Multiple victims, no remorse: the factors behind Erin Patterson's life sentence

Erin Patterson has been sentenced to life imprisonment in Victoria over the deaths of three people who ate a beef wellington laced with death cap mushrooms.

In sentencing, the court pointed to the number of victims, the deliberate planning involved and the absence of any remorse. A fourth person survived after prolonged hospital treatment.

The judge described a sustained deception both before and after the lunch, including false claims about illness and attempts to dispose of evidence, as factors that removed any basis for leniency.

The case attracted extraordinary public attention across Australia and New Zealand, in part because of the ordinary domestic setting of a family lunch, and in part because the method left investigators reconstructing events from foraging records and phone data.