The Court of Appeal in Victoria, on Friday, handed down a heavier prison sentence to Australian murderer Erin Patterson for killing her husband’s parents and aunt in July 2023.

Following an 11-week trial at a courthouse in Morwell in 2025, the 52-year-old was found guilty of three murders and a further count of attempted murder, after she deliberately laced their meals with lethal and toxic death cap mushrooms.

The jury at the lower court originally sentenced her to life in prison but was eligible to apply for parole after 33 years.

Ms Patterson, however, maintained that the dish was accidentally contaminated, appealed the judgement against her as a “miscarriage of justice”, and urged the higher court to either set her free or hear the case again.

At the appeal hearing early this year, her lawyers argued that the trial at the lower court was marred by irregularities, including an allegation that members of the jury stayed in the same hotel as a witness for the police and members of the prosecution.

However, the court dismissed the appeal, insisting that her three mushroom murders, which were “carefully planned and deliberate”, deserved a harsher sentence.

The court ruled that considering the “shocking criminality”, the convict should spend her life in jail with no prospect of parole for the “extraordinarily cold and calculated” murders which must “be denounced in the strongest terms”.