Speaker 1: It was a showdown today in the mushroom murder trial.
Speaker 1: The lead barristers of both the prosecution and the defense
Speaker 1: addressed the jury, with Nannette Rodgers finalizing the Crown's argument
Speaker 1: that Aaron Patterson told lies upon lies when her murder
Speaker 1: plot started to unravel.
Speaker 2: We say there is no reasonable alternative explanation for what
Speaker 2: happened to the lunch guests other than the accused deliberately
Speaker 2: sourced death cap mushrooms and deliberately included them in the meal.
Speaker 2: She served them with an intention to kill them. In
Speaker 2: the lead up to the lunch and in the periods
Speaker 2: after the lunch, Aaron Patterson told so many lies it's
Speaker 2: hard to keep track of them. She has told lies
Speaker 2: upon lies because she knew the truth would implicate her.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Colin Mandy started the defense case by saying his
Speaker 1: client never planned to kill her lunch guests and had
Speaker 1: a motive to keep them in her world.
Speaker 3: She didn't plan it. She never planned to kill anyone,
Speaker 3: and when they did get very, very sick, she panicked
Speaker 3: because that's when she realized that it might have been
Speaker 3: the meal and the spotlight would be on her. And
Speaker 3: that's a very powerful reason why you can't, in our submission,
Speaker 3: find this element of intention. It's why you should have
Speaker 3: a reasonable doubt about it. It is an implausible theory
Speaker 3: when you take a step back and look at the
Speaker 3: big picture.
Speaker 1: In Room four of the La Trobe Valley Law Courts,
Speaker 1: both sides came out swinging. I'm Brook Greebert Craig, and
Speaker 1: this is the mushroom cook We just finished day thirty
Speaker 1: three of Aaron Patterson's trial, and as always I'm joined
Speaker 1: by court reporter Laura Placella. We've had a big day, Yes,
Speaker 1: another one this morning. Doctor Rogers continued with the prosecution's
Speaker 1: fourth calculated deception, which was the sustained cover Aaron embarked
Speaker 1: on to conceal the truth to remind listeners the other
Speaker 1: three with a fabricated cancer claim Aaron used as a
Speaker 1: reason for the lunch, the lethal doses of poison Aaron
Speaker 1: secreted in the beef Wellington's and Aaron's attempts to make
Speaker 1: it seem like she also suffered death cap mushroom poisoning.
Speaker 4: So there were four elements to the sustained cover up,
Speaker 4: two of which doctor Rogers mentioned yesterday. But today she
Speaker 4: turned to the disposing of the dehydrator that she said
Speaker 4: Erin had used to dehydrate death caps. Erin has admitted
Speaker 4: that she dumped the appliance the day after she was
Speaker 4: released from Monash Medical Center, but doctor Rogers said today
Speaker 4: the only reason that Aaron dumped it was because she
Speaker 4: knew she had used it to prepare the deadly meal.
Speaker 4: This is what doctor Rogers said today. These are her words,
Speaker 4: but not her voice.
Speaker 2: If there was nothing incriminating about the dehydrator, why hide it?
Speaker 2: And there is only one reasonable explanation. She knew it
Speaker 2: would incriminate her. She knew that she had dehydrated death
Speaker 2: cap mushrooms in that appliance, and that she had deliberately
Speaker 2: done so, and she knew that keeping it was going
Speaker 2: to be far too risky. So one of the first
Speaker 2: things that she did after getting back from the Monash
Speaker 2: Hospital was to race out to the tip and dump it,
Speaker 2: try to make it disappear. If not for the careful
Speaker 2: analysis of the accused spank records conducted by Senior Constable
Speaker 2: Meg Crawford, no one would ever have known about the dehydrator.
Speaker 2: Aaron Patterson certainly wasn't telling anyone about it. In fact,
Speaker 2: when she was asked by police during the record of
Speaker 2: interview on fifth of August whether she knew anything about
Speaker 2: a dehydrator in her house. She answered with a completely
Speaker 2: straight face no.
Speaker 1: Doctor Rogers then moved on to the last element of
Speaker 1: the sustained cover up, which was Aaron deliberately concealing her
Speaker 1: usual mobile phone from police. Rogers talked the jury through
Speaker 1: Phone A, which was her usual phone, Phone B, which
Speaker 1: was her dummy phone, and Phone C, which was her
Speaker 1: NOKIAF phone. Laura, let's start with Phone A.
Speaker 4: The game of phones continues, so with Phone A, as
Speaker 4: you just said, brook Erin's usual phone. Doctor Rogers explained
Speaker 4: today that this phone was using the SIM card ending
Speaker 4: in seven eighty three in the lead up to the
Speaker 4: lunch and she said this simcard was also infhone A
Speaker 4: right up until the start of the search warrant, which
Speaker 4: was executed at Aaron's house on August five. But doctor
Speaker 4: Rogers told the jury today that while detectives were at
Speaker 4: Erin's house, Phone A was being handled without their knowledge.
Speaker 4: She reminded the jury of the evidence that the simcard
Speaker 4: lost connection with the network at some point that day
Speaker 4: between twelve oh one pm and one forty five PM,
Speaker 4: and she alleged this was because Aeron removed the SIM
Speaker 4: card before concealing Phone A from police. She reiterated to
Speaker 4: the jury today that police have never been able to
Speaker 4: recover Phone A, even after returning to Aaron's house for
Speaker 4: a second time in November.
Speaker 1: Let's move on to Phone B. What did doctor Rogers
Speaker 1: say about that device?
Speaker 4: For the first time, we heard doctor Rogers call Phone
Speaker 4: B the dummy phone, and this was the device that
Speaker 4: Erin handed to police at the end of the search
Speaker 4: on August five, and she accused Erin today of setting
Speaker 4: up this dummy phone to deliberately trick the police. She
Speaker 4: said that police found nothing on Phone B because it
Speaker 4: had been factory reset multiple times by Erin, including on
Speaker 4: August five and August six, the day after the search.
Speaker 4: She then turned to the SIM card that was in
Speaker 4: Phone B when it was handed over, and that was
Speaker 4: a SIM card ending in eight three five. Erin claimed
Speaker 4: last week that she was setting up a new phone
Speaker 4: the week of the search, but doctor Rogers said that
Speaker 4: the jury could reject her claim because it was not
Speaker 4: a phone or a phone number that the accused could
Speaker 4: say she was truthfully using.
Speaker 1: Great let's finish with Phone C, which was the Nokia phone.
Speaker 4: Doctor Rogers told the jury that after Erin took the
Speaker 4: SIM card ending in seven eighty three, which was her
Speaker 4: usual SIM card, out of Phone A, she then later
Speaker 4: placed it into Phone C, the Nochia. She said that
Speaker 4: Erin continued to use this number in Phone C even
Speaker 4: after she returned home from her record of interview on
Speaker 4: August five. She said, Erin's usage of this simcard made
Speaker 4: it quite clear that this was her usual SIM card
Speaker 4: and not the SIM card ending in eight three five
Speaker 4: that was in Phone B when Aaron handed it over.
Speaker 4: Here's doctor Rogers's explanation for why Aaron did what she
Speaker 4: did with the phones.
Speaker 2: All of this conduct, the factory resets, the handing over
Speaker 2: of the blank dummy phone, pretending that Phone B was
Speaker 2: her phone number. All of this was designed to frustrate
Speaker 2: the police investigation of this matter. It was all done
Speaker 2: so that the police would never see the contents of
Speaker 2: the accused's real mobile phone. We suggest to you that
Speaker 2: the only reasonable explanation for engaging in all of this
Speaker 2: deceptive conduct is that she knew that the information on
Speaker 2: Phone A, her usual mobile phone, would implicate her in
Speaker 2: the deliberate poisoning of the lunch guests.
Speaker 1: After doctor Rogers finished her four calculated deceptions, she moved
Speaker 1: on to Aeron's claim that she must have accidentally foraged
Speaker 1: death cat mushrooms.
Speaker 4: Doctor Rogers said that she anticipated the defense would argue
Speaker 4: that the jury cannot discount the possibility that Erin had
Speaker 4: innocently foraged for wild mushrooms for a family meal, but
Speaker 4: accidentally collected death cap mushrooms in that process before dehydrating them,
Speaker 4: placing them into a tupperware container with other dehydrated mushrooms,
Speaker 4: and therefore unknowingly including them in the beef wellingtons. But
Speaker 4: doctor Rogers said the only evidence of Erin ever foraging
Speaker 4: for mushrooms came from her Her children told an investigator
Speaker 4: that they did not know their mum to pick and
Speaker 4: eat wild mushrooms, and Erin never discussed foraging with her
Speaker 4: Facebook friends. Doctor Rogers explained to the jury why the
Speaker 4: prosecution say Aarin lied about foraging.
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's 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 cap mushrooms having been found in her dehydrator, she
Speaker 2: had to come up with something new. You should simply
Speaker 2: disregard this new claim that this was a horrible foraging
Speaker 2: accident as nothing more than an attempt by the accused
Speaker 2: to get her story to fit the evidence that the
Speaker 2: police compiled in this case.
Speaker 1: Doctor Rodgers then moved onto motive. She said the evidence
Speaker 1: didn't demonstrate that Aaron had any particular motive.
Speaker 2: Motive is not an element of the crime of murder
Speaker 2: or the crime of attempted murder, and it is only
Speaker 2: the elements of the offense that you must find proven
Speaker 2: beyond reasonable doubt that makes sense. People do different things
Speaker 2: for different reasons. Sometimes the reason is obvious enough to others.
Speaker 2: At other times, the internal motivations are only known by
Speaker 2: the person themself. You don't have to know why a
Speaker 2: person does something in order to know they did it.
Speaker 1: While doctor Rodgers said the prosecution didn't need to prove motive,
Speaker 1: she still took the jury to evidence about the relationship
Speaker 1: between Aaron Simon and Donn and Gale she told the
Speaker 1: jurors they had heard evidence over the course of the
Speaker 1: trial that showed that they loved each other. Doctor Rogers
Speaker 1: added that Aaron professed her love for Donni Gale in
Speaker 1: her record of interview, and Simon testified that Aaron seemed
Speaker 1: to love his parents, but she said the relationship between
Speaker 1: Aaron and her parents in law was not always a
Speaker 1: harmonious one. After a child support dispute arose between Aaron
Speaker 1: and Simon in October twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: Don and Gail were dragged unwillingly into the conflict between
Speaker 2: the accused and Simon over child support. That was Simon's evidence.
Speaker 2: Simon said he noticed a substantial change in his relationship
Speaker 2: with the accused in late twenty twenty two over the
Speaker 2: issue of child support, which had not abated by the
Speaker 2: end of that year. As you have heard, child support
Speaker 2: became a significant source of tension between the accused and
Speaker 2: Simon Patterson, how much Simon Patterson was paying, whether it
Speaker 2: covered the school fees, and the payment of the children's
Speaker 2: medical bills.
Speaker 4: Doctor Rogers said that the evidence showed that the divide
Speaker 4: between Erin and don and Gale was deeper than they
Speaker 4: ever She said that Aaron expressed her true feelings to
Speaker 4: her Facebook friends in bitter, angry messages she wrote about
Speaker 4: her parents in law, where she called them a lost
Speaker 4: cause and said fuck em.
Speaker 2: The point of this evidence is that it shows we
Speaker 2: say that the accused was leading a duplicitous life when
Speaker 2: it came to the Pattersons, she presented one side while
Speaker 2: expressing contrary beliefs to others.
Speaker 1: Then doctor Rodgers asked the fourteen jurors to personally think
Speaker 1: about what they would do if this was a horrible
Speaker 1: accident that happened to them Laura. As doctor Rogers explains,
Speaker 1: our listeners may also think about what they would do
Speaker 1: if they were in this situation.
Speaker 2: If you were told that the meal you had cooked
Speaker 2: and served to your family was thought to have possibly
Speaker 2: contained deathcat mushrooms, what would you do. Would you go
Speaker 2: into self preservation mode, just worrying about protecting yourself from blame.
Speaker 2: Would you race away from the hospital and do who
Speaker 2: knows what for an hour and a half. Would you
Speaker 2: be reluctant to receive treatment. Would you take two and
Speaker 2: a half hours to eventually agree to get your kids
Speaker 2: to hospital? Would you lie about the source of the
Speaker 2: ingredients to medical practitioners and the health department officials for days,
Speaker 2: even though the truth might help those you claim to love. No,
Speaker 2: that's not what you do. You would do everything you
Speaker 2: could to help the people you love.
Speaker 1: She went on to say, you would tell.
Speaker 2: The treating medical practitioners every scheric of information that might
Speaker 2: help to identify the cause of the illness, so that
Speaker 2: 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 cooi 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 4: Doctor Rogers said that Aaron panicked not because she realized
Speaker 4: she had made a grave foraging mistake, but because doctors
Speaker 4: had figured out that death caps were behind the illnesses
Speaker 4: of the guests. She said, innocent panic did not explain
Speaker 4: the extensive and prolonged efforts that Erin went to in
Speaker 4: order to cover up what she had done. She said.
Speaker 4: It also did not explain why Erin chose to persist
Speaker 4: with her lies when the lives of the guests were
Speaker 4: at stake.
Speaker 1: Doctor Rogers first took the jury through the lies Erin
Speaker 1: has omitted, lies about never owning a dehydrator and never
Speaker 1: having forage from mushrooms.
Speaker 4: But then doctor Rogers turned to the lies Erin hasn't admitted.
Speaker 3: She said.
Speaker 4: These included lying in a record of interview about being
Speaker 4: very helpful to the Department of Health, lying about why
Speaker 4: she held the lunch, and lying when she said she
Speaker 4: never told the lunch guests that she had been diagnosed
Speaker 4: with cancer. Doctor Rogers said her starkest lie was the
Speaker 4: one she told about having an appointment to explore gastric
Speaker 4: bypass surgery.
Speaker 2: The prosecution says that you cannot accept the accused as
Speaker 2: a truthful, honest and trustworthy witness. She has told too
Speaker 2: many lies and you should reject her evidence.
Speaker 1: Doctor Rogers told the jury to think of the case
Speaker 1: like a jigsaw puzzle. One piece on its own may
Speaker 1: not tell you very much about what the picture is,
Speaker 1: but when you start putting more together and looking at
Speaker 1: it as a whole, the picture becomes clearer.
Speaker 4: Doctor Rogers then revealed to the jury that there was
Speaker 4: one final deception, a fifth that she had not previously mentioned.
Speaker 2: The deception she has tried to play on you the
Speaker 2: jury with her untruthful evidence. When she knew her lies
Speaker 2: had been uncovered, she came up with a carefully constructed
Speaker 2: narrative to fit with the evidence. Almost there are some
Speaker 2: inconsistencies that she just came do not account for, so
Speaker 2: she ignores them, says she can't remember those conversations, or
Speaker 2: says other people are just wrong, even her own children.
Speaker 4: As she neared the end of her closing address, doctor
Speaker 4: Rogers said that the evidence in this case showed that
Speaker 4: Erin prepared and allocated the meal, that she was the
Speaker 4: only person who consumed the meal but did not fall
Speaker 4: seriously ill, that she was familiar with the i Naturalist website,
Speaker 4: that her phone was in the very two locations in
Speaker 4: Gippsland where death caps had been cited and recorded in
Speaker 4: April and May twenty twenty three, that she was dehydrating
Speaker 4: mushrooms consistent with death caps, and remnants of death caps
Speaker 4: were found in her dehydrator. That she concealed her actions,
Speaker 4: including by dumping her dehydrator, and finally that she told many,
Speaker 4: many lies about the true source of the mushrooms. Doctor
Speaker 4: Rogers told the jury, when they consider all of this evidence,
Speaker 4: they will be satisfied that the used deliberately sourced death caps,
Speaker 4: serve them to Don, gail Ian and Heather, and did
Speaker 4: so intending to kill them. She then thanked the jury
Speaker 4: before returning to her seat.
Speaker 1: Aaron's barrister, Colin Mandy, then began his closing address.
Speaker 4: He started by telling the jurors there were two simple
Speaker 4: issues that they had to determine. The first was is
Speaker 4: there a reasonable possibility that death caps were put into
Speaker 4: this meal accidentally? And the second was is it a
Speaker 4: reasonable possibility that Erin did not intend to kill or
Speaker 4: cause serious injury to her guests. He said if either
Speaker 4: of those were reasonable possibilities, then the jury would have
Speaker 4: reasonable doubt and must acquit his client of all charges.
Speaker 4: He then met a criticism of the approach taken by
Speaker 4: the prosecution in this trial.
Speaker 3: Their approach is this working from the assumption that Aaron
Speaker 3: Patterson is guilty of these crimes, pick and choose the
Speaker 3: evidence that fits that theory, and then tie it all
Speaker 3: together in an attempt to present a coherent narrative and
Speaker 3: ignore the things that don't fit. So they have constructed
Speaker 3: that case theory by, as I say, picking and choosing
Speaker 3: evidence while ignoring the context, cherry picking convenient fragments while
Speaker 3: discarding inconvenient truths.
Speaker 1: Mister Mandy then went on to tell the jury what
Speaker 1: happened in the wake of the lunch was a terrible tragedy.
Speaker 1: He said, since the four guests were good, innocent people,
Speaker 1: the jurors may have a desire to punish whoever caused
Speaker 1: their deaths, but he told the jurors they must fiercely
Speaker 1: guard against that kind of reasoning.
Speaker 4: Mister Mandy then moved on to motive, or more specifically,
Speaker 4: a lack of motive, and so that it made it
Speaker 4: more likely what happened was an accident. He told the
Speaker 4: jury that the defense had actually presented positive evidence of
Speaker 4: a lack of motive, dubbing it an antimotive. It was
Speaker 4: at this point that mister Manny pointed to Don tutoring,
Speaker 4: Erin's son, and the pair also completing science experiments together.
Speaker 4: He said that Erin had a motive to keep Doningale
Speaker 4: in her world. This is what he went on to say.
Speaker 3: Absolutely no doubt that Erin was devoted to her children.
Speaker 3: Why would she take wonderful, active, loving grandparents away from
Speaker 3: her own children. At the time the middle of twenty
Speaker 3: twenty three, she was in a good place. Aaron was
Speaker 3: in a good place. She had a big, beautiful house.
Speaker 3: She had just landscaped the garden. She had her children,
Speaker 3: who she loves deeply. She had them with her most
Speaker 3: of the time, effectively sole custody. She was very comfortable financially.
Speaker 3: Her body image wasn't great, it hadn't been for a
Speaker 3: long time, but she was planning to do something about that.
Speaker 3: She was looking forward to returning to study. All things considered,
Speaker 3: she was in a good place, and in that context
Speaker 3: we submit to you that she is most unlikely to
Speaker 3: have planned to murder people, especially if it is inevitable
Speaker 3: that it would be discovered.
Speaker 1: Mister Mandy then took the jury to the dehydrator. He said,
Speaker 1: if Aaron had been planning this murder from April twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, she would not have bought the dehydrator in
Speaker 1: her own name, with her own details, using her own
Speaker 1: credit card, taken photos of the dehydrator, taken photos of
Speaker 1: the mushrooms in the Dehydrata, shared the photos in a
Speaker 1: Facebook chat and waited so long before getting rid of
Speaker 1: the dehydrator itself. Mister Mandy added that if she had
Speaker 1: planned to kill the guests, she would not have sent
Speaker 1: the images of the murder weapon and the murder method
Speaker 1: to her own Facebook fronts.
Speaker 4: Mister Mandy told the jury that an intelligent person carefully
Speaker 4: planning a murder would know if you poisoned four people
Speaker 4: at a lunch at your house, the meal would be
Speaker 4: under suspicion and the focus would be on the cook
Speaker 4: very very quickly. But he said, according to the prosecution theory,
Speaker 4: Aaron pushed ahead with her lunch regardless. He admitted she
Speaker 4: panicked in the days after the lunch when, as the cook,
Speaker 4: the spotlight was on her. He said she dumped the
Speaker 4: dehydrator not to dispose of evidence, but because she panicked
Speaker 4: following conversation she had with Simon where he accused her
Speaker 4: of poisoning his parents with the dehydrator. He said her
Speaker 4: actions on the day she drove to the tip to
Speaker 4: dump it spoke volumes about her state of mind.
Speaker 3: She drives to the tip in her own car, pays
Speaker 3: for disposal of the dehydrator with her own bank card
Speaker 3: doesn't attempt to disguise those actions in any way. It
Speaker 3: could only have been panic, not because she was guilty,
Speaker 3: but because that's what people might think. It was a
Speaker 3: deep shock to her how these four people became so
Speaker 3: seriously unwell. It was a deep shock to her because
Speaker 3: she never intended it to happen. And if that's a
Speaker 3: reasonable possibility, then she must be found not guilty.
Speaker 1: Mister Mandy then moved on to the leftovers of the meal.
Speaker 1: He refuted the prosecution's claim that Aaron had been forced
Speaker 1: to tell police where the leftovers were.
Speaker 3: She told the police where to find them without hesitation.
Speaker 3: She must have been confident that there was no poison
Speaker 3: in order to do that, He went on to say,
Speaker 3: a guilty person on the Crown case, being at the
Speaker 3: premises for some time that morning, would have already thrown
Speaker 3: them out. You might think, get rid of them, put
Speaker 3: them in the neighbor's bin or a public bin, bury
Speaker 3: them in the backyard, or do something else. There had
Speaker 3: been two days to do all of that. Instead directing
Speaker 3: the police where to find the evidence that there were
Speaker 3: deathcap mushrooms in the meal, at that time on Monday morning.
Speaker 3: The inference that you can draw from that is that
Speaker 3: she genuinely believed that there were not deathcap mushrooms inside
Speaker 3: that bin, inside those leftovers.
Speaker 4: Mister Mandy then spoke about erin taking to the witness box.
Speaker 4: He said she didn't have to do this. He reminded
Speaker 4: the jury that she was cross examined for five hours
Speaker 4: a day over five days, recounting information from two years ago,
Speaker 4: and was questioned about every minutia of her movements and
Speaker 4: every single conversation she had with the witnesses. In this case,
Speaker 4: she has the right to silence.
Speaker 3: She didn't have to answer any questions. She could have
Speaker 3: stayed in the dock and said absolutely nothing, not given evidence.
Speaker 3: In the case, the prosecution has to prove the case,
Speaker 3: and that's part of the exercise. She doesn't have to
Speaker 3: prove anything. And yet she decided to give evidence, to
Speaker 3: give her account, and to subject herself to several days
Speaker 3: of cross examination by a very experienced ba arister. Let's
Speaker 3: consider her position in choosing to do that, not only
Speaker 3: your scrutiny, of course, but the scrutiny of the whole
Speaker 3: world being closely cross examined about the fine details of
Speaker 3: her account and about every word that she said to
Speaker 3: other people two years ago in twenty four hours to
Speaker 3: forty eight hours.
Speaker 1: Mister Mandy's closing address finished early today because he was
Speaker 1: starting to cough and his voice was failing him, but
Speaker 1: he will continue tomorrow.
Speaker 4: And before we jump off the Mikes, I will add
Speaker 4: that Justice Christopher Biale gave the jurors and us an
Speaker 4: update on the trial timeline. He said he won't commence
Speaker 4: his charge or his instructions to the jury until Monday
Speaker 4: next week, flagging that he might finish on Tuesday afternoon
Speaker 4: or maybe he'll spill over into Wednesday. He said he
Speaker 4: wanted to provide them with this update so they could
Speaker 4: get their affairs in order before deliberations begin.
Speaker 1: So, Laura, it looks like the jury won't retire to
Speaker 1: consider a verdict until midnext week.
Speaker 4: So we have a few more days left to go.
Speaker 1: We sure do. To stay updated on this case, go
Speaker 1: to the mushroomcook dot com dot au