The public has had a long held fascination with detectives. Detective sy aside of life the average person is never exposed to. I spent thirty four years as a cop. For twenty five of those years I was catching killers. That's what I did for a living. I was a homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated. The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some of the content and language might be confronting. That's because no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into this world. Welcome back to Part two of my chat with Greg Hadrick, the LOGI Award winning screenwriter behind some of the country's biggest crime series and the author of the book The Mushroom Murders. We have been taking an in depth look at the and Patterson case. In part two, we take
you into the trial. In preparation for writing the book, Greg witnessed the proceedings of the trial and had access to the court transcripts, so Greg knows this case better than most. We talk about the strength of the prosecution case and how the defense team attempted to create enough doubt in the minds of the jury. A lot of things came up that you may or may not be aware of. My chat with Greg gave me a much greater understanding of what went on in one of the
biggest murder trials in the country. If you thought you knew everything about the case, have a listen to our conversation and you might be surprised. Greg Hadrick, welcome back to part two. Thank you Gary of your second time on Eye Catch Killers.
Greg.
In part one, we were talking about the circumstances leading up to the victims of this murder getting sick, the serving of the pie and the taken the hospital, and Eron's reaction to to what happened. I think we left off on part two with the police starting to become involved. That you've had a lunch, four people are critically ill, and the person that served the lunch is going about okay, and homicide would notified at that point.
In time they were, and they for about it won't happen very quickly. I think for about a day they had. The informant was Detective Steve Eppingstall Yep, and he says they sort of watched it for a day and then on the fourth.
There was a comment in your book and it reminded me, and it's a bit of black humor that comes in the world of policing and homicide that we're not the nearly.
Homicide because and I had a bit of a chuckle, and you know, this.
Is a very serious case we're talking about, but that was very much the narrative in homicide that well, often we get called about anything that's happened, and you get that many calls when you're on call, you have to draw the line say look, we will come if the person and is dead. Up until that point in time, unless it's obvious, we don't go out.
So I had a bit of a chuckle. That was police jargon, police jargon. Side squad, nearly the homicide squad. They so they had to. They started the third They are looking at it and they've been told about it, and it's a roundabout. Then when Aaron takes the dehydrator to the kunar a tip, I think that happens on
the second. Actually on Wednesday, the second, and I think she well, she says she took that because she knew that the child protection workers were doing a home they had to visit the home environment to check that the kids would be okay, and so she knew that they were going to arrive in an hour's time, and there was a food dehydrator on the kitchen bench. So she decided get rid of that, get rid of.
That, covering up the evidence. Before we talk how the case built against Aaron. The three of the four died from who consumed the consumed the meal. It became apparent in the reading of your book and stuff that I've picked up in the media, how horrendous their deaths were. And I think, you know, we talk about this and their errands attracted the attention of people for so many different reasons. But we got three good people who have lost their lives in a.
Very valuaful, torturous It was. It was terrible, and Justice Bill made a point of that in his sentencing remarks as well, that the language when you say people are killed by mushrooms makes it sound soft. You know, it's not a knife, it's not a gun, it's you know,
it's not an axe. It's a mushroom, and yet you know, the autopsies on poor Galeen Heather showed that their entire livers were dead, and that most of their bowers dead, most of their kidneys were They had suffered through being killed from the inside out, which is a the book for me, is almost like being drawn and quartered. It's shocking. It was horrendous. Yeah, it was horrendous.
And I hadn't even picked up on the fact that you say it didn't seem like a violent death because it's mushroom mushroom pie, and you know, we sort of have a bit of a snicker about that, but we should really understand the pain that these people are. People went through and the survivor.
Of course, and indeed, not.
Only he lost his wife, but he was in the cama for a very long time.
Three weeks I think, yeah, before he was finally excubated, and then in rehab for weeks after that claims and I'm sure he's telling the truth. Ian is a very honest guy that you know his self will never be the same. Yeah, you know, what they went through was was a horrific ordeal and it shouldn't be forgotten when people go mushroom lady and mushroom killer. That that language softens what was really happening. Very very real.
Victims are very horrendous, horrendous crime. We've got the homicide involved, We've got they're starting to look at the case. And when the victims passed away, I would imagine that it was led by homicide.
Who was two am on. So they're starting, they are becoming more involved. On the third Steve epping Still said, you know, we knew by the way they had medical information that particularly Heather and Gale, we're not going to survive. Yeah, So they were doing a report for the coroner, blah blah blah, and then two am on the morning of the fourth overnight, Heather that's the first one to die,
and at that point it became a homicide case. Okay, So by seven o'clock that morning or seven thirty that morning, Steve epping Still and his team are there. So within five or six hours of Heather dying, it's an active homicide case.
Okay, Now did they I would imagine they went to Aeron's home.
Well, first of all, they got the bank records. They actually didn't go to They went to Eron same on the fifth, so this is now. So the sequence of events for them was they however, you know, you know more than I about you know what you've got to do to go through to get people's bank records. But they got them for the previous two months. I think it was Meg, I forget her name, I should know was looking through them from the third back, so she was from the latest day back and.
Looking I would imagine that the purchase of the mushrooms that it's not just gathering evidence to prove the offense, it's to discount version.
Of all of that. And pretty within a couple of hours, she comes across the transaction where Aaron has gone, you know, to the local tip to the kuna A transfer station literally two days before, and she took that to Stephen, going will she chucked something out? What she chucked out? They get straight onto the office at the Kunrara transfer station.
He goes to the CCTV and says, because they know the time of the transactions done, the drop yeah, And there she is getting out of a car and taking a big box and putting it in the tip and so they send a worker down there to get it out and it's a it's a dehydrator, and Steve calls the local cops and says, can you pick it up for us one thanky, And they went later that afternoon
and picked it up. So before the end of the day of the first day of the investigation, they had Erin's dehydrator that she'd thrown out two days.
Before, okay, and had Aaron mentioned that mushrooms that she put in the dehydrator. At this stage, she's still claiming she never foraged anything, right, okay, So she's claiming, and so the cops then they wait until it's later that night on the fourth, so it's still happening on the fourth. The two am on the fourth is when Heather dies. That day of the fourth is when they get the dehydrator from the tip. That night of the fourth Gale dies.
Yep. And on the fifth they raid. They go and search the house. And what did they find anything of interest at the house, Well, they found several computers which they were looking for communication devices. They found the manual of the dehydrator with some other manuals, which was handy. They were looking for the dinner plates, but by then
there were no gray plates any longer. But they took photos of everything in the kitchen and took some phones, not all the phones, but some of the phones, and of course they asked, they asked Aaron to hand over the her phone, her main phone she's been using all year, and that's when she had while the house was being searched. She switched her phones.
Down for it because this yeah, yeah, so this is from February.
She bought a new Samsung A twenty three that had a phone number in that was the phone number that everyone contacted her, which ended in seven eighty three, and that's been her main phone throughout all these months that she's been doing whatever planning has been necessary for this crime. And in the trial she claims that the phone started playing up and had a screen which froze a bit
conveniently just a day or two before the raid. That said, she's still using it and it's still accepting and receiving text and calls, et cetera, right up until the raid. And Steve Epping still as the informant, is walking around with her and mostly sort of accompanying her around the house while the cops do the search, and at some point she manages to take the SIM card out of that phone. We know it was in it at twelve oh one, and we know it was out of it
by one. So sometime in that hour and a half, she's taken the SIM card out of her main phone, put the main phone somewhere, and put a SIM card from her tablet which had a different phone number in the eight three five into a second handset, which she said, Oh, I just wanted to stop Simon from bothering me, and so I was going to change my phone number anyway, but she decides to do it in the middle of
a police search. And then when the cops at the end of the search ask at a syrender her phone, the one she gives them is Phone B, which she had also factory reset while she was walking around with the cops the editing off it, and that's the one that you see her hand over. And the seven eighty three, the A twenty three phone, which had been the one which would have any history of what website she's visited, what Google search is she's done, et cetera. That is never found, the cops never find it.
Tells me something about it. I've seen organized crime types that have got that calmness to seeing there talking as they're changing the same card in their bone and all that. But it shows a little bit about her, doesn't it.
It does.
But I suppose callous enough to invite people over and know you're going to feed them a lethal meal, can sit there and calmly manage to hold your metal enough to change a SIM card in the phone. Why police are executing the search warrant for suspected murder.
Yeah, that's family members. That's pretty extraordinary. Yeah, callous. She manages to do that. She then puts that seven eight three SIM into a different into a Nokia phone. And as I say, we've never have found no one's ever found that her main phone. The cops take that phone at that point they think that is her main phone. She's done that jattically fool them. And it's in a
safe in Steve wapping Stool's office in Spencer Street. And that night Aaron wonders if they've turned it off or disconnected it from the Internet, and she does find my phone search and realizes they haven't, so even though she doesn't have to because it's already clean, she fact she resets it remotely again again at five o'clock in the morning from her bedroom and lean gather. Yeah, that tells a lot a bit, Yeah, it tells a lot. And why this is going on, there's some other things that
are coming out. She's not reacting the way that you would think, like.
If these people are so close to her, the closest family she's got. She's invited them to lunch and they're all in hospital on their way to dine or have died, and she doesn't seem to be reacting.
She never asks how they are, never says can I go and see them? Can I just you know, maybe apologize profusely for you know, whatever I did the court, nothing, okay, never goes near the complains that no one tells her what's going on, But then she doesn't ask. She could have easily called Simon and said, how are they going. It's the cops who arrive and tell her that Heather and Gale have both died, But even then she doesn't call anyone to offer any condolences that we were told
at court, yeah at all. And and the first interview a lot of which you know can out find online. That happens after that police search. So that search finishes around about three or four o'clock in the afternoon.
There's a lot of image there of them sitting at the table that's.
All that search, while that search is happening, and all of that was presented at court, and you know, while she's sitting at that table. I mean, I have the other thing that the police did I think, I'm not sure if you've read this in the book, is that they catalog all the things they took during the search.
But there were a few laptops, a couple of laptops that were left there, and it did make it look like it was a bit of a sloppy search and they missed things that they really should have picked up. And I just wondered, knowing from other cases, from other homicide cops here and you know what you think, but that I suspect that that was deliberate. That poker face, Yes, those just listening there as a poker face, But I'd be very surprised if they hadn't left them there to
see if she continued in from eating behavior. But that never came out in court. That's just me from knowledge of other cases going. No, I don't think that was sloppy. I think they knew exactly what they were doing there.
They certainly would have would have had their focus on her. What about the item taken from the tip that she disposed of?
So yeah, so she that is now back at one thaky station, which is where the cops take her after the search for her interview. So they they start asking, you know, why she had the lunch and she says, you know, I just wanted to stay in touch with my family and my grandparentst. Cetera. Then they talk about whether she ever foraged for any food. She denies her foraging. Did you ever dry or dehydrate any food? And they go and she goes, no, never, and the dehydrator is
in the next room. It's literally they've already got it and it's in the next room. It's nice locking people in the lies when you know they're line. Yeah, and so yeah, he knew that right off the bat and
hang herself. Yeah, And then I think it's a you know, it's a great interview in the sense that he then goes back to her presentation at hospital and ask her about that and when she did end up at Monash Medical Center for a day and was under observation, what the doctors thought then and when she found out about you know, what might have actually caused the other guests to be unwell. Et ce so goes all of that, and then he comes back and says, let me go
through what we took from the house. First of all, this manual for a sunbeam dehydrator. What's that about? And she denies it again, And I thought, she to me, I think they've given her every opportunity They've been fair to think through this. Have a think now, I a're going to give you another chance. What can you tell us? And she denies it again and never had one, might have had one years and years ago. But again those.
Vague gas that give you a little bit of leeway either way.
And so they finished that interview, and Steve actually drove it back home that night, and it's that night that she factory resets the phone remote in the office. But I think you can tell from from what they've already got. But they already recovered the way she behaved in the interview, the way she lied about everything. They'd be thinking, you're thinking you've got a case.
But as was highlighted in your dis secting the trial, the beyond reasonable doubt three murders and the temp murder, the evidence looks overwhelming, but the element of doubt can be it was an accident?
Was it an accident?
And the defense have just got to chip away in the minds of a couple of the jury members, and all of a sudden, this person.
You get that because you know she's lying because she's dead scared that she's going to be accused of killing them, and you go, well, yes, but does that explain everything?
Well, I'm looking at some of the things from breaking down the notes I've made from reading the book and the other media accounts of what's gone on, like the points you'd be looking at like how strong was her anger against Simon?
And yeah, she's not going to say I wanted to kill him?
But what was there evidence there suggesting that there was a hatred or an anger towards Simon?
Well there was back in December, yeah, but in the months leading up to the lunch not so much. I mean, yeah, he'd said no, I don't want to come to lunch with you, But other than that, there's nothing in particular the prosecution could point to that illustrated you know, building hatred. Yeah.
It makes it hard because the jury, like we sit and struggle sometimes with motive or we were talking about struggling with motive. The jury if yeah, if she's making threats, you're going to regret what you've done to me and all that. But so the prosecution can present, well, they've separated, but the defense can go, well, there's lots of people who have separated, and play it off that way. Why did she invite the guests to lunch, well, claims to
tell them about her cancer diagnosis? How did she explain another way in the trial.
In the trial, she admitted that she had to admit that was a lie because there is no record of any cancer diagnosis, and the prosecution was saying she was expecting all four of them to be dead, and no one would know that she'd ever said that. But in the trial she said, look, I did have a real medical issue. I've been embarrassed about my weight and it had been a growing issue, and I'd been balemic for twenty years and I was stressing me out and I
had to do something about it. And I'd made a booking to investigate doing gastric bypass surgery, and that was really the medical issue that was on my mind. But I was too embarrassed to actually say that to them, But I was looking at being in hospital for that surgery, and this was her giving evidence at the trial. At the trial, the prosecution, as far as I know, I'm pretty sure of this, they had no idea of this her evidence in chief at the very end of the trial.
Yeah, And just to bring people up the speed, sorry I've jumped ahead, but how long after the death of the three people was she charged?
How she was charged on second of November twenty twenty three. They died in the first week of war, So three months, okay, three months she's charged.
Now we're sort of fast forward to the trial and we're at the trial with the trial again, just so people understand that an accused person doesn't have to give evidence. It's up to the prosecutors to prove the case, prove the allegations against the accused, and then once they've done that, then the accused presents their defense and the accused doesn't
have to get in the witness box. And very rarely do accuse people getting the witness box, especially at murder trials, because it opens it up to all sorts of cross examination and invariably goes bad for them. She chose to get in there. Why do you think she chose to get in there.
I there were things in her story that I think only she could explain, she had an explanation for, and I think she felt if she had any chance of being able to create reasonable doubt in the minds of a jury, it would be her who would be able to do that. Okay, I think that's why.
So your reading of it listening to it following it was she was pretty well jammed up after the prosecution finished their case and she had to present something, and she had no witnesses to come into saying no she was in the state at the time or whatever it was. In that type of case, she had no one except for herself who could explain it, and so rolled the dice and thought that she get away of it. Getting back to what you were talking about before the cancer.
She agrees it wasn't cancer, but what it was it was an embarrassing medical condition, and she had actually booked in to get Yeah.
A gastric band? Is it? What's it called? Gastric When did you have it? Last? So during her evidence in chief, when Colin Mandy was asking her these questions, she just said she was giving her history of being balamic in her history of having terribly embarrassing issues with her with her weight and needing to address it, and that she had a plan to do gastric bypass surgery. That's that's
all in her evidence in chief. When Nanette Rodgers was cross examining her, this is in the last two or three days of the trial, and she she's challenging you know what she said the lunch was about, and gets to the point where, you know, this apparent plan for gastric surgery, and Nannette says something like, but it was nothing more than a plan, was it. You know, you're just sort of making this up. And she said, no, I haven't. I had an appointment, and that really threw silence.
It was like what and she said, no, we're with and you know, with the Enrich Clinic in Melbourne. I had an appointment to see someone to discuss this surgery. And that was a that was a shoe drop moment in the trial because the prosecution did not know that at all, and so they had that was on a Friday morning, and they literally had Friday afternoon to try and figure out what the hell that was all about,
because they only had another day we finished. Yeah, and even I remember listening to it and thinking, that does put it different if she really had an appointment to do this, you know, with a surgeon who was going to do this surgery for her, and she's given this history, all of a sudden, you're thinking, oh, my god, well that that does explain the lunch.
That's where it's on that delicate balance, isn't it, because that you buy into that? And yet oh, she's telling the truth there And I understand she's embarrassed to talk about the nature of the surgery, but it was a medical condition. That's all explainable, So says little things that can make a difference, they can.
Yeah, And you know, this is at the very end of the trial, and you know, I'm trying to think like a duror, going, well, now I've got to relook at a whole host of other bits of evidence where you went. You know, it's ninety percent sure, but there's a ten percent chance this could have happened. But if if they can prove that she was going to have this surgery.
Yeah, it's credibility to the lunch, to her version of events. So the prosecutors would have scrambled I would imagine there'd be people running out of the court and making call it.
Imagine. They did scramble, and they scrambled very well, and because what they discovered was that Aaron did have an appointment. What she'd remembered is that she had made an appointment with the Enridge Clinic and she had What Aaron didn't realize was that the Enridge Clinic doesn't offer that surgery. Right, Okay, that's the problem. So again it was a big problem, and you go, oh, so she wasn't telling the truth.
It was she's well again, as you know people who are so good at lying, there was there was part of it was truth Smidge and the truth Smidge and the truth and the rest wasn't. So yes, she was. She made a booking to Enrich to do something. Now it's mostly and this is no apparently highly respected clinic, but it's mostly cosmetic surgery. It's it's not you know, genuine surgical procedures for for serious health issues. How did that play out in court? Did they set the trap
for him? They did? They came back first thing Monday morning, and Nanette did a string of questions which sort of let her down the trap and then finally was saying, but he do you agree that's you know what Enrich offers. He is their website blah blah blah, and can you see that it does not offer gastric bypass surgery? And
she went, oh, well, I thought it did. And then then it took Colin Mandy in his re examination on the very last day of the trial to say that there was it didn't even now offer lip per suction. But back then there was one of one of their practitioners who did off a liper section, so he was trying to sort of to soften soften the lie and
honest mistake. It was honest mistake. Yeah, and she would have looked at this, but there were just too many times where you try and take care in it her word, and then you realize you can't.
In the way she responded when she was called out, is there still that calmness about her, like it's not sort of collapse ahead or no?
There was no, There wasn't. There was never a collapsed head moment. There was never oh my god, I'm done for just I've lost a point here. I'll keep going, keep adding.
A couple of other things, like serving of the food gray plates a separate plate for her.
Did that play out in the trol Yeah, that there was a lot of discussion about the plates, because she obviously claimed she never had four gray plates, and Ian was adamant. Ian was adamant that she had. And the plates the police found during this search, and I think there are two black ones, and there are two black and red ones, and there was one there was one that her daughter had made at kindergarten somewhere which was
sort of multicolored one. There weren't many and in fact, Simon said to the police, he said she never did have many plates, but those were the only ones the police could find when they did their search, and they matched what Aaron had said she'd put the beef Rington's on, not at all what Ian said she put the beef Wellington on. And Ian just he was a very credible witness, particularly because you know, he couldn't remember exactly what people
said in the conversation blah blah blah. When he wasn't entirely sure. He was quite honest about saying, I'm not entirely sure, but when he was sure, he just had lock it in a quiet certainty that he just couldn't resist, And then what they jumping forward a little bit. What we didn't know until all the pre trial rulings on admissibility in admissibility of evidence, which were lifted four weeks after the trial. The jury never got to hear this
during the trial proper. But the minute the lunch was finished at three o'clock, when Don and Gale and Ian and Heather drove off and the boys are in the TV computer room, she took a box of rubbish to the tip and that happened within fifteen minutes of the lunch ending.
And are you privy to the logic of the ruling of that being excluded.
To believe yes, that has been that's been released, that they're not trying to hide it. I believe it's because when the police found out about that trip to the tip, it was about a week and a week and a half later, and they couldn't recover what she'd thrown out. So because there was no evidence that it was just innocuous so it was just food scraps, they said it to be too prejudicial to put it in, thinking it might have been something prejudicial.
Because next time she took something to the tip, it was definitely.
It definitely was.
Yeah, yeah, I suppose we do in those protections in place, but.
I wonder, I mean, I suppose that.
Sorry, I'm trying to be reasonable for you, Greg, I just wanted to become across race.
I can I can understand that. I can understand the reasoning behind that I and this is I haven't done in big legal surveys and forensic examination of the of it, but just listening to the number of crime cases I've listened to and followed, the law and judges are very strong on saying to a jury, you are the arbiters of fact. You are the ones who decide what is and is in fact. Let me deal with what law is and make sure it's a fair trial, but you
decide what's fact. Time and again, you guys, they can only decide what's fact and what's presented to them. And a lot of times, like with that trip to the tip immediately after lunch, why couldn't you say to a jury it might have been innocuous, we have no evidence, but it did happen, and let the jury be the arbitis the fact that you say they are.
Greg, I'm with you on that. We've got the jury system, because we want to rely on being judged by your peers on the available evidence, and they're put on this pedestal to make judgment on another one of their peers, but they're only provided limited informations.
Yeah, and I think if you're you either trust them that they understand what prejudice and biases and know how to take that into account, or you don't. And if you do, I think I think more should be ruled and admissible than the law currently allows. That's not to say it should be open slather and everything, but I think at the moment the pendulums just swung a bit too.
Much, and the judges in their judges summing up, give the warnings the necessary warnings, and they could explain to the way the way that you just explain it. But it's frustrating from a policing point of view watching seeing the jury sit there and you can see them literally scratch their heads sometimes and there's something missing here. We know something missing. Why was that just cut off? Or
why have we been excluded from the court. We're judging whether this person is guilty of murder and they've just had three hours of v legal argument and we've been excluded. Shouldn't we be part of that? Shouldn't we?
I think that's it's interesting my reading and my understanding I could be corrected on this is that the jury the jury system began hundreds of years ago because you would be tried not only by your peers and by your community, but by people who knew you. Yes, And the irony is now you can only be tried by jurors who don't know you. Yeah. And and in fact, if you have any connection with the accused of their relatives, et cetera, then you've got to excuse yourself from the jury.
If you have any connection with any of the witnesses, you excuse yourself from the jury. So the jury, who are not allowed to talk or interact with people, are meant to judge facts purely on a highly curated set of evidence which is presented to presented to them. Whereas the system began with yeah, I know Joe blow over there, and you know, I know you don't get aware of them, and I got aware of them. And then you've got twelve of us here, all have different relationships with them. Do you reckon.
Did he punch out John on the pub or not? I think the evolution of the jury system. I think we need to evolve, especially now with you're covering the crimes, where the warning there you're not to read the afternoon paper, you're not to watch the news. Well, now we're gone past that. We have gone going to happen. So we know you're going to look and the moment you walk out of this call room, you're going to google how this case is going and how has it been reported.
But as a DURA you can only rely on what's presented in the court. That should be enough of a warning. It should be enough.
But yeah, it's I just I guess I'm just coming up from the point of view, shouldn't shouldn't we start a conversation about whether the system can be reviewed and improved a bit. And it's a system that I fully support, yes, completely, I just think it could be better.
Well, you talk the pendulum, and sometimes the pendulum have swung too far and we need to bring it back back a bit. But I have long held a bugbear of the jurors aren't presented with all the facts, and if they are to adjudicate on the facts given, provide them all the facts. That's right, and then they can put what weight they think necessary on it. But yeah,
it's an interesting argument or interesting discussion. Her claims of having diarrhea, this trapter didn't it because we talked briefly in in part one that she said the onset of diary came in the afternoon, and whereas if it's from the ingredients that the others were suffering, the diary that was eight to ten hours later, and that so then she's left with this conundrum of yeah, I said I was sick, but now I'm not that sick, And she started to give different versions of events of how sick
she was or no, she got really sick. Later talk us through that, because that was a miscalculation.
On that home. I think it was a miscalculation on her behalf, because Simon was pretty adamant that, you know, on the phone the first time they talked, she said that she initially started feeling a little bit woozy four thirty ish in the afternoon. Now, even if he's got that a little bit wrong, she was an normal gastor reaction to a lunch at one o'clock would be about that. And then, as I said, she said to too many people that she was suffering from diarrhea when she drove
her son's mate home. That she sort of locked into a version of that, even though she was the master sort of watering things down, you know, when she's in the backtracking, Yeah, just walking back a little bit, when she's giving her evidence and building up what she was saying happened after midnight on Sunday night. That's when three days later she first used of the word explosive diary, which was I think to Salianne Atkinson, to the health expert. And so now she's trying to make it sound like
her strong symptoms didn't happen un till roughly the same time. Yeah, but you could never get away from the fact that she told too many people that really by seven o'clock she was happened happened earlier. So then Colin Mandy's only answer to that was he'd done, in my mind, a very good job of he did try and cover that.
He did do uncover up very well. So she was she was saying, she added, this is now let's go back to nine o'clock in the morning, nine thirty in the morning, and she's making the mushroom mixture for the beef Wellington's a little bit of a tast, a little bit of a taste test, and realizes that they'd really bit bland and don't have any flavor, and that's why she adds the dried mushrooms from the Asian grosser from
some shop you can't remember. Then comes the issue, well, most home cooks, if you've started tasting something and you think it's not doesn't have the right flavor, and you add something to it, you taste again. Yes, that's what almost everybody does. If you're not a taster, fine, but if you are tasting to check the flavor and you
add something, you taste again. The defense couldn't say that at the beginning because the question people were why isn't she dead, you know, or at least in intensive care if she was tasting, if she was adding death cap mushrooms to it, So that was skipped over until Colin Mandy realized at the end of the trial. I think he realized at the end of the trial. Certain how it came out that one explanation for her feeling diarrhea at seven o'clock is that she had tasted a bit.
So all of a sudden tasting is mentioned on the second last day of the trial, just the clock back and you go, well, okay, so, but it must have tasted because she had no liver damage. And this is where in terms of just just doubt, all you need is doubt. So the defense colin Man had also accessed one journal from Germany, and there's there's more research into death cap mushrooms over in europecause there's more of them.
There's more de cap mushrooms that say there are four stages, and just because you eat the same thing doesn't mean everyone ends up with the same stage. You can have someone just having very small reaction and someone else is eating the same thing have a different reaction. And he was using that to try and cast doubt in the jury's mind that in fact Erin's claimed diarrhea and there were just enough medical symptoms when you finally did get any one of hospital to go where she probably did
suffer something. Maybe it did if you've murdered three people, but you must have just tasted a tiny, tiny, tiny enough amount to feel sick at seven o'clock at night. But you're now starting to ask people to believe a lot. Yeah, but again.
It's putting in doubt and also, I think the body weight of a person and the age of the people that died, it could react. And if you have the professor or the expert witness there saying well, it's possible, because most things are possible.
And that's what they're very good at asking that question. Yeah, not what's most likely, but it is it at all possible? You've been caught too long. Yeah, I've heard that question too many times and the answers, well, yes, it's a hard one to say no too. But you did then
have to go, well, that's weighed up with. So she tasted enough to realize there wasn't enough flavor added Asian dried mushrooms, then just tasted a tiny little quarter of tea spooned luckily apparently nothing else, and that was enough that you know, when she started to feel simpto that seven o'clock it was because of that. And you go, okay, but the difference you still come back to thinking and I think that what you're putting doubt in someone's mind.
But then you go, three people died, one very very nearly died, and she was discharged after a couple of hours. Yeah, and you know that that's not just an incremental difference. That's a huge, huge and there was a reluctance to get tested and the reluctance to bring the kids in.
The other thing that I found from your book, from your Dura, and I think this is the type of thing that goes through Dura's mind where you're sitting there, and I think it was just sort of reflection of what goes on in the dur Dura mind that she's Aaron was saying that she had a I think it was a three hour round trip that she had to take to drop her son somewhere trying and she was getting around in white pants and like the Duras just thinking and this I'm sure and it's not legal basis.
I'm sure this is how the Duras process stuff. If you had diarrhea, would you be wearing white pants?
Yeah, Like little things like that, But these are all the type of things that grow through the mind. Getting rid of the dehydrator. We've talked about that, But what explanation did she give when she was in the witness box for getting rid of the dehydrated.
Sheer panic that she thought if it was left there, and she thought that Katrina Crypts from Child Protection was coming around that afternoon, and if she saw that she had a dehydrator which still had mushroom crumbs on it, because that's how they found.
Yeah, yeah, that she was likely to be blamed for it, for it and did she and I might have this wrong, But didn't she allude to or claim that Simon also accused her at some did you voice.
No, that's that that happened. So what before she gets rid of the dehydrated Yeah, So that's the other The other reason is it's a contested reason. When she was admitted to monashing, the kids were there as well, and they're just going through through tests. The kids were asking why they'd been taken out of school. I think you know what's all this about, and she was saying, well, they think that it's the lunch I did on Saturday and the mushrooms in it that might have made you know,
Pop and Nanna a bit sick. And the kids were saying, but why are we here because she took the mushrooms off the one that we ate, et cetera. And it started a conversation about mushrooms, and that led to the description that the kids knew an Aaron knew that when she first bought the dehydrator. She crushed up dried button mushrooms and put them in muffins because you know her do she didn't like mushrooms and she wanted to feed
some good veggies. And the daughter actually really preferred the mushies with the mushrooms in than the ones without the mushrooms in. And that of course telling that story. Yeah, you mentioned the dehydrator that she used to actually put the mushrooms in the muffins. And according to Aaron, this was on the Monday afternoon, I think. And that's when Simon said to her, is that how you poison my
parents with that dehydrator? Right? And that she says, that's the moment when she realized she was going to get blamed for everything.
Okay, so again is trying to write off her actions at the sound very damning towards her. Is I panic because Simon was accusing me of.
Killing his mom and dad. Now Simon point blank denied ever, saying that to her, it comes down to do you take Aerin at a word. If you do take Aerin at a word, it's consistent with what she said she did. She had Simon already blaming her. She was feeling panicked. She knew child Protection was coming around the next day. Stress, this is all going to come back at me. I've got to hide whatever I can and takes the dehydrated to the tip.
What about her foraging for mushrooms? When did that break? When did she acknowledge that she.
Was that happened? It wasn't during the record of you with the police. It was after the fifth of August. By the time they did. It was the autopsies that sort of showed beyond doubt it was a death cat, that it was death cap mushrooms that killed Don and Gale. And the DNA testing on the crumbs from the trays and the dehydrator showed that there were death cap mushrooms on the dehydrator. Right, So the combination of scientific evidence that was beyond doubt as opposed to, you know, there's
a ten percent chance of this. There was no explanation for that other than she had used forage mushrooms in those beef Wellington's. Then on top of that, and I think this was the other thing they finally when they went through there was an SD card with photos on it and there was a tablet that she'd used that had thumbnails of photos from the memory cash from Google photos, and they showed photos she'd taken of mushrooms on the dehydrator and some of the particularly some of the photos
were clearly foraged mushrooms. Particularly there was one set that Dr Tom May, who was a mycologist, again he said with a very high level of confidence they were death cap mushrooms. He couldn't say beyond all doubt, but with a very high level of confidence. And given the crumbs and the DNA were there, you sort of go with it. So over the course between August and November when she was charged, the evidence that she must have foraged and
death cap mushrooms cannot be cultivated. They can only grow on roots of oak trees, so you have to go out to a park somewhere where there's specific So put all those facts together and you can't keep denying it.
Okay, Yeah, And did she when she was giving evidence, did she?
Yeah, she said she had. She She then said she started foraging mushrooms during COVID, so all of a sudden it started three years ago. And there are photos of her on I think the rail trail and again with the kids were you know, they're on their scooters and she's picking mushrooms. There's photos of her in her kitchen in the house before the ones she earned at Lee Gathera, the one before that, and again there's foraged mushrooms that she says she just got in the backyard, which are
on the kitchen bench. So all of a sudden, once that wall came down. Forager. She's a forager. What she denies ever doing is deliberately foraging death caps. She said, obviously I must have at some point because they're in the dehydrator and they're in the beef. Wellington's terrible accident again put that little bit of doubt.
Yeah, I'm just looking all different parts that the trial was hinging. It would have been an interesting trial to listen to because you'd be walking out each day thinking we've got her. I'm talking from a police point there, or she's she came out on top here, creating those doubt.
Yeah, several nights when I was talking to my kids in my life about it, and they were just reading headlines, and had read headlines for months ago ago. Why is it taking so long? You shouldn't they lock her up? And I was going, you know, she might not be convicted here. Yeah, and they were quite surprised. But the more I there were several days through the middle and second part of the trial where I'm going this isn't necessarily over. There's a there.
The assummation of the case that I look at, like, we've gone through the trial, she's given evidence.
How long was she in the witness box for about six or seven days. That's a long time, A long time. I think she was three days giving her evidence in chief and three or four days in crossmains in the armor of breaking down a motion anything. Not really it was a pretty good performance.
Yeah, Okay, this is a summation of just what we've talked about, but of the case against Saron. So for you presenting the prosecution case, Aaron had forage for wild mushrooms near Mike Parks and trails. She had hydrated deaf cap mushrooms in her dehydrator. The mushroom mixture in her beef Wellington's had included those dehydrated death mushrooms. The beef Wellington had killed three of her lunch guests and very nearly killed the fourth that had killed all their livers.
That's the result. By contrast, Aaron had not suffered any liver damage at all. So if you're going to summarize the case, it sort of gets back to the start of it, doesn't it Your fictional dura and I just take this quote out of the book because I thought it was a good way of explaining it. They were five points I just read out there. The first four could be explained by a tragic accident or a deliberate
act with murderous intent. The fifth makes a tragic accident less likely explanation and an active murderous intent a more likely explanation. So that fifth one, if Aaron had not suffered, if she got sick and survived, it would be hard for anyone to convict her.
It's a difficult one, is it? It is?
And the judge was it Justice Bill, Justice Bill in his summing when we talk about what the role of the jurors, and this is from the transcripts, if you find that the accused lied about something, you can use that fact to help you decide whether or not you
believe the other things the accused has said. That is not to say that just because you find that she lied about one matter, you must also find she has been lying about everything else, But you can use the fact that she lied to help you determine the truthfulness of other things that she has said. Do not reason that just because a person is shown to have told a lie about something must be guilty. Evidence that she
told these lies is not evidence of guilt. These alleged lies are only relevant if all in assessing her credibility. Now there's a lot of warnings.
There isn't it.
There's a lie getting in there and lie through your teeth, But that doesn't mean you're guilty. So that's why it makes like you and I both understand the court system. We've seen it enough, being involved in it enough. But for a dura you'd be sitting there scratching your head and going, well, we know she told this lie, this lie, this lie, this lie, But the judge is saying, well, that doesn't make it guilty.
It's hard and that's what I think makes it such a strong conviction with all of those warnings and thinking we can't take that step, we can't take that step, we can't take that step. And yet still when you look at the totality of the evidence, there's no other
reasonable explanation. There's just too many places where the stretch is too big where you know or maybe that didn't happen for five percent of this reason, But when you string twenty of them together and you know that so many times she's only told the truth when she's had to, when she's been caught in a lie, and she's lied so much so that her credibility is if you assume she has very little credibility left to begin with, then
you look at the whole line. And then I think for my juror, it was feeding the kids the leftovers on the Sunday night, Well that's a big gun. That for me is yeah, that's a big not take that risk, cannot be No, yeah, that's not a well there's a five percent chance maybe you know you right do it? You don't do it now as soon as you start taking that out and go, well, she must have known
that those people are uncontaminated. And I think Justice Bill said that that's the other thing he's looking to do is you can only convict if it's the only reasonable explanation for the whole of the evidence. And I believe that's that's the position the jury reached, having been warned again and again and again not to leap to that conclusion.
Yeah, well, they are all the warnings in there. I always look at people where because that's drummed into you early throughout your policcing career or investigative career as a detective, that you know lies that don't make them guilty when they're self serving lies. I start the former, like, none of her lies have been detrimental to her. They're all
self serving lies. And when people tell me, oh, look there might be a mental health issue, but every sort of thing that's coming out of their mouth is self serving, I wagh that some people are lives, we've all met them, like the compulsive liars. But when they're self serving lies, I start to look at it a little bit differently. And what I see from all her lies everything was to distance her from every defense that she's committed.
How long were the jury out? Eight days? I think okay, which seemed long at the but I'm not sure is all that long for a nine ten week trial.
Yeah, there's a lot to a lot of process. Yeah, they would have known the pressure was on with their decisions. When they came back. Were you surprised or what were you thinking?
The result? But when they came back, I was in the camp of thinking Aaron was guilty. I'm not sure if I was a juror, I still had that corner of a doubt that it would only take one or two of them to go. It's not quite we can't beyond reasonable. So if you'd asked me the day before, I would have said maybe seventy thirty being convicted, But it wouldn't have surprised me. Yeah, having heard the whole what was the media pack like with it?
Because I know the media pack are always discussing them having bets on which way it's going to get.
I think more people I don't think there were very few who thought she was innocent. And again I think that the minority were still not sure if she'd be convicted. Right. The majority thought she would be and deserved to be, but not by huge It wasn't ninety nine percent. It had been a you know, the defense had done a very good job of muddying enough moments. But at the end of the day, you know, as even Colin Mandy said in the sentencing hearings, you know, it was very
grave offending. But it was a fascinating case to hear every detail and track the journey of how a jury deals with, as I said, the curated and limited bits of evidence they have, but looking in their totality to reach a conclusion that there was no other reasonable explanation.
We touched on one of the pieces of information the fact that she went to the tip straight after the lunch. Also the fact that there was three other charges that for attempt murder of Simon, her husband.
They were and they were part of the of the trial right up until I think two days before the trial, So she was charged with other murders. Yeah, so she was actually facing seven charges. Justice Bill had i think ruled three of those charges anyway, he didn't want three of them to proceed. I'm not sure what the legal term is. And the prosecution took that to the the Court of Appeal in Victoria and they came back with quite a lengthy ruling. And in that ruling were descriptions
of those three insidants. And when you read.
Them, could you give us just a brief to tell them? And we bear in mind that she hasn't been convictioned, hasn't been disclaimer, but these were the allegations.
It started with her suggesting that they go on a walk I think to Wilson's promontory and without the kids, just to discuss something whatever they co parenting discussion needed to happen. She'd packed separate lunch for them, but she had one lunch and someone had the other, and he started getting very sick that night and ended up I
think she took him to the hospital. They say it in an airbnb and he just got sicker, and about two days later she took him to Lean Gath the hospital and he was in hospital for days and they never could find out what it caused. Was But a few months later, because they hadn't got to their lovely nature walk to discuss whatever the matter they wanted to discuss, she suggested they do it again and she brought you know,
another prepackaged lunch over, I think the second one. She brought it to his house and they were due to go the next day or whatever, and the same thing happened. He had that he had the food she'd brought over that night. The next day he was sick as a dog and was in hospital again for a long time. I think the second time was the longest. I think there was like two or three weeks and it was
very sick, and again they couldn't the doctors. I should have the details in front of me, but the doctors couldn't nail down exactly what had caused the illness us. And this I think that would have happened while she was moving houses into lean gather. And then the third one, they went to Haqua I think the place is called, or they were planning a trip there, and again it was another you know, let's go away on a just you and me, and we'll discuss what has to happen
with the kids. And the same thing. She brought prepackaged food and you know, he had one that was wrapped up and he had there was a chicken carry for him and a chicken carry for her, but separate things and the same thing. So it was three times in about over the course of a year, maybe a bit longer than a year. And after that third time, which again it wasn't just oh sick, I've got to go to the toilet for half a day, it was in hospital.
It was again hospitalized I think the second one who was actually in a coma for five or six days. It was very serious. So those were the three attempted murder charges that the prosecution also wanted to bring against erin the circumstantial case of the similarity between oh, you know, I've packed your food and I've prepacked mine and he gets sick the next day. But medically there was no concrete evidence of what had caused his illness and whether
it was related to that food. Where the failing, that's where the failing was. So there was no you couldn't point to a doctor saying it was something here, this is what did it, and it was in this chicken curry. So because of that break in the line of evidence, circumstantially you look at it and you go, well, it's pretty obvious.
Well tendency in coincidence. And just to clarify that, the DPP dropped those charges against Aaron in regards to Simon.
So that was a problem. Yeah, and I think the prosecution I don't quite understand the law here, but bear with me for a second, was saying, because of what happened with the beef Wellington lunch on July twenty nine, you can use that as evidence for saying she must have poisoned Simon with these three right, But the Court of Appeal was saying, you can't present those three on the same ticket as evidence for that lunch. Who's if she's guilty of that then becomes evidence for the lunch.
It's it becomes circular, circular argument. You go's a circular argument. And so you're needing the result on one to prove those three, and yet you want those three to be used to prove the other, and you can't do that, and they won't. No, not allowed. Okay, So I can understand that, really, And so they were separated from the indictment. But the jury knew there had been because it had been in the press. The jury knew there had been
three other attempted murder charges. They weren't informed, but they were not informed. They were told put it out of your mind, and they never knew any details about it. So this is this is a hard thing for the juris, isn't it? Because you what was that about?
And I'm sure the conversation is happening in the jury room going what was that about?
Then we ask you about that? Can you find out what was what that was? You know, the prosecution two days away from a trial, now we can't know anything about it.
That's a complex system, isn't it. It really is so come back guilty and she's recently been sentenced. What did Patterson get to these her endless crimes?
The headline sentence was life imprisonment, which was not contested by the defense. What was contestant was a non parole period. The prosecution was arguing that she should never be released. The defense was saying because of the harshness of her situation in custody, she's so notorious, because of the massive fame of the case, that she's in solitary confinement and because of that duress, that there should be some non
parole period. And in the end, Justice Buell accepted that argument and put a non parole period of thirty three years, so she'll be in her early eighties when she gets out. Okay, Well still yeah, heavy significant sentence. It's a significant sentence.
Yeah, Greg, I have enjoyed our chat again with the book.
Is there a TV series in it? Is there a movie? Look, I've been concentrating on getting the book finished first. Let's hope. I know there is a screen series in development with the ABC with another production company. But if any of the big streamers and other broadcasters you know, read the book and want to develop a series out of it. I'm certainly here to help them. Well.
The Mushroom Murders a fascinating read and a really novel concept looking from a juror's point of view. I obviously read a lot of true crime books, and I was sitting down about the start that I've thought, this is a novel idea like looking from a juris point of view. But it really took you into the case, and it took me into the intensity of the trials. Like quite often I say with a murder trial, how exhausting they are,
because it's an emotional roller case. Do you think you're in front, then step back, And it really took us inside that and give us a bit of an insight into what the.
Jura is all about.
So I'm glad you've sort of done a new turn in your career or partially, and there you see yourself as a writer. Any other cases that you're looking.
At, I will now I'm going to try and get back on the eye catch killers. If you can get that is definitely something worth striving for. I'm really glad you enjoyed the read, and I have enjoyed the pivot into authorship and hopefully it'll continue.
It's an interesting way of telling the stories in a book, you get so much detail and look, people have enjoyed this podcast. What we're talking about. We've literally just scratched the surface of what's in the book.
So the Mushroom Murders. Thank you Gary, Okay, Thanks Greg,