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Erin Patterson’s get-out-of-jail bid · The Front

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Today's biggest news from The Australian. I'm Claire Harvey with
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: the Front's afternoon headlines. She's in virtual solitary confinement in
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Victoria's toughest women's prison, surrounded by terrorists, drug dealers and
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  Speaker 1: child abusers. And now Aaron Patterson's confirmed what we all suspected.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: She's not going to submit quietly. Patterson is famous around
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  Speaker 1: the world as the Mushroom Murderer, the fifty one year
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  Speaker 1: old country mum of two who was convicted earlier this
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  Speaker 1: year of deliberately poisoning a homemade beef Wellington in order
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  Speaker 1: to kill four of her husband's elderly relatives. Three of
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: them did die, her parents in law Don and Gale Patterson,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: and her husband's aunt, Heather Wilkinson. One guest at the lunch,
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  Speaker 1: Baptist pastor Ian Wilkinson, survived to give devastating evidence against
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  Speaker 1: Aaron Patterson. Wilkinson is Patterson's uncle by married and he
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  Speaker 1: offered her his forgiveness in a very moving victim impact statement.
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  Speaker 1: Patterson also, according to the judge who sentenced her to
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  Speaker 1: life imprisonment with a non parole period of thirty three years,
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  Speaker 1: wanted to kill her husband, Simon Patterson, but he declined
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  Speaker 1: to attend the lunch at the last minute. Patterson has
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  Speaker 1: always denied wrongdoing. She says the whole thing was a terrible,
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  Speaker 1: tragic accident that she accidentally included death cap mushrooms from
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  Speaker 1: her pantry in the meal, thinking they were harmless edible fungi.
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  Speaker 1: These are the words of Christopher bial the sentencing judge
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  Speaker 1: who sentenced Patterson to three life sentences to be served
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  Speaker 1: concurrently plus twenty five years for the attempted murder of
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  Speaker 1: Ian Wilkinson. Beale allowed us to broadcast this recording in September.
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  Speaker 2: You maintain your innocence. In other words, there is no
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  Speaker 2: evidence of remorse. You showed no pity for your victims.
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  Speaker 2: Instead of informing those treating the Pattersons and Wilkinson's that
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  Speaker 2: you had used forage mushrooms, which you could have done
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  Speaker 2: without having to admit that you had deliberately poisoned their meals,
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  Speaker 2: you repeatedly denied foraging, insisting that the mushrooms for the
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  Speaker 2: beef wellingtons were so solely from Woolworth's and an Asian grocery.
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  Speaker 2: We will never know whether revealing the use of foraged
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  Speaker 2: mushrooms would have made a difference.
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  Speaker 1: Patterson's lawyers lodged papers with Victorian courts on Monday, indicating
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  Speaker 1: she's appealing against the unanimous verdicts of the jury that
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: convicted her. You need grounds to get an appeal up
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  Speaker 1: to prove that perhaps the jury was incorrectly instructed by
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  Speaker 1: the judge, or that the trial was not conducted fairly.
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  Speaker 1: We don't yet know exactly what Aaron Patterson's grounds of
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  Speaker 1: appeal will be. During the trial, Justice Christopher Beale agreed
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  Speaker 1: with her senior counsel Colin Mandy that several pieces of
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  Speaker 1: evidence that the Crown wanted included against Patterson were potentially
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  Speaker 1: prejudicial and should be hidden from the jury until after
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  Speaker 1: the verdict. We revealed these in The Australian after the
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  Speaker 1: suppressions were lifted. Remember the cat post. The jury didn't
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: get to see that, but it was a social media
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  Speaker 1: post the Crown says Patterson made before the Beef Wellington lunch,
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  Speaker 1: in which she claimed her cat had ingested deathcap mushrooms
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  Speaker 1: asking friends for advice. Turns out Patterson didn't have a cat.
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  Speaker 1: It was also revealed after the verdict that Simon Patterson
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: believed Aaron had tried to kill him on numerous occasions
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  Speaker 1: by poisoning his food. Again, Patterson has always denied wrongdoing.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: There's another twist too. The Director of Public Prosecutions is
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: also appealing, saying Patterson's sentence was manifestly inadequate for the
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  Speaker 1: gravity of her crimes. Check out that story live right
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: now at the Australian dot com dot a U and
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  Speaker 1: come back to the front first thing in the morning.