So now we know: Erin Patterson will be 82 before she gets the chance to get out of jail; if she gets out at all.

This will make her one of Victoria’s longest-serving female inmates.

But the revelations from Patterson’s sentencing hearing, in the Supreme Court of Victoria on Monday morning, leaned less to the historic, and more to the primal.

Today, crime and justice reporter Erin Pearson, on the people impacted by Patterson’s premeditated and pitiless cruelty, and what the judge made of them. And the unexpected moments of mercy and forgiveness that Patterson was, nevertheless, offered by one of them.

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