Speaker 1: A retired pharmacist and poisons expert, Christine McKenzie, went on
Speaker 1: a walk in the Gippsland town of Locke. She had
Speaker 1: gone to visit her daughter, but while she was there
Speaker 1: she took a stroll at the local oval to see
Speaker 1: what interesting fungi she could find. She told the court today, we're.
Speaker 2: On the recreation oval, the sports ground at Locke. There
Speaker 2: it's surrounded by oak trees. I observed some amanita feloides
Speaker 2: around the roots or around underneath one of the oak
Speaker 2: trees on the western side. I believe of the oval.
Speaker 1: Seeing the danger of a potentially toxic mushroom colony, she
Speaker 1: plucked as many as she could find and as she
Speaker 1: explained today in court, she took photos of them. She
Speaker 1: then posted the phottos to a citizen website courti Naturalist,
Speaker 1: a resource that asks its users to share their observations
Speaker 1: from the natural world.
Speaker 2: I was fascinated by how few fungi have been really
Speaker 2: identified in Australia, and I just find them personally beautiful
Speaker 2: and it's a lovely way to go for a bushward
Speaker 2: with an expert and you suddenly become much more aware
Speaker 2: of the variety of fungi that there are, so I'm
Speaker 2: not a forager. I don't go for a walk to
Speaker 2: find them to eat. It's just pure fascination.
Speaker 1: What became of that post and how the prosecution alleges
Speaker 1: Aaron Patterson later used it was at the center of
Speaker 1: today's testimony. I'm Brook Creebert Craig, and this is the
Speaker 1: mushroom Cook. It's the start of week four of Aaron
Speaker 1: Patterson's murder trial, and I'm back with my colleague, court
Speaker 1: reporter Laura Placella.
Speaker 3: Hi, Laura, Hey, it's great to be back. We are
Speaker 3: more than halfway through, it seems.
Speaker 1: Yes, we are. As you heard at the top of
Speaker 1: the episode. A former poisons information specialist was the first
Speaker 1: person to give evidence today. Christine McKenzie told the jury
Speaker 1: she spotted deathcat mushrooms while she was on a walk
Speaker 1: with her husband and grandson in Locke.
Speaker 3: That's right, and as you mentioned, she is an expert
Speaker 3: and she worked for seventeen years at the Victorian Poisons
Speaker 3: in five Mation Center. While working at the center, Miss
Speaker 3: mackenzie told the court that she developed quite a fascination
Speaker 3: with fungi and she did a lot of research herself
Speaker 3: and went on a lot of bushwalks, and it was
Speaker 3: on this day on April eighteen, twenty twenty three, where
Speaker 3: she wasn't so much on a bushwalk, but just a
Speaker 3: nice family walk with her grandson and their dog, where
Speaker 3: she spotted these deathcat mushrooms growing just to the side
Speaker 3: of an oval in Locke. She told the jury she
Speaker 3: wanted to remove the mushrooms because she knew how toxic
Speaker 3: they were, so she described taking out and I quote
Speaker 3: the dog pooh bag she had with her and putting
Speaker 3: the mushrooms into the bag. But before she did that,
Speaker 3: she made sure to take those photos that she could
Speaker 3: then reference later.
Speaker 1: Yes, she then posted those photos to Iron Naturalists, which
Speaker 1: is a citizen website, which we've heard before when my
Speaker 1: cologist Tom May was giving his evidence last week.
Speaker 3: She was really concers earned that people walking their dogs
Speaker 3: or children who were playing near the oval would accidentally
Speaker 3: consume the mushrooms, or people who were foraging would mistakenly
Speaker 3: believe them to be edible mushrooms and pick them. She
Speaker 3: also told the court that she was worried that fresh
Speaker 3: death cap mushrooms may grow in that same place over
Speaker 3: the coming weeks, So this was the reason she posted
Speaker 3: their location to our naturalist to make sure anyone that
Speaker 3: was using that website knew that there were death caps
Speaker 3: growing in that area. The photos she posted to our
Speaker 3: Naturalists were shown to the jury today and Miss mackenzie
Speaker 3: took the opportunity to describe what the death cap mushrooms
Speaker 3: looked like. These are her words, it's not her voice.
Speaker 2: So this is, if I may say so myself, quite
Speaker 2: a nice image of a death cap mushroom. It shows,
Speaker 2: first of all, the cap which is white with a
Speaker 2: bit of a yellow olive green tinge. You can't quite
Speaker 2: see in that one, but in a subsequent photo the
Speaker 2: gills underneath are white. The stuff or stem is sitting
Speaker 2: in quite a bulb bulbus structure and there's just hanging
Speaker 2: down underneath the gills there's the remnants of a veil
Speaker 2: where it was connected when it was popping through the ground.
Speaker 1: Now, Miss Mackenzie's evidence really set the jury up for
Speaker 1: the next witness, who was digital forensic expert Dr Matthew Serell.
Speaker 3: The court heard he runs a consulting company that relates
Speaker 3: to digital forensics and has actually been involved in more
Speaker 3: than four hundred criminal matters, giving evidence for both the
Speaker 3: prosecution and the defense. He told the court that his
Speaker 3: area of expertise was around mobile phone network data. Last week,
Speaker 3: our listeners may remember that the jury got a lesson
Speaker 3: in deathcat mushrooms and all things related. But this week
Speaker 3: it's fair to say that they started getting a lesson
Speaker 3: in telecommunications networks. It was some pretty dense evidence today,
Speaker 3: but doctor Sorel walked the jury through it. He started
Speaker 3: by describing how a base station, which is pretty much
Speaker 3: a phone tower, provides a connection between a mobile phone
Speaker 3: and a network through antennas. He said they could be
Speaker 3: located on top of a tall commercial building, a grain silo,
Speaker 3: or even a large water tank. He then walked the
Speaker 3: jury through all the different types of records that telephone
Speaker 3: companies keep. There were really basic records, he said, called
Speaker 3: call charge records, which contain the details around the phone
Speaker 3: calls you make, the texts you send, and the data
Speaker 3: you use. But then there was also some high level
Speaker 3: records called event based monitoring records, and the shorthand for
Speaker 3: this was EBMs. I won't bore our listeners with the details,
Speaker 3: but he explained how these types of records were a
Speaker 3: lot more rich with information, especially relating to timestamps.
Speaker 1: Doctor Sorel told the jury he had been provided four
Speaker 1: and a half years of core charge records from January
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen to August twenty twenty three relating to a
Speaker 1: phone belonging to error.
Speaker 3: That's right, So these are those basic records I just
Speaker 3: referred to. But doctor Cerel also told the court that
Speaker 3: he was given some specific EBM records relating to a
Speaker 3: few dates in April and May twenty twenty three concerning
Speaker 3: the Lock and Outram areas, which are two townships near
Speaker 3: Lee Andngatha.
Speaker 1: Let's begin with Lock April twenty eight, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3: Before we dive into doctor Cerel's evidence, Let's just remember
Speaker 3: that miss McKenzie's iinatchalist post was made on April eighteen,
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three, and she observed those death caps in Lock.
Speaker 3: Doctor Cerel told the court today that it was his
Speaker 3: opinion that the records from Erin's phone indicated that there
Speaker 3: was a possible visit to the Loch area on April
Speaker 3: twenty eight, from about nine o'clock in the morning to
Speaker 3: about ten o'clock. He said that when you looked at
Speaker 3: those EBM records, the mobile phone connected to Bay Station
Speaker 3: at Lock and Lock South at nine oh eight, nine
Speaker 3: oh nine, and again at ten oh one.
Speaker 1: So the court also heard that Aaron's phone was in
Speaker 1: Lock on May twenty two.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right. So doctor Serrel then walked the jury
Speaker 3: through the fact that on May twenty two, this phone
Speaker 3: made repeated connections to some of these base stations in Lock,
Speaker 3: and on this occasion the connections were happening every five minutes,
Speaker 3: and he told the court that this was consistent with
Speaker 3: the phone being relatively stationary in this area, which indicates
Speaker 3: a possible visit.
Speaker 1: So we've mentioned May twenty two already, where else was
Speaker 1: Erin's phone located?
Speaker 2: Laura?
Speaker 3: To answer this question, we might just take a step
Speaker 3: back and remind our listeners of some of the evidence
Speaker 3: from last week. The jury heard from mycologist or fungi specialist,
Speaker 3: doctor Tom May, who was asked about an I natchalist
Speaker 3: post he made on May twenty one, twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: He was in the Outram area going for a walk
Speaker 3: and he told the court he observed death caps along
Speaker 3: a street called Nielson Street. He then took some photos
Speaker 3: of the death cap mushrooms and posted them to our naturalist,
Speaker 3: just like miss Mackenzie did exactly. The court then heard
Speaker 3: today from doctor Serraul, who said it was his opinion
Speaker 3: that again this mobile phone belonging to Erin made a
Speaker 3: possible visit to northern Outram, that is where Nielson Street
Speaker 3: is located, one day later after doctor May's post on
Speaker 3: May twenty two. He said this visit was no earlier
Speaker 3: than eleven twenty four am and no later than eleven
Speaker 3: forty nine am, using the same sort of language he
Speaker 3: referred to when talking about the possible visit to Locke,
Speaker 3: He said that the mobile phone was relatively stationary in
Speaker 3: the area until about eleven forty nine due to its
Speaker 3: repeated connections to one of the nearby base stations before
Speaker 3: it returned tillian Gatha, which is where Eron lives at midday.
Speaker 3: We did refer to this May twenty two date earlier.
Speaker 3: So it appears from the records that doctor Sorell has
Speaker 3: analyzed that Erin's phone was first in Lock on the
Speaker 3: morning of May twenty two, before it traveled to Outram
Speaker 3: later that morning.
Speaker 1: So, in summary, it's the prosecution case that Aaron traveled
Speaker 1: to Locke and Outrim in April and May twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: in the days after these deathcap sightings were posted on
Speaker 1: the I Naturalist website. That's right, but it's really important
Speaker 1: to mention at this stage that doctor Sorel will return
Speaker 1: to the witness box tomorrow and will be cross examined
Speaker 1: by Erin's defense team, where they will have a chance
Speaker 1: to question doctor Sorel about these records and the conclusions
Speaker 1: he can draw from them. We'll talk more about that
Speaker 1: after he gives evidence tomorrow.
Speaker 3: See then Brook.
Speaker 1: Thanks Laura, and remember go to the mushroomcook dot com
Speaker 1: dot au to stay up to date with all the
Speaker 1: latest in this case.