When Erin Patterson wakes up on December 25, there’ll be no Christmas tree. No gifts from loved ones, no family members to embrace and no festive meal.
Instead, the “mushroom murderer” will open her eyes and see only the four walls of her toilet-sized prison cell within the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre in Ravenhall, Victoria, where she will stay cooped up for most of the day.
It will be loud. Not from Christmas excitement but the yelling and screaming of fellow inmates also held in solitary confinement inside the state’s largest women’s prison.
SOUL DESTROYING
This isn’t Patterson’s first Christmas behind bars, because she has been in custody since 2023. But it will be her first as a convicted killer.
So what will the day be like for the notorious triple murderer?
Woman’s Day asked prison advocate Ashleigh Chapman, who spent 10 years at the same prison, with two of them in solitary confinement, to share her own experience of being locked up there.
Ashleigh, who was released earlier this year, wishes to make it clear that her comments here are based purely on her own time inside at the maximum-security facility.
She points out that “conditions didn’t change” at all over the Christmas period and the morning began with the usual routine.
“[You] wake up from the announcement, get counted, then you do your own thing [like] have a shower before going back to sleep until you hear breakfast or medication coming,” she says.
According to reports, Patterson spends roughly 22 hours a day in her cell due to frequent lockdowns. It is located in the Gordon unit of the prison which has about 20 such cells.
She reportedly barely sleeps and crochets all night.
She has a hair straightener, TV and access to a 1.5m by 1.5m courtyard, which she can use with permission.
“There are no activities for people in solitary confinement,” Ashleigh recalls. “[And] no Christmas decorations are allowed at all.”
As for a Christmas feast, a traditional roast dinner with all the trimmings was not on the menu for Ashleigh and there certainly wasn’t a joyful gathering around the dinner table with fellow inmates.
Instead, meals were delivered as usual through a slot in the solid steel door of the cell at around 3.30pm.
“[At Christmas] the meals are the same, just dinner is served at lunch and lunch is served at dinner. Meat and vegetable and a fruit cake [and it’s] always served in recyclable containers,” Ashleigh adds.
During her trial, Patterson, 51, detailed how she had converted to Christianity after meeting her ex-husband Simon Patterson and his family. However, Ashleigh says there were no religious services available during her incarceration. Any Christmas gifts are also donated.
NO HUMAN CONTACT
“Gifts that were donated to the prison network are handed out and vary, though most items are removed due to being in solitary,” she says.
As for visitors on Christmas Day, Ashleigh says it was only ever permitted if “Christmas Day falls on the allocated day scheduled in the Gordon unit…and only for the morning.”
In a nutshell, Ashleigh’s experience of Christmas in solitary confinement was “soul destroying”.
“You sit in your cell all day, with no fresh air, no human contact and doing the same thing repeatedly,” she says.
“Maybe if you’re lucky you can get fresh air, however [that’s] very limited. It’s soul destroying.”
Patterson is currently serving life in prison for murdering her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson, as well as attempting to murder Heather’s husband Ian Wilkinson.
She will be eligible for parole in 2056, when she is 82.
