Speaker 1: On August fifteen, twenty twenty three, a Victoria Police digital
Speaker 1: forensic officer named Sharman fox Henry was given a job.
Speaker 1: His job was to uncover traces of digital information information
Speaker 1: that had been found on a computer seized by police
Speaker 1: from the home of Aaron Patterson. After extracting the data,
Speaker 1: mister fox Henry ran a keyword search typing in terms
Speaker 1: to see if there were any matches.
Speaker 2: Deaf cap, deaf cab, mushroom, deaf cap, mushrooms, mushroom poison.
Speaker 1: Today in court, mister fox Henry was asked questions about
Speaker 1: what he found. I'm Brooke Reebert Craig and this is
Speaker 1: the Mushroom cook. Day sixteen of Aaron Patterson's murder trial
Speaker 1: has wrapped up, and once again I'm joined by a
Speaker 1: court reporter, Laura Plasseller.
Speaker 3: Good to be here with you. As always, It's.
Speaker 1: Been quite a day to day, hasn't it. Yes, it
Speaker 1: has so. The jury has been given many lessons throughout
Speaker 1: the trial, including lessons on mushrooms, but today it was
Speaker 1: all about computers.
Speaker 3: That's right. At the top of the episode, our listeners
Speaker 3: were introduced to Sharman fox Henry. He is part of
Speaker 3: the Victoria Police Cybercrime Squad. And he took to the
Speaker 3: stand today, like you said, Brooke, to give the jury
Speaker 3: yet another lesson. It's fair to say that will be
Speaker 3: pretty well versed I think in a number of topics
Speaker 3: by the end of this trial. His evidence began with
Speaker 3: a slide show and the first slide read what is
Speaker 3: a computer? So we started very much with the basics,
Speaker 3: and he slowly walked the jury through evidence around computers, files, folders, thumbnails,
Speaker 3: and even some more technical things known as artifacts. And
Speaker 3: he explained that artifacts can range from a Microsoft word
Speaker 3: file to a web browser cookie.
Speaker 1: Now, a number of devices were seized from Aaron Patterson's
Speaker 1: home and mister fox Henry was one of the officers
Speaker 1: who examined them.
Speaker 3: Yes, so the jury previously heard that several devices were
Speaker 3: seized by police from Aaron's home when warrants were executed
Speaker 3: on August five and November two, twenty twenty three, August
Speaker 3: five being about one week after the lunch and in particular, today,
Speaker 3: mister fox Henry was questioned about a Cooler Master computer
Speaker 3: that was found, Cooler Master being the brand of computer.
Speaker 3: He walked the jury through his job as a digital
Speaker 3: forensics officer and how he extracts data from devices. He
Speaker 3: explained that the beginning of that process involves creating a
Speaker 3: copy of the data which is the case, and from
Speaker 3: that case he can run analysis for the investigators. He
Speaker 3: told the court that he was asked to run a
Speaker 3: keyword search for five terms. Those terms were the ones
Speaker 3: you heard at the top of the episode, death cap,
Speaker 3: death cap, mushroom, death cap, mushrooms, mushrooms, and poison.
Speaker 1: So what was actually found on the caller master computer then?
Speaker 3: So it was at this point today where a forensic
Speaker 3: examination report was brought up on the screens in the
Speaker 3: court for the jury to see, and this contained all
Speaker 3: the records that were pulled from this device. The court
Speaker 3: heard there were records in this report that related to
Speaker 3: a search term. So you think about a search term
Speaker 3: as something you would type into a browser, just like Google.
Speaker 3: This search term was for a naturalists and the record
Speaker 3: showed that this search was made on May twenty eight,
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two, at around seven to twenty p so
Speaker 3: that's about fourteen months before the lunch at the center
Speaker 3: of this trial. To remind our listeners again, I Naturalist
Speaker 3: is that citizen science website we've been referring to that
Speaker 3: allows members of the public to post sightings of plants,
Speaker 3: animals and fungi, which includes deathcap mushrooms.
Speaker 1: Yes, and doctor Tom May and Christine McKenzie both gave
Speaker 1: evidence about this website previously.
Speaker 3: That's right. So mister fox Henry was asked what these
Speaker 3: records meant and he told the court that it confirmed
Speaker 3: a being search was done for iiurnaturalist on this day.
Speaker 3: I mentioned Google before, Bing is another search engine. But
Speaker 3: it is really important to note at this stage that
Speaker 3: the court didn't hear today who made these searches. It
Speaker 3: was simply evidence about the fact a search was made
Speaker 3: on that device.
Speaker 1: And were there any other records relating to the Cooler
Speaker 1: Master computer?
Speaker 3: Yes, there were. After mister fox Henry spoke about the
Speaker 3: search term record, we moved on to some web history
Speaker 3: records and the court heard that after the search term
Speaker 3: I naturalist was made by seven twenty one pms. This
Speaker 3: is about one minute later, the urliinaturalist dot org was
Speaker 3: visited by a browser on this computer. Another record showed
Speaker 3: that two minutes later, at seven twenty three pm, another
Speaker 3: I naturalist url was accessed by the computer. So we've
Speaker 3: spoken about URLs, but the court heard today that every
Speaker 3: web page has a title as well, and the title
Speaker 3: of the URL that was visited at seven twenty three
Speaker 3: and I'll read this out here from my notes was
Speaker 3: deathcap from Melbourne, Vic, Australia on May eighteenth, twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: at two thirty six pm by Ivan Margitter Bricker Reserve
Speaker 3: Moravin iNaturalist. The court wasn't told too much more at
Speaker 3: all about this web page and what all of those
Speaker 3: words meant. But the jury have previously heard evidence from
Speaker 3: doctor May and miss McKenzie who you mentioned earlier Brooke,
Speaker 3: who have made posts on I Naturalists before when they've
Speaker 3: observed fungi in the wild.
Speaker 1: And did the jury find out how many times these
Speaker 1: web pages were actually visited?
Speaker 3: They did so. Mister Fox Henry explained that there was
Speaker 3: data extracted that related to the visit count and he
Speaker 3: told the court that for this particular web page, the
Speaker 3: visit count was two, which indicated the web page had
Speaker 3: been visited twice.
Speaker 1: And there was another search term that we heard more
Speaker 1: about today, wasn't there there was?
Speaker 3: After the court heard about the naturalist search terms, they
Speaker 3: were also brought to a search term made at seven
Speaker 3: twenty three pm so on this same day, on May
Speaker 3: twenty eighth, twenty twenty two, for the current Borough Middle Pub.
Speaker 3: According to the records, this search was made on the
Speaker 3: computer about two minutes after the search for OI Naturalist.
Speaker 1: That was a lot of detail, Laura, Can you summarize
Speaker 1: it for our listeners.
Speaker 3: I'll definitely try. As I mentioned earlier, everything we heard
Speaker 3: about today was a record that related to a computer
Speaker 3: seized from Erin's home. While the court didn't hear who
Speaker 3: made searches or who visited websites on this device, what
Speaker 3: was made clear was that there were searches made for
Speaker 3: Iron Naturalist, and after those searches were made, web pages
Speaker 3: relating to I Naturalist were also accessed, in particular that
Speaker 3: web page relating to a siding of Deathcap Mushrooms in Morabin,
Speaker 3: which is a suburb in Melbourne.
Speaker 1: Great summary, Laura, Mister Fox Henry also examined another device.
Speaker 3: That's right. We didn't hear a lot about this today
Speaker 3: because by the time it was mentioned it was close
Speaker 3: to the end of the day. But he told the
Speaker 3: court the cybercrime team analyzed the of Gail Patterson and
Speaker 3: we're expected to hear more of what was found tomorrow.
Speaker 1: That's right, and to end the day, Justice Christopher Bill
Speaker 1: gave a bit of a warning to the jury, didn't
Speaker 1: he He did.
Speaker 3: After there were those references made to the URLs which
Speaker 3: were shown on the screen in the courtroom, he turned
Speaker 3: to the jurors and gave them a gentle reminder that
Speaker 3: they should not be going home and googling these URLs
Speaker 3: to figure out where they went to, and they should
Speaker 3: only be relying on the evidence they're hearing in court.
Speaker 1: Thanks Laura, and to stay updated on all our coverage
Speaker 1: of this case, go to the mushroomcook dot com dot
Speaker 1: au for more