Australian state to press for longer sentence for mushroom killer

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MELBOURNE (Reuters) -Australia’s Victoria state will appeal the sentence handed down to convicted mushroom murderer Erin Patterson, with the prosecutor calling the sentence ‘manifestly inadequate,” Australia’s national broadcaster reported on Monday.

Patterson was last month convicted of murdering three elderly relatives of her estranged husband with a meal containing poisonous mushrooms in the township of Leongatha, Victoria. She was sentenced to a minimum of 33 years in prison.

The presiding judge said Erin Patterson showed no pity for her in-laws after she served them individual portions of Beef Wellington laced with death cap mushrooms, in what was one of the longest jail terms ever given to a woman in the country.

“The Director of Public Prosecutions has filed an appeal against the sentence of Erin Patterson with the Court of Appeal,” the media adviser at the Supreme Court of Victoria told Reuters via email.

The Office of Public Prosecutions confirmed to the ABC that the appeal had been filed on the basis that the sentence handed down to Patterson was “manifestly inadequate,” it reported. Reuters could not reach the Office of Public Prosecutions outside of office hours.

(Reporting by Melanie Burton. Additional reporting by Stefica Nicol Bikes; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)