{"id":137103,"date":"2025-08-11T14:06:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T14:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/137103\/"},"modified":"2025-08-11T14:06:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T14:06:11","slug":"judge-ruled-erin-patterson-would-have-to-face-separate-trial-for-attempting-to-kill-estranged-husband-to-avoid-prejudice-victoria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/137103\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge ruled Erin Patterson would have to face separate trial for attempting to kill estranged husband to avoid prejudice | Victoria"},"content":{"rendered":"

Triple murderer Erin Patterson would have been unfairly prejudiced if a jury heard allegations<\/a> she tried to kill her estranged husband in the years before the fatal poison mushroom lunch.<\/p>\n

Victorian supreme court justice Christopher Beale made the decision on 14 March, ruling Patterson would have to face a separate trial for the three alleged attempted murder charges.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors ultimately dropped the charges in relation to Simon Patterson just before the triple-murder trial started in Morwell.<\/p>\n

Patterson was on 7 July found guilty<\/a> of killing Simon\u2019s parents, Don and Gail, 70, and his aunt Heather Wilkinson, 66, along with the attempted murder of Heather\u2019s husband Ian Wilkinson.<\/p>\n

Erin Patterson denies the allegations relating to her former partner, Simon Patterson.<\/p>\n

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Justice Beale\u2019s redacted pre-trial rulings were released to media on Monday evening after Patterson lost her bid to keep the evidence a secret to preserve her appeal rights.<\/p>\n

The details around the alleged attempted murders of Simon Patterson were revealed for the first time on Friday.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors had alleged Patterson tried to poison Simon several times between 2021 and 2022.<\/p>\n

The first was a penne pasta Patterson cooked him before leaving for a camping trip in November 2021, which led to a five-day hospital stay for Simon.<\/p>\n

He also ended up in a coma after a camping trip in late May 2022 where he allegedly ate a chicken korma curry Patterson had made him.<\/p>\n

Simon had to undergo surgery to remove a large portion of his bowel after eating the curry, he told the supreme court during pre-trial hearings.<\/p>\n

It was also alleged he fell ill in September 2022 after eating a wrap Patterson prepared for him while camping together at Wilsons Promontory.<\/p>\n

The prosecution claimed the allegations could be used as coincidence evidence to show the similarities between what allegedly happened to Simon and the mushroom lunch victims.<\/p>\n

\"ErinErin Patterson’s interview with Victoria police released \u2013 video<\/p>\n

But Beale ruled the charges should be heard in a separate trial to prevent jurors from \u201cmisusing or overvaluing\u201d the evidence in relation to Simon.<\/p>\n

He determined if a jury found Patterson had deliberately poisoned her four lunch guests in July 2023, there was a risk they would wrongly assess the charges relating to Simon.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI am not persuaded that its probative value substantially outweighs the significant danger or risk of unfair prejudice to the accused,\u201d Beale said in his written reasons.<\/p>\n

The judge also made pre-trial rulings in relation to documents on poisoning found on devices police seized from Patterson\u2019s home.<\/p>\n

Beale ruled the documents failed the relevance test because the evidence could only go as high as Patterson possibly accessed the file.<\/p>\n

The judge also stopped the jury from seeing a Facebook post Patterson made to a poisons page, where she claimed her cat had chewed on a mushroom and was vomiting.<\/p>\n

Justice Beale noted the post was made 18 months before the first allegation in relation to Simon.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my view, even if the evidence of this post shows an interest in poisons, it is temporally remote,\u201d the judge said in his reasons.<\/p>\n

Patterson will face a two-day pre-sentence hearing later in August, during which she will listen to statements from the Pattersons and Wilkinsons.<\/p>\n

She will have 28 days to appeal after she is sentenced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Triple murderer Erin Patterson would have been unfairly prejudiced if a jury heard allegations she tried to kill…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":137104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4740,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-137103","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115010521350610398","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}