Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, June eighteen, twenty twenty five. The sprawling Middle
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Speaker 1: This story's moving fast and you can read the latest
Speaker 1: from our correspondents on the ground, Jonnie Bashan and Leam Mendez,
Speaker 1: plus all the world's best reporting and analysis right now
Speaker 1: at The Australian dot Com dot you. The Crown doesn't
Speaker 1: have a motive for Aaron Patterson's alleged murder of her
Speaker 1: family members, but the prosecutors say they have proved Aaron
Speaker 1: Patterson deliberately poisoned them. The defense says that lack of
Speaker 1: an alleged motive means she's not guilty. Today the closing
Speaker 1: arguments in the Mushroom trial, brought to you by Voice Actors.
Speaker 1: If Aaron Patterson deliberately poisoned her elderly relatives, what's the motive?
Speaker 1: And if it was all a terrible accident, how does
Speaker 1: she explain her lies? That's the nub of this week's
Speaker 1: action in the mushroom trial in the Victorian Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: sitting in the Latrobe Valley, where this fifty year old
Speaker 1: mother of two is pleading not guilty to three counts
Speaker 1: of murder and one of attempted murder. Aaron Patterson doesn't
Speaker 1: have to prove anything. The onus is all on the
Speaker 1: Crown to convince the jury that not only did her
Speaker 1: actions result in three deaths, Don and Gale Patterson and
Speaker 1: Heather Wilkinson, and one very serious illness Ian Wilkinson, but
Speaker 1: that this wasn't just reckless or foolish, it was deliberate.
Speaker 1: That's the essential component of murder. In a moment, will
Speaker 1: take you to the defense closing argument by Colin Man.
Speaker 1: But first, here's how the Crown has set out its
Speaker 1: closing to the jury in the past two days. Doctor
Speaker 1: Nannette Roger's sc is the Crown prosecutor. We've used a
Speaker 1: voice actor to bring you her words and all the
Speaker 1: words spoken in court.
Speaker 2: At the heart of this case are four calculated deceptions
Speaker 2: made by the accused. The first deception was the fabricated
Speaker 2: cancer claim she used as a pretense for the lunch invitation.
Speaker 2: The second deception was the lethal doses of poison the
Speaker 2: accused secreted in the home cooked beef Wellington's. The third
Speaker 2: deception was her attempts to make it seem that she
Speaker 2: also suffered death cap mushroom poisoning. And fourthly, the fourth
Speaker 2: deception the sustained cover up she embarked upon to conceal
Speaker 2: the truth.
Speaker 1: The Crown hasn't come up with a motive for Patterson's
Speaker 1: alleged crimes, and it doesn't have to. The Crown only
Speaker 1: has to convince the jury beyond reasonable doubt that her
Speaker 1: actions were premeditated and intentional. If you've been following the trial,
Speaker 1: you'll remember the message exchanges Erin Patterson had with her
Speaker 1: mother in law Gail and her husband Simon in the
Speaker 1: days before the lunch.
Speaker 3: Hi, Gail, I had a needle biopsy taken of the
Speaker 3: lump and I'm returning for an MIRI next week and
Speaker 3: we'll know more after the results of those two things.
Speaker 1: Hi, Erin, how did you get on yesterday with your
Speaker 1: medical tests?
Speaker 4: Love, Don and Gail.
Speaker 3: There's a bit to digest with everything that's come out
Speaker 3: of it all. I might talk more about it with
Speaker 3: you both when I see you in person. Love Erin
Speaker 3: the Crown says Patterson was telling bald faced lies.
Speaker 2: She didn't think her lunch guests would live to reveal it.
Speaker 2: Her lie would die with them.
Speaker 1: But Ian Wilkinson, Erin's uncle by marriage and a pastor
Speaker 1: at the local Baptist church, live to tell his tale.
Speaker 2: Ian Wilkinson told you after the lunch, Aaron announced she
Speaker 2: had cancer. She said she was very concerned because she
Speaker 2: believed it was very serious, life threatening. She was anxious
Speaker 2: about telling the kids. She was asking our advice about it.
Speaker 2: Should I tell the kids or not tell the kids
Speaker 2: about this threat to my life. She spoke about a
Speaker 2: diagnostic test that showed a spot on the scan that
Speaker 2: was a tumor. He led a prayer asking for God's
Speaker 2: blessing and that she'd have the wisdom in how she
Speaker 2: told the kids.
Speaker 1: Rogers said Simon's father, Don, before he died, would reveal
Speaker 1: to his son.
Speaker 2: What the accused had told them. That she'd had some
Speaker 2: tests on her elbow which had led to the discovery
Speaker 2: of ovarian cancer. A positive cancer diagnosis is what Don
Speaker 2: told Simon.
Speaker 1: Aaron Patterson said in her time in the witness box,
Speaker 1: she never gave them a definite diagnosis, only that cancer
Speaker 1: was a possibility. She said she really did have plans
Speaker 1: for surgery, but it was a gastric bypass that she
Speaker 1: was too embarrassed to discuss.
Speaker 2: This was an elaborate lie.
Speaker 1: Nanett Rogers told the jury Aaron Patterson knowingly concealed enough
Speaker 1: deathcap mushrooms in the individual beef Wellington's to kill each
Speaker 1: of her lunch guests.
Speaker 2: She made sure she would not suffer the same fate
Speaker 2: as her lunch guests by making herself an individual beef
Speaker 2: Wellington that did not contain any death cap mushrooms. The
Speaker 2: sinister deception was to use a nourishing meal as the
Speaker 2: vehicle to deliver the deadly poison.
Speaker 1: Patterson told a Child Protective Services officer she'd never made
Speaker 1: beef wellington before, but used a recipe from Nagi Mayhashi's
Speaker 1: recipe Tin Eats cookbook because she wanted to do something fancy.
Speaker 1: Rogers said that recipe called for a single beef Wellington
Speaker 1: meat encased in layers of mushroom paste and pastry to
Speaker 1: be sliced up, not individual Wellington's, as Patterson made.
Speaker 2: Why deviate so significantly from an unfamiliar recipe for a
Speaker 2: special lunch. The prosecution says this was a deliberate choice.
Speaker 2: It enabled the accused to control what ingredients went into
Speaker 2: each individual parcel, and it was the only way to
Speaker 2: be sure that she herself would not accidentally consume any
Speaker 2: death cap mushroom.
Speaker 1: Rogers suggested Aaron Patterson may have made two batches of
Speaker 1: mushroom paste, one poisoned, one knot. In her evidence, Patterson
Speaker 1: said she'd added dried mushrooms from a tubbleware box to
Speaker 1: improve the flavor.
Speaker 2: The recipe book called for seven hundred grams of sliced
Speaker 2: mushrooms to serve six or eight people, so she had
Speaker 2: one point seventy five kilos of mushrooms for a dish
Speaker 2: that called for less than half. Why then would she
Speaker 2: resort to dried or forage mushrooms she had more than enough.
Speaker 1: Pattison said she thought these were dried mushrooms she'd boord
Speaker 1: from an Asian grosser, but later realized they must have
Speaker 1: also contained dried death cap mushrooms she'd accidentally foraged. Patterson's
Speaker 1: evidence was that she had saved the mushrooms because there
Speaker 1: were two strong for a meal she'd made previously. She
Speaker 1: said they'd smelt pungent, and the jury heard from expert
Speaker 1: witness Tom May that dried deathcap mushrooms had a very strong,
Speaker 1: unpleasant smell.
Speaker 2: Why then, would you add mushrooms that smell funny and
Speaker 2: you're worried might be too overpowering to a special lunch
Speaker 2: you were preparing for guests. The evidence in this trial
Speaker 2: shows that the accused knew how to dehydrate and blitz
Speaker 2: mushrooms into a powder to hide inside food.
Speaker 1: That's a reference to a message sent to the friends
Speaker 1: she made in a true crime Facebook group in which
Speaker 1: she said she'd been hiding dehydrated mushrooms in her children's
Speaker 1: food in order to increase their intake of veggies. Rogers
Speaker 1: then turned to a website called eye Naturalist, where users
Speaker 1: can post their observations about fungi growing in the wild,
Speaker 1: including their specific geographic location.
Speaker 2: There is no direct evidence as to where the accused
Speaker 2: sourced deathcap mushrooms. However, what the evidence does demonstrate is
Speaker 2: that she was aware of a website that could be
Speaker 2: used to locate deathcap mushrooms, and that she had the
Speaker 2: opportunity to source those mushrooms at a time proximate or
Speaker 2: near to the lunch.
Speaker 1: Rogers said analysis of the devices seized from Aaron Patterson's
Speaker 1: home showed she used the map feature on I Naturalist
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two to view the location of deathcap
Speaker 1: mushrooms in Victoria. Rogers said she didn't seek out information
Speaker 1: about other types of mushrooms.
Speaker 2: The only other people living with the accused in the
Speaker 2: house at the time was her son and her daughter.
Speaker 2: You will therefore have no trouble, I suggest, being satisfied
Speaker 2: that it was the accused using the computer to look
Speaker 2: up death cap mushrooms on I Naturalist.
Speaker 1: In April twenty twenty three, a post on Our Naturalist
Speaker 1: recorded a sighting of death cap mushrooms in the Locke area,
Speaker 1: about twenty eight k's from Patterson's town of land Gatha.
Speaker 1: Rogers took the jury to sell tower information that tracked
Speaker 1: Patterson's phone on that day and photos found on her device.
Speaker 2: From all this evidence, you can safely infer that the
Speaker 2: accused firstly was out at the lock reserve on the
Speaker 2: twenty eighth of April twenty three. Secondly that she found
Speaker 2: and collected death cat mushrooms from that reserve. Thirdly that
Speaker 2: then she went to leem Gatha and bought the dehydrator
Speaker 2: within two hours of returning from Locke for the very
Speaker 2: purpose of dehydrating and preserving those death cap mushrooms. And fourthly,
Speaker 2: these photos on the Samsung tablet show the very death
Speaker 2: cap mushroom she collected at the lock Reserve.
Speaker 1: Rogers said Patterson was not seriously unwell after the lunch,
Speaker 1: and she knew that was a problem. She ran the
Speaker 1: jury through evidence that even though Patterson said she was
Speaker 1: suffering diarrhea on the Sunday after the lunch, she didn't
Speaker 1: present at hospital until Monday morning after taking her kids
Speaker 1: to the school bus, and then Roger says she didn't
Speaker 1: tell the doctors and nurses what she now says, which
Speaker 1: is that she'd taken emodium medication on her first visit
Speaker 1: to hospital. On the Monday morning, Patterson left, promising to return,
Speaker 1: even as a doctor called her three times, then called
Speaker 1: Triple O to express his concern.
Speaker 2: There is only one logical or reasonable explanation for why
Speaker 2: the accused left hospital, and after being told she might
Speaker 2: have consumed a lethal toxin from death cap mushrooms, she
Speaker 2: realized that what she had done was going to be uncovered.
Speaker 2: She fled back to her house to try and work
Speaker 2: out how she was going to manage the situation and
Speaker 2: how she might explain why she wasn't sick like the
Speaker 2: lunch guests. She knew very well that she had not
Speaker 2: eaten death cap mushrooms.
Speaker 1: Rogers said leaving the hospital against medical advice was incriminating conduct.
Speaker 1: When she did return to the hospital, Rogers says Patterson
Speaker 1: was resistant to medications the nurses wanted to give her.
Speaker 2: Her reluctance to receive medical treatment is inexplicable unless she
Speaker 2: knew she had not eaten what her lunch guests had done.
Speaker 2: This resistance to receiving medical treatment is another example of
Speaker 2: what we say is incriminating conduct.
Speaker 1: On August three, when her lunch guests were critically ill
Speaker 1: in hospital, Aaron Patterson drove to the kunwaraor transfer station,
Speaker 1: the local tip and dumped her dehydrator.
Speaker 2: She wanted to hide the evidence. This is another example
Speaker 2: of incriminating conduct. The defense may argue that this was
Speaker 2: part of a wild panic. The accused did this because
Speaker 2: she was worried she would be falsely accused of deliberately
Speaker 2: poisoning her lunch guests. You should completely reject that position.
Speaker 1: In the witness box, Patterson said that in the hospital,
Speaker 1: Simon Patterson had asked her if she'd use the dehydrator
Speaker 1: to poison his parents, and that statement upset and worried her.
Speaker 2: Her story about Simon accusing her in the hospital of
Speaker 2: using the dehydrator and this sending her into a panic
Speaker 2: is nonsense. Simon Patterson categorically denied to you ever saying
Speaker 2: such a thing to the accused. She knew it would
Speaker 2: incriminate her. She knew that she had dehydrated deathcap mushrooms
Speaker 2: in that appliance, and that she had deliberately done so,
Speaker 2: and she knew that keeping it was going to be
Speaker 2: far too risky.
Speaker 1: Police were onto this almost immediately because they were analyzing
Speaker 1: her bank records, but when they interviewed Patterson on August five,
Speaker 1: she said she didn't own a dehydrator. Rogers said during
Speaker 1: the police search of her home on August five, Patterson
Speaker 1: deliberately concealed her primary phone, phone A, and handed them
Speaker 1: another device, Phone B.
Speaker 2: We say is a dummy phone set up deliberately by
Speaker 2: the accused to trick the police and to conceal the
Speaker 2: existence and most importantly, the contents of her usual mobile phone.
Speaker 2: When police took phone b away after the search warrant
Speaker 2: and tried to analyze it, they found nothing. Why, Because
Speaker 2: this phone was factory resent multiple times after the lunch,
Speaker 2: its contents were wiped.
Speaker 1: Rogers said, despite Patterson's claim to be a keen recreational
Speaker 1: mushroom forager, she was the only one who remembered any
Speaker 1: behavior like this, not her husband, her kids, or any
Speaker 1: of her online friends.
Speaker 2: The suggestion now that these mushrooms may have been accidentally foraged,
Speaker 2: we suggest, is a very late change to the accused story.
Speaker 2: You might think that at some point it dawned on
Speaker 2: her that the Asian grocery story didn't add up, particularly
Speaker 2: when faced with the evidence about the remnants of the
Speaker 2: death cat mushrooms having been found in her dehydrator, she
Speaker 2: had to come up with something new.
Speaker 1: Roger said. The breakdown of Erin and Simon Patterson's marriage
Speaker 1: and the fact Patterson had dragged Donngale Patterson into a
Speaker 1: disagreement about money was significant.
Speaker 2: The evidence shows you might think that the divide between
Speaker 2: the accused and her in laws was deeper than they
Speaker 2: ever knew. We say that the accused was leading a
Speaker 2: duplicitous life. When it came to the Pattersons, she presented
Speaker 2: one side while expressing contrary beliefs to others. When Don
Speaker 2: and Gale sent the accused messages about her ongoing financial
Speaker 2: issues with Simon and meant and praying, she replied with
Speaker 2: an eye roll emoji. She was mocking them and their
Speaker 2: religious beliefs despite attending church with them. If she did
Speaker 2: love them as she claimed, one would expect her to
Speaker 2: inquire after their welfare immediately in those circumstances. But what
Speaker 2: did she do? When Simon told her that Don and
Speaker 2: Gale were in hospital, she immediately went on to talk
Speaker 2: about her own symptoms, never asked a question about Don
Speaker 2: and Gale.
Speaker 1: Rogers ended with an appeal to the jury's life experience.
Speaker 2: Think about what you would do in this situation. If
Speaker 2: this was really just a horrible accident. If you were
Speaker 2: told that the meal you'd cooked and served to your
Speaker 2: family was thought to have possibly contained death cat mushrooms,
Speaker 2: what would you do. Would you go into self preservation mode,
Speaker 2: just worrying about protecting yourself from blame. Would you race
Speaker 2: away from the hospital and do who knows what for
Speaker 2: an hour and a half. Would you be reluctant to
Speaker 2: receive treatment, Would you take two and a half hours
Speaker 2: to eventually agree to get your kids to hospital? Would
Speaker 2: you lie about the source of the ingredients to medical
Speaker 2: practitioners and the Health Department of officials for days, even
Speaker 2: though the truth might help those you claim to love. No,
Speaker 2: that's not what you would do. You would do everything
Speaker 2: you could to help the people you love. You would
Speaker 2: tell the treating medical practitioners every scheric of information that
Speaker 2: might help to identify the cause of the illness, so
Speaker 2: that they could get the right treatment to your loved ones,
Speaker 2: regardless of any risk of blame that might fall on you.
Speaker 2: If your children had come within cooy of the same meal,
Speaker 2: you would move mountains to get them to hospital as
Speaker 2: quickly as possible. And if you yourself had truly consumed
Speaker 2: the same meal, you would gladly receive all of the
Speaker 2: medical treatment you could get your hands on. Aaron Patterson
Speaker 2: acted the way she did because she knew what she
Speaker 2: had done.
Speaker 1: Coming up. Aaron Patterson's lawyer has he say.
Speaker 4: Use your heads, not your hearts.
Speaker 1: On Tuesday, Erin Patterson's barrister, Colin Mandarc got his chance
Speaker 1: to set out in detail exactly why he says Patterson
Speaker 1: didn't mean to poison for elderly relatives and why she
Speaker 1: should be acquitted.
Speaker 4: You have to consider the issues rationally and logically, without emotion,
Speaker 4: without prejudice towards anyone, without sympathy towards anyone, and you
Speaker 4: have to assess the evidence dispassionately with your common sense.
Speaker 1: The barrister acknowledged the deaths of Don Gale and Heather
Speaker 1: Wilkinson and the suffering of Ian Wilkinson was a terrible tragedy.
Speaker 1: He said he understood that the family members who'd attended
Speaker 1: court over the course of the trial were still mourning
Speaker 1: their loss.
Speaker 4: These were good, innocent people, and whoever caused their deaths
Speaker 4: must be held to account. That instinctive design to punish
Speaker 4: the person responsible, to seek retribution, to think that they
Speaker 4: must pay for what they've done, but a jury has
Speaker 4: to fiercely guard against that kind of reason.
Speaker 1: Mandy reiterated the burden of proof rested with the crown,
Speaker 1: not the defense. Basically, Aaron Patterson doesn't have to prove anything.
Speaker 4: Members of the jury, your consideration of the evidence in
Speaker 4: this trial comes down to two simple issues. First, is
Speaker 4: there a reasonable possibility that death cap mushrooms were put
Speaker 4: into this meal by accident. Second, is it a reasonable
Speaker 4: possibility Aaron Patterson did not intend to kill or cause
Speaker 4: serious injury to her guests. And in the end, after
Speaker 4: you've considered all of the evidence, if either of those
Speaker 4: is a reasonable possibility on all of the evidence, then
Speaker 4: you'd find her not guilty.
Speaker 1: Mandy said. Patterson's accounts of when she became unwell and
Speaker 1: where she purchased them ushrooms were mostly consistent.
Speaker 4: She was giving the same account over and over again,
Speaker 4: but to lots of different people in many different contexts,
Speaker 4: and in the end, when you analyze the evidence carefully,
Speaker 4: there's very little meaningful variation in the accounts that she gave.
Speaker 1: He also pointed to the fallibility of memory.
Speaker 4: People have imperfect and honestly mistaken memories. You may recall
Speaker 4: playing games like the telephone game, where messages are whispered
Speaker 4: from one person to another all the way along, and
Speaker 4: then you compare the message that was relayed at the
Speaker 4: beginning to the one that came out at the end.
Speaker 4: It's completely completely different.
Speaker 1: Colin Mandy acknowledged that the Crown doesn't have to prove
Speaker 1: a motive, but he said without one, they can't get
Speaker 1: to murder.
Speaker 4: Without a motive, You're left guessing about the most important
Speaker 4: element of the offense in this trial, and that's intention.
Speaker 1: He said. Pattison didn't have any reason to harm or
Speaker 1: murder her in laws.
Speaker 4: They loved her. She loved them. That's relevant. Don and
Speaker 4: Gale had never been anything but kind and understanding to
Speaker 4: Aaron Patterson. There was absolutely no reason at all for
Speaker 4: her to hurt them in any way at all. Not
Speaker 4: only is there no motive, there are very good reasons
Speaker 4: not to harm these people. And if you do embark
Speaker 4: on this plan to harm them in this way, inevitably,
Speaker 4: whatever happens, you will lose the only people in the
Speaker 4: world who were any support to you and your children.
Speaker 4: You will lose your children, and you'll lose everything that's
Speaker 4: important to you.
Speaker 1: Mandy said she didn't dump the dehydrated because she was guilty,
Speaker 1: rather because she was rattled.
Speaker 4: If you're planning a murder, what's the one thing you
Speaker 4: really should plan to dispose of. That's the murder weapon.
Speaker 4: She would have disposed of it months before and never
Speaker 4: told anyone she had one. She drives to the tip
Speaker 4: in her own car, pays for the disposal of the
Speaker 4: dehydrator with her own bank card, doesn't attempt to disguise
Speaker 4: those actions in anyone. It can only have been panic,
Speaker 4: not because she was guilty, but because that's what people
Speaker 4: might think. It was a deep shock to her how
Speaker 4: these four people became so seriously unwell. It was a
Speaker 4: deep shock because she never intended for it to happen.
Speaker 4: And if that's a reasonable possibility, then she must be
Speaker 4: found not guilty, Mandy said.
Speaker 1: When police asked if she had any leftovers from the meal,
Speaker 1: she gave them her gate access code and said they
Speaker 1: were probably in her bin.
Speaker 4: A guilty person, you would think would have already thrown
Speaker 4: them out. You might think get rid of them, put
Speaker 4: them in a neighbor's bin or a public bin, bury
Speaker 4: them in the backyard, or do something else. There'd been
Speaker 4: two days to do all of that, instead of directing
Speaker 4: the police where to find the evidence that there were
Speaker 4: death cat mushrooms in the meal. So the prosecution theories,
Speaker 4: we say, make no sense. The alternative is far more
Speaker 4: sensible and logical. She didn't know they were poisoned. She
Speaker 4: fed the children of the meat with the mushrooms scraped
Speaker 4: off she threw the leftovers in the bin. She told
Speaker 4: the police where to find them because she didn't know
Speaker 4: they had poison in them. It's straightforward, it's not convoluted,
Speaker 4: it's non elaborate, it's not tortured. An innocent person would
Speaker 4: say go grab them, help yourselves. That's what she did say.
Speaker 1: Colin Mandy sc will resume his closing submissions on Wednesday.
Speaker 1: For all the latest from the Victorian Supreme Court in Morewell,
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