An Australian woman convicted of murdering three relatives with poisonous mushrooms has been approved for Ozempic weight-loss jabs while in prison, according to reports. Erin Patterson, the 51-year-old serving life at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre in Melbourne for the triple murder, returned to court last month to overturn her convictions. Patterson has been approved for the weight-loss drug because she is in solitary confinement and won't be able to exercise, according to local reports.
She was granted the weight-loss injections in recent weeks, the Herald Sun reported, citing prison sources. The Victoria justice department said that drugs are provided to prisoners if required based on doctors' advice. She was also convicted of attempting to murder Heather’s husband, Ian Wilkinson, who survived after becoming gravely ill.
Patterson has always denied deliberately poisoning her relatives. The case, which transfixed Australia and generated a flood of podcasts, books and television programmes, centres on a family lunch at Patterson’s home in Leongatha, in Victoria’s Gippsland region, on 16 July 2023. The meal was a beef Wellington dish prepared with the deadly death cap mushrooms.
She maintained during her trial that the inclusion of the highly toxic mushrooms was an accident and that she panicked and attempted to conceal what had happened afterwards. During the appeal, her lawyers argued that some of the trial evidence was too speculative and that key evidence for their case had been wrongly excluded. The judges are expected to reserve their decision and the outcome may not be known for several weeks.
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