MELBOURNE, Australia, Aug 25, (AP): The sole survivor of a deadly lunch laced with toxic mushrooms said on Monday he felt only half alive following the death of his wife and he continued to grieve the loss of his two closest friends. Ian Wilkinson read the first victim impact statement in at a sentencing hearing for Erin Patterson at the Victoria state Supreme Court.

The 50-year-old will be sentenced on Sept 8 on three counts of murder and one of attempted murder. The prosecution argued for a life sentence without possibility of parole, while defense lawyers want her to become eligible for release after serving 30 years. "The offending here is horrendous,” Justice Christopher Beale told the court.

A jury convicted Patterson in July of murdering Wilkinson’s wife Heather Wilkinson, her sister Gail Patterson, and her husband Don Patterson with a lunch of beef Wellington pastries and foraged death cap mushrooms in July 2023. Erin Patterson was also convicted of attempting to murder Ian Wilkinson, who spent weeks in hospital and survived after receiving a liver transplant.

Wilkinson, a Baptist pastor, described his wife as a woman who took her faith seriously and was full of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control. "I only feel half alive without her,” Wilkinson said before weeping. "It’s one of the distressing shortcomings of our society that so much attention is showered on those who do evil and so little on those who do good,” he added.

He described Gail and Don Patterson, the parents of Erin Patterson’s estranged husband Simon Patterson, as the closest people to him after his wife and family. "My life is greatly impoverished without them,” Wilkinson said. "I’m distressed that Erin has acted with callous and calculated disregard for my life and the lives of those I love. What foolishness possesses a person to think that murder could be the solution to their problems, especially the murder of people who have only good intentions towards her?” he added. Wilkinson offered Patterson his forgiveness for the harms she had done to him.