What Erin Patterson told her friend after she was found guilty
As she was being led back down to the cells by court staff, Patterson made the comment, 'See you soon', to her best friend and supporter, Ali Rose Prior. Ms Prior left the court thronged by media. 'I'm saddened, and it is what it is,' she said when asked how she was feeling.
'I didn't have any expectations, it's the justice system and it is what it is,' she continued as walked outside, escorted by G4S security staff. One reporter asked, 'She said she would see you soon, were you hoping to see her?' 'I will see her,' Ms Prior replied, as she wept behind her sunglasses. '...I'm her friend and I'll see her - I'll visit with her.'
Asked if Patterson was confident there would be a not-guilty verdict, she said: 'I don't know.' Ms Prior then begged media to leave her alone so she could get to her car. The verdict ends one of the nation's most intriguing homicide cases.
Patterson sat defiantly throughout her 10-week trial, glaring at the media, members of the public and the family of the people she murdered with callous disregard. The mother-of-two had pleaded not guilty to the murders of Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail's sister, Heather Wilkinson.
They died after consuming death caps in the beef Wellingtons during lunch at Patterson's Leongatha home in southeast Victoria on July 29, 2023. Only Pastor Ian Wilkinson survived her plot - a blunder Patterson would live to regret, and will now serve time for after also being found guilty of attempting to murder him.
Seated at the back of courtroom four of the Supreme Court of Victoria, sitting at the Latrobe Valley Magistrates' Court, Patterson, dressed in a paisley shirt, appeared stunned as her fate was sealed on Monday afternoon. Asked to deliver a verdict, the jury foreperson - one of only five women to sit on the original 15-person panel - simply stated, 'guilty'. The verdict produced an audible gasp from those within the packed courtroom, which included members of the Patterson clan.
Patterson will now be taken back down to the Morwell Police Station cells where she had been kept throughout the trial. They are the cells she had grown to loathe throughout her trial, complaining about being denied a pillow, doona and her computer. She can expect to spend the next decades of her life caged within the walls of Dame Phyllis Frost Centre in Melbourne's west alongside a rogue's gallery of female killers.
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