As Erin Patterson awaits sentencing after being convicted of the murders of three people, it has been reported that she could avoid a life sentence in jail because she has been diagnosed with a rare psychological condition.
According to the Daily Mail, doctors at the Dame Phyllis Frost Correctional Centre have found she has Munchausen’s Syndrome – also known as factitious disorder – where a person pretends to be unwell to gain attention from friends and family.
Patterson, 50, who was found guilt of murdering her in-laws Don and Gail Patterson and Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson, and the attempted murder of Heather’s husband Ian, told the court she had lied to her victims about having cancer to obtain their sympathy.
During the ten-week trial at the Latrobe Valley Law Courts in east Victoria, Patterson recounted telling her lunch guests that she’d received a cancer diagnosis and relished their responses – although it was untrue and she had not been diagnosed with any illness.
MITIGATING FACTORS
“They made me feel loved and cared for in the way that they were asking about my health and I didn’t want that to stop, so I kept going,” Patterson explained.
The report in the Mailonline claims that this diagnosis could save Patterson from being jailed for life if it’s cited as a mitigating factor for the murders during her pre-sentence hearing which is thought to be taking place sometimes in August. Patterson will likely be sentenced to life without parole unless there are compelling reasons for Justine Christopher Beale to be less stringent.
In the past Patterson also claimed to a friend that she’d been diagnosed with autism and one of her ways to process stress was to play loud music or scream loudly.
“I have Asperger’s (they don’t call it that anymore but that’s what it was called when I was diagnosed) so I often run into misunderstandings and miscommunication in real life and then go on about it a bit too long and over-analyse the effects,” she is reported to have written in a text message to a friend seen by The Australian newspaper.
If she claimed to have the neurodevelopment condition when she doesn’t, this could also be held up as another example of her Munchausen’s.
FIRST RUN IN WITH THE LAW
In September 2004, Patterson lost her driving licence for two-and-a-half years after crashing her unregistered car while drunk and leaving the scene.
Court records show Patterson was almost three times over the limit, and she was driving 95kh/h in a 60km/h zone.
She pleaded guilty to the five charges and was fined $1,000.
FAMOUS VICTIMS
There is also another type of the psychological disorder known as Munchausen’s by proxy – or factitious disorder imposed on another. A famous example of this is the case of Gypsy-Rose Blanchard, who was the victim of her mother, Dee Dee’s Munchausen by proxy. Over the course of more than a decade Gypsy-Rose was given unnecessary medication and surgeries because of her mother’s insistence that she suffered from various illnesses and disabilities when she didn’t.
There is also speculation by some experts that convicted baby killer Lucy Letby had Munchausen syndrome by proxy too,
