Erin Patterson - We the members of the MN jury find the defendant Guilty or Not Guilty?

[Dustyblue]

Well here we are, after 2 years of head-scratching speculation and many weeks of trial detail-thrashing. It looks like the Judge will give his directions to the jury on Tuesday, after which they'll be sequestered in a local motel (I do not envy them this) to reach a verdict.

Clearly we're not privy to every last piece of evidence shown at the trial, but those of us who've been following closely will surely have formed an opinion one war or the other.

So, I ask you- if you were on the jury- what would your verdict be?

Awful!

Simon seems at fault for telling some of his family of his suspicions about Erin seeking to harm or kill him with food, but not others, especially once they’d accepted the lunch invitation. That said it sounds like his position was terrible, it was a serious accusation and it sounds like he might have been in denial about her. If he’d fully believed she’d done that one would presume he’d have tried for full custody.

Hard disagree with your take. He is not responsible for Erin’s actions. Even though he thought she was trying to poison him, he never could have predicted she would poison anyone else.

Of course he’s not at all responsible for her actions.

But if he (rightly as it turns out) thought she had deliberately poisoned him, several times, it seems illogical to make the assumption that she’d not harm anyone else and to tell some family members and people invited by her to lunch but not others. Perhaps denial was at work.

We want not to believe the worst of people and he must have been in a terrible situation.

@Civilservant again, I disagree. Even if he suspected that Erin was trying kill him, it’s not reasonable to expect that she would try to kill anyone else.

I listened to the most recent The Trial podcast which reported on this today. He now believes she poisoned him on four occasions with, a spaghetti bolognese, a curry,a stew and a wrap. It wasn’t until the 4th attempt that the penny finally dropped that she could be poisoning him. He told his GP who was also a friend and his father Don who went on to be murdered by Erin. Don told him to write everything down and ‘be careful’ but not to tell anyone else because it wasn’t fair on Erin and he didn’t want people treating her differently.

The main reason Simon didn’t want to go to the meal was he didn’t want to eat anything prepared by Erin but he thought it was only him who was her target. Obviously he would also feel uncomfortable sitting down for a social occasion thinking what he did about Erin. He had no reason to believe she would murder the rest of his family and Don was aware of what Simon believed Erin had done.

I also thought it interesting that the first alleged poisoning took place at the end of 2021 before the fall out over child maintenance.

Please stop the victim blaming.

The victim blaming of Simon on here has been so upsetting. He told a bible study group friend, he told his doctor (who encouraged him to keep a spreadsheet), he told his sister, and he told his father. Only his doctor and his sister took him seriously. Everyone else thought he was being a bit paranoid /melodramatic. His sister tried to get her parents to not go to the lunch, but Don told her not to be silly - and Don and Gail had had lunch at Erin's house the previous month (when Simon refused to attend also) without any incident.

Simon had no reason to believe Erin would murder his parents and his aunt and uncle, it's just so far beyond the norm - and all he had at the time were strong suspicions she'd been trying to poison him, and no evidence of it.

His father believed him after he and Gail and Ian and Heather became so violently ill - but by then it was too late.

Exactly. He had no proof, only a suspicion, that she was trying to poison him and probably had times where he doubted it himself. It's a helluva thing to accuse someone of when you're not absolutely certain- you run this risk of looking like a paranoid, vindictive bastard.

And yet he DID take that risk and tell a few people. He's totally blameless in all this.

I caught a video on Youtube that was interesting. A former Victorian police officer, Gary Jubelin (who has a podcast called "I Catch Killers") spends an hour discussing the case with Xanthe Mallet.

Xanthe Mallet must have brilliant publicists. She seems to be interviewed on most commercial TV channels anytime ANYTHING happens that might warrant the "forensic psych" point of view. She repeats herself and says nothing that most arm-chair psychologists couldn't say themselves. Yes, we know what the DSM is ( Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). I don't doubt her credentials, but jeez it's hard to take her seriously.

Have a look if you've an hour to waste. The banter b/w the two of them is both funny and distasteful.

@Dustyblue A former Victorian police officer, Gary Jubelin (who has a podcast called "I Catch Killers") spends an hour discussing the case with Xanthe Mallet

What on earth are you on? He’s not Victorian, either past or present. He was in the NSW police force for his entire career and has nothing to do with Victoria so no idea where you got that from. The mushroom killer was Victorian. In other news, Xanthe, formerly from Mars 🤣.

@HoppingPavlova You're right, my mistake. Jubelin was former NSW police, not Victorian.

EP is from Gippsland in Victoria, where I live. Xanthe is, I think, originally from Scotland.

Hope that clears things up for you.

Hope that clears things up for you

Uhhm, I didn’t need things cleared up. I was clear from the get go😁.

It will be interesting to see which family members provide victim impact statements. There are potentially quite a few of them.

Will Simon be allowed to??

How soon would an appeal be signalled by EP (if it hasn't already happened that is)?

To appeal there would have to be a very good reason i.e. The lawyers/and or judge made a mistake. An appeal can't be made simply because the defendant didn't like that they were found guilty or that they think their sentence is too harsh, unless the sentence given is deemed too harsh for the crime but considering how many people she's been convicted of killing I'd doubt the sentence will be lenient.

I believe you have 28 days to lodge an appeal against the guilty verdict or apply for a time extension for appeal. However the judge in the case was very careful (see the articles linked yesterday) to not allow any evidence that may give grounds for appeal. So I think it’s highly unlikely the defence would have any grounds for appeal.

Usually if they plan to appeal, it’s announced pretty soon after the verdict, so I think it’s very unlikely she will appeal.

As @Sagealicious said, she could also appeal against the sentence (after sentencing), however I don’t think she’ll have any grounds to appeal any triple-murder sentence as ‘too harsh’. I think she’ll need to reconcile herself to the fact that the rest of her life, or most of it, will be in jail.

All this inadmissible evidence coming out makes me think it must be hard to be a witness. For the ER doctor for example (can't remember his name - the showpony guy with the mullet) - when talking about his suspicions etc he can't just say that Simon's GP rang the hospital to warn them it wasn't a normal food poisoning case. So witnesses would be almost forced to lie or at the least to be evasive. And Simon in particular must have needed to be very careful what he said on the stand so as to not risk the case.

I believe her appeal may be based around the jury, lawyers and press all staying at the same hotel.

of course Simon will be able to write an impact statement.

I don't know how much of a leg she has to stand on re the accomodation, as it was at her insistence the trial was held in Morwell, not in the more suitable Melbourne.

But I expect her to try to lodge an appeal against everything - verdict, sentence, jail food!

The jury was fully supervised and escorted at the hotel by jury supervision people. They didn’t get any chance to mix with anyone.

If something is held in a small town then accommodation options will be limited.

She’s not making an appeal. The 28 day period in which she would have had to make one has passed.

Reading all the stuff that has come out this past week, I find it fascinating to hear Simon's pre-trial evidence that his suspected rat poisoning caused him to have low potassium levels.

One of the things Erin commented on when she was admitted to hospital after the fatal lunch, and they brought back her blood test results, was that they showed low potassium. The doctor contradicted this and said they were fine.

It's not admissible evidence, but it may show some sort of guilty awareness.

She has twenty-eight days after sentencing to lodge an appeal.

Or so the newspaper reports say.

I thought that an appeal against the guilty verdict would have to come within 28 days of the conviction and an appeal against the sentence would have to come within 28 days of sentencing. But I'm no lawyer, so definitely could be wrong.

"Erin Patterson will have 28 days from the date of her sentence to begin the process of lodging an appeal, according to the Supreme Court of Victoria.

Her legal team can appeal either the guilty verdict itself, the sentence handed down or both of those things together."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-07/erin-patterson-mushroom-murder-trial-guilty-verdict-appeal/105477378