Speaker 1: You heard the accused say that she regrets telling lies,
Speaker 1: but that's what she did. She's not on trial for
Speaker 1: being a liar. And whether or not you agree or
Speaker 1: condone or think that what she did was morally correct,
Speaker 1: and you'd have your views about that, those things don't
Speaker 1: have any place in this trial.
Speaker 2: Is Aaron Pattison a murderer or just a liar? It's
Speaker 2: been one of the central questions of this Mushroom cook
Speaker 2: trial throughout today. Her defense barrister Colin Mandy said his
Speaker 2: client did some things that could appear sinister in hindsight,
Speaker 2: but he said that doesn't make her a murderer. Mister
Speaker 2: Mandy continued with his closing address today as he tried
Speaker 2: to forensically pick apart the prosecution case. I'm Brook Greebt Craig,
Speaker 2: and this is the Mushroom Cool. Day thirty four of
Speaker 2: Aaron Patterson's murder trial has just wrapped up, and I'm
Speaker 2: here with my colleague, court reporter Laura PLASSELLA.
Speaker 3: Hey, Brook, let's get the show on the road.
Speaker 2: Let's do it so. Mister Mandy began his closings today
Speaker 2: by reminding the jury of the themes of his address.
Speaker 2: He said they were misleading impressions, honest and mistaken memories,
Speaker 2: the burden of pruth, and the duty of fairness.
Speaker 3: But in a similar fashion to Crown Prosecutor Nnette Rodgers
Speaker 3: when she gave her extra fifth deception, mister Mandy said
Speaker 3: there was also a fifth theme that he hadn't yet mentioned,
Speaker 3: and he said this was hindsight reasoning. He said this
Speaker 3: type of reasoning can create false clarity about ambiguous situations.
Speaker 3: He told the jury that Erin's actions might have been
Speaker 3: explicable given the information available to her at the time,
Speaker 3: but he said they can appear sinister when viewed through
Speaker 3: the lens of what you know happened subsequently. Here's more
Speaker 3: of what he said about this. These are his words,
Speaker 3: but not his voice.
Speaker 1: People react differently to situations based on their personalities, their experiences,
Speaker 1: the way they are. None of these things determines guilt.
Speaker 1: Your personality, your experiences of life, the patterns of your
Speaker 1: behavior doesn't determine whether or not you're guilty of something
Speaker 1: that happened in the past. And it is an invitation.
Speaker 1: Hindsight reasoning is an invitation to apply a moral judgment
Speaker 1: to what someone has done. It is a distraction from
Speaker 1: your exercise, which you have to engage in using your
Speaker 1: heads and not your hearts, your intellectual analysis of the evidence.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter what you may have done in a
Speaker 1: similar situation. No one knows what they would have done
Speaker 1: in a similar situation.
Speaker 3: Up until this point, mister Mandy had really been talking
Speaker 3: about the themes we mentioned earlier, but at this stage
Speaker 3: in his closing address today, he wanted to take the
Speaker 3: jury back to the timeline of the lunch and the
Speaker 3: events leading up to the lunch, and that went back
Speaker 3: a number of years.
Speaker 2: Mister Mandy started by transporting the jury back to twenty
Speaker 2: twenty when Aaron became interested in mushrooms during Victoria's COVID lockdowns.
Speaker 2: He said she photographed mushrooms in the wild, picked them,
Speaker 2: and took them home, where she ate them.
Speaker 3: Mister Mandy then turned to the fungi at the center
Speaker 3: of this case, death cap mushrooms. He said it made
Speaker 3: sense that Aaron would come to hear about these toxic
Speaker 3: mushrooms since she was developing an interest in wild mushrooms.
Speaker 3: He confirmed she visited citizen science website I Naturalist in
Speaker 3: May twenty twenty two, specifically a world map showing the
Speaker 3: locations of death caps and a siding of death caps
Speaker 3: in Marabin. But he said this was a very brief
Speaker 3: interaction with the website because she wanted to find out
Speaker 3: or make sure that there weren't any death caps growing
Speaker 3: in Gippsland. He described her visit to the website as
Speaker 3: idle curiosity.
Speaker 1: So this was not a person carefully studying this information,
Speaker 1: doing research about it. This was not a deep and
Speaker 1: abiding interest in the subject matter. It was passing attention
Speaker 1: in exactly the same way as many of us would
Speaker 1: do on our devices. Something pops into your head in
Speaker 1: an idle moment and you go, I wonder about that.
Speaker 3: Mister Mehdi said that in May twenty twenty two, there
Speaker 3: were no signings of death caps in the Gippsland area.
Speaker 3: He went on to say that there had only ever
Speaker 3: been two sidings of death caps in this area that
Speaker 3: were posted to the website, and this was in April
Speaker 3: and May twenty twenty three. These were the two posts
Speaker 3: by Christine McKenzie and doctor Tom may In Locke and Outram.
Speaker 3: He reminded the jury that the prosecution was alleging that
Speaker 3: Erin saw both these signings on our Naturalist and then
Speaker 3: traveled to those areas to forage for death caps. It
Speaker 3: was at this point in his closing address mister Mandy
Speaker 3: actually became quite theatrical. At the lectern he was speaking from,
Speaker 3: he acted out the allegation that his client was waiting
Speaker 3: for these sightings to appear.
Speaker 1: And on the Crown case, you might think remarkably extraordinarily,
Speaker 1: Aaron Patterson observed and acted on the only two sightings
Speaker 1: of death cap mushrooms ever in South Gippsland, as is
Speaker 1: their case, like she was sitting there waiting for them,
Speaker 1: never seen them before in South Gippsland. I Naturalist says
Speaker 1: that I grow here, refresh up, still not there, refresh
Speaker 1: still not there, refresh still not there. Ah, How likely
Speaker 1: is that? And there's not one scrap of evidence that
Speaker 1: she actually saw those posts, not from mister fox Henry,
Speaker 1: not from the records, not from anyone else. There's no
Speaker 1: evidence she ever returned to the I Naturalist website after
Speaker 1: the single visit in May of twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: Moving away from mushrooms now now, mister Mandy took the
Speaker 2: jury to the evidence from Simon and Aaron, where they
Speaker 2: both spoke of Erin having a good relationship with Don
Speaker 2: and Gail. Mister Mandy told the jury there was no
Speaker 2: possible prospect she wanted to destroy her whole world and
Speaker 2: her whole life. Mister Mandy said there was no awkwardness
Speaker 2: between them until September twenty twenty two, about seven years
Speaker 2: after their separation. Mister Mandy said the prosecution had attempted
Speaker 2: to undermine the loving, supportive relationship between Aaron and the
Speaker 2: Patterson family by presenting her as two faced. He said
Speaker 2: the only evidence of any kind of dispute between them
Speaker 2: were the messages over child support and Aaron's belief she
Speaker 2: had not been invited to Gaile's seventieth birthday celebrations. Here's
Speaker 2: what he said today in court about it.
Speaker 1: Erin is feeling hurt and left out. It is a
Speaker 1: deplete misunderstanding. She's completely wrong, She's got the wrong end
Speaker 1: of the stick, and she's apologizing, totally inconsistent with the
Speaker 1: way a cold blooded, calculating person would behave.
Speaker 2: Mister Mandy then said the spat about the tax return
Speaker 2: and child support was also resolved amicably.
Speaker 1: It's, in fact, the only evidence of any kind of
Speaker 1: dispute or tension between Erin and Don and Gail was
Speaker 1: the tone of the messages that you can actually see
Speaker 1: in evidence, and our submission to you is that it
Speaker 1: is an entirely unremarkable minor blow up. Is minor blow
Speaker 1: up the right thing to say, It's a minor thing
Speaker 1: in family relationships. It stands out in this case because
Speaker 1: it's the only one, because these people are eternally polite
Speaker 1: to each other. It's the only evidence of any kind
Speaker 1: of tension, so it jumps out. But looking at it,
Speaker 1: what kind of tension is it? It's not. It's not
Speaker 1: a significant one. It's not about very much at all.
Speaker 3: Mister Mandy said the prosecution had tried to suggest that
Speaker 3: this was evidence of Erin leading a duplicitous life, but
Speaker 3: he said the messages actually showed that Erin was someone
Speaker 3: who didn't hide her true feelings, someone who was standing
Speaker 3: up for herself, and someone who is being direct but
Speaker 3: not rude. Mister Mandy then took the jury to the
Speaker 3: messages between Erin and her Facebook friends, saying these messages
Speaker 3: were pretty normal for someone when they were ranting about
Speaker 3: things in their life, including the people they love.
Speaker 1: Loving someone doesn't mean that you never feel frustrated with them,
Speaker 1: or upset with them, or hurt by them. The prosecution's
Speaker 1: argument assumes that human relationships are one dimensional. That is
Speaker 1: the way it always is. There is no nuance to it,
Speaker 1: there is no subtlety, and that's simply not realistic, they
Speaker 1: say to you. Ignore the long history of support and
Speaker 1: love and respect from the Patterson family for Erin from Erin.
Speaker 1: Ignore all of that long history and actual real world
Speaker 1: observations made by the people closest to Aaron and Simon
Speaker 1: day after day for years and years and years. Ignore
Speaker 1: all that, and instead rely on three days of upset
Speaker 1: from Erin and the recollections of these online friends about
Speaker 1: things she might have said, of which there is no
Speaker 1: record other than those two weeks.
Speaker 2: Mister Mandy then turned to the issue of Aaron's weight.
Speaker 2: He said the evidence showed she had a problem with
Speaker 2: her self image, She purchased diet books, she binge ate,
Speaker 2: and was embarrassed and depressed.
Speaker 3: Mister Mandy said Erin contacted the Enrich Clinic in Melbourne
Speaker 3: in around April or May twenty twenty three for a consultation,
Speaker 3: and she booked an appointment that was scheduled for September.
Speaker 3: Erin told the jury last week that she booked this
Speaker 3: appointment because she wanted to explore gastric bypass surgery, but
Speaker 3: she later accepted under cross examination that the clinic never
Speaker 3: offered this procedure. However, mister Mandy reiterated today that the
Speaker 3: clinic did offer liposuction in twenty twenty three. This is
Speaker 3: what he said about his client state of mind at
Speaker 3: the time.
Speaker 1: Her understanding at the time that she booked it was
Speaker 1: that they offered the full range of weight loss treatment options,
Speaker 1: including liposuction, gastric bypass, and other surgery. She was mistaken,
Speaker 1: honestly mistaken, understandable, you might think, in circumstances where she
Speaker 1: ultimately canceled the appointment and hadn't had a consultation with them.
Speaker 2: Mister Mandy moved onto the lump Aaron said she had
Speaker 2: on her elbow. He said she often thought there were
Speaker 2: things wrong with her. In her evidence, Aaron admitted to
Speaker 2: the jury she lied to Donn and Gale about having
Speaker 2: tests on her elbow in June twenty twenty three because
Speaker 2: she liked the attention they were giving her.
Speaker 1: She's not on trial for lying. This is not a
Speaker 1: court of as I said to you, moral judgment, you
Speaker 1: shouldn't take the leap from this lie about a lump
Speaker 1: on her elbow to finding her guilty of triple murder.
Speaker 1: Those things are a very, very long way apart.
Speaker 3: Mister Mandy then took the jury to the section of
Speaker 3: Erin's evidence. When she was asked about what she told
Speaker 3: the guests about cancer from the witness box, she said
Speaker 3: that she wasn't proud of it, but she led the
Speaker 3: guests to believe that she might be needing some treatment
Speaker 3: in relation to averian cancer. Later in her evidence, she
Speaker 3: explained that she was trying to communicate to them that
Speaker 3: she was undergoing investigations around ovarian cancer. But under cross
Speaker 3: examination she was very firm and she denied telling the
Speaker 3: guests that she had cancer. Mister Mandy then took the
Speaker 3: jury to the evidence of Ian, who said that he
Speaker 3: remembers Aaron telling the guests at the table that she
Speaker 3: was in the diagnostic phase, but that maybe treatment was
Speaker 3: not yet specified. Our listeners may remember that Aarin said
Speaker 3: she misled her guests because she didn't want to tell
Speaker 3: them she was planning on undergoing gastric bypass surgery. This
Speaker 3: is what mister Mandy said today.
Speaker 1: Her concerns about her weight her body image were deeply personal,
Speaker 1: deeply embarrassing. Much easier to say I've got to go
Speaker 1: to hospital for a few days to get some surgery
Speaker 1: for some treatment than to tell people that you're going
Speaker 1: to get liposuction or a gastric bypass. Much easier to
Speaker 1: just continue this lie about the lump and hint at
Speaker 1: diagnosis and treatment rather than tell truth. Much easier to
Speaker 1: never tell anyone that you're a binge eater who makes
Speaker 1: herself so sick from overeating that she throws up. Those
Speaker 1: kind of things are private and deeply embarrassing. So she
Speaker 1: did tell them a lie, but she did not say
Speaker 1: consistent with her evidence that she had a definitive cancer diagnosis.
Speaker 2: Mister Mandy also argued that if the cancer story was
Speaker 2: a ruse to get the guests to the lunch, she
Speaker 2: would not have told them after they had eaten their
Speaker 2: beef Wellington's if this was a.
Speaker 1: Ruse, So there was no need to have the conversation
Speaker 1: because the deed on the crown case, the consumption of
Speaker 1: the food had already happened. There was absolutely no need
Speaker 1: for Aaron to say anything about cancer at all. If
Speaker 1: it was a ruse that was related to deliberately poisoning
Speaker 1: people on the Crown case, her object had already been
Speaker 1: achieved by that point. So the only rational conclusion fact finding,
Speaker 1: drawing inferences, making logical connections, which is what you have
Speaker 1: to do. The only rational conclusion is that the lie
Speaker 1: about cancer had absolutely nothing to do with any intention
Speaker 1: to kill. If there was one, what's the point in
Speaker 1: telling them at the end, after they've eaten the food.
Speaker 1: It is going to be some time before anyone gets
Speaker 1: sick from eating the meal. The guests could have told
Speaker 1: anyone about the conversation in the meantime.
Speaker 2: Moving on to the meal itself, mister Mandy turned to
Speaker 2: the prosecution's claim that Aaron lied about buying mushrooms from
Speaker 2: an Asian grosser and purchasing a dehydrator with the sole
Speaker 2: intent of using it to dry death caps.
Speaker 3: Mister Mandy actually said that the evidence doesn't seem to
Speaker 3: make any sense at all. He said Aaron didn't need
Speaker 3: to buy a dehydrator if it was just going to
Speaker 3: be used for that one meal. He told the jury
Speaker 3: that mushrooms can be dehydrated in an oven and it
Speaker 3: was more likely the purchase of the dehydrator was part
Speaker 3: of a long term project for his client. He also
Speaker 3: said that the prosecution's claim that she was experimenting by
Speaker 3: dehydrating button mushrooms before turning her attention to the death
Speaker 3: caps was also implausible.
Speaker 1: Why would you need to hide mushrooms in a mushroom paste.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make any sense. She could hide them in
Speaker 1: a brownie or a muffin where they don't belong. So
Speaker 1: that theory we submit to you doesn't make any sense
Speaker 1: at all, and it is one of the many, many
Speaker 1: logical implausibilities in the prosecution argument in this case.
Speaker 3: Mister Mandy reminded the jury that it was the prosecution
Speaker 3: case that and cooked five poisoned beef Wellington's and one
Speaker 3: unpoisoned beef wellington. He said, if that was the case,
Speaker 3: it would have been very important for his client to
Speaker 3: not lose track of the one unpoisoned serve when putting
Speaker 3: it in the oven. Mister Mandy told the jury that
Speaker 3: there was only one logical way of getting around that problem,
Speaker 3: and he said it wasn't using different plates. He said
Speaker 3: it made more sense to mark the pastry of the
Speaker 3: unpoisoned one, so you could identify which one was safe
Speaker 3: throughout the cooking process.
Speaker 2: Speaking of plates, mister Mandy said it was a colorful
Speaker 2: piece of evidence pun non intended.
Speaker 3: Referring to the argument he just made about marking the pastry.
Speaker 3: He said Ian had to be wrong about what he
Speaker 3: said about Aaron serving the guests on four gray plates
Speaker 3: and Aaron serving herself on a smaller orange tan plate.
Speaker 1: But when you look at all the evidence on the
Speaker 1: issue of plates and what plates Erin had in her house,
Speaker 1: and what everyone says aboute it has to be the
Speaker 1: case that Ian Wilkinson is wrong about what he said.
Speaker 1: It makes no sense logically that you would use that
Speaker 1: method to deliver an unpoisoned parcel. But otherwise on all
Speaker 1: of the evidence, he's wrong, honestly mistaken.
Speaker 3: He then took the jury to some of the other
Speaker 3: evidence about the plates. He reminded then that Simon said
Speaker 3: Aaron did not have a matching set of plates, that
Speaker 3: their son said he remembered cleaning up white plates after
Speaker 3: the lunch, and that Aaron said she had used two black,
Speaker 3: two white, and one black and red plate for the lunch.
Speaker 3: When plating up the meal, mister Mandy said, considering all this,
Speaker 3: it was likely there was at least three different colored
Speaker 3: plates at the lunch table.
Speaker 2: Mister Mandy then turned to after the lunch and Aaron's
Speaker 2: evidence that once her guest left, she had binged the
Speaker 2: orange cake brought for dessert and then made herself sick.
Speaker 2: In her evidence, Aaron said, and she couldn't remember what
Speaker 2: was in her vomit.
Speaker 1: If she was lying to you, she would say, oh, look,
Speaker 1: when I throw up, I could clearly recognize pastry and
Speaker 1: meat and mushrooms in there. Absolutely, categorically it all came up.
Speaker 1: If she was lying, that's what she would say. But
Speaker 1: instead she says, I don't know, it's vomit. If she
Speaker 1: was lying, she would have said icerop immediately and I
Speaker 1: could clearly see everything. She didn't say that to you.
Speaker 3: Mister Mandy told the jury that Erin had not lied
Speaker 3: about falling ill after the lunch, but it was more
Speaker 3: the case of the progress of her illness being very
Speaker 3: different to that of her guests. He said it was
Speaker 3: plain enough that Erin's symptoms were different, so he took
Speaker 3: the jury to the evidence of toxicologist Dimitri Girista Mulis
Speaker 3: who said the severity of the symptoms was the result
Speaker 3: of a number of factors. The court has previously heard
Speaker 3: that these factors include the amount of toxin consumed, the
Speaker 3: distribution of the toxin in the meal, the person weight,
Speaker 3: as well as their age. Mister Mandy explained to the
Speaker 3: jury that the dried mushrooms Erin added into the meal
Speaker 3: may not have been evenly spread throughout the paste, and
Speaker 3: he also said that while don Ian and Heather ate
Speaker 3: their entire serves Erin and Gail did not.
Speaker 1: No one was measuring, so it's a bit hard after
Speaker 1: you have eaten a parcel to say how much of
Speaker 1: you already eaten, But that's a relevant factor. Some people
Speaker 1: ate a whole portion and some people ate one on
Speaker 1: one thirds or one and two thirds.
Speaker 3: He also mentioned the fact that Aaron read more than
Speaker 3: one hundred kilos and was significantly younger than her guests.
Speaker 3: He said, together these factors meant that Aaron may have
Speaker 3: reacted much better after consuming death Caps compared to her guests.
Speaker 3: He reiterated to the jury that people can react differently
Speaker 3: after consuming this poison, and with.
Speaker 2: That, mister Mandy was done for the day.
Speaker 3: But he will continue his closing address tomorrow.
Speaker 2: In the meantime, go to the mushroomcook dot com dot
Speaker 2: au for more
Speaker 1: Doctor Do