Speaker 1: Today in the trial of Aaron Patterson, police officer Kwang
Speaker 1: Tran took to the stand to show the jury some
Speaker 1: CCTV of a service station on the South Gippsland Highway
Speaker 1: in Coldermeined. It's one of those modern servos with a
Speaker 1: macas and a parking area. You can just about see
Speaker 1: from space in the footage, a little red MG car
Speaker 1: pulls up outside the entry to the building. Dressed in
Speaker 1: a gray top and cream pants, Aaron walks in and
Speaker 1: goes to the ladies. Nine seconds later she exits. She
Speaker 1: browses the food section, purchases items and then leaves. It's
Speaker 1: a typical visit to a typical servo that could happen
Speaker 1: anywhere in country Australia. But this visit happened on July thirty,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, one day after the beef Wellington lunch
Speaker 1: that led to the deaths of three people and the
Speaker 1: charges of murder against the person who cooked the meal.
Speaker 1: I'm Brook Greebert Craig, and this is the Mushroom Cook.
Speaker 1: We've just finished day fifteen of Aaron Patterson's trial, and
Speaker 1: I'm here as always with my colleague and court reporter
Speaker 1: Laura Placella.
Speaker 2: Another day, another podcast episode.
Speaker 1: Yes it is. It was a full day in court,
Speaker 1: but majority of the day we heard again from doctor
Speaker 1: Matthew Sirall, who continued his evidence from yesterday, but more
Speaker 1: on him later. At the top of the episode, our
Speaker 1: listeners heard about CCTV that was pulled from a BP
Speaker 1: service station.
Speaker 2: That's right, but let's just take a step back for
Speaker 2: a second and give our listeners a little bit more context.
Speaker 2: It's been a while a few episodes actually, since we've
Speaker 2: spoken about the events following the lunch. We've been spending
Speaker 2: time focusing on phone records from the months before the
Speaker 2: lunch and some scientific evidence about the leftovers from a
Speaker 2: month after the lunch. So let's bring it back to
Speaker 2: this meal. On July twenty nine, the court heard evidence
Speaker 2: two weeks ago from Aaron's Sun who spoke about the
Speaker 2: day's following that meal and what he remembers. He said
Speaker 2: that the day after lunch, on July thirty, he woke
Speaker 2: up and went into the kitchen where he saw his
Speaker 2: mum drinking a coffee. He said that she told him
Speaker 2: she had been unwell throughout the night, was feeling a
Speaker 2: bit sick and had experienced diarrhea, and the court heard
Speaker 2: they would not be going to church that Sunday like
Speaker 2: they usually do, but our listeners might remember that her
Speaker 2: son was taking flying lessons and one of those lessons
Speaker 2: was booked for that Sunday. Her son explained that he
Speaker 2: told his mom there was no pressure for her to
Speaker 2: take him to this flying lesson, considering she was sick,
Speaker 2: but he said that she insisted she would still take him.
Speaker 2: So the jury heard that later that afternoon they set
Speaker 2: off for the lesson, which is in Taiab, a town
Speaker 2: in the Mornington Peninsula, which is over an hour's drive
Speaker 2: from where they live in Leengatha. And on the way
Speaker 2: they stopped at this BP service station in Cold Meat,
Speaker 2: and this is where the CCTV footage was obtained. As
Speaker 2: you mentioned earlier, Brooke, the jury heard today from Senior
Speaker 2: Constable Quang Tran from the homicide squad, who said he
Speaker 2: obtained the CCTV footage in August. That footage was then
Speaker 2: played to the jury in the prosecution opening a few
Speaker 2: weeks ago. The jury heard that that day she purchased
Speaker 2: some sour confectionery, a ham, cheese and tomato sandwich, and
Speaker 2: a sweet chili chicken rut. After three minutes, she left
Speaker 2: the service station, but it was a short cameo by
Speaker 2: Constable Tran. After this CCTV footage was played to the jury,
Speaker 2: his evidence was done for the day and the jury
Speaker 2: went home, but were expected to hear from him at
Speaker 2: a later stage.
Speaker 1: Now that brings me back to doctor Serrell, the digital
Speaker 1: forensic expert the jury heard from yesterday. He was cross
Speaker 1: examined by Aaron's defense barrister Colin Mandy sc today.
Speaker 2: We heard yesterday that he specializes in mobile phone network
Speaker 2: data and he really did give the jurors a lesson
Speaker 2: in the mobile phone network and how it all works.
Speaker 2: He confirmed that he had received years of phone records
Speaker 2: relating to a handset belonging to Erin, and yesterday he
Speaker 2: was questioned about these records, in particular certain dates in
Speaker 2: April and May twenty twenty three. Today, as you mentioned, Brooke,
Speaker 2: he was cross examined by the defense. They attempted to
Speaker 2: cast out on the opinions that doctor Cerel had drawn
Speaker 2: from these records. One of the first dates that doctor
Speaker 2: Sorel was brought to was April twenty eight, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: To give some context, around this date. This is ten
Speaker 2: days after Christine McKenzie, who we heard from yesterday, posted
Speaker 2: on our naturalist and observation of deathcat mushrooms growing near
Speaker 2: an oval in Locke. Doctor Sorel told the court yesterday
Speaker 2: that it was his opinion that Erin's phone made a
Speaker 2: possible visit to Locke on April twenty eight, so again,
Speaker 2: ten days after this post was made. Mister Mandy questioned
Speaker 2: him today about that opinion, and doctor Soerell agreed with
Speaker 2: mister Mandy that there were no records that he had
Speaker 2: that showed the phone was definitively in the boundary of
Speaker 2: the Locke township. He did go on to say, though,
Speaker 2: that the records did show that the phone was certainly
Speaker 2: to the east of the township. In a very similar fashion,
Speaker 2: mister Mandy also asked doctor Sorel questions around one of
Speaker 2: the other dates he was asked to analyze of Erin's
Speaker 2: phone records, and this was May twenty two. This was
Speaker 2: one day after mycologist doctor Tom May hosted a citing
Speaker 2: of deathcat mushrooms in Outram on May twenty one. Mister
Speaker 2: Mandy put a proposition to doctor Soerell today around that
Speaker 2: date and asked whether Erin's phone records were consistent with
Speaker 2: the proposition that the phone moved from lee Gatha down
Speaker 2: the Bass Highway heading to Inverlocke and at some point
Speaker 2: stopped for a period of time. Doctor Serell thought about
Speaker 2: this hypothetical for a bit and he said he had
Speaker 2: a concern with it, which was that there was one
Speaker 2: base station. Just to remind our listeners, this is the
Speaker 2: technical term for a telephone tower. He said that there
Speaker 2: was no connection with the Kongwak base station during that journey,
Speaker 2: and he said that was an anomaly with mister Mandy's proposition. However,
Speaker 2: he did agree though with the defense that there remained
Speaker 2: a possibility that the mobile phone did not enter the
Speaker 2: Outram postcode on that day.
Speaker 1: So all this evidence sounds a little bit confusing.
Speaker 2: Yes, and it's safe to say that today was definitely
Speaker 2: another dense day of evidence. But if I can put
Speaker 2: it like this, during his evidence in chief yesterday, doctor
Speaker 2: Cerel spoke about the possible visits that could have been
Speaker 2: made to these areas by Erin's phone on a number
Speaker 2: of days. Today, when it came to his cross examination,
Speaker 2: he was really speaking about the fact that just because
Speaker 2: these could be possible visits, it didn't mean that there
Speaker 2: weren't other possibilities or other possible types of visits her
Speaker 2: phone could have made on these days.
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense now. And on a lighter note,
Speaker 1: we had a little intruder in the courtroom today.
Speaker 2: We did. It definitely broke up the evidence from doctor Serral,
Speaker 2: even if it was just momentarily. There was a little
Speaker 2: beetle that was crawling on the microphone that he was
Speaker 2: speaking into in the witness box, and it managed to
Speaker 2: catch his attention and he kind of stopped mid sentence
Speaker 2: and told the court there's a nice little beetle crawling
Speaker 2: across my microphone, which got some laughs from the courtroom,
Speaker 2: and then soon after that his evidence continued.
Speaker 1: Yes, we did have a little chuckle with that. We
Speaker 1: will be back tomorrow, but in the meantime go to
Speaker 1: the mushroomcook dot com dot au to stay updated on
Speaker 1: this case.