Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Thursday, June nineteen, twenty twenty five. Ecstasy on prescription.
Speaker 1: That's the promise from a major health insurer funding access
Speaker 1: to a psychotherapy program for post traumatic stress disorder that
Speaker 1: includes the use of the psychedelic MDMA. That story is
Speaker 1: live now at the Australian dot com dot a U.
Speaker 1: Aaron Patterson told lies, but that doesn't make her a killer.
Speaker 1: That's the core of her defense barrister's argument in the
Speaker 1: Victorian Supreme Court, where Patterson, a fifty year old mother
Speaker 1: of two, has pleaded not guilty to murdering three elderly
Speaker 1: relatives and attempting to murder a fourth. Today the lies
Speaker 1: of Aaron Patterson and why the defense says they point
Speaker 1: to her innocentes. Aaron Patterson told lies in the aftermath
Speaker 1: of a family lunch that left three dead and another
Speaker 1: gravely ill. She lied about owning a dehydrator. She lied
Speaker 1: about foraging for mushrooms. She failed to tell the truth
Speaker 1: about her plans for the future. But the barrister representing
Speaker 1: her at trial in the Victorian Supreme Court says those
Speaker 1: lies and omissions point not to guilt, but to her innocence.
Speaker 2: The lies in the days afterwards, everything she does in
Speaker 2: the days afterwards doesn't change what her intention was at
Speaker 2: the time of serving the meal. And a person, you
Speaker 2: might think, who accidentally made four people very unwell with
Speaker 2: all of the consequences of that, including the custody of
Speaker 2: her children on the line, that person has a motive
Speaker 2: to tell a lot of lies.
Speaker 1: Those are the words of Colin Mandy sc read for
Speaker 1: you by a voice actor. Mandy said, despite her lies,
Speaker 1: Patterson is a person of good character with a strong
Speaker 1: relationship with her in laws.
Speaker 2: She was close with the Patterson family and had been
Speaker 2: from the very earliest days of her relationship with Simon.
Speaker 2: Evidence is she always had a good relationship with Gail
Speaker 2: and Don, a close relationship. They treated her like a daughter.
Speaker 1: The barrister pointed to the evidence of Simon Patterson and
Speaker 1: his brother Matthew, who both said their parents were active
Speaker 1: in their lives of Aaron Patterson's two kids, and he
Speaker 1: said Aaron and Simon were on good terms despite several
Speaker 1: years of separation until December of twenty twenty two, when
Speaker 1: there was some tension about child support. Payments.
Speaker 2: Just pause and think about that, seven years since the
Speaker 2: official separation, dealing with two children in a respectful way.
Speaker 2: And if there were the occasional disagreements that you might
Speaker 2: have seen some evidence of, they were resolved really smoothly.
Speaker 1: Mandy said. Any negative text messages Aaron sent about the
Speaker 1: Pattersons to the friends she'd made online were a natural
Speaker 1: expression of frustration.
Speaker 2: She didn't mean those things. She regrets the language that
Speaker 2: she used now that the whole world scrutinizing them. She
Speaker 2: is ashamed of what she had written. She may well
Speaker 2: have regretted it two minutes after she'd sent it. And
Speaker 2: we suggest to you that these messages are a distraction
Speaker 2: from the real evidence in the case, the evidence that
Speaker 2: is relevant to these charges.
Speaker 1: In the days after the launch, when police and the
Speaker 1: Victorian Department of Health were investigating what had made the
Speaker 1: Pattersons and the Wilkinsons so sick, Aaron Patterson told police
Speaker 1: they could find the leftovers in the bin outside her house.
Speaker 1: She gave them the pin code to the gate so
Speaker 1: they could get in.
Speaker 2: Why tell people the leftovers existed at all? Why put
Speaker 2: the pastry and the mushrooms minus the meat into bin?
Speaker 2: As a deliberate ruse to somehow divert attention from the activities,
Speaker 2: and then having to tell the police where they were
Speaker 2: because she knew they contained death cap mushrooms.
Speaker 1: The barrister also questioned evidence given by survivor Ian Wilkinson.
Speaker 1: He said the four lunch guests had been served on
Speaker 1: gray plates, while Patterson ate off a smaller, red colored plate.
Speaker 1: Mandy said it was more plausible that Aaron had used
Speaker 1: a combination of colored plates from different sets.
Speaker 2: There's no evidence of gray plates. No one says that,
Speaker 2: apart from Ian, it would make perfect sense for the
Speaker 2: guests to take the two sets of matching plates for
Speaker 2: themselves to the table, especially when it wouldn't make any
Speaker 2: sense to use a different colored plate to identify the
Speaker 2: unpoisoned parcel when you can make it much clearer and
Speaker 2: easier by making a mark on the pastry itself.
Speaker 1: The prosecution alleged Aaron Patterson used posts made on Our
Speaker 1: Naturalist to locate death caps growing near her home, but
Speaker 1: Mandy said computer records showed Patterson visited the relevant pages
Speaker 1: for less than a minute, so this was.
Speaker 2: Not a person carefully studying this information doing research about it.
Speaker 2: This was not a deep and abiding interest in this
Speaker 2: subject matter. It was passing attention in exactly the same
Speaker 2: way as many of us would do on our own devices.
Speaker 1: Coming up, What about the motive the Crown hasn't suggested
Speaker 1: to the jury a motive for Aaron Patterson's alleged murder
Speaker 1: and attempted murder. Prosecutor Nanette Rodgers did draw the jury's attention, however,
Speaker 1: to Patterson's distance from her husband Simon's family and her
Speaker 1: attempt to draw Don and Gail Patterson into her disagreement
Speaker 1: with their son about child support. Colin Mandy, acting for Patterson, says,
Speaker 1: not only is there no motive to kill her children's
Speaker 1: grandparents and great aunt and uncle, but in fact Aaron
Speaker 1: Patterson had a motivation to keep them alive.
Speaker 2: Our submission is there was no venom in their relationship
Speaker 2: and no difficulty in the relationship between Aaron and Don
Speaker 2: and Gail, and if there had been, there were plenty
Speaker 2: of witnesses who got called in this case by the
Speaker 2: prosecution who could have been asked to comment on it.
Speaker 1: The Crown's case is that Patterson invented a cancer diagnosis
Speaker 1: to lure the relatives to a lunch when her real
Speaker 1: motivation was to poison them. The prosecution rubbished Patterson's claim
Speaker 1: that she didn't have cancer, but she was expecting surgery
Speaker 1: for a gastric bypass or libersuction. She said she was
Speaker 1: embarrassed to admit the real reason at the life lunch,
Speaker 1: where she was asking for their support in managing the
Speaker 1: kids while she was out of action.
Speaker 2: She had a problem with binge eating. She was feeling embarrassed, guilty, depressed.
Speaker 1: The jury heard evidence that the clinic she'd booked into,
Speaker 1: the Enrich Dermatology Clinic, didn't offer gastric bypass, although it
Speaker 1: did at the time offer liposuction.
Speaker 2: Her understanding at the time she booked it was that
Speaker 2: they offered the full range of weight loss treatment options,
Speaker 2: including liposuction, gastric bypass, and other surgery. She was mistaken,
Speaker 2: honestly mistaken.
Speaker 1: Patterson told Gail Patterson before the lunch that she had
Speaker 1: a lump on her elbow, and she told the jury
Speaker 1: that in the past she'd had unfounded worries about cancers,
Speaker 1: including of the ovaries and the brain.
Speaker 2: It was not so much the lump on her elbow
Speaker 2: that was important, but the attention the love, the kindness
Speaker 2: that she was getting from her support network. Aron often
Speaker 2: thought she had issues with her health that ended up
Speaker 2: going nowhere that were never confirmed or diagnosed. That's not
Speaker 2: made up. That's not a lie. It's there for everyone
Speaker 2: to see in her medical records and the conversations that
Speaker 2: she had with other people, including Simon. She didn't have
Speaker 2: anyone else in the world. That's not a lie. That's
Speaker 2: the truth. She still had a great relationship with Don
Speaker 2: and Gaale, that's the truth. And Simon might have been
Speaker 2: isolating her a bit from the wider Patterson family. Also
Speaker 2: probably true, and at the very least true that she
Speaker 2: felt that way about it. Now, with the benefit of hindsight,
Speaker 2: with the prosecution and a murder trial, criticizing your every misstep,
Speaker 2: your every lapse in judgment, your every mistake, focusing on
Speaker 2: every silly thing you did, the mean things you said
Speaker 2: in text messages, this seems terrible. It's terrible lies exposed
Speaker 2: for the whole world. But if you put yourselves back
Speaker 2: there where Erin was in June of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: and if you look at it, we say with objectivity,
Speaker 2: not with the benefit of hindsight, it might be more understandable.
Speaker 2: She's not on trial for lying. This is not a
Speaker 2: court of moral judgment. You can't, you shouldn't take the
Speaker 2: leap from this lie about a lump on her elbow
Speaker 2: to finding her guilty of triple murder.
Speaker 1: The trial continues and you can follow our coverage live
Speaker 1: at the Australian dot com dot au