Speaker 1: Already and this is the daily This is the Daily
Speaker 1: ohs oh, now it makes sense.
Speaker 2: Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Tuesday,
Speaker 2: the eighth of July. I'm Emma Gillespie.
Speaker 1: I'm Lucy Tassel.
Speaker 2: Late yesterday afternoon, a long awaited verdict was handed down
Speaker 2: in the mushroom murder trial of Aaron Patterson. A jury
Speaker 2: found Patterson guilty on all three charges of murder, which
Speaker 2: carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment in Victoria, and
Speaker 2: she was also found guilty of attempted murder.
Speaker 1: Pattison was charged after she served her estranged husband's relatives
Speaker 1: a beef Wellington lunch that included deathcap mushrooms. Prosecutors alleged
Speaker 1: she put them in the meal intentionally, while the defense
Speaker 1: argued it was a mistake. Today we'll update you on
Speaker 1: the latest in the trial, from verdict to sentencing, what
Speaker 1: led to this moment and what comes next.
Speaker 2: Lucy, You, like many of us, have been following this
Speaker 2: case very closely over the last few months, even the
Speaker 2: last couple of years. It's been a prominent story in
Speaker 2: the Australian media landscape for some time. Now we finally
Speaker 2: have a verdict. Can you walk us through what happened
Speaker 2: in the case yesterday?
Speaker 1: So yesterday afternoon we all got the news alert that
Speaker 1: the jury was finished their deliberations, which had taken about
Speaker 1: a week. They went into being sequestered. We'll explain that
Speaker 1: more later, but they went into deliberate last Monday, and
Speaker 1: so they had come to a verdict. Justice Christopher Biale
Speaker 1: presided over the reading of the verdict, which was delivered
Speaker 1: to a packed court room in the Latrobe Valley Magistrates Court,
Speaker 1: which is where all of this has taken place. In court,
Speaker 1: there's differing accounts of Patterson's reaction. From the ABC, we
Speaker 1: heard that she showed little emotion. From nine we heard
Speaker 1: that she blinked a lot. That was kind of the
Speaker 1: main reaction that she showed. But certainly there wasn't a
Speaker 1: large emotional reaction.
Speaker 2: When she heard those verdicts. Yes on those four charges.
Speaker 1: Yes, when she was read the verdict and she was
Speaker 1: found guilty of three counts of murder. Those relate to
Speaker 1: the deaths of Don Patterson and Gail Patterson. That's her
Speaker 1: estranged husband, Simon's parents, and Heather Wilkinson, who is her
Speaker 1: a strange husband. Simon's aunt. And then of course there's
Speaker 1: the account of attempted murder that relates to Ian Wilkinson.
Speaker 1: That's Heather's husband, so Simon's uncle, and he survived the lunch.
Speaker 2: Okay. So, as we've kind of touched on, this is
Speaker 2: a case that has captivated not just Australians but the
Speaker 2: world ye for quite some time now. We've discussed the
Speaker 2: details of it on the podcast, we've discussed the big
Speaker 2: updates from what ended up being a ten week hearing.
Speaker 2: But can you just give us a quick reminder of
Speaker 2: how we got here? Tell us about that fateful lunch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So for those who are unfamiliar, who might have
Speaker 1: forgotten the details in all of the information that's been
Speaker 1: presented during the trial. So Aaron Patterson invited five people
Speaker 1: over to lunch at her home in eastern Victoria and
Speaker 1: the town of Leanngatha in July twenty twenty three. So
Speaker 1: the people that she invited were her husband, Simon, so
Speaker 1: they were estranged but still very much legally married, his
Speaker 1: parents Don and Gale, and his aunt and uncle Heather
Speaker 1: and Ian Wilkinson. The night before, Simon told erin via
Speaker 1: text that he wouldn't be attending. We saw those texts
Speaker 1: tended in court as evidence. Then the lunch went ahead anyway,
Speaker 1: So Don Gale, Heather, Ian and Erin they all sit
Speaker 1: down for a meal of beef wellington. So, for those
Speaker 1: who don't know, a beef wellington.
Speaker 2: Is a log of beef.
Speaker 1: It's coated in a mushroom paste called duk cell and
Speaker 1: then it's wrapped in pastry. Aaron made individual beef wellington's
Speaker 1: that differed from the recipe that she was using, which
Speaker 1: came from the recipe Tin Eats cookbook Dinner Yep, which
Speaker 1: is on the shelf probably in your home right now
Speaker 1: given iconic, yeah best selling cookbook. Now, that recipe calls
Speaker 1: for a single log. She chose to make individual slices.
Speaker 2: Which we heard in court was because she couldn't find
Speaker 2: a piece of steak or beef that was big enough
Speaker 2: yea to make the log, so she made individual portions. That,
Speaker 2: of course then was contested over the weeks of this hearing.
Speaker 1: Yes about whether or not she could have found her
Speaker 1: evidence was that she couldn't find it. She bought individual steaks.
Speaker 1: So following the lunch, Don Gaale, Heather and Ian all
Speaker 1: become extremely unwell Aaron gave evidence that she also became unwell.
Speaker 1: Her four guests or went to hospital. Erin then later
Speaker 1: went to hospital. Don and Gail and Heather died in
Speaker 1: hospital in the following days. Ian Wilkinson survived. He required
Speaker 1: a liver transplant, but he did live and he attended court.
Speaker 2: And he was in hospital for a lengthy period.
Speaker 1: Yes, you might have remembered the headlines around when he
Speaker 1: came out of hospital. That that was kind of the
Speaker 1: biggest development in that case in those later months of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three until Erin herself was charged in November
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: And you mentioned there that Erin did go to hospital.
Speaker 2: What do we know about her condition? How was she
Speaker 2: physically after the lunch?
Speaker 1: Yeah, she was not as sick as her guests. That
Speaker 1: is certainly not contested. She has given evidence that she
Speaker 1: was sick. So she said that she had been having
Speaker 1: diarrhea for days, took herself into the hospital to get
Speaker 1: some fluids, and that's when doctors told her, Oh, you
Speaker 1: are the person from this lunch that we've heard about.
Speaker 1: Everyone else who was there is really really critically ill
Speaker 1: and we're very worried about you. Did anyone else eat this.
Speaker 1: She at that point said that her children had been
Speaker 1: given some of the meal, but that she'd scraped the
Speaker 1: mushrooms off because they don't like them, and they told
Speaker 1: her her kids needed to come into hospital. She pretty
Speaker 1: soon after checked herself out of hospital. She said that
Speaker 1: was to deal with some things at home, like letting
Speaker 1: out the dog, feeding the sheep that were in her paddock,
Speaker 1: and then she later returned to hospital. But yeah, there's
Speaker 1: contested evidence about how sick she actually was. It's certainly
Speaker 1: clear that she didn't need a liver transplant, She didn't
Speaker 1: need as much care as the others. One of the
Speaker 1: reasons she gave for why that might be the case
Speaker 1: is that she had a history of disordered eating, and
Speaker 1: she said that she had binged and then thrown up
Speaker 1: some of the food from the lunch. She suggested that
Speaker 1: might be or rather the defense suggested that might be
Speaker 1: why she wasn't as sick because it wasn't in her
Speaker 1: system for as long.
Speaker 2: Okay, so that paints a little bit of a picture
Speaker 2: of the defense, which we'll go into more shortly. But
Speaker 2: what was the prosecution's case against Patterson, Because obviously this
Speaker 2: is ultimately the successful argument.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it's kind of strange to be thinking about
Speaker 1: that now. I feel like for the entire length of
Speaker 1: the trial. It's obviously as responsible journalists you have to
Speaker 1: be incredibly careful about what you say about a case
Speaker 1: while it's still in the court, at risk of prejudicing
Speaker 1: the jury. But yeah, it feels strange now to be
Speaker 1: able to say one side has definitively exactly. I mean,
Speaker 1: there could still be an appeal, but that's.
Speaker 2: We We will get to that.
Speaker 1: We'll get to that. Sorry, jumping ahead of myself. The
Speaker 1: prosecution argument, which, as you said, has now been found
Speaker 1: by the jury to be the more convincing. One. Prosecutors
Speaker 1: argued Patterson to really put death cat mushrooms in the
Speaker 1: beef Wellington to kill her guests. They painted a picture
Speaker 1: of a woman who had two faces, a polite face
Speaker 1: to her in laws in person and her real face
Speaker 1: speaking to her Facebook friends online, expressing frustration about her
Speaker 1: in law's role in her relationship with her estranged husband,
Speaker 1: which had been cooling in recent years despite many years
Speaker 1: of amicable separation. Okay, doctor Nannette Rodgers, she's the prosecutor,
Speaker 1: She told the jury. Patterson had research deathcat mushrooms online
Speaker 1: and purchased a dehydrator a food dehydrator to prepare them.
Speaker 1: The prosecution presented evidence that Pattison lied repeatedly to police
Speaker 1: about whether or not she foraged and whether or not
Speaker 1: she had a dehydrator, and they also highlighted that Patterson
Speaker 1: had thrown away the dehydrator at the tip just two
Speaker 1: days before her police interview, which you probably have seen
Speaker 1: the CCTV footage of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot was said about where the mushrooms came from,
Speaker 2: whether or not she'd foraged them herself, whether or not
Speaker 2: she'd purchased them from an Asian grosser, whether they were
Speaker 2: in her pantry for a long period of time, and
Speaker 2: she accidentally had death.
Speaker 1: Caps, which was the defense argument.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So tell me a little bit more about
Speaker 2: the defense argument.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, Pattison admitted on the stand that she had
Speaker 1: foraged for mushrooms and then stored them in a tupperware container.
Speaker 1: The defense's argument and her argument, was that if death
Speaker 1: caps were mixed in, which she admitted was possible, it
Speaker 1: was just a tragic accident, that she had never intentionally
Speaker 1: foraged for poisonous mushrooms, and that they're ending up in
Speaker 1: the meal, which she said was to add flavor to
Speaker 1: the mushroom paste. The foraged mushrooms was just a mistake.
Speaker 1: And I mentioned there that she took the stand, as
Speaker 1: we would know, that's a very rare thing in court cases.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember this case really taking a sharp turn
Speaker 2: when we she earned that Aaron Patterson would be taking
Speaker 2: the stand as witness to give testimony in her own trial.
Speaker 2: She provided evidence over a period of several days.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was it?
Speaker 2: Key learnings and revelations from that time.
Speaker 1: The biggest one for me that I was safe to
Speaker 1: say the most surprised to see someone admit on the
Speaker 1: stand was Aaron admitted to telling several lies during her
Speaker 1: original police interview. So we've touched on the foraging and
Speaker 1: the dehydrator, so she lied. She told them she had
Speaker 1: never foraged for mushrooms and that she didn't own a dehydrator.
Speaker 1: I suppose that one sort of a half truth because
Speaker 1: she at that moment did not own a dehydrator because
Speaker 1: it was in the local tip, but she had owned
Speaker 1: one until days earlier. On the stand, she also admitted
Speaker 1: to misleading her guests about having cancer. She told the
Speaker 1: court she wanted their support, but had never actually been
Speaker 1: diagnosed with cancer. But she said that she kind of
Speaker 1: led them to believe that that was the case because
Speaker 1: she was seeking their support in coming weeks, because she
Speaker 1: said she was thinking about getting gastric banding surgery to
Speaker 1: assist with weight loss.
Speaker 2: And that during the recovery period she would need additional
Speaker 2: family support with the kids, etc.
Speaker 1: So she said she was just alighting the actual requirement
Speaker 1: for that support.
Speaker 2: Okay, there was, of course an extensive list of lies
Speaker 2: that were dissected, explained, re prosecuted during that testimony. We
Speaker 2: did a whole podcast episode on that which actually you
Speaker 2: led Lucy expertly, super super interesting. We will pop link
Speaker 2: to that in the show notes if you want to
Speaker 2: hear more. But we must move on or we'll spend
Speaker 2: all day talking about the fascinating developments from that trial.
Speaker 2: But after what ended up being ten weeks of hearings,
Speaker 2: the judge finally gave quite extensive instructions to the jury
Speaker 2: over several days before they began deliberations last week. What
Speaker 2: are the key updates from that time? What do we
Speaker 2: need to know?
Speaker 1: I think the biggest one to know is that Justice
Speaker 1: Beale said Patterson needs to be presumed innocent until she's
Speaker 1: proven guilty, and that the jury are the only ones
Speaker 1: who can decide whether the prosecution has quote proven their
Speaker 1: case beyond a reasonable doubt. Now, that's the threshold in
Speaker 1: criminal cases. You've probably heard us on this podcast before
Speaker 1: talk about how in civil cases it's a lower standard
Speaker 1: of proof, which is on the balance of probabilities, is
Speaker 1: it more likely than not that something happened or didn't happen.
Speaker 1: But in a criminal case, it's you have to not
Speaker 1: have any reasonable doubt in your mind that something occurred
Speaker 1: the way that the prosecution presented it as happening. If
Speaker 1: you have a reasonable doubt, you can't find a person
Speaker 1: guilty of a crime.
Speaker 2: So it's like being ninety to one hundred percent sure
Speaker 2: of something versus being fifty one percent sure of something.
Speaker 1: It's not even ninety it has to be one hundred
Speaker 1: that you have to be. Well, certainly, I mean that's
Speaker 1: what the defense said, right, But I think that is
Speaker 1: also a legal principle that you can't have a doubt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the jury had fifteen members throughout the trial.
Speaker 2: We know that there were not fifteen jurors on the
Speaker 2: stand yesterday when they came back into the court to
Speaker 2: hand down their verdict. What was that process.
Speaker 1: So one DURA was dismissed during the trial. It was
Speaker 1: reported they had been discussing the trial with their family members,
Speaker 1: which is not allowed. Yep, jurors weren't sequestered. They weren't
Speaker 1: kept separate from the rest of the world during the trial,
Speaker 1: which is also partly why we have to be careful
Speaker 1: in the media in terms of accidentally saying something that
Speaker 1: could come across a juror's path that could influence their
Speaker 1: decision making. So we were down to fourteen, and then
Speaker 1: last week before the d began deliberating, two more were dismissed.
Speaker 1: So the court system takes in more duras than will
Speaker 1: actually make the.
Speaker 2: Decision, particularly in a high profile case like this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in case of illness or family emergency, any of
Speaker 1: the reasons why people might not be able to complete
Speaker 1: the full trial. So two were dismissed and then the
Speaker 1: final twelve went on to They were then sequestered, which
Speaker 1: means that they were kept separate from the rest of
Speaker 1: the world, didn't go home for the days that they
Speaker 1: were deliberating, were taken probably to a hotel, no media,
Speaker 1: no phone, only the case and the deliberations every day.
Speaker 2: So they were essentially put into a lockdown bubble of
Speaker 2: this jury where they had no communication with the outside world,
Speaker 2: no access to any communication devices. It was you will
Speaker 2: stay together until you can reach a decision.
Speaker 1: Yes, and that had to be a unanimous decision, and
Speaker 1: we now know a unanimous verdict of guilt on all
Speaker 1: four charges.
Speaker 2: So tell me how it all unfolded on Monday. On
Speaker 2: Monday afternoon we got the news. The newsroom here at
Speaker 2: the Daily Os was ready to go. We've been waiting
Speaker 2: for a while for this one. What charges specifically has
Speaker 2: Aaron Patterson been found guilty of?
Speaker 1: So there's three. So there's account of murder of Don Patterson,
Speaker 1: account of murder of Gail Patterson, account of murder of
Speaker 1: Heather Wilkinson, and then another one of attempted murder for
Speaker 1: Ian Wilkinson, who survived. That's about all we know in
Speaker 1: terms of the juries, thinking that they collectively found Aaron
Speaker 1: Patterson responsible beyond a reasonable doubt. Australian jurors are not
Speaker 1: allowed to speak in the media about their decision making
Speaker 1: and we will never know what was discussed in the
Speaker 1: jury room.
Speaker 2: Okay, so just to recap lucy, we've got three charges
Speaker 2: of murder. Aaron Patterson has been found guilty of ye
Speaker 2: one count of attempted murder guilty. Also, that's the disease there.
Speaker 2: What happens now?
Speaker 1: So Erin is remanded in custody, she's awaiting being sentenced.
Speaker 1: We don't yet know when she will be sentenced, okay, and.
Speaker 2: That decision will be up to the judge. The jury
Speaker 2: are dismissed.
Speaker 1: Yep, that's it. The jury's jobs are done. They go
Speaker 1: back to their lives. I mean, imagine just going back
Speaker 1: to work tomorrow knowing that you couldn't talk about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yes, So basically, at this point, it's the legal
Speaker 1: system takes over the prosecution. The defense makes submissions about
Speaker 1: what they think the sentence should be. Okay, the maximum
Speaker 1: sentence for murder is life. It's we just don't know, okay,
Speaker 1: it's going to pan out there, But we know that
Speaker 1: Erin is in custody. We also know that the next
Speaker 1: time she appears in court will be for victim impact statements.
Speaker 2: What does that mean?
Speaker 1: So that means that the people who have been affected
Speaker 1: by what a jury has now found were Erin's actions
Speaker 1: will be able to speak to the court, to the judge,
Speaker 1: and to Erin herself about the impact that this has
Speaker 1: had on them. So I imagine we'll be hearing from
Speaker 1: the families of well, yeah, I guess once upon a
Speaker 1: time Erin's family, right, Erin's extended family, probably from Ian Wilkinson.
Speaker 1: I'm just speculating, but I imagine when you think of
Speaker 1: the people who've been affected, Don and Gale's other grandchildren,
Speaker 1: Heber and Ian's grandchildren and children. Yep, yeah, we will
Speaker 1: be hearing from them before sentencing is decided.
Speaker 2: That will be fascinating and we will keep an eye
Speaker 2: on that. As Lucy said, the sentencing date is yet
Speaker 2: to be set, but the murder charge in Victoria carries
Speaker 2: life imprisonment, which is typically twenty five years. Attempted murder
Speaker 2: also carries a maximum sentence of twenty five years, so
Speaker 2: on maths alone, we're looking at a very very lengthy
Speaker 2: prison sentence for Aaron Patterson. Lucy, thank you so much
Speaker 2: for taking us through that, and thank you over the
Speaker 2: course of these hearings for breaking it all down for
Speaker 2: us and helping us get our heads around such a
Speaker 2: complicated case, that's all we've got time for on today's episode.
Speaker 2: We will be back later this afternoon with your latest
Speaker 2: evening news headlines, but until then, have a great day.
Speaker 1: My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda
Speaker 1: Bunjelung Calkatin woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges
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