Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Speaker 1: Detective sy aside of life the average person is never
Speaker 1: exposed to. I spent thirty four years as a cop.
Speaker 1: For twenty five of those years I was catching killers.
Speaker 1: That's what I did for a living. I was a
Speaker 1: homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
Speaker 1: I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
Speaker 1: The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
Speaker 1: from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
Speaker 1: and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
Speaker 1: of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
Speaker 1: no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Speaker 1: Join me now as I take you into this world.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Part two of my chat with Greg Hadrick,
Speaker 1: the LOGI Award winning screenwriter behind some of the country's
Speaker 1: biggest crime series and the author of the book The
Speaker 1: Mushroom Murders. We have been taking an in depth look
Speaker 1: at the and Patterson case. In part two, we take
Speaker 1: you into the trial. In preparation for writing the book,
Speaker 1: Greg witnessed the proceedings of the trial and had access
Speaker 1: to the court transcripts, so Greg knows this case better
Speaker 1: than most. We talk about the strength of the prosecution
Speaker 1: case and how the defense team attempted to create enough
Speaker 1: doubt in the minds of the jury. A lot of
Speaker 1: things came up that you may or may not be
Speaker 1: aware of. My chat with Greg gave me a much
Speaker 1: greater understanding of what went on in one of the
Speaker 1: biggest murder trials in the country. If you thought you
Speaker 1: knew everything about the case, have a listen to our
Speaker 1: conversation and you might be surprised. Greg Hadrick, welcome back
Speaker 1: to part two. Thank you Gary of your second time
Speaker 1: on Eye Catch Killers.
Speaker 2: Greg.
Speaker 1: In part one, we were talking about the circumstances leading
Speaker 1: up to the victims of this murder getting sick, the
Speaker 1: serving of the pie and the taken the hospital, and
Speaker 1: Eron's reaction to to what happened. I think we left
Speaker 1: off on part two with the police starting to become involved.
Speaker 1: That you've had a lunch, four people are critically ill,
Speaker 1: and the person that served the lunch is going about okay,
Speaker 1: and homicide would notified at that point.
Speaker 2: In time they were, and they for about it won't
Speaker 2: happen very quickly. I think for about a day they had.
Speaker 2: The informant was Detective Steve Eppingstall Yep, and he says
Speaker 2: they sort of watched it for a day and then
Speaker 2: on the fourth.
Speaker 1: There was a comment in your book and it reminded me,
Speaker 1: and it's a bit of black humor that comes in
Speaker 1: the world of policing and homicide that we're not the nearly.
Speaker 2: Homicide because and I had a bit of a chuckle,
Speaker 2: and you know, this.
Speaker 1: Is a very serious case we're talking about, but that
Speaker 1: was very much the narrative in homicide that well, often
Speaker 1: we get called about anything that's happened, and you get
Speaker 1: that many calls when you're on call, you have to
Speaker 1: draw the line say look, we will come if the
Speaker 1: person and is dead. Up until that point in time,
Speaker 1: unless it's obvious, we don't go out.
Speaker 2: So I had a bit of a chuckle. That was
Speaker 2: police jargon, police jargon. Side squad, nearly the homicide squad.
Speaker 2: They so they had to. They started the third They
Speaker 2: are looking at it and they've been told about it,
Speaker 2: and it's a roundabout. Then when Aaron takes the dehydrator
Speaker 2: to the kunar a tip, I think that happens on
Speaker 2: the second. Actually on Wednesday, the second, and I think
Speaker 2: she well, she says she took that because she knew
Speaker 2: that the child protection workers were doing a home they
Speaker 2: had to visit the home environment to check that the
Speaker 2: kids would be okay, and so she knew that they
Speaker 2: were going to arrive in an hour's time, and there
Speaker 2: was a food dehydrator on the kitchen bench. So she
Speaker 2: decided get rid of that, get rid of.
Speaker 1: That, covering up the evidence. Before we talk how the
Speaker 1: case built against Aaron. The three of the four died
Speaker 1: from who consumed the consumed the meal. It became apparent
Speaker 1: in the reading of your book and stuff that I've
Speaker 1: picked up in the media, how horrendous their deaths were.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, we talk about this and
Speaker 1: their errands attracted the attention of people for so many
Speaker 1: different reasons. But we got three good people who have
Speaker 1: lost their lives in a.
Speaker 2: Very valuaful, torturous It was. It was terrible, and Justice
Speaker 2: Bill made a point of that in his sentencing remarks
Speaker 2: as well, that the language when you say people are
Speaker 2: killed by mushrooms makes it sound soft. You know, it's
Speaker 2: not a knife, it's not a gun, it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's not an axe. It's a mushroom, and yet you know,
Speaker 2: the autopsies on poor Galeen Heather showed that their entire
Speaker 2: livers were dead, and that most of their bowers dead,
Speaker 2: most of their kidneys were They had suffered through being
Speaker 2: killed from the inside out, which is a the book
Speaker 2: for me, is almost like being drawn and quartered. It's shocking.
Speaker 2: It was horrendous. Yeah, it was horrendous.
Speaker 1: And I hadn't even picked up on the fact that
Speaker 1: you say it didn't seem like a violent death because
Speaker 1: it's mushroom mushroom pie, and you know, we sort of
Speaker 1: have a bit of a snicker about that, but we
Speaker 1: should really understand the pain that these people are. People
Speaker 1: went through and the survivor.
Speaker 2: Of course, and indeed, not.
Speaker 1: Only he lost his wife, but he was in the
Speaker 1: cama for a very long time.
Speaker 2: Three weeks I think, yeah, before he was finally excubated,
Speaker 2: and then in rehab for weeks after that claims and
Speaker 2: I'm sure he's telling the truth. Ian is a very
Speaker 2: honest guy that you know his self will never be
Speaker 2: the same. Yeah, you know, what they went through was
Speaker 2: was a horrific ordeal and it shouldn't be forgotten when
Speaker 2: people go mushroom lady and mushroom killer. That that language
Speaker 2: softens what was really happening. Very very real.
Speaker 1: Victims are very horrendous, horrendous crime. We've got the homicide involved,
Speaker 1: We've got they're starting to look at the case. And
Speaker 1: when the victims passed away, I would imagine that it
Speaker 1: was led by homicide.
Speaker 2: Who was two am on. So they're starting, they are
Speaker 2: becoming more involved. On the third Steve epping Still said,
Speaker 2: you know, we knew by the way they had medical
Speaker 2: information that particularly Heather and Gale, we're not going to survive. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So they were doing a report for the coroner, blah
Speaker 2: blah blah, and then two am on the morning of
Speaker 2: the fourth overnight, Heather that's the first one to die,
Speaker 2: and at that point it became a homicide case. Okay,
Speaker 2: So by seven o'clock that morning or seven thirty that morning,
Speaker 2: Steve epping Still and his team are there. So within
Speaker 2: five or six hours of Heather dying, it's an active
Speaker 2: homicide case.
Speaker 1: Okay, Now did they I would imagine they went to
Speaker 1: Aeron's home.
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, they got the bank records. They
Speaker 2: actually didn't go to They went to Eron same on
Speaker 2: the fifth, so this is now. So the sequence of
Speaker 2: events for them was they however, you know, you know
Speaker 2: more than I about you know what you've got to
Speaker 2: do to go through to get people's bank records. But
Speaker 2: they got them for the previous two months. I think
Speaker 2: it was Meg, I forget her name, I should know
Speaker 2: was looking through them from the third back, so she
Speaker 2: was from the latest day back and.
Speaker 1: Looking I would imagine that the purchase of the mushrooms
Speaker 1: that it's not just gathering evidence to prove the offense,
Speaker 1: it's to discount version.
Speaker 2: Of all of that. And pretty within a couple of hours,
Speaker 2: she comes across the transaction where Aaron has gone, you know,
Speaker 2: to the local tip to the kuna A transfer station
Speaker 2: literally two days before, and she took that to Stephen,
Speaker 2: going will she chucked something out? What she chucked out?
Speaker 2: They get straight onto the office at the Kunrara transfer station.
Speaker 2: He goes to the CCTV and says, because they know
Speaker 2: the time of the transactions done, the drop yeah, And
Speaker 2: there she is getting out of a car and taking
Speaker 2: a big box and putting it in the tip and
Speaker 2: so they send a worker down there to get it
Speaker 2: out and it's a it's a dehydrator, and Steve calls
Speaker 2: the local cops and says, can you pick it up
Speaker 2: for us one thanky, And they went later that afternoon
Speaker 2: and picked it up. So before the end of the
Speaker 2: day of the first day of the investigation, they had
Speaker 2: Erin's dehydrator that she'd thrown out two days.
Speaker 1: Before, okay, and had Aaron mentioned that mushrooms that she
Speaker 1: put in the dehydrator. At this stage, she's still claiming
Speaker 1: she never foraged anything, right, okay, So she's claiming, and
Speaker 1: so the cops then they wait until it's later that
Speaker 1: night on the fourth, so it's still happening on the fourth.
Speaker 1: The two am on the fourth is when Heather dies.
Speaker 1: That day of the fourth is when they get the
Speaker 1: dehydrator from the tip. That night of the fourth Gale dies.
Speaker 2: Yep. And on the fifth they raid. They go and
Speaker 2: search the house. And what did they find anything of
Speaker 2: interest at the house, Well, they found several computers which
Speaker 2: they were looking for communication devices. They found the manual
Speaker 2: of the dehydrator with some other manuals, which was handy.
Speaker 2: They were looking for the dinner plates, but by then
Speaker 2: there were no gray plates any longer. But they took
Speaker 2: photos of everything in the kitchen and took some phones,
Speaker 2: not all the phones, but some of the phones, and
Speaker 2: of course they asked, they asked Aaron to hand over
Speaker 2: the her phone, her main phone she's been using all year,
Speaker 2: and that's when she had while the house was being searched.
Speaker 2: She switched her phones.
Speaker 1: Down for it because this yeah, yeah, so this is
Speaker 1: from February.
Speaker 2: She bought a new Samsung A twenty three that had
Speaker 2: a phone number in that was the phone number that
Speaker 2: everyone contacted her, which ended in seven eighty three, and
Speaker 2: that's been her main phone throughout all these months that
Speaker 2: she's been doing whatever planning has been necessary for this crime.
Speaker 2: And in the trial she claims that the phone started
Speaker 2: playing up and had a screen which froze a bit
Speaker 2: conveniently just a day or two before the raid. That said,
Speaker 2: she's still using it and it's still accepting and receiving
Speaker 2: text and calls, et cetera, right up until the raid.
Speaker 2: And Steve Epping still as the informant, is walking around
Speaker 2: with her and mostly sort of accompanying her around the
Speaker 2: house while the cops do the search, and at some
Speaker 2: point she manages to take the SIM card out of
Speaker 2: that phone. We know it was in it at twelve
Speaker 2: oh one, and we know it was out of it
Speaker 2: by one. So sometime in that hour and a half,
Speaker 2: she's taken the SIM card out of her main phone,
Speaker 2: put the main phone somewhere, and put a SIM card
Speaker 2: from her tablet which had a different phone number in
Speaker 2: the eight three five into a second handset, which she said, Oh,
Speaker 2: I just wanted to stop Simon from bothering me, and
Speaker 2: so I was going to change my phone number anyway,
Speaker 2: but she decides to do it in the middle of
Speaker 2: a police search. And then when the cops at the
Speaker 2: end of the search ask at a syrender her phone,
Speaker 2: the one she gives them is Phone B, which she
Speaker 2: had also factory reset while she was walking around with
Speaker 2: the cops the editing off it, and that's the one
Speaker 2: that you see her hand over. And the seven eighty three,
Speaker 2: the A twenty three phone, which had been the one
Speaker 2: which would have any history of what website she's visited,
Speaker 2: what Google search is she's done, et cetera. That is
Speaker 2: never found, the cops never find it.
Speaker 1: Tells me something about it. I've seen organized crime types
Speaker 1: that have got that calmness to seeing there talking as
Speaker 1: they're changing the same card in their bone and all that.
Speaker 1: But it shows a little bit about her, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: It does.
Speaker 1: But I suppose callous enough to invite people over and
Speaker 1: know you're going to feed them a lethal meal, can
Speaker 1: sit there and calmly manage to hold your metal enough
Speaker 1: to change a SIM card in the phone. Why police
Speaker 1: are executing the search warrant for suspected murder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's family members. That's pretty extraordinary. Yeah, callous. She
Speaker 2: manages to do that. She then puts that seven eight
Speaker 2: three SIM into a different into a Nokia phone. And
Speaker 2: as I say, we've never have found no one's ever
Speaker 2: found that her main phone. The cops take that phone
Speaker 2: at that point they think that is her main phone.
Speaker 2: She's done that jattically fool them. And it's in a
Speaker 2: safe in Steve wapping Stool's office in Spencer Street. And
Speaker 2: that night Aaron wonders if they've turned it off or
Speaker 2: disconnected it from the Internet, and she does find my
Speaker 2: phone search and realizes they haven't, so even though she
Speaker 2: doesn't have to because it's already clean, she fact she
Speaker 2: resets it remotely again again at five o'clock in the
Speaker 2: morning from her bedroom and lean gather. Yeah, that tells
Speaker 2: a lot a bit, Yeah, it tells a lot. And
Speaker 2: why this is going on, there's some other things that
Speaker 2: are coming out. She's not reacting the way that you
Speaker 2: would think, like.
Speaker 1: If these people are so close to her, the closest
Speaker 1: family she's got. She's invited them to lunch and they're
Speaker 1: all in hospital on their way to dine or have died,
Speaker 1: and she doesn't seem to be reacting.
Speaker 2: She never asks how they are, never says can I
Speaker 2: go and see them? Can I just you know, maybe
Speaker 2: apologize profusely for you know, whatever I did the court, nothing, okay,
Speaker 2: never goes near the complains that no one tells her
Speaker 2: what's going on, But then she doesn't ask. She could
Speaker 2: have easily called Simon and said, how are they going.
Speaker 2: It's the cops who arrive and tell her that Heather
Speaker 2: and Gale have both died, But even then she doesn't
Speaker 2: call anyone to offer any condolences that we were told
Speaker 2: at court, yeah at all. And and the first interview
Speaker 2: a lot of which you know can out find online.
Speaker 2: That happens after that police search. So that search finishes
Speaker 2: around about three or four o'clock in the afternoon.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of image there of them sitting at
Speaker 1: the table that's.
Speaker 2: All that search, while that search is happening, and all
Speaker 2: of that was presented at court, and you know, while
Speaker 2: she's sitting at that table. I mean, I have the
Speaker 2: other thing that the police did I think, I'm not
Speaker 2: sure if you've read this in the book, is that
Speaker 2: they catalog all the things they took during the search.
Speaker 2: But there were a few laptops, a couple of laptops
Speaker 2: that were left there, and it did make it look
Speaker 2: like it was a bit of a sloppy search and
Speaker 2: they missed things that they really should have picked up.
Speaker 2: And I just wondered, knowing from other cases, from other
Speaker 2: homicide cops here and you know what you think, but
Speaker 2: that I suspect that that was deliberate. That poker face, Yes,
Speaker 2: those just listening there as a poker face, But I'd
Speaker 2: be very surprised if they hadn't left them there to
Speaker 2: see if she continued in from eating behavior. But that
Speaker 2: never came out in court. That's just me from knowledge
Speaker 2: of other cases going. No, I don't think that was sloppy.
Speaker 2: I think they knew exactly what they were doing there.
Speaker 1: They certainly would have would have had their focus on her.
Speaker 1: What about the item taken from the tip that she
Speaker 1: disposed of?
Speaker 2: So yeah, so she that is now back at one
Speaker 2: thaky station, which is where the cops take her after
Speaker 2: the search for her interview. So they they start asking,
Speaker 2: you know, why she had the lunch and she says,
Speaker 2: you know, I just wanted to stay in touch with
Speaker 2: my family and my grandparentst. Cetera. Then they talk about
Speaker 2: whether she ever foraged for any food. She denies her foraging.
Speaker 2: Did you ever dry or dehydrate any food? And they
Speaker 2: go and she goes, no, never, and the dehydrator is
Speaker 2: in the next room. It's literally they've already got it
Speaker 2: and it's in the next room. It's nice locking people
Speaker 2: in the lies when you know they're line. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: so yeah, he knew that right off the bat and
Speaker 2: hang herself. Yeah, And then I think it's a you know,
Speaker 2: it's a great interview in the sense that he then
Speaker 2: goes back to her presentation at hospital and ask her
Speaker 2: about that and when she did end up at Monash
Speaker 2: Medical Center for a day and was under observation, what
Speaker 2: the doctors thought then and when she found out about
Speaker 2: you know, what might have actually caused the other guests
Speaker 2: to be unwell. Et ce so goes all of that,
Speaker 2: and then he comes back and says, let me go
Speaker 2: through what we took from the house. First of all,
Speaker 2: this manual for a sunbeam dehydrator. What's that about? And
Speaker 2: she denies it again, And I thought, she to me,
Speaker 2: I think they've given her every opportunity They've been fair
Speaker 2: to think through this. Have a think now, I a're
Speaker 2: going to give you another chance. What can you tell us?
Speaker 2: And she denies it again and never had one, might
Speaker 2: have had one years and years ago. But again those.
Speaker 1: Vague gas that give you a little bit of leeway
Speaker 1: either way.
Speaker 2: And so they finished that interview, and Steve actually drove
Speaker 2: it back home that night, and it's that night that
Speaker 2: she factory resets the phone remote in the office. But
Speaker 2: I think you can tell from from what they've already got.
Speaker 2: But they already recovered the way she behaved in the interview,
Speaker 2: the way she lied about everything. They'd be thinking, you're
Speaker 2: thinking you've got a case.
Speaker 1: But as was highlighted in your dis secting the trial,
Speaker 1: the beyond reasonable doubt three murders and the temp murder,
Speaker 1: the evidence looks overwhelming, but the element of doubt can
Speaker 1: be it was an accident?
Speaker 2: Was it an accident?
Speaker 1: And the defense have just got to chip away in
Speaker 1: the minds of a couple of the jury members, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, this person.
Speaker 2: You get that because you know she's lying because she's
Speaker 2: dead scared that she's going to be accused of killing them,
Speaker 2: and you go, well, yes, but does that explain everything?
Speaker 1: Well, I'm looking at some of the things from breaking
Speaker 1: down the notes I've made from reading the book and
Speaker 1: the other media accounts of what's gone on, like the
Speaker 1: points you'd be looking at like how strong was her
Speaker 1: anger against Simon?
Speaker 2: And yeah, she's not going to say I wanted to
Speaker 2: kill him?
Speaker 1: But what was there evidence there suggesting that there was
Speaker 1: a hatred or an anger towards Simon?
Speaker 2: Well there was back in December, yeah, but in the
Speaker 2: months leading up to the lunch not so much. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: he'd said no, I don't want to come to lunch
Speaker 2: with you, But other than that, there's nothing in particular
Speaker 2: the prosecution could point to that illustrated you know, building hatred. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It makes it hard because the jury, like we sit
Speaker 1: and struggle sometimes with motive or we were talking about
Speaker 1: struggling with motive. The jury if yeah, if she's making threats,
Speaker 1: you're going to regret what you've done to me and
Speaker 1: all that. But so the prosecution can present, well, they've separated,
Speaker 1: but the defense can go, well, there's lots of people
Speaker 1: who have separated, and play it off that way. Why
Speaker 1: did she invite the guests to lunch, well, claims to
Speaker 1: tell them about her cancer diagnosis? How did she explain
Speaker 1: another way in the trial.
Speaker 2: In the trial, she admitted that she had to admit
Speaker 2: that was a lie because there is no record of
Speaker 2: any cancer diagnosis, and the prosecution was saying she was
Speaker 2: expecting all four of them to be dead, and no
Speaker 2: one would know that she'd ever said that. But in
Speaker 2: the trial she said, look, I did have a real
Speaker 2: medical issue. I've been embarrassed about my weight and it
Speaker 2: had been a growing issue, and I'd been balemic for
Speaker 2: twenty years and I was stressing me out and I
Speaker 2: had to do something about it. And I'd made a
Speaker 2: booking to investigate doing gastric bypass surgery, and that was
Speaker 2: really the medical issue that was on my mind. But
Speaker 2: I was too embarrassed to actually say that to them,
Speaker 2: But I was looking at being in hospital for that surgery,
Speaker 2: and this was her giving evidence at the trial. At
Speaker 2: the trial, the prosecution, as far as I know, I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure of this, they had no idea of this
Speaker 2: her evidence in chief at the very end of the trial.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And just to bring people up the speed, sorry
Speaker 1: I've jumped ahead, but how long after the death of
Speaker 1: the three people was she charged?
Speaker 2: How she was charged on second of November twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: They died in the first week of war, So three months, okay,
Speaker 2: three months she's charged.
Speaker 1: Now we're sort of fast forward to the trial and
Speaker 1: we're at the trial with the trial again, just so
Speaker 1: people understand that an accused person doesn't have to give evidence.
Speaker 1: It's up to the prosecutors to prove the case, prove
Speaker 1: the allegations against the accused, and then once they've done that,
Speaker 1: then the accused presents their defense and the accused doesn't
Speaker 1: have to get in the witness box. And very rarely
Speaker 1: do accuse people getting the witness box, especially at murder trials,
Speaker 1: because it opens it up to all sorts of cross
Speaker 1: examination and invariably goes bad for them. She chose to
Speaker 1: get in there. Why do you think she chose to
Speaker 1: get in there.
Speaker 2: I there were things in her story that I think
Speaker 2: only she could explain, she had an explanation for, and
Speaker 2: I think she felt if she had any chance of
Speaker 2: being able to create reasonable doubt in the minds of
Speaker 2: a jury, it would be her who would be able
Speaker 2: to do that. Okay, I think that's why.
Speaker 1: So your reading of it listening to it following it
Speaker 1: was she was pretty well jammed up after the prosecution
Speaker 1: finished their case and she had to present something, and
Speaker 1: she had no witnesses to come into saying no she
Speaker 1: was in the state at the time or whatever it was.
Speaker 1: In that type of case, she had no one except
Speaker 1: for herself who could explain it, and so rolled the
Speaker 1: dice and thought that she get away of it. Getting
Speaker 1: back to what you were talking about before the cancer.
Speaker 1: She agrees it wasn't cancer, but what it was it
Speaker 1: was an embarrassing medical condition, and she had actually booked
Speaker 1: in to get Yeah.
Speaker 2: A gastric band? Is it? What's it called? Gastric When
Speaker 2: did you have it? Last? So during her evidence in chief,
Speaker 2: when Colin Mandy was asking her these questions, she just
Speaker 2: said she was giving her history of being balamic in
Speaker 2: her history of having terribly embarrassing issues with her with
Speaker 2: her weight and needing to address it, and that she
Speaker 2: had a plan to do gastric bypass surgery. That's that's
Speaker 2: all in her evidence in chief. When Nanette Rodgers was
Speaker 2: cross examining her, this is in the last two or
Speaker 2: three days of the trial, and she she's challenging you
Speaker 2: know what she said the lunch was about, and gets
Speaker 2: to the point where, you know, this apparent plan for
Speaker 2: gastric surgery, and Nannette says something like, but it was
Speaker 2: nothing more than a plan, was it. You know, you're
Speaker 2: just sort of making this up. And she said, no,
Speaker 2: I haven't. I had an appointment, and that really threw silence.
Speaker 2: It was like what and she said, no, we're with
Speaker 2: and you know, with the Enrich Clinic in Melbourne. I
Speaker 2: had an appointment to see someone to discuss this surgery.
Speaker 2: And that was a that was a shoe drop moment
Speaker 2: in the trial because the prosecution did not know that
Speaker 2: at all, and so they had that was on a
Speaker 2: Friday morning, and they literally had Friday afternoon to try
Speaker 2: and figure out what the hell that was all about,
Speaker 2: because they only had another day we finished. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: even I remember listening to it and thinking, that does
Speaker 2: put it different if she really had an appointment to
Speaker 2: do this, you know, with a surgeon who was going
Speaker 2: to do this surgery for her, and she's given this history,
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, you're thinking, oh, my god, well
Speaker 2: that that does explain the lunch.
Speaker 1: That's where it's on that delicate balance, isn't it, because
Speaker 1: that you buy into that? And yet oh, she's telling
Speaker 1: the truth there And I understand she's embarrassed to talk
Speaker 1: about the nature of the surgery, but it was a
Speaker 1: medical condition. That's all explainable, So says little things that
Speaker 1: can make a difference, they can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know, this is at the very end
Speaker 2: of the trial, and you know, I'm trying to think
Speaker 2: like a duror, going, well, now I've got to relook
Speaker 2: at a whole host of other bits of evidence where
Speaker 2: you went. You know, it's ninety percent sure, but there's
Speaker 2: a ten percent chance this could have happened. But if
Speaker 2: if they can prove that she was going to have
Speaker 2: this surgery.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's credibility to the lunch, to her version of events.
Speaker 1: So the prosecutors would have scrambled I would imagine there'd
Speaker 1: be people running out of the court and making call it.
Speaker 2: Imagine. They did scramble, and they scrambled very well, and
Speaker 2: because what they discovered was that Aaron did have an appointment.
Speaker 2: What she'd remembered is that she had made an appointment
Speaker 2: with the Enridge Clinic and she had What Aaron didn't
Speaker 2: realize was that the Enridge Clinic doesn't offer that surgery. Right, Okay,
Speaker 2: that's the problem. So again it was a big problem,
Speaker 2: and you go, oh, so she wasn't telling the truth.
Speaker 2: It was she's well again, as you know people who
Speaker 2: are so good at lying, there was there was part
Speaker 2: of it was truth Smidge and the truth Smidge and
Speaker 2: the truth and the rest wasn't. So yes, she was.
Speaker 2: She made a booking to Enrich to do something. Now
Speaker 2: it's mostly and this is no apparently highly respected clinic,
Speaker 2: but it's mostly cosmetic surgery. It's it's not you know,
Speaker 2: genuine surgical procedures for for serious health issues. How did
Speaker 2: that play out in court? Did they set the trap
Speaker 2: for him? They did? They came back first thing Monday morning,
Speaker 2: and Nanette did a string of questions which sort of
Speaker 2: let her down the trap and then finally was saying,
Speaker 2: but he do you agree that's you know what Enrich offers.
Speaker 2: He is their website blah blah blah, and can you
Speaker 2: see that it does not offer gastric bypass surgery? And
Speaker 2: she went, oh, well, I thought it did. And then
Speaker 2: then it took Colin Mandy in his re examination on
Speaker 2: the very last day of the trial to say that
Speaker 2: there was it didn't even now offer lip per suction.
Speaker 2: But back then there was one of one of their
Speaker 2: practitioners who did off a liper section, so he was
Speaker 2: trying to sort of to soften soften the lie and
Speaker 2: honest mistake. It was honest mistake. Yeah, and she would
Speaker 2: have looked at this, but there were just too many
Speaker 2: times where you try and take care in it her word,
Speaker 2: and then you realize you can't.
Speaker 1: In the way she responded when she was called out,
Speaker 1: is there still that calmness about her, like it's not
Speaker 1: sort of collapse ahead or no?
Speaker 2: There was no, There wasn't. There was never a collapsed
Speaker 2: head moment. There was never oh my god, I'm done
Speaker 2: for just I've lost a point here. I'll keep going,
Speaker 2: keep adding.
Speaker 1: A couple of other things, like serving of the food
Speaker 1: gray plates a separate plate for her.
Speaker 2: Did that play out in the trol Yeah, that there
Speaker 2: was a lot of discussion about the plates, because she
Speaker 2: obviously claimed she never had four gray plates, and Ian
Speaker 2: was adamant. Ian was adamant that she had. And the
Speaker 2: plates the police found during this search, and I think
Speaker 2: there are two black ones, and there are two black
Speaker 2: and red ones, and there was one there was one
Speaker 2: that her daughter had made at kindergarten somewhere which was
Speaker 2: sort of multicolored one. There weren't many and in fact,
Speaker 2: Simon said to the police, he said she never did
Speaker 2: have many plates, but those were the only ones the
Speaker 2: police could find when they did their search, and they
Speaker 2: matched what Aaron had said she'd put the beef Rington's on,
Speaker 2: not at all what Ian said she put the beef
Speaker 2: Wellington on. And Ian just he was a very credible witness,
Speaker 2: particularly because you know, he couldn't remember exactly what people
Speaker 2: said in the conversation blah blah blah. When he wasn't
Speaker 2: entirely sure. He was quite honest about saying, I'm not
Speaker 2: entirely sure, but when he was sure, he just had
Speaker 2: lock it in a quiet certainty that he just couldn't resist,
Speaker 2: And then what they jumping forward a little bit. What
Speaker 2: we didn't know until all the pre trial rulings on
Speaker 2: admissibility in admissibility of evidence, which were lifted four weeks
Speaker 2: after the trial. The jury never got to hear this
Speaker 2: during the trial proper. But the minute the lunch was
Speaker 2: finished at three o'clock, when Don and Gale and Ian
Speaker 2: and Heather drove off and the boys are in the
Speaker 2: TV computer room, she took a box of rubbish to
Speaker 2: the tip and that happened within fifteen minutes of the
Speaker 2: lunch ending.
Speaker 1: And are you privy to the logic of the ruling
Speaker 1: of that being excluded.
Speaker 2: To believe yes, that has been that's been released, that
Speaker 2: they're not trying to hide it. I believe it's because
Speaker 2: when the police found out about that trip to the tip,
Speaker 2: it was about a week and a week and a
Speaker 2: half later, and they couldn't recover what she'd thrown out.
Speaker 2: So because there was no evidence that it was just
Speaker 2: innocuous so it was just food scraps, they said it
Speaker 2: to be too prejudicial to put it in, thinking it
Speaker 2: might have been something prejudicial.
Speaker 1: Because next time she took something to the tip, it
Speaker 1: was definitely.
Speaker 2: It definitely was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I suppose we do in those protections in place, but.
Speaker 2: I wonder, I mean, I suppose that.
Speaker 1: Sorry, I'm trying to be reasonable for you, Greg, I
Speaker 1: just wanted to become across race.
Speaker 2: I can I can understand that. I can understand the
Speaker 2: reasoning behind that I and this is I haven't done
Speaker 2: in big legal surveys and forensic examination of the of it,
Speaker 2: but just listening to the number of crime cases I've
Speaker 2: listened to and followed, the law and judges are very
Speaker 2: strong on saying to a jury, you are the arbiters
Speaker 2: of fact. You are the ones who decide what is
Speaker 2: and is in fact. Let me deal with what law
Speaker 2: is and make sure it's a fair trial, but you
Speaker 2: decide what's fact. Time and again, you guys, they can
Speaker 2: only decide what's fact and what's presented to them. And
Speaker 2: a lot of times, like with that trip to the
Speaker 2: tip immediately after lunch, why couldn't you say to a
Speaker 2: jury it might have been innocuous, we have no evidence,
Speaker 2: but it did happen, and let the jury be the
Speaker 2: arbitis the fact that you say they are.
Speaker 1: Greg, I'm with you on that. We've got the jury system,
Speaker 1: because we want to rely on being judged by your
Speaker 1: peers on the available evidence, and they're put on this
Speaker 1: pedestal to make judgment on another one of their peers,
Speaker 1: but they're only provided limited informations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think if you're you either trust them
Speaker 2: that they understand what prejudice and biases and know how
Speaker 2: to take that into account, or you don't. And if
Speaker 2: you do, I think I think more should be ruled
Speaker 2: and admissible than the law currently allows. That's not to
Speaker 2: say it should be open slather and everything, but I
Speaker 2: think at the moment the pendulums just swung a bit too.
Speaker 1: Much, and the judges in their judges summing up, give
Speaker 1: the warnings the necessary warnings, and they could explain to
Speaker 1: the way the way that you just explain it. But
Speaker 1: it's frustrating from a policing point of view watching seeing
Speaker 1: the jury sit there and you can see them literally
Speaker 1: scratch their heads sometimes and there's something missing here. We
Speaker 1: know something missing. Why was that just cut off? Or
Speaker 1: why have we been excluded from the court. We're judging
Speaker 1: whether this person is guilty of murder and they've just
Speaker 1: had three hours of v legal argument and we've been excluded.
Speaker 1: Shouldn't we be part of that? Shouldn't we?
Speaker 2: I think that's it's interesting my reading and my understanding
Speaker 2: I could be corrected on this is that the jury
Speaker 2: the jury system began hundreds of years ago because you
Speaker 2: would be tried not only by your peers and by
Speaker 2: your community, but by people who knew you. Yes, And
Speaker 2: the irony is now you can only be tried by
Speaker 2: jurors who don't know you. Yeah. And and in fact,
Speaker 2: if you have any connection with the accused of their relatives,
Speaker 2: et cetera, then you've got to excuse yourself from the jury.
Speaker 2: If you have any connection with any of the witnesses,
Speaker 2: you excuse yourself from the jury. So the jury, who
Speaker 2: are not allowed to talk or interact with people, are
Speaker 2: meant to judge facts purely on a highly curated set
Speaker 2: of evidence which is presented to presented to them. Whereas
Speaker 2: the system began with yeah, I know Joe blow over there,
Speaker 2: and you know, I know you don't get aware of them,
Speaker 2: and I got aware of them. And then you've got
Speaker 2: twelve of us here, all have different relationships with them.
Speaker 2: Do you reckon.
Speaker 1: Did he punch out John on the pub or not?
Speaker 1: I think the evolution of the jury system. I think
Speaker 1: we need to evolve, especially now with you're covering the crimes,
Speaker 1: where the warning there you're not to read the afternoon paper,
Speaker 1: you're not to watch the news. Well, now we're gone
Speaker 1: past that. We have gone going to happen. So we
Speaker 1: know you're going to look and the moment you walk
Speaker 1: out of this call room, you're going to google how
Speaker 1: this case is going and how has it been reported.
Speaker 1: But as a DURA you can only rely on what's
Speaker 1: presented in the court. That should be enough of a warning.
Speaker 1: It should be enough.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's I just I guess I'm just coming
Speaker 2: up from the point of view, shouldn't shouldn't we start
Speaker 2: a conversation about whether the system can be reviewed and
Speaker 2: improved a bit. And it's a system that I fully support, yes, completely,
Speaker 2: I just think it could be better.
Speaker 1: Well, you talk the pendulum, and sometimes the pendulum have
Speaker 1: swung too far and we need to bring it back
Speaker 1: back a bit. But I have long held a bugbear
Speaker 1: of the jurors aren't presented with all the facts, and
Speaker 1: if they are to adjudicate on the facts given, provide
Speaker 1: them all the facts. That's right, and then they can
Speaker 1: put what weight they think necessary on it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting argument or interesting discussion. Her claims of
Speaker 1: having diarrhea, this trapter didn't it because we talked briefly
Speaker 1: in in part one that she said the onset of
Speaker 1: diary came in the afternoon, and whereas if it's from
Speaker 1: the ingredients that the others were suffering, the diary that
Speaker 1: was eight to ten hours later, and that so then
Speaker 1: she's left with this conundrum of yeah, I said I
Speaker 1: was sick, but now I'm not that sick, And she
Speaker 1: started to give different versions of events of how sick
Speaker 1: she was or no, she got really sick. Later talk
Speaker 1: us through that, because that was a miscalculation.
Speaker 2: On that home. I think it was a miscalculation on
Speaker 2: her behalf, because Simon was pretty adamant that, you know,
Speaker 2: on the phone the first time they talked, she said
Speaker 2: that she initially started feeling a little bit woozy four
Speaker 2: thirty ish in the afternoon. Now, even if he's got
Speaker 2: that a little bit wrong, she was an normal gastor
Speaker 2: reaction to a lunch at one o'clock would be about that.
Speaker 2: And then, as I said, she said to too many
Speaker 2: people that she was suffering from diarrhea when she drove
Speaker 2: her son's mate home. That she sort of locked into
Speaker 2: a version of that, even though she was the master
Speaker 2: sort of watering things down, you know, when she's in
Speaker 2: the backtracking, Yeah, just walking back a little bit, when
Speaker 2: she's giving her evidence and building up what she was
Speaker 2: saying happened after midnight on Sunday night. That's when three
Speaker 2: days later she first used of the word explosive diary,
Speaker 2: which was I think to Salianne Atkinson, to the health expert.
Speaker 2: And so now she's trying to make it sound like
Speaker 2: her strong symptoms didn't happen un till roughly the same time. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but you could never get away from the fact that
Speaker 2: she told too many people that really by seven o'clock
Speaker 2: she was happened happened earlier. So then Colin Mandy's only
Speaker 2: answer to that was he'd done, in my mind, a
Speaker 2: very good job of he did try and cover that.
Speaker 2: He did do uncover up very well. So she was
Speaker 2: she was saying, she added, this is now let's go
Speaker 2: back to nine o'clock in the morning, nine thirty in
Speaker 2: the morning, and she's making the mushroom mixture for the
Speaker 2: beef Wellington's a little bit of a tast, a little
Speaker 2: bit of a taste test, and realizes that they'd really
Speaker 2: bit bland and don't have any flavor, and that's why
Speaker 2: she adds the dried mushrooms from the Asian grosser from
Speaker 2: some shop you can't remember. Then comes the issue, well,
Speaker 2: most home cooks, if you've started tasting something and you
Speaker 2: think it's not doesn't have the right flavor, and you
Speaker 2: add something to it, you taste again. Yes, that's what
Speaker 2: almost everybody does. If you're not a taster, fine, but
Speaker 2: if you are tasting to check the flavor and you
Speaker 2: add something, you taste again. The defense couldn't say that
Speaker 2: at the beginning because the question people were why isn't
Speaker 2: she dead, you know, or at least in intensive care
Speaker 2: if she was tasting, if she was adding death cap
Speaker 2: mushrooms to it, So that was skipped over until Colin
Speaker 2: Mandy realized at the end of the trial. I think
Speaker 2: he realized at the end of the trial. Certain how
Speaker 2: it came out that one explanation for her feeling diarrhea
Speaker 2: at seven o'clock is that she had tasted a bit.
Speaker 2: So all of a sudden tasting is mentioned on the
Speaker 2: second last day of the trial, just the clock back
Speaker 2: and you go, well, okay, so, but it must have
Speaker 2: tasted because she had no liver damage. And this is
Speaker 2: where in terms of just just doubt, all you need
Speaker 2: is doubt. So the defense colin Man had also accessed
Speaker 2: one journal from Germany, and there's there's more research into
Speaker 2: death cap mushrooms over in europecause there's more of them.
Speaker 2: There's more de cap mushrooms that say there are four stages,
Speaker 2: and just because you eat the same thing doesn't mean
Speaker 2: everyone ends up with the same stage. You can have
Speaker 2: someone just having very small reaction and someone else is
Speaker 2: eating the same thing have a different reaction. And he
Speaker 2: was using that to try and cast doubt in the
Speaker 2: jury's mind that in fact Erin's claimed diarrhea and there
Speaker 2: were just enough medical symptoms when you finally did get
Speaker 2: any one of hospital to go where she probably did
Speaker 2: suffer something. Maybe it did if you've murdered three people,
Speaker 2: but you must have just tasted a tiny, tiny, tiny
Speaker 2: enough amount to feel sick at seven o'clock at night.
Speaker 2: But you're now starting to ask people to believe a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but again.
Speaker 1: It's putting in doubt and also, I think the body
Speaker 1: weight of a person and the age of the people
Speaker 1: that died, it could react. And if you have the
Speaker 1: professor or the expert witness there saying well, it's possible,
Speaker 1: because most things are possible.
Speaker 2: And that's what they're very good at asking that question. Yeah,
Speaker 2: not what's most likely, but it is it at all possible?
Speaker 2: You've been caught too long. Yeah, I've heard that question
Speaker 2: too many times and the answers, well, yes, it's a
Speaker 2: hard one to say no too. But you did then
Speaker 2: have to go, well, that's weighed up with. So she
Speaker 2: tasted enough to realize there wasn't enough flavor added Asian
Speaker 2: dried mushrooms, then just tasted a tiny little quarter of
Speaker 2: tea spooned luckily apparently nothing else, and that was enough
Speaker 2: that you know, when she started to feel simpto that
Speaker 2: seven o'clock it was because of that. And you go, okay,
Speaker 2: but the difference you still come back to thinking and
Speaker 2: I think that what you're putting doubt in someone's mind.
Speaker 2: But then you go, three people died, one very very
Speaker 2: nearly died, and she was discharged after a couple of hours. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and you know that that's not just an incremental difference.
Speaker 2: That's a huge, huge and there was a reluctance to
Speaker 2: get tested and the reluctance to bring the kids in.
Speaker 2: The other thing that I found from your book, from
Speaker 2: your Dura, and I think this is the type of
Speaker 2: thing that goes through Dura's mind where you're sitting there,
Speaker 2: and I think it was just sort of reflection of
Speaker 2: what goes on in the dur Dura mind that she's
Speaker 2: Aaron was saying that she had a I think it
Speaker 2: was a three hour round trip that she had to
Speaker 2: take to drop her son somewhere trying and she was
Speaker 2: getting around in white pants and like the Duras just
Speaker 2: thinking and this I'm sure and it's not legal basis.
Speaker 2: I'm sure this is how the Duras process stuff. If
Speaker 2: you had diarrhea, would you be wearing white pants?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like little things like that, But these are all
Speaker 1: the type of things that grow through the mind. Getting
Speaker 1: rid of the dehydrator. We've talked about that, But what
Speaker 1: explanation did she give when she was in the witness
Speaker 1: box for getting rid of the dehydrated.
Speaker 2: Sheer panic that she thought if it was left there,
Speaker 2: and she thought that Katrina Crypts from Child Protection was
Speaker 2: coming around that afternoon, and if she saw that she
Speaker 2: had a dehydrator which still had mushroom crumbs on it,
Speaker 2: because that's how they found.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that she was likely to be blamed for it,
Speaker 3: for it and did she and I might have this wrong,
Speaker 3: But didn't she allude to or claim that Simon also
Speaker 3: accused her at some did you voice.
Speaker 2: No, that's that that happened. So what before she gets
Speaker 2: rid of the dehydrated Yeah, So that's the other The
Speaker 2: other reason is it's a contested reason. When she was
Speaker 2: admitted to monashing, the kids were there as well, and
Speaker 2: they're just going through through tests. The kids were asking
Speaker 2: why they'd been taken out of school. I think you
Speaker 2: know what's all this about, and she was saying, well,
Speaker 2: they think that it's the lunch I did on Saturday
Speaker 2: and the mushrooms in it that might have made you know,
Speaker 2: Pop and Nanna a bit sick. And the kids were saying,
Speaker 2: but why are we here because she took the mushrooms
Speaker 2: off the one that we ate, et cetera. And it
Speaker 2: started a conversation about mushrooms, and that led to the
Speaker 2: description that the kids knew an Aaron knew that when
Speaker 2: she first bought the dehydrator. She crushed up dried button
Speaker 2: mushrooms and put them in muffins because you know her
Speaker 2: do she didn't like mushrooms and she wanted to feed
Speaker 2: some good veggies. And the daughter actually really preferred the
Speaker 2: mushies with the mushrooms in than the ones without the
Speaker 2: mushrooms in. And that of course telling that story. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you mentioned the dehydrator that she used to actually put
Speaker 2: the mushrooms in the muffins. And according to Aaron, this
Speaker 2: was on the Monday afternoon, I think. And that's when
Speaker 2: Simon said to her, is that how you poison my
Speaker 2: parents with that dehydrator? Right? And that she says, that's
Speaker 2: the moment when she realized she was going to get
Speaker 2: blamed for everything.
Speaker 1: Okay, so again is trying to write off her actions
Speaker 1: at the sound very damning towards her. Is I panic
Speaker 1: because Simon was accusing me of.
Speaker 2: Killing his mom and dad. Now Simon point blank denied ever,
Speaker 2: saying that to her, it comes down to do you
Speaker 2: take Aerin at a word. If you do take Aerin
Speaker 2: at a word, it's consistent with what she said she did.
Speaker 2: She had Simon already blaming her. She was feeling panicked.
Speaker 2: She knew child Protection was coming around the next day. Stress,
Speaker 2: this is all going to come back at me. I've
Speaker 2: got to hide whatever I can and takes the dehydrated
Speaker 2: to the tip.
Speaker 1: What about her foraging for mushrooms? When did that break?
Speaker 1: When did she acknowledge that she.
Speaker 2: Was that happened? It wasn't during the record of you
Speaker 2: with the police. It was after the fifth of August.
Speaker 2: By the time they did. It was the autopsies that
Speaker 2: sort of showed beyond doubt it was a death cat,
Speaker 2: that it was death cap mushrooms that killed Don and Gale.
Speaker 2: And the DNA testing on the crumbs from the trays
Speaker 2: and the dehydrator showed that there were death cap mushrooms
Speaker 2: on the dehydrator. Right, So the combination of scientific evidence
Speaker 2: that was beyond doubt as opposed to, you know, there's
Speaker 2: a ten percent chance of this. There was no explanation
Speaker 2: for that other than she had used forage mushrooms in
Speaker 2: those beef Wellington's. Then on top of that, and I
Speaker 2: think this was the other thing they finally when they
Speaker 2: went through there was an SD card with photos on
Speaker 2: it and there was a tablet that she'd used that
Speaker 2: had thumbnails of photos from the memory cash from Google photos,
Speaker 2: and they showed photos she'd taken of mushrooms on the
Speaker 2: dehydrator and some of the particularly some of the photos
Speaker 2: were clearly foraged mushrooms. Particularly there was one set that
Speaker 2: Dr Tom May, who was a mycologist, again he said
Speaker 2: with a very high level of confidence they were death
Speaker 2: cap mushrooms. He couldn't say beyond all doubt, but with
Speaker 2: a very high level of confidence. And given the crumbs
Speaker 2: and the DNA were there, you sort of go with it.
Speaker 2: So over the course between August and November when she
Speaker 2: was charged, the evidence that she must have foraged and
Speaker 2: death cap mushrooms cannot be cultivated. They can only grow
Speaker 2: on roots of oak trees, so you have to go
Speaker 2: out to a park somewhere where there's specific So put
Speaker 2: all those facts together and you can't keep denying it.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, And did she when she was giving evidence,
Speaker 1: did she?
Speaker 2: Yeah, she said she had. She She then said she
Speaker 2: started foraging mushrooms during COVID, so all of a sudden
Speaker 2: it started three years ago. And there are photos of
Speaker 2: her on I think the rail trail and again with
Speaker 2: the kids were you know, they're on their scooters and
Speaker 2: she's picking mushrooms. There's photos of her in her kitchen
Speaker 2: in the house before the ones she earned at Lee Gathera,
Speaker 2: the one before that, and again there's foraged mushrooms that
Speaker 2: she says she just got in the backyard, which are
Speaker 2: on the kitchen bench. So all of a sudden, once
Speaker 2: that wall came down. Forager. She's a forager. What she
Speaker 2: denies ever doing is deliberately foraging death caps. She said,
Speaker 2: obviously I must have at some point because they're in
Speaker 2: the dehydrator and they're in the beef. Wellington's terrible accident
Speaker 2: again put that little bit of doubt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm just looking all different parts that the trial
Speaker 1: was hinging. It would have been an interesting trial to
Speaker 1: listen to because you'd be walking out each day thinking
Speaker 1: we've got her. I'm talking from a police point there,
Speaker 1: or she's she came out on top here, creating those doubt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, several nights when I was talking to my kids
Speaker 2: in my life about it, and they were just reading headlines,
Speaker 2: and had read headlines for months ago ago. Why is
Speaker 2: it taking so long? You shouldn't they lock her up?
Speaker 2: And I was going, you know, she might not be
Speaker 2: convicted here. Yeah, and they were quite surprised. But the
Speaker 2: more I there were several days through the middle and
Speaker 2: second part of the trial where I'm going this isn't
Speaker 2: necessarily over. There's a there.
Speaker 1: The assummation of the case that I look at, like,
Speaker 1: we've gone through the trial, she's given evidence.
Speaker 2: How long was she in the witness box for about
Speaker 2: six or seven days. That's a long time, A long time.
Speaker 2: I think she was three days giving her evidence in
Speaker 2: chief and three or four days in crossmains in the
Speaker 2: armor of breaking down a motion anything. Not really it
Speaker 2: was a pretty good performance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, this is a summation of just what we've
Speaker 1: talked about, but of the case against Saron. So for
Speaker 1: you presenting the prosecution case, Aaron had forage for wild
Speaker 1: mushrooms near Mike Parks and trails. She had hydrated deaf
Speaker 1: cap mushrooms in her dehydrator. The mushroom mixture in her
Speaker 1: beef Wellington's had included those dehydrated death mushrooms. The beef
Speaker 1: Wellington had killed three of her lunch guests and very
Speaker 1: nearly killed the fourth that had killed all their livers.
Speaker 1: That's the result. By contrast, Aaron had not suffered any
Speaker 1: liver damage at all. So if you're going to summarize
Speaker 1: the case, it sort of gets back to the start
Speaker 1: of it, doesn't it Your fictional dura and I just
Speaker 1: take this quote out of the book because I thought
Speaker 1: it was a good way of explaining it. They were
Speaker 1: five points I just read out there. The first four
Speaker 1: could be explained by a tragic accident or a deliberate
Speaker 1: act with murderous intent. The fifth makes a tragic accident
Speaker 1: less likely explanation and an active murderous intent a more
Speaker 1: likely explanation. So that fifth one, if Aaron had not suffered,
Speaker 1: if she got sick and survived, it would be hard
Speaker 1: for anyone to convict her.
Speaker 2: It's a difficult one, is it? It is?
Speaker 1: And the judge was it Justice Bill, Justice Bill in
Speaker 1: his summing when we talk about what the role of
Speaker 1: the jurors, and this is from the transcripts, if you
Speaker 1: find that the accused lied about something, you can use
Speaker 1: that fact to help you decide whether or not you
Speaker 1: believe the other things the accused has said. That is
Speaker 1: not to say that just because you find that she
Speaker 1: lied about one matter, you must also find she has
Speaker 1: been lying about everything else, But you can use the
Speaker 1: fact that she lied to help you determine the truthfulness
Speaker 1: of other things that she has said. Do not reason
Speaker 1: that just because a person is shown to have told
Speaker 1: a lie about something must be guilty. Evidence that she
Speaker 1: told these lies is not evidence of guilt. These alleged
Speaker 1: lies are only relevant if all in assessing her credibility.
Speaker 1: Now there's a lot of warnings.
Speaker 2: There isn't it.
Speaker 1: There's a lie getting in there and lie through your teeth,
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean you're guilty. So that's why it
Speaker 1: makes like you and I both understand the court system.
Speaker 1: We've seen it enough, being involved in it enough. But
Speaker 1: for a dura you'd be sitting there scratching your head
Speaker 1: and going, well, we know she told this lie, this lie,
Speaker 1: this lie, this lie, But the judge is saying, well,
Speaker 1: that doesn't make it guilty.
Speaker 2: It's hard and that's what I think makes it such
Speaker 2: a strong conviction with all of those warnings and thinking
Speaker 2: we can't take that step, we can't take that step,
Speaker 2: we can't take that step. And yet still when you
Speaker 2: look at the totality of the evidence, there's no other
Speaker 2: reasonable explanation. There's just too many places where the stretch
Speaker 2: is too big where you know or maybe that didn't
Speaker 2: happen for five percent of this reason, But when you
Speaker 2: string twenty of them together and you know that so
Speaker 2: many times she's only told the truth when she's had to,
Speaker 2: when she's been caught in a lie, and she's lied
Speaker 2: so much so that her credibility is if you assume
Speaker 2: she has very little credibility left to begin with, then
Speaker 2: you look at the whole line. And then I think
Speaker 2: for my juror, it was feeding the kids the leftovers
Speaker 2: on the Sunday night, Well that's a big gun. That
Speaker 2: for me is yeah, that's a big not take that risk,
Speaker 2: cannot be No, yeah, that's not a well there's a
Speaker 2: five percent chance maybe you know you right do it?
Speaker 2: You don't do it now as soon as you start
Speaker 2: taking that out and go, well, she must have known
Speaker 2: that those people are uncontaminated. And I think Justice Bill
Speaker 2: said that that's the other thing he's looking to do
Speaker 2: is you can only convict if it's the only reasonable
Speaker 2: explanation for the whole of the evidence. And I believe
Speaker 2: that's that's the position the jury reached, having been warned
Speaker 2: again and again and again not to leap to that conclusion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, they are all the warnings in there. I
Speaker 1: always look at people where because that's drummed into you
Speaker 1: early throughout your policcing career or investigative career as a detective,
Speaker 1: that you know lies that don't make them guilty when
Speaker 1: they're self serving lies. I start the former, like, none
Speaker 1: of her lies have been detrimental to her. They're all
Speaker 1: self serving lies. And when people tell me, oh, look
Speaker 1: there might be a mental health issue, but every sort
Speaker 1: of thing that's coming out of their mouth is self serving,
Speaker 1: I wagh that some people are lives, we've all met them,
Speaker 1: like the compulsive liars. But when they're self serving lies,
Speaker 1: I start to look at it a little bit differently.
Speaker 1: And what I see from all her lies everything was
Speaker 1: to distance her from every defense that she's committed.
Speaker 2: How long were the jury out? Eight days? I think okay,
Speaker 2: which seemed long at the but I'm not sure is
Speaker 2: all that long for a nine ten week trial.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot to a lot of process. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they would have known the pressure was on with their decisions.
Speaker 1: When they came back. Were you surprised or what were
Speaker 1: you thinking?
Speaker 2: The result? But when they came back, I was in
Speaker 2: the camp of thinking Aaron was guilty. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: if I was a juror, I still had that corner
Speaker 2: of a doubt that it would only take one or
Speaker 2: two of them to go. It's not quite we can't
Speaker 2: beyond reasonable. So if you'd asked me the day before,
Speaker 2: I would have said maybe seventy thirty being convicted, But
Speaker 2: it wouldn't have surprised me. Yeah, having heard the whole
Speaker 2: what was the media pack like with it?
Speaker 1: Because I know the media pack are always discussing them
Speaker 1: having bets on which way it's going to get.
Speaker 2: I think more people I don't think there were very
Speaker 2: few who thought she was innocent. And again I think
Speaker 2: that the minority were still not sure if she'd be convicted. Right.
Speaker 2: The majority thought she would be and deserved to be,
Speaker 2: but not by huge It wasn't ninety nine percent. It
Speaker 2: had been a you know, the defense had done a
Speaker 2: very good job of muddying enough moments. But at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, you know, as even Colin Mandy
Speaker 2: said in the sentencing hearings, you know, it was very
Speaker 2: grave offending. But it was a fascinating case to hear
Speaker 2: every detail and track the journey of how a jury
Speaker 2: deals with, as I said, the curated and limited bits
Speaker 2: of evidence they have, but looking in their totality to
Speaker 2: reach a conclusion that there was no other reasonable explanation.
Speaker 1: We touched on one of the pieces of information the
Speaker 1: fact that she went to the tip straight after the lunch.
Speaker 1: Also the fact that there was three other charges that
Speaker 1: for attempt murder of Simon, her husband.
Speaker 2: They were and they were part of the of the
Speaker 2: trial right up until I think two days before the trial,
Speaker 2: So she was charged with other murders. Yeah, so she
Speaker 2: was actually facing seven charges. Justice Bill had i think
Speaker 2: ruled three of those charges anyway, he didn't want three
Speaker 2: of them to proceed. I'm not sure what the legal
Speaker 2: term is. And the prosecution took that to the the
Speaker 2: Court of Appeal in Victoria and they came back with
Speaker 2: quite a lengthy ruling. And in that ruling were descriptions
Speaker 2: of those three insidants. And when you read.
Speaker 1: Them, could you give us just a brief to tell them?
Speaker 1: And we bear in mind that she hasn't been convictioned,
Speaker 1: hasn't been disclaimer, but these were the allegations.
Speaker 2: It started with her suggesting that they go on a
Speaker 2: walk I think to Wilson's promontory and without the kids,
Speaker 2: just to discuss something whatever they co parenting discussion needed
Speaker 2: to happen. She'd packed separate lunch for them, but she
Speaker 2: had one lunch and someone had the other, and he
Speaker 2: started getting very sick that night and ended up I
Speaker 2: think she took him to the hospital. They say it
Speaker 2: in an airbnb and he just got sicker, and about
Speaker 2: two days later she took him to Lean Gath the
Speaker 2: hospital and he was in hospital for days and they
Speaker 2: never could find out what it caused. Was But a
Speaker 2: few months later, because they hadn't got to their lovely
Speaker 2: nature walk to discuss whatever the matter they wanted to discuss,
Speaker 2: she suggested they do it again and she brought you know,
Speaker 2: another prepackaged lunch over, I think the second one. She
Speaker 2: brought it to his house and they were due to
Speaker 2: go the next day or whatever, and the same thing happened.
Speaker 2: He had that he had the food she'd brought over
Speaker 2: that night. The next day he was sick as a
Speaker 2: dog and was in hospital again for a long time.
Speaker 2: I think the second time was the longest. I think
Speaker 2: there was like two or three weeks and it was
Speaker 2: very sick, and again they couldn't the doctors. I should
Speaker 2: have the details in front of me, but the doctors
Speaker 2: couldn't nail down exactly what had caused the illness us.
Speaker 2: And this I think that would have happened while she
Speaker 2: was moving houses into lean gather. And then the third one,
Speaker 2: they went to Haqua I think the place is called,
Speaker 2: or they were planning a trip there, and again it
Speaker 2: was another you know, let's go away on a just
Speaker 2: you and me, and we'll discuss what has to happen
Speaker 2: with the kids. And the same thing. She brought prepackaged
Speaker 2: food and you know, he had one that was wrapped
Speaker 2: up and he had there was a chicken carry for
Speaker 2: him and a chicken carry for her, but separate things
Speaker 2: and the same thing. So it was three times in
Speaker 2: about over the course of a year, maybe a bit
Speaker 2: longer than a year. And after that third time, which
Speaker 2: again it wasn't just oh sick, I've got to go
Speaker 2: to the toilet for half a day, it was in hospital.
Speaker 2: It was again hospitalized I think the second one who
Speaker 2: was actually in a coma for five or six days.
Speaker 2: It was very serious. So those were the three attempted
Speaker 2: murder charges that the prosecution also wanted to bring against
Speaker 2: erin the circumstantial case of the similarity between oh, you know,
Speaker 2: I've packed your food and I've prepacked mine and he
Speaker 2: gets sick the next day. But medically there was no
Speaker 2: concrete evidence of what had caused his illness and whether
Speaker 2: it was related to that food. Where the failing, that's
Speaker 2: where the failing was. So there was no you couldn't
Speaker 2: point to a doctor saying it was something here, this
Speaker 2: is what did it, and it was in this chicken curry.
Speaker 2: So because of that break in the line of evidence,
Speaker 2: circumstantially you look at it and you go, well, it's
Speaker 2: pretty obvious.
Speaker 1: Well tendency in coincidence. And just to clarify that, the
Speaker 1: DPP dropped those charges against Aaron in regards to Simon.
Speaker 2: So that was a problem. Yeah, and I think the
Speaker 2: prosecution I don't quite understand the law here, but bear
Speaker 2: with me for a second, was saying, because of what
Speaker 2: happened with the beef Wellington lunch on July twenty nine,
Speaker 2: you can use that as evidence for saying she must
Speaker 2: have poisoned Simon with these three right, But the Court
Speaker 2: of Appeal was saying, you can't present those three on
Speaker 2: the same ticket as evidence for that lunch. Who's if
Speaker 2: she's guilty of that then becomes evidence for the lunch.
Speaker 2: It's it becomes circular, circular argument. You go's a circular argument.
Speaker 2: And so you're needing the result on one to prove
Speaker 2: those three, and yet you want those three to be
Speaker 2: used to prove the other, and you can't do that,
Speaker 2: and they won't. No, not allowed. Okay, So I can
Speaker 2: understand that, really, And so they were separated from the indictment.
Speaker 2: But the jury knew there had been because it had
Speaker 2: been in the press. The jury knew there had been
Speaker 2: three other attempted murder charges. They weren't informed, but they
Speaker 2: were not informed. They were told put it out of
Speaker 2: your mind, and they never knew any details about it.
Speaker 2: So this is this is a hard thing for the juris,
Speaker 2: isn't it? Because you what was that about?
Speaker 1: And I'm sure the conversation is happening in the jury
Speaker 1: room going what was that about?
Speaker 2: Then we ask you about that? Can you find out
Speaker 2: what was what that was? You know, the prosecution two
Speaker 2: days away from a trial, now we can't know anything
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 1: That's a complex system, isn't it. It really is so
Speaker 1: come back guilty and she's recently been sentenced. What did
Speaker 1: Patterson get to these her endless crimes?
Speaker 2: The headline sentence was life imprisonment, which was not contested
Speaker 2: by the defense. What was contestant was a non parole period.
Speaker 2: The prosecution was arguing that she should never be released.
Speaker 2: The defense was saying because of the harshness of her
Speaker 2: situation in custody, she's so notorious, because of the massive
Speaker 2: fame of the case, that she's in solitary confinement and
Speaker 2: because of that duress, that there should be some non
Speaker 2: parole period. And in the end, Justice Buell accepted that
Speaker 2: argument and put a non parole period of thirty three years,
Speaker 2: so she'll be in her early eighties when she gets out. Okay,
Speaker 2: Well still yeah, heavy significant sentence. It's a significant sentence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Greg, I have enjoyed our chat again with the book.
Speaker 2: Is there a TV series in it? Is there a movie? Look,
Speaker 2: I've been concentrating on getting the book finished first. Let's hope.
Speaker 2: I know there is a screen series in development with
Speaker 2: the ABC with another production company. But if any of
Speaker 2: the big streamers and other broadcasters you know, read the
Speaker 2: book and want to develop a series out of it.
Speaker 2: I'm certainly here to help them. Well.
Speaker 1: The Mushroom Murders a fascinating read and a really novel
Speaker 1: concept looking from a juror's point of view. I obviously
Speaker 1: read a lot of true crime books, and I was
Speaker 1: sitting down about the start that I've thought, this is
Speaker 1: a novel idea like looking from a juris point of view.
Speaker 1: But it really took you into the case, and it
Speaker 1: took me into the intensity of the trials. Like quite
Speaker 1: often I say with a murder trial, how exhausting they are,
Speaker 1: because it's an emotional roller case. Do you think you're
Speaker 1: in front, then step back, And it really took us
Speaker 1: inside that and give us a bit of an insight
Speaker 1: into what the.
Speaker 2: Jura is all about.
Speaker 1: So I'm glad you've sort of done a new turn
Speaker 1: in your career or partially, and there you see yourself
Speaker 1: as a writer. Any other cases that you're looking.
Speaker 2: At, I will now I'm going to try and get
Speaker 2: back on the eye catch killers. If you can get
Speaker 2: that is definitely something worth striving for. I'm really glad
Speaker 2: you enjoyed the read, and I have enjoyed the pivot
Speaker 2: into authorship and hopefully it'll continue.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting way of telling the stories in a book,
Speaker 1: you get so much detail and look, people have enjoyed
Speaker 1: this podcast. What we're talking about. We've literally just scratched
Speaker 1: the surface of what's in the book.
Speaker 2: So the Mushroom Murders. Thank you Gary, Okay, Thanks Greg,