Woman convicted of mushroom poison murders in Australia ordered to never be released from prison

October 30, 2026 / 8:31 AM EDT / CBS/AP

An Australian appeals court on Friday ordered triple-murderer Erin Patterson to never be released from prison because of the "shocking criminality" involved in poisoning four of her estranged husband's relatives with death cap mushrooms.

The three judges of the Victoria state Court of Appeal dismissed Patterson's appeal of her convictions and upheld prosecutors' challenge to the leniency of her 33-year nonparole sentence, meaning she will spend the rest of her life behind bars. Beforehand, she would have been 82 years old when she could be considered for release.

"This offending was extraordinarily cold and calculated and stands to be denounced in the strongest terms," Justice Stephen McLeish said on behalf of all three judges.

"In all the circumstances after anxious consideration, we have concluded that the case involved such shocking criminality that it is inappropriate to fix a nonparole period," McLeish added.

Patterson is only the second woman in Australia to be imprisoned for life without possibility of parole. The first is meatworker Katherine Knight, who was sentenced in New South Wales state in 2001 for the murder a year earlier of her partner John Price, whom she'd stabbed at least…

Original source: https://www.cbsnews.com/world/