So, Erin Patterson was found guilty, just like I predicted. If only the great state of Victoria had listened, they could have saved all that taxpayer money on a lengthy trial and avoided the media circus outside the Latrobe Valley Law Courts. For more than eleven weeks, documentary film crews and journalists with well-coiffed hair and large microphones have descended on the small town of Morwell to learn the fate of a woman accused of possibly the greatest act of mass poisoning since Jim Jones invited 900 of his closest and most devoted friends round for a Ribena and cyanide party.

Let me squeeze out a quick exposition dump in case you missed it, or had better things to do, such as mowing your lawn or counting the bricks in your house. Patterson was found guilty of murdering her estranged husband’s parents, Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, and Heather Wilkinson, Gail’s sister, who was 66. She was also found guilty of the attempted murder of Wilkinson’s husband, Ian, by serving a Beef Wellington she had laced with death-cap mushrooms.

How did I know she did it, you ask? Call it a hunch, but there was something in her eyes that gave it away, specifically tears. A few days after the third person (Donald) had died, a reporter from A Current Affair secured what would become her only interview. Sam Cucchiara spoke briefly with Australia’s answer to Lucretia Borgia as her car drew up outside her home in Leongatha. She gave a tear-soaked rendition to the cameras reminiscent of Anne Hathaway’s pathetic blubber in Les Miserables. In her bizarre, animalistic moaning and gasping for air, Patterson seemed more like she was passing a kidney stone than showing regret or empathy for those she killed. Regardless of the severity of the crime, the established hierarchy of victimhood remains applicable – as a woman, she sits relatively high on the progressive stack. As Cucchiara went on to write, ‘Erin Patterson tried to convince me –and the world – she too was a victim.’

When a little Australian courtroom in a sleepy rural idyll is witness to one of the most high-profile trials in recent history, a few tin-foil hat types are certain to show up. Among the throngs of sleep-deprived cameramen missing their child’s birthday was a new species of permanently online weirdos: podcasters. There were so many podcasters outside the courthouse that you could throw a rock and hit five (if you were lucky). Welcome to the strange new world of the internet detective.

From multi-million dollar fraud to lost cats, cheating husbands and the rather bizarre claim that Taylor Swift is an Illuminati clone of a satanic priestess, the internet is full of mysteries and an army of people eager to solve them. There are more than 4.4 million members of the investigative Reddit thread Unresolved Mysteries, while its sister site, RBI: Reddit Bureau of Investigation, has more than 800,000. Yet with the rise of the true-crime podcast, this reasonably quaint activity has descended into madness.

Whether it’s horrific murders or the psychological profile of a serial killer, millions flock to these channels to satisfy their craving for real-life crime. No stone is left unturned: from bloodstain pattern analysis to bullet trajectory, platforms such as YouTube and Spotify provide thousands of hours of content for digital detectives. Yet bizarrely, the consumers of this incredibly popular genre tend to be women. Of the half a million regular downloads of the true-crime podcast Wine and Crime, an astonishing 85 per cent of the audience is female. Meanwhile, Rachel Fairburn, the co-host of All Killa No Filla – a podcast about serial killers – claims 80 per cent of its listeners are female. It should come as no surprise that two of the genre’s biggest YouTube channels are run by women, Eleanor Neale and Kendall Rae, who have amassed 2.9 million and 3.9 million subscribers, respectively. Forget the gender pay-gap nonsense, we appear to have a real gender true-crime gap!

During the trial, it emerged that Patterson was also a fan of true-crime podcasts. The court heard that she was a member of a Facebook group dedicated to the crimes of Keli Lane, a woman convicted of killing her baby daughter in one of Australia’s most notorious criminal cases. Caro Meldrum-Hanna, an investigative journalist, took notice of Lane in 2018, after she wrote to her asking for help. In no time, dozens of true-crime podcasts started to appear documenting the case – experts were interviewed, with some calling into question the judge’s verdict.

What explains this fascination? There are several reasons. As a species, we often find patterns and meaning in things that are random, like seeing the face of God in tea leaves or the Virgin Mary in a water stain. Psychologists call this apophenia – a form of cognitive bias common in our lives. Women are generally the victims of murder, so it is a safe way for them to explore violent crime in a controlled and detached manner. But the gender bias skews the opposite way when it comes to the way people kill. Men tend to behave impulsively, tending to violence and extreme cruelty, whereas women typically employ a more strategic and manipulative approach. Women who commit heinous crimes seem to be guided more by their hearts than their fists.

Which brings me neatly back to Patterson. As the trial unfolded, it came to light that she had planned the entire thing. It was not a mindless act of violence, but a cold, calculated and premeditated one. To lure her unsuspecting guests to lunch at her home, she made up a fake cancer story and lied to the police about foraging for wild mushrooms. In her closing remarks, Nanette Rogers SC said Patterson had ‘told so many lies it’s hard to keep track of them’. She will be sentenced later this year, and a life sentence is expected.

Maybe don’t let her work in the prison canteen.