Erin Patterson, the woman accused of killing three family members with a mushroom meal she served up at her Melbourne home last year, has pleaded not guilty in a Victorian Supreme Court.
Appearing via video link, Patterson formally pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder and five counts of attempted murder in the Latrobe Valley Magistrates Court on Tuesday.
"Not guilty your honour," she said, according to ABC News.
Patterson has maintained her innocence following the deaths, at the time saying she was "devastated".
"I really want to repeat that I had absolutely no reason to hurt these people whom I loved," she said in a statement to Victoria Police and obtained by ABC.
The case has been adjourned to a directions hearing in the Supreme Court in Melbourne on May 23.
It's a shift in Patterson's legal strategy to fast-track the hearing as it comes after her defence lawyers previously indicated they wanted a committal hearing to take place in Morwell, which would not have taken place until 2025.
Her defence barrister Colin Mandy SC did not indicate what had prompted the change, but it will save a significant amount of court time.
Magistrate Tim Walsh asked Mandy, for Patterson, whether he had explained the "fast track" process to Patterson and whether she understood it, according to The Guardian.
Mandy said: "I have and she does".
At the end of Tuesday's hearing, Walsh said there was "an extremely voluminous" brief of evidence that had been compiled by police, adding that it was "not the sort of matter that can just be passed to another barrister on a few weeks' notice".
The Supreme Court will determine the upcoming jury trial schedule.
Deadly lunch
The family members of Patterson's ex-husband ate a beef Wellington at her home in the Victorian town of Leongatha on July 29.
Her former in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, and Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson, 66, died in hospital days after eating a meal - on August 4 and 5 - allegedly containing deadly mushrooms.
A fourth person, Wilkinson's husband Ian, was hospitalised in a critical condition. He was released from the hospital in September.
Patterson was also accused of attempting to kill her husband Simon on four separate occasions between 2021 and 2022, one of those being the deadly lunch, however, he did not attend.
