The case of murder murder in Australia ends with the survivor Ian Wilkinson’s kindness about kindness

On Monday, at 10:18, Erin Paterson headed the four in the Supreme Court building to start a life imprisonment.

Its slow patellation took it directly for two rows of wooden benches full of journalists, and each considered the exit of Paterson by any final detail.

Upstairs in the public gallery, observers exposed their neck to get the last look – perhaps for decades, perhaps, if – no – a seemingly ordinary woman who is one of the most unusual killers of Australia.

She also watched as she was Jan Wilkinson, the only one who survived the famous mushroom food Paterson in 2023, a fierce story about the murder, which the judge refused as “huge betrayal”.

Mr. Wilkinson went and came out of court for months without saying a public word. He always wore a black sleeveless jacket to keep warm in the winter refrigerator, never healing from the mushrooms of death who took his wife and two best friends.

But on Monday, he focused on the steps of the court building to talk to the media for the first time. He quietly thanked the police, who “discovered the truth about what had happened to three good people,” and the lawyers who tried the case for “hard work and perseverance”.

There was also praise for doctors who saved his life and desperately tried to stop the rigid decline of other guests.

For the age of 71, he returned to the house he shared with Hiser, his wife 44, who raised his four children before becoming a teacher and teacher.

“Silence in our house is a daily reminder,” he told the court two weeks ago, when he gave an emotional statement about the victim’s impact.

“(There) Nobody share in the everyday tasks that pulled great joy from Gonchar around the house and the garden. At the end of the day, no one can divorce.”

“I only feel half alive without her,” he added.

For most, Hilkinson’s Hilkinson will be remembered by one of Paterson’s victims, an unhappy lunch guest in the murder without a clear motive.

But for her husband, pastor in the Baptist Church, Mrs. Wilkinson was his “beautiful wife” – he said, but full of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness and self -control”, as well as “tips of the wise”.

“This is one of the problematic shortcomings of our society, which is so much focused on those who make evil, and so few who do good,” he said in his statement of the victim’s impact – a barely hidden outburst in the center of attention to the killer.

Never in the recent memory of the Australian criminal case was so loud: the mystery of the murder in the town with a weapon, which is so foreign, it would not seem inappropriate in the novel Agatha Christie-not so much whicdunnit.

The audience treated the queue daily to take a place in the courtroom, thousands of people chose the details of the case on the Internet, and journalists went down from all over the world to cover the long trial.

At least five podcas followed the case in the regional Victorian city of Marvel. The documentary crew from the streaming service followed every step.

The Australian Broadcast Corporation (ABC) works. And there will be several books, one of them co -authored with Helen Garner, the Dajen of Contemporary Australian Literature.

Many were in court earlier this month, since one by one, a number of applications for the victim made the consequences of the horrific crime and the unprecedented attention he attracted.

Simon Paterson – a remote husband of the killer – wrote about his inability to formulate how much he missed his mother and dad.

Ruth Dubua – daughter Jan and Hilkinson – said the Paterson court used the natural kindness of her parents against them.

The 100-year-old mother Don Paterson shared her grief when she survived.

However, the widespread thread was how the media and the public only aggravated their grief and trouble.

“Intensive lighting in the media left me a second idea of ​​every word I say, experiencing, to whom I can trust my thoughts and feelings,” said Ms. Dubua in court. “This has changed the way to interact with people.”

“Especially rethink to experience the tragedy of our family, which turns into entertainment for the masses and know that people use our family’s injury for their own personal benefits.”

Mr -n Paterson lost his parents Don and Gayle with the food prepared by his wife, the lunch he had also eaten if he did not refuse the invitation at the last moment.

Ultimately he was abandoned by trial but He count.

It was approximately the way it could be as it could get. But through the legal process, he spent as little time as possible in court, for everything, for the safety and privacy of his home.

He was not there for the sentence of unanimous guilty or the sentence on Monday. And his statement about the impact of the victim of the crescent month ago – all 1034 words – read a relative.

The statement had hints why. He described the tension of being in the constant face of people who show “threatening interest” in his family.

“Children and I suffered for many days, filled with strangers who are threatening our home … We encountered people who are waiting in our front door, in centimeters with a television camera and a microphone after the bell.

“Strangers holding notebooks were aggressively knocking on our windows early in the morning, trying to look into the bedroom of my children, always throwing up before the arrival of the police.

“When we are in a cafe, when I suddenly say that it’s time to go, children know that we immediately leave calmly because I noticed someone who recorded us.”

It is difficult enough to fight the “gloomy reality” that they live in “irreparable home … When almost everyone knows that their mothers killed their grandparents,” he said.

Christopher Bill’s justice said on Monday that Paterson was injured in four generations of Paterson and Wilkinson’s families and wound indescribable sadness in the communities that they clearly loved them.

“Erin was accepted as part of the Paterson family. She was welcomed and treated for true love and respect that she did not feel in her family,” Bill said, reading a tranche of the statement proposed by the court.

“Her actions are a deep and devastating betrayal of trust and love for it.”

Speaking to the age of 50, Justice Bill said: “You have not only reduced three short lives and cause strong damage to Jan Wilkinson’s health … You caused unwavering suffering with your children, which you deprived of your favorite grandparents.”

It would be impossible to protect them from “a continuous discussion of the case in the media, on the Internet, in public spaces – even in the school yard,” he added.

Even more hampering her insult, her crimes were widely planned – and she was so committed to their shooting that even if the authorities fry her for information, which could help save the lives of lunch guests, she refused to help them.

“You have not shown sorry for your victims … (and) you were engaged in a difficult cover for your guilt.”

Her further persistence of her innocence is another one.

“Your inability to show remorse, pour in salt on all the wounds of the victims,” ​​he said.

Bill’s justice stated that it does not fluctuate in the classification of Paterson’s actions as the worst kind of insulting, but ceased to simply be ashamed to make the sharpest term, thanks to the extreme isolation, which she faces such a notorious prisoner.

By three circumstances murder and attempted murder, It was brought to life imprisonment but will receive the right to release in 2056, If she’s 82 years old.

But while Justice Bill was deprived of Patterson on Monday, Mr. Wilkinson was its characteristic.

Outside the trial, he did not regret a single word for his wife’s killer.

Instead, his last words for the public were calling for action.

“Our life and life of our community depend on the kindness of others,” he said.

“I would like to encourage everyone to be good for each other.”

It ended with another appeal so that people respected their family’s privacy when they “continue to mourn and heal”, and with some, perhaps unjustified wishes for the assembled media package. “Thank you for listening. Hope you have a great day.”

Usually it was a decent, quiet way out that the family hopes it would be the end of the criminal case – and the possibility of peace.

Now Erin Paterson has until midnight on October 6 to appeal her condemnation or sentence.