Erin Patterson, the Australian woman accused of killing three relatives with a meal of death cap mushrooms baked in a Beef Wellington lunch, has been found guilty of three counts of murder and the attempted murder of the lone survivor.

A 12-member jury reached the verdict after around six days of deliberation following a 10-week trial in Morwell, a tiny town about an hour’s drive from the suburban dining room in Leongatha, Victoria, where the lethal lunch was served in July 2023.

Patterson’s former parents-in-law, Don and Gail Patterson, died along with Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson. Heather’s husband Ian, their local pastor, survived after a weekslong stay in hospital.

Prosecutors alleged that Patterson deliberately laced the lunch with death cap mushrooms, highly toxic fungi that she picked after seeing their location posted on a public website.

Her defense lawyers argued the deaths were a “terrible accident” and that Patterson repeatedly lied to police out of panic when she realized she may have added foraged mushrooms to the meal.

Under Australian law, none of the jurors can be publicly identified, and they’re prohibited from disclosing jury room deliberations even after the trial ends.

It will never be known which pieces of evidence influenced each juror’s decision, but all 12 were required to agree on the verdict.

The trial has captivated audiences worldwide via news reports and four podcasts dedicated to unpacking each day’s evidence.

Patterson sat in court, listening as prosecutors called witness after witness, whose testimony, they alleged, told a compelling story of a triple murder that the jury found satisfied the legal standard of beyond reasonable doubt.

The fateful lunch

The agreed facts were that Patterson asked five people to lunch on July 29, 2023, including her estranged husband Simon Patterson, who pulled out the day before.

Within hours of the meal, the four lunch guests – Simon’s parents Don and Gail, and his aunt and uncle, Heather and Ian Wilkinson – became ill with vomiting and diarrhea. They went to hospital where they were placed in induced comas as doctors tried to save them.

Gail and Heather died on August 4 from multiorgan failure, followed by Don on August 5, after he failed to respond to a liver transplant. Ian Wilkinson survived and was finally discharged from hospital in late September, after almost two months of intensive treatment.

Death cap mushrooms contain amanita toxins that prevent the production of proteins in liver cells, leading to cell death and possible liver failure from about two days after ingestion.

Native to Europe, the lethal mushrooms have been found growing in several Australian states, and around the time of the lunch, they had been seen within a short drive of Patterson’s home in rural Victoria.

In finding Patterson guilty, jury members indicated they were convinced beyond reasonable doubt that she planned to kill all four guests by hiding death cap mushrooms in the lunch.

During the trial, the prosecution argued that Patterson had the opportunity to pick lethal mushrooms after seeing their location posted on the citizen science iNaturalist website.

The guilty verdict suggests the jury accepted the prosecution’s argument that she likely traveled to two sites in April and May 2023, and deliberately picked the mushrooms used in the meal.

Patterson admitted that on April 28 – the same day as cellphone signals put her in the vicinity of death cap mushrooms – she bought a dehydrator that she later dumped at a waste recycling center on August 2.

It had her fingerprints on it and contained remnants of death cap mushrooms.

The prosecution alleged that Patterson faked illness in the days after serving the lunch and tried to cover her tracks by disposing of the dehydrator and factory resetting her devices to delete evidence.

The prosecution did not have to prove motive.

Prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC accused Patterson of having two faces: One she showed the world that suggested she had a good relationship with the Pattersons, the parents of her estranged husband, and a hidden face she showed only her Facebook friends that suggested she wanted to cut ties with them.

In Facebook messages sent in December 2022, Patterson had expressed anger and frustration over Don and Gail’s reluctance to get involved in their son’s marriage breakdown.

“I’m sick of this shit I want nothing to do with them,” she wrote. “I thought his parents would want him to do the right thing but it seems their concern about not wanting to feel uncomfortable and not wanting to get involved in their son’s personal matters are overriding that so f*** em.”

And another message read: “This family I swear to f***ing god.”

During eight days of testimony including cross-examination, Patterson consistently pleaded her innocence, claiming she inadvertently added foraged mushrooms to the meal.

In his directions to the jury, Justice Christopher Beale said that Patterson’s admission that she told lies and disposed of evidence must not cause them to be prejudiced against her.

“This is a court of law, not a court of morals,” he said.

“The issue is not whether she is in some sense responsible for the tragic consequences of the lunch, but whether the prosecution has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that she is criminally responsible for those consequences,” he said.

The jury found that Patterson had intended to kill all four lunch guests and lied repeatedly on the stand to claim she didn’t.

Patterson will be sentenced at a later date.

This is a developing story. More to come

Indonesia’s rumbling Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki erupted Monday, sending a column of volcanic materials as high as 18 kilometers (11 miles) into the sky and depositing ash on villages.

The volcano has been at the highest alert level since last month and no casualties were immediately reported.

Indonesia’s Geology Agency recorded an avalanche of searing gas clouds mixed with rocks and lava traveling up to 5 kilometers (3 miles) down the volcano’s slopes during the eruption. Observations from drones showed lava filling the crater, indicating deep movement of magma that set off volcanic earthquakes.

The column of hot clouds that rose into the sky was the volcano’s highest since the major eruption in November 2024 that killed nine people and injured dozens, said Muhammad Wafid, the Geology Agency chief. It also erupted in March.

“An eruption of that size certainly carries a higher potential for danger, including its impact on aviation,” Wafid told The Associated Press from Switzerland where he was attending a seminar. “We shall reevaluate to enlarge its danger zone that must be cleared of villagers and tourist activities.”

The volcano monitoring agency had increased the alert status for Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki to the highest level after an eruption on June 18, and more than doubled an exclusion zone to a 7-kilometer (4.3-mile) radius since then as eruptions became more frequent.

After an eruption early last year, about 6,500 people evacuated and the island’s Frans Seda Airport was closed. The airport has remained closed since then due to the continuing seismic activity.

The 1,584-meter (5,197-foot) mountain is a twin volcano with Mount Lewotobi Perempuan in the district of Flores Timur.

Monday’s eruption was one of Indonesia’s largest volcano eruptions since 2010 when Mount Merapi, the country’s most volatile volcano erupted on the densely populated island of Java. That eruption killed 353 people and forced over 350,000 people to evacuate affected areas.

Indonesia is an archipelago of more than 280 million people with frequent seismic activity. It has 120 active volcanoes and sits along the “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped series of seismic fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.

The owners of a pet lion that jumped a wall and attacked a woman and two children in the Pakistani city of Lahore have been arrested.

The woman and her two young children, aged 5 and 7, were taken to hospital, after being attacked in an alleyway when the lion escaped from a farmhouse in the neighborhood of Johan town on Thursday.

Security camera footage released by police showed the lion leaping over a concrete wall and pouncing on a woman from behind, knocking her to the ground. A man can be seen running out of the property the lion escaped from with an object in hand and chasing the lion away from the woman, before the wild cat takes off further down the road where the children were attacked.

They sustained injuries to their faces and arms but are now in stable condition, according to the Associated Press news agency.

Lahore police said in a video posted to social media that the lion had escaped from an open cage at the farmhouse and that it was recaptured by the owners, who promptly put it in a vehicle and went into hiding in another district.

Muhammad Faisal Kamran, Deputy Inspector General of Lahore Police Operations, said three people were arrested on Friday morning. “We’ve also captured the lion and transferred it to Wildlife authorities,” Kamran said.

Lahore police shared an image of three men in a police cell and video of the lion in a cage.

Owning wild cats as pets is seen as a status symbol in Pakistan and is not uncommon, but a license is required, and large cats must be kept outside city limits.

“This unfortunate incident highlights how wild animals are often kept in such places without a license, or permission — with no legal procedures followed — endangering the lives of many people,” Kamran said.

The Punjab government announced Sunday that it was undertaking a province-wide crackdown on those keeping lions without a license. So far, 13 lions have been captured and five individuals arrested in connection with violating wildlife regulations.

Former Russian Transport Minister Roman Starovoit died by suicide on Monday, just hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin fired him from the job, officials said.

Starovoit was dismissed by Putin on Monday morning. The decree announcing his dismissal was published on the official Kremlin website, with his deputy Andrey Nikitin appointed acting minister.

Asked by reporters for the reasons behind Starovoit’s dismissal, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov denied this was due to a “lack of trust,” but he did not give any alternative reason.

The Investigative Committee of Russia said in a statement that Starovoit’s body was found inside a car in Odintsovo, a suburb of Moscow. He was found with a gunshot wound, the committee said. It said the circumstances of his death were being investigated but the “main theory is suicide.”

Before he became a minister in May 2024, Starovoit was the governor of the southern Russian Kursk region. While he left the post before Ukraine’s surprise incursion, he was partially blamed for security failures in the Russian region.

The dismissal came amid a multi-day disruption to air travel in Russia. Russian Federal Agency for Air Transport said 485 flights were canceled, 88 were diverted and 1,900 were delayed over the weekend and into Monday.

The agency said the cancellations were down to “external interference,” without giving any specifics. But the Russian Defense Ministry said more than 400 Ukrainian long-range strikes were intercepted during the same period of time.

The Ukrainian military said it also struck a chemical plant in Krasnozavodsk, north of Moscow early on Monday. It said the plant manufactures “pyrotechnic devices and ammunition, including thermobaric warheads for Shahed-type” drones.

Another deadly night in Ukraine

At least 12 civilians were killed and more than 90 injured in Russian attacks across Ukraine in the 24 hours to mid-morning on Monday, according to Ukrainian authorities.

At least 29 people, including three children aged 3, 7 and 11, were injured when Russian drones hit a residential building, a kindergarten and a commercial area at 6 a.m. local time Monday (11 p.m. ET on Sunday) in Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine.

At least 17 more people, including a teenage boy, were injured when the same city was struck with drones again just five hours later, according to Kharkiv mayor Ihor Terekhov.

The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia fired four surface-to-air missiles and 101 Shahed-type drones at Ukraine in the past 24 hours, adding that it downed 75 of the drones either by shooting them down or by jamming.

The Land Forces of Ukraine said on Monday that two of its recruitment offices were hit by Russian drones on Monday, the latest in a string of similar incidents.

Six draft offices across the country have been attacked by Russian drones in just over a week, the Land Forces said in a statement, adding that they believed Russia was attacking the offices in an attempt to disrupt the Ukrainian military’s enlistment process.

At least two people have been killed and more than a dozen injured in these attacks, the statement said.

“Something can be born out of everything – if you want it to,” said Iris Haim, whose hostage son Yotam was killed in Gaza. Those words are helping her find hope.

The new beginning that Haim now longs for is a grandchild, created from sperm she had harvested from Yotam’s body upon its return home in December 2023.

Yotam, 28, was kidnapped by Hamas-led militants from kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7, 2023. After spending 65 days in captivity, he was mistakenly shot by Israeli troops on December 15, 2023 along with two other hostages, Alon Shamriz and Samer Talalka, as they attempted to flee their captors in northern Gaza.

Yotam is the only Israeli hostage whose sperm is known to have been retrieved posthumously, and whose family is lobbying to use it to have a child.

Haim says Yotam, a single man at the time of his death, always wanted children. “Yotam really wanted that – he talked about it a lot,” she said.

A total of 205 hostages have so far been returned, 148 of whom were released alive, and 57 returned dead, according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office. Most had been dead for weeks, if not months, making the men’s sperm no longer viable for use – except for Yotam’s. That’s where his mother saw an unexpected opportunity to have what would be her first grandchild.

Chances of successful sperm retrieval are highest in the first 24 hours after death, with the cut-off time being 72 hours, according to the Israeli government.

There are currently 50 Israeli hostages held in Gaza, of whom at least 20 are believed to be alive. Both Hamas and Israel have accepted a new ceasefire proposal and indirect negotiations on a deal have restarted, raising hopes that more could return home soon.

Uncharted territory

Haim remembers with painful clarity the moment Israeli authorities came to her home and told her about her son’s death. “Yotam was killed. By friendly fire. While escaping Hamas captivity. He was mistakenly identified as a terrorist,” Haim recalled the officers saying.

Half an hour after they broke the news of Yotam’s death, one officer approached Haim and whispered, “you can request sperm retrieval,” Haim said. The process “immediately got started, immediately,” she said.

Yotam’s sperm was retrieved within the necessary window of time. Ten samples were extracted, “enough for five children,” Haim recalled being told by the doctor who performed the procedure.

Haim now faces an uphill battle to get approval to use his sperm to produce a grandchild. If she succeeds, her next challenge would be to find a woman to carry the child and raise it.

Sperm lives on briefly after death, which is why it’s possible for doctors to retrieve it from testicular tissue. Any live sperm cells found are transferred and frozen in liquid nitrogen.

None, however, can be used without approval from a family court, where Haim now faces an uphill battle to continue her son’s lineage.

In Israel, extracting sperm from a dead body is permitted, but there is no law that clearly defines the process of using the sperm for the purpose of producing offspring.

“In Israeli law, we don’t have a law for this procedure,” Nily Shatz, Haim’s lawyer, said, adding that family courts have only approved posthumous use of sperm by parents of the deceased to produce a child twice in the past; however, the second case was later overturned after an appeal brought by the state. “All the other cases were rejected.”

The first case was that of a woman who after years of court battles was able to have a grandchild after proving that her son, who was killed in Gaza in 2002, wanted children, according to Shatz. The court, however, declared that the ruling should not be perceived as a precedent, saying legislators must decide on the matter in the future. The second case was that of a couple who are still fighting in court to have a grandchild with retrieved sperm of their late son, who died in 2012.

Extreme caution

Meirav Ben-Ari, a lawmaker in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, is pushing for a bill that formally allows family members to use retrieved sperm even if the deceased had not specifically stated his wish to have a child posthumously, as long as they can prove the deceased would have wanted a child.

Netanyahu’s coalition is made up of some of the most religiously conservative parties ever to hold power in Israel, including ultra-Orthodox and far-right religious Zionist factions whose agendas are reshaping the country’s legal and social fabric.

Shatz, Haim’s lawyer, said that after the horrors of October 7, it was past time for parliament to pass a law on the issue, especially as families of hundreds of fallen soldiers retrieve the sperm of their dead.

But while Haim longs to be a grandmother, the issue of using the sperm of deceased men remains controversial. It raises ethical, religious and legal questions that lawmakers are yet to address.

For now, cases are assessed individually by the family courts, Shatz said. And since there are varying opinions in government about the practice, each case is viewed with extreme caution, she said.

At the moment, for families to use the sperm of their deceased, they must prove to the courts that the person who died wanted children, even after his death.

Yotam’s family is working to prove that he wanted children by providing testimony from relatives, friends and his therapist, but such intangible proof is likely to be harder for many others to present.

“There’s no logical way (where) usually people say that I want a child, even if I’m going from the world,” Shatz said, noting this isn’t something ordinary men think about, especially when young.

Sperm retrievals soared after October 7

Posthumous sperm retrieval (PSR) in Israel was previously open only to partners – provided other relatives did not object – while parents of the deceased had to apply for legal permission. Following the October 7 attacks, the Ministry of Health loosened the rules.

“In previous years, approximately 15–20 such retrievals were performed annually,” the ministry said.

For Haim, having a grandchild is a way to prove that Israel will keep growing despite the massacre.

“Every mother whose child was killed wants to have something from that child, not just photos. She wants something tangible,” Haim said, her eyes briefly filling with tears. “As the people of Israel, we need to understand today that, after October 7, we need to keep growing – to show our enemies that our way, this continuity of our lives here in this country, and in general, is through the creation of new life.”

“That forces you to be in this situation. That’s what war is doing to us,” he said.

Levine advocates for soldiers to decide early whether they’d like to have children, and for them to preserve their sperm while they are still alive.

Some have also called for soldiers to leave a “biological will,” a testament that lays out an individual’s wishes when it comes to posthumous use of eggs or sperm, whether they are retrieved after death or frozen while the person is still alive.

‘The knock on the door’

Bella Savitsky, whose son Jonathan died in combat on October 7, opted to retrieve his sperm and got approval for it, but it came too late.

Savitsky, a senior lecturer in the School of Health Sciences at Ashkelon Academic College, said studies show a maximum of 36 hours since time of death is the only time that retrieved sperm can be usable, a shorter timeframe than that cited by the Israeli government. This window is narrower in Israel because the hot weather can affect the sperm’s quality in dead bodies, she said.

On October 9, 2023, Savitsky received “the knock on the door” from authorities, telling her that her 21-year-old son had been killed in heavy fighting at an army outpost near Gaza.

“He wanted to get married, to have children, a dog, and a home in the countryside.”

It took many hours for Savitsky to obtain a court order allowing the harvesting of her son’s sperm.

“Altogether, it took 70 hours,” she said. “So, when the posthumous sperm retrieval was done, it was not intact. There was no live sperm.”

Ethical considerations

Sperm retrieval after death undoubtedly raises complex moral, ethical, judicial and religious questions. While technology has advanced, critics say the law has not kept up.

Experts say the controversy stems from the lack of clear consent from the father and the idea of bringing a child into the world who is fatherless from the outset.

“You are bringing into the world a child whose parent is known, named and deceased. This has a significant psychological impact and is different from a single-parent family,” Siegal said.

Some may also object to having children that effectively serve as a monument to the deceased father.

In that case, “the grandparents are seeking a ‘memorial’ – a form of commemoration – or trying to recreate something that cannot be recreated,” Siegal said. There are also religious considerations, as “retrieving sperm is an intrusive act, and in Judaism, there is a critical prohibition against desecrating the dead,” he said.

To mitigate these issues, Savitsky believes that young men should be asked whether they would want their sperm to be posthumously retrieved before they enter army service, but said the ministry of defense may be wary of implementing this as it could dent troop morale.

For Haim, despite the difficulties, the battle to have a grandchild gives her strength in the face of the tragedy she faces after October 7, as well as hope for the future.

In May, the State Attorney’s Office gave a green light in principle for Haim to use Yotam’s sperm. That was a first step towards what may be a long journey for her to have a grandchild. The family still needs to present evidence to prove that Yotam would have wanted a child, Shatz, Haim’s lawyer said.

“In the end, the reality did happen to us on October 7. So now – what will we do with that reality? Cry, wail, say, why did this happen to us?” she asked.

“Yes, a disaster happened. Period. But what else happened? A lot of amazing things also happened. That’s where I’m aiming (for).”