Erin Patterson: From an ordinary mum to a household namepublished at 05:01 BST
Image source, EPAErin Patterson is now a household name in Australia, after finding herself at the heart of a triple-murder case that gripped the world last year.
But before all of that, she was a regular mum in a small Australian town.
She’d studied business and accounting at university, and at one point worked as an air traffic controller at Melbourne’s Tullamarine airport.
She and her estranged husband Simon Patterson got married in 2007.
“Some of the things that attracted me to her in the first place is definitely her intelligence. She’s quite witty and can be quite funny,” he told the court during her murder trial last year.
Simon said that Erin had received a “substantial inheritance” from her grandmother, which he estimated at A$2m ($1.3m; £964,000), and the court heard she wasn’t working at the time of the murders.
The couple separated in 2015 – though they remained on amicable terms for a while.
But their relationship changed in 2022, after Simon listed himself as “separated” on his tax return – a move that he said upset Erin. There was also a falling out over child support payments, and the jury was shown unflattering messages where Erin rants about her former partner being a “deadbeat” and his parents “a lost cause”.
When Erin invited Simon and his family over for that fateful lunch in July 2023, Simon pulled out the day before, saying he felt “uncomfortable” attending amid the tension. And after the trial, it was revealed he believed she had repeatedly tried to poison him before.
