Criminology professor Dr Xanthé Mallett delivered a scathing assessment of Erin Patterson’s character after the Australian mother-of-two was found guilty of mass murder.
Speaking to the Mail’s award-winning The Trial podcast, she described Patterson, who murdered three family members by poisoning, as a ‘vengeful’ woman who believed she could pull the wool over investigators’ eyes.
When veteran crime correspondent Caroline Cheetham asked what could drive a seemingly ‘average’ woman to kill three people, Dr Mallett identified Patterson’s inability to process her divorce as the key factor.
Erin Patterson was found guilty today of three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder for poisoning her estranged husband’s relatives with death cap mushrooms hidden in a Beef Wellington lunch at her home in July 2023.
‘I am divorced, I understand toxic marriages and simmering loathing – but I have never poisoned anyone’, Dr Mallett began.
‘I have seen cases where people – for example, those with narcissism mixed with a borderline personality disorder – can be led to a place where if they feel wronged, they act like an avenging angel.
‘There’s this righteousness to them… what I believe happened is that Patterson had this simmering rage for her ex-husband Simon and felt perhaps as if his family hadn’t supported her.
‘She then transferred some of that rage on them and felt justified in harming them because of this.’
Dr Mallett argued that Patterson’s choice to use Death Cap mushrooms reveals her callousness and extreme sense of vengeance.
She told the podcast: ‘Death Cap mushrooms have four different toxins within them. They’re incredibly toxic and an awful, awful way to die.
‘They shut down your organs and cause internal bleeding. There is a very small chance of survival once you’ve had a single dose.
‘It takes a certain kind of person to want to use toxins of that nature. If Simon had gone to the lunch, he would have watched his family die.
‘Not only that, but their grandchildren, her children, would have watched them die a painful, drawn-out death. What kind of person does that?’
Drawing from her experience analysing similar cases, Dr Mallett believes Patterson feels little remorse for what she has done.
‘I have seen and spoken to people like her – I expect her to be totally arrogant, totally assured in her actions – thinking she’s done nothing wrong’, the criminologist said.
‘When she gave evidence, she kept talking about how difficult it was for her, how it had affected her life, how all the attention was impacting her.
‘Even when the family were in hospital, there was never any concern for them. It was all me, me, me.
‘I think she feels justified in what she’s done. I don’t think there would be any remorse or guilt in her.’
Having viewed her in court, host Cheetham thought Patterson came across as an ‘academically intelligent woman.’
She then asked Dr Mallett whether she agreed with that assessment, given Patterson’s meticulous planning of the murders and her attempts to throw investigators off the scent.
‘I think she’s intelligent in some ways, very dumb in others’, the professor argued.
‘Frankly, this was obvious premeditation. It was not well planned; it was not well carried out. Her sense of own abilities is vastly overrated.
‘She thought she could outpace the police, all the experts and the witnesses because she is so smart, right? That’s the narcissist in her.
‘I worked on a similar case where the accused was a narcissistic psychopath – they are not as smart as they think they are.
‘Patterson is cunning though – she’s manipulative, a good liar. A bit of a chameleon who can bend the truth.
‘When she’s caught in one lie, she twists it more and more.’
To listen to Dr Mallett’s psychological profile of Erin Patterson in full, search for the Mail’s award-winning podcast The Trial of Erin Patterson now.
