Already and this is the Daily This is the Daily OS. Oh, now it makes sense.
Good morning, and welcome to the Daily Oz. It's Tuesday, the tenth of June. I'm Lucy Tassel.
I'm Billy Fitzsimon's.
Last week, Aaron Patterson, who is accused of the murder of three people and the attempted murder of another, took the stand in her own defense. Patterson told the court her version of the events of the fatal lunch she hosted, a meal she now admits must have contained death cap mushrooms. In today's episode, we'll recap the first week of Patterson's testimony and how it squares with what we've learned in the trial so far. So Lucy.
Last Monday is when we first learned that Aaron Patterson would actually be in the witness box for this trial, which is a surprise because she didn't have to do that, right, Yeah.
She did not, And I think it's not editorializing to say I was very surprised. That's because defendants in criminal trials are not required to testify, and it's rare that they do, so that means the defense kind of builds its case around calling other witnesses to kind of speak for the defendant, and also by asking questions of the prosecution's witnesses. Obviously, the prosecution and the defense, the two different sides can ask questions of each other's witnesses.
And it's because the burden of proof is on the prosecution, right, Yes, so Aaron Patterson doesn't necessarily actually have to prove that she didn't do it. The prosecution just has to prove that she did it.
Yes, And when we say did it, we mean intentionally poisoned a meal. Yes, that's the allegation. But yeah, that's the concept of innocent until proven guilty, and it's the prosecution's jump to prove that she is guilty.
Got it.
So when a defendant testifies in that rare case, they get asked questions by their own lawyers first, who obviously are interested in making sure they defend themselves. That's like the key verb. So we might hear the defense asking questions about their client's perspective on the events that are the subject of the trial. So in this case, the July twenty twenty three lunch, and that's to convince the jury of their case. The danger and the reason that
defendants tend not to do. This is because they also have to be cross examined by the prosecution, so the other side, those questions will usually be more pointed, more direct. And again, as we say, the prosecution is trying to prove that the defendant did something, so the questioning is going to be very different, and we definitely saw those two approaches in Patterson's trial this week.
Before we go on and explain what exactly happened last week in this case, I think for anyone who isn't as familiar with this story, do you want to just explain who Aaron Patterson is and what she is accused of.
Yeah. Absolutely. Aaron Patterson is a fifty year old woman who lives in the regional town of lean Gatha in eastern Victoria. She is married to a man named Simon Patterson, and they have two children. Erin and Simon married in two thousand and seven and separated in twenty fifteen. They've never been divorced, but they've also never got back together. In July twenty twenty three, Erin invited five people over to lunch, Simon, his parents, Don and Gail, and his
aunt and uncle Heather and Ian Wilkinson. Now, Simon told Erin the night before the lunch that he would not attend, and we know that from texts that have been shown in court and also Simon's evidence and this week Erin's evidence. The lunch was held at Aaron's home. Don, Gail, Heather, and Ian all came. As I said, not Simon. All four of those people became very ill after the lunch. They all went to hospital where Don, Gailee, and Heather
later died with suspected death cap mushroom poisoning. Ian however, survived, and he went on to give evidence at this trial.
And Ian is the uncle of Erin's husband, Yes, exactly, so he is the sole survivor of this.
Lunch other than Aaron. Yes, got it. Erin has also given evidence that she became ill following the lunch too, though not as sick as her guests obviously did so.
Erin was giving evidence last week, and that came after weeks of other people also giving evidence, because this trial has now gone on for several weeks. Right, Yes, what else did we learn when Erin took the stand?
We heard a lot, which is understandable when a person is asked questions all day for four and a half days. Erin began giving evidence on Monday afternoon. I'll try and give you some of the biggest moments, but just to say, like there is so much, let's start with the lunch itself. This was something that her defense barrister, Colin Mandy sc took her through. We know that Erin served her guests a beef Wellington Traditionally. I don't know if you've ever
had a beef Wellington haven't. I think I must have once. But anyway, traditionally it's cooked as one big, large baked dish. It's like a log. You cut it and you serve it in slices. So we have already heard from other witnesses in this trial though, so like from Ian Wilkinson, for example, that Erin prepared individual beef Wellington's for her guests. Now on the stand last week, she said this was because she couldn't find a big enough piece of beef for a whole log, as the recipe calls for, so
she bought individual steaks. Another big element of beef Wellington is this mushroom paste that kind of wraps around the big piece of beef, which Erin told her barrister she made using some woolies mushrooms and some dried mushrooms from her pantry. It also goes for procudo, but she said she didn't put protrudo in because one of the lunch guests don doesn't eat pork, so she substituted that. So she's made a couple of changes to the recipe, but the key thing is she makes this paste of mushrooms
that wraps around the beef. In the days following the lunch, doctors were suspecting death cap poisoning. After of course, her four guests have shown up at hospital and they're very unwell.
When authorities were starting to get involved, Erin told health workers, like health authorities, she had bought mushrooms at an Asian grocer in Eastern Melbourne, and that actually sparked a massive search by authorities to find if there was an Asian grocer in Eastern Melbourne selling death cap mushrooms well, because that would be a massive concern, right, yeah, that would be a huge public health issue. And so that's based on evidence those workers have given to the court during
the trial. Now, in terms of what Erin has said, she said she stored these mushrooms in a tupperware container for some months. On the stand last week, though, she admitted she now believes that dried mushrooms she'd foraged could have been in that tupperware, and that she could have unknowingly foraged death cap mushrooms. She's denied intentionally foraging for death caps or intentionally poisoning the meal, but has accepted on the stand that they must have been in there.
Lucy, I have so many more questions, but before we get to them, here is a quick message from USWANSA. When we say foraging, do we mean she found these mushrooms in the wild.
Yes.
So she's no longer saying that she bought them at this Asian grosser. She's now saying that she literally found them in a forest, sumwherre or in the wild somewhere.
So this is one of the interesting aspects of Erin's evidence, and it's also the kind of thing that typically prevents defendants from testifying. Erin has, on the stand last week, admitted to telling authorities lies. And I want to be super clear. As journalists, we have to be incredibly careful
about what we say about an active ongoing trial. We would never normally say this person has lied, but Erin has to the defense and the prosecution, admitted that in her original police interview, which was recorded on the fifth of August twenty twenty three, she told police she had I'm quoting her, never foraged, as in gone out and looked for mushrooms. And she has now admitted on the stand that this was a lie, that she had in fact done so, so telling authorities that these mushrooms must
have come from an Asian groser. She had gone to an Asian grocer, but she was not telling them the whole truth, which was that she was beginning to worry. She said that she had accidentally picked up death cap mushrooms while going out into the wild and searching for mushrooms in her area.
Okay, so she admitted to lying about foraging. Yes, was there anything else that she admitted to lying about?
So there was another big one that she admitted to lying to police about, and that is about owning a food dehydrator.
I've seen this, I've seen the headlines about this.
Yes, although I suppose I one is partly true. So, as I said in her police interview that was the fifth of August twenty twenty three, she told police she didn't own a dehydrator. That was partly true, I say, because two days earlier she was seen on CCTV footage disposing of the dehydrator at the local tip.
Got it.
So in that moment she did not own a dehydrator, but she previously had and she used it to dehydrate mushrooms.
Right, and so in the court case last week, she admitted to using the dehydrator on the mushrooms that were used in the beef Wellington pie. Yes is that pie?
Yes, it's like a yeah, it's pies. Cool. Yeah. So she told police she didn't own one. They said, why do you have a manual for a dehydrator? And she said maybe I owned one in the past and paraphrasing this is the general thrust, got it. But yes, she has since admitted in court saying it wasn't entirely true to tell police that I didn't own a dehydrator, and she has admitted that her fingerprints are confirmed to have been on the dehydrator that police took from the tip.
I'll just say, though, what she has maintained across questioning by with the defense and the prosecution is that she did not intentionally forage for death cap mushrooms. She did not intentionally put them in the meal, and she did not intend to kill any of the people who later died.
So my understanding of this case is that she is not denying that there were death cap mushrooms in the meal that she cooked for the four guests at her house. Yes, what she is denying is that it was intentionally death cap mushrooms and that she intentionally killed three people.
Yes, she denies that she sought them out, that she dehydrated them intentionally. All these things got it, which intent is one of the things that the prosecution has to prove in order for the jury to make a finding of murder. She's saying that was absolutely not my intention.
Was there anything else that she lied about or admitted to lying about.
There's not so much a lie, but kind of something that she clarified through a few days of evidence. So when this trial began, we heard in both the defense and the prosecution's opening statements that Aaron had led her guests to believe that she had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer and was seeking their advice over lunch on how to tell her children.
And did she have cancer?
No. We also heard this point about her kind of explaining a diagnosis from Ian Wilkinson when he gave evidence last Wednesday. Under questioning from the defense, Erin said she had a history of ovarian cancer in her family and was worried about it. She added that in the past Don and Gail had shown her care and concern whenever she so that's Simon's parents. That they'd shown her care and concern whenever she discussed medical issues with them, and she had a desire for that interest in her well
being to continue. She told her defense barrister she was quote not proud of this, but that she had led her guests to quote believe that I might be needing some treatment in regards to ovarian cancer in the next few weeks. She's since admitted she was never diagnosed. Instead, she told the court she was actually planning to get gastric bypass surgery following decades of struggling with her body
image and with disordered eating. She told her barrister she would need the support of her in laws if she did get that operation. So that's a weight loss operation, yes, but that she had ultimately lied to them about why she would need their help. Then, under cross examination from the prosecutor, doctor Bennett Rogers, Aaron said she didn't think she had explicitly told her guests that she had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She agreed she wanted to lead
them to believe she had cancer. It's a nuance. It's it's a nuance, and it's the sort of thing that can come out when you're being asked questions about the same thing by two different people with two different approaches.
Yeah, okay, so today is Tuesday. Yes, is Aaron Patterson still on the stand today?
She is.
And I remember we reported last week in one of our headline podcasts that the judge has said that this trial is going to go on for longer than he initially expected.
Yes. I think that's probably because he wouldn't have expected Eron to give evidence. As I said, it's a rare occasion. But yes, Justice Christopher Beale has told the jurors that proceedings will continue for at least another week, at which point he'll let them know if they can go off to deliberate, or if there's more evidence that needs to be presented.
Interesting. Well, we will keep everyone updated on what happens there. It is really a case that literally has the attention of the whole world. Yeah, they are a journalists from all over the world who are in this court in Victoria to find out what is happening in this court and report on it. Lucy, thank you so much for explaining it. Thanks Billy, and thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Daily os. If you'd like to support us, if you can click follow on
Spotify or Apple. It really helps other people find us and helps us climb up those charts. We'll be back again this afternoon with your evening headlines, but until then, have a great day.
My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bunjelung Caalcutin woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.