The last time Erin Patterson welcomed guests across the threshold of her home on the outskirts of Leongatha, a small cattle-farming town in the Australian state of Victoria, it was 12.30pm on Saturday, July 29, 2023.
Four elderly family members were joining her lunch. But within a week of this supposedly happy occasion, three of her guests were dead and the fourth in hospital, fighting for his life.
Erin, 50, had served beef wellington, a dinner party staple her mother used to cook on special occasions.
It soon became clear that highly poisonous death cap mushrooms had somehow found their way into the dish's filling.
Shortly afterwards, Patterson was interviewed by police. A month or so later she was arrested and, for the past six weeks, this middle-aged mother of two has been at Latrobe Valley Magistrates' Court, in the nearby town of Morwell, on trial for murder.
