Nine podcasts. In this episode, a senior public health advisor is questioned about her communication with the accused killer as the health department tried to find the source of the death cap mushrooms, and we hear more from the digital forensics officer.
Victoria's mushroom mystery, the mushroom lunch that claimed three lives.
An Australian family's meal is now the center of a homicide investigation.
For bizarre tragedy now grabbing global headlines.
Aaron Patterson's alleged victims died after eating a family lunch she'd serve them at her home.
I cannot think of another investigation that has generated this level of media and public interest. Four of the guests of that lunch were much loved members of this church. Only one will ever return.
People are feeling very heavy with having lost such wonderful people.
Today, Aaron Pattison remained here inside her home. She's continued to plead her innocence in a court room in Country Victoria, Aaron Patterson is on trial accused of using death cat mushrooms to kill. She's pleaded not guilty to murdering three of her former in laws and attempting to kill a fourth the town's church pastor. It's up to the jurors to decide what happened when Pattison's loved ones sat down
to eat. The fifth week of this trial has begun in Morewell and there's been quite a few more witnesses giving evidence. But before we get to that, we want to firstly, and this was the same order that the jury saw. All of this is come back to Sharman Fox Henry.
Yes.
Now, if people have listened to our previous episodes, they might remember he's a senior digital forensics officer within attached to Victoria Police and the cyber Crime Squad. Now he's previously given his evidence in chief. He has returned on various days and there's been different witnesses in between his evidence. But for the start of the fifth week he was back on the stand to be cross examined by Colin Mandy, Aaron Patterson's barrister.
Into court in a slightly oversized suit. He has quite a significant mustache and some big black glasses on his head and he made his way from the door which is on the right hand side, all the way over to the witness box on the left. And this was one in a list of days that he'd appeared in court. But during the evidence that we heard today, Colin Mandy
sc was questioning fox Henry about his qualifications. Penny. He was asked a little bit about what he does now, but what he was doing back at the time of this investigation. So it was August twenty twenty three that he was working as a digital forensics officer when he was asked by members of the homicide squad to take copies of what was found on these electronic devices and take that copy and give that over to Victoria Police. But now he works as a senior digital forensic officer
in the Cyber Crime Squad. It was explained to the jury that he's since undergone a lot of extra training. He's done a lot of other courses and things like that. Butly Colin Mandy's questioning was was trying to establish what qualifications he had at that time, and the way that Sharman fox Henry explained it was a lot of his training on the different systems that Victoria Police use at the time was peer based. He learned a lot of
it from his colleagues. Well, he may not have undergone specific training with these specific companies, it was peer based and he essentially had learned what to do from his colleagues.
And he's spoken through different parts of his evidence that he sort of had a qualification in sound initially and he'd then worked in audio visual and that was with
Victoria Police as well. So while the court was told in this part of his cross examination and his re examination that he sort of started with the particular role with the cyber Crime Squad in sort of the June of twenty twenty three, so a couple of months before the August, that he had been working in a different, slightly different department, but doing some things that were still
within that sort of information technology space. And he was taken through a number of different parts of his evidence and asked a lot of different questions by Colin Mandy sc and as part of one of them early on where he was being asked again about his training and who told him how and what to do and how is he being instructed, he was asked about when it came specifically to the computer that listeners will have heard about before that he extracted and he's given evidence that
he extracted the data from for police and investigators to then go through how he sort of went about doing that, And there's a lot of different programs that are mentioned in this, but there was a specific question put to him by mister Mandy that essentially came to the answer of that he'd selected something that said select all as part of downloading this information.
Yeah, he said that copying a device or the hard drive or hard drives of a device. We know in this case with his computer there was a number of hard drives on it, he said, was a plug in
and press going process. So while these questions were being sent his way trying to figure out exactly what his qualifications are and how you actually do things, he was saying, well, no, these are the words that he was using was his plug in, pressco process, and that was how he would perform his job and transfer the material accurately.
Across so that it could then be further looked at by investigators, and then the investigators can then tag that with different evidence tags we heard today and Fox Henry was asked, well, did you put those tags on yourself, and he said no, there is these tags that the police can put on themselves.
And there was something like two million artifacts or files that were downloaded off this particular PC. But fox Henry explained that it was only sixty odd different files that essentially went to Victoria Police for them to have a further look at.
And he's previously explained in his evidence using this word artifacts, not perhaps in the way that people might commonly think of that word, but artifacts sort of being types of data and URLs and different things that can be looked
at singularly or individually from these devices. Now we've heard about a number of other devices through mister fox Henry's evidence, and two of those are a tablet that police say was sees from Aaron Patterson's home, and the other is a phone that's been referred to it's a Samsung mobile phone as Phone B And previously the prosecutor has given evidence that the court will hear some evidence that that handset was given to police by the accused woman by
Aaron Patterson. Now, going back to those two devices, neither of those were examined by this particular witness by fox Henry. He's told the court they're examined by another member sort of of the team. But he was asked quite a lot of questions about these by mister Mandy, and one of those the tablet and the photos that were contained
on the tablet. He was asked basically, could was there any way of knowing exactly what device had taken a photo, if it was a phone, how it had ended up on something, or could they potentially have been sent to a device and ended up on a device from someone downloading a picture from the Internet or from a Facebook message.
At this point, Penny that I actually missed hearing a little bit of Fox Henry's evidence because something had just happened after the mid morning break, and we were all a little bit distracted, I think in the court room for a little bit of time. We know that the mid morning break usually happens about eleven thirty am, about a fifteen minute break.
And that's given by the judge and it happens in most trials as well. He's set this out with the jury from the start that they get a break in the morning and in the afternoon, sometimes more because they're listening to so much information so that they can just have a moment sort of a fifteen minutes or so, like you said, and then they can come back in refreshed and keep listening for another hour or so.
But just as the jury sat back down and Fox Henry went to take his position in the witness box. There was a gentleman in the back row, a protester that stood up. He had a yellow T shirt on with writing on it, and he fixed his gaze on the judge and said, your honor or judge, accusing him
of covering up murders and a like. And we couldn't hear exactly all the words that he was saying, but this was set in front of jury Penny and this gentleman he also had a blazer on, like a suit jacket over the top of this yellow shirt, and he was sitting in the back row next to five or six different members of the press. But this is also less than five meters away from the accused woman herself. Yeah,
but very very quickly, this didn't last very long. The tip staff and a police officer quickly escorted this man from the room, and the judge said to the bar table, all right, let's just continue.
And it did really continue quite rapidly after that, this evidence mister fox Henry sort of continuing what he'd been saying and what he spoke about with Colin Mandy. He sort of said, yes, well, there isn't an exact way necessarily to know you could have downloaded something from a chat or something if you've got if you were already viewing it through the app Google Photos, which is already
spoken about through part of his evidence. So that was mentioned to him and he agreed with the defense there. But then there was this other device, Phone B was brought up again too, and mister Mandy asked him a number of dis frenk questions regarding how do you know exactly how a time and date and those settings are
set on a particular phone. He's spoken about previously in his evidence that this phone, when he looked at the data that had been extracted and when he was explaining it to the jury, that there were four times that this phone has been factory reset, And he explained through his evidence during this cross examination that basically a factory reset removes all of the details except perhaps maybe some security details, maybe some sort of serial numbers, and it's
largely unable to be recovered, and that when there was this evidence being shown to the jury that all of these resets, according to the data, were in twenty twenty three, one sort of in February of twenty twenty three one, early August, sort of a few days prior to the next two factory resets, and that then the two factory resets that followed on the fifth and the sixth of August.
It was sort of being asked by Colin Mandy, well, if there was a factory reset, especially not very long ago, how would that affect the data for the next lots of factory resets. So there was lots of questions about this, and the witness basically said, well, yes, there's no way that you can fully know exactly if that time is in or out. If it's been slightly altered, then potentially that could mean that the data you're getting could be
slightly off. It's sort of hard to say when there has been that many factory resets on the phone.
But when he was referring to the photographs on the tablet for example, and that time and date was also brought up again, the witness maintained that Windows ten that was being used at the time on the PC saves its own time. It's got like its own server or
database that the time is linked in with. It's not up to the user, for example, or some other means to change the time so there was lots of questions in the evidence today for this particular witness about the times and dates and how we ensure things are what they say that they are.
And he also mentioned as part of his evidence that when they're making these copies, there's a copy of the data that's made that it's essentially unwritable, it's uneditable, so that whoever's coming in and examining that can't go adding or changing things. It exists as it was taken off that device.
That's right now.
Moving on to the next witness that the jury has heard from now, this was a forensic pathologist, doctor Brian Bier, and he gave evidence about the autopsies that were conducted on the three lunch guests who passed away. And the first autopsy that he was talking about was Heather Wilkinson. And it wasn't actually himself who conducted that autopsy. It was a colleague, he said, but that he has a more senior role and he was overseeing that particular procedure.
Yeah, that's right, doctor Brian Bier. He's worked at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine for a number of years now, but even longer as a forensic pathologist. Then his evidence
really got underway. We know he either conducted or was overseeing the autopsies of the three lunch guests who passed away, and he was explaining the dates and time that they arrived and then the process to really have a look at not only what was going on in their body at the time of death, but whether or not they had any pre existing health conditions that could have impacted the medical treatment that occurred.
He concluded essentially for all of them that there was this extensive neurosis of the liver which was very consistent with amanita poisoning or toxic mushroom poisoning. Now, there's been different parts of evidence given by different witnesses at medical levels about making these diagnoses, but it was in the
bodies of the two female lunch guests. There wasn't any of this particular toxin that was able to be found from a death cat mushroom, but there was some of that toxin found in the results from Donald Patterson.
Yeah, the way he explained it, Penny was he told the jury that all three had acute liver failure and multiple organ failure that was consistent with someone who had eaten deathcat mushrooms and while Donald patterson he remains were the only ones that tested positive to Amanita toxin or
death cat mushroom poisoning. Both sisters, he said, had organ damage that were really consistent with the same It was a urine test that had been taken from Don Patterson while he was still in hospital that was tested and
that's where the positive result came for deathcat mushrooms. The pathologist explained that when all three arrived at his facility, police had asked for immediate autopsies to be conducted on the bodies, and he was told that it was believed that all three had eaten deathcat mushrooms as well.
And there was one part of his evidence that he answered a few more questions on regarding Gail Patterson and any pre existing conditions. He spoke as well about Don Patterson's heart and that it was a little more enlarged and heavier than you would expect of someone sort of for his description at that time, and maybe that he did have a sort of a high blood pressure of
hypertension at the time. But he noted in his evidence, well, there's probably a lot of people even in this room who were living with that condition and that he did believe that there was definitely this amanita poisoning as well. But he also noted with all of these particular autopsies, they also looked at all of the medical history that had come from all of the different hospitals, yes, local hospitals standing on the Austin and various other notes too.
But he spoke a bit more about what he found around Gail Patterson and her health.
Yeah, so the first autopsy that was taken place was on Heather Wilkinson. She was sixty six at the time and she died on the fourth of August twenty twenty three, and he said he was unable to find any existing medical conditions, but noted that she did appear to have been a fairly healthy lady at the time. She said there, he said that there was a very extensive necrosis of the liver in her case, and of all of her
liver cells had died. And in addition to that, he said the small and large bow, well the lining of it was also necrotics. So his explanation was quote that the cells were dead. Beier said that Wilkinson's sister, Gail Patterson, who was seventy at the time also died from acute liver failure and multiple organ failure. Was the second autopsy that was conducted, and then the third autopsy, he said, was conducted on Don Patterson, who was seventy at the time, three days after his death.
Let's hear a little bit more about what doctor Brian Beier said in his evidence. It's not their real voices.
Did Gail Patterson suffer from any serious pre existing health conditions that you have been able to gather from reading her medical records and performing the autopsy on her body.
I'll just qualify by saying there was no serious issues just prior to her death. Having said that, in twenty twenty, she had an episode of Herpes simplex type one encephalitis, which she presented with basically changes of fever and headaches in essence, just issues with understanding and expressing herself understanding other people anyway. That was from all accounts, diagnosed fairly quickly.
She had a CSF sample taken and that confirmed that this was due to the Herpes simplex type one, and also a subsequent CT and MRI scans showed changes which were very consistent with that as well. She was given antibiotic creme and appears to have recovered quite well from that. I think early in January of twenty twenty one. There's possibility, some question that there could be a reoccurrence, but I
think that was not confirmed. And my understanding from reading the notes that she made quite a good recovery with just some slight issues, particularly with her ability to express and understand various things.
Did that in any way contribute to her death.
No.
At this point, Penny Aaron Patterson could be seen crying in the dock. There was tears in her eyes and she was looking up at times as be confirmed his autopsy results.
Yeah, and this was sort of a part of the evidence that the jury has already heard in this fifth week of the trial, but there was quite a bit more evidence to come from another witness. They've been told that that is a Department of Health official, Sally Anne Atkinson, will come back after this with some of her evidence and what she could recall to the jury and told
them was her memory of her communications with Aaron Patterson. Now, Sally Anne Atkinson told the jury that she was in a senior public health sort of official role within Victoria's Department of Health. At the time that the fatal lunch took place back at the end of July twenty twenty three, and subsequently she was involved over the following days and weeks in regards to particularly trying to find the source of what had made these people so unwell.
Yeah, she explained to the jury that she was working as part of this gashtro illness related team, and it's a team which oversaw illnesses such as typhoid and salmonella and these types of things. And she said that's when she received a notification about a potential outbreak of death cap mushroom poisoning. It was an alert from a doctor, she explained to doctor Connor. It was about two thirty three pm on the thirty first of July twenty twenty three.
She said the doctor believed that there'd been an outbreak, which is what she classified as anything involving more than two people that may have occurred at a family luncheon.
Yeah. So, she said, the way that she initially got this information was there's sort of a number that people can call, and she said through her evidence that they would be notified the team that she worked in by either council workers perhaps members of the public, doctors, other medical staff about any kind of food or gastro intestinal related outbreak and that you know that could include then trying to stop a product of self that had someone ella in it getting out and trying to sort of
really get on top of any outbreaks in the community, and that an outbreak. As you said, anything over two people, they considered that an outbreak. But she said that this message came from doctor Connor McDermott, a doctor at the Austin Hospital, and that it had come initially as sort of a phone message, a voicemail, and it was very therefore short and.
Brief, but it adverted to an email, yeah, and it.
Had come through this email system and into her inbox, and that she had that little bit of information. She thought that they were family members and that there might have been some sort of luncheon. But from there she spoke about the different communications she had with Aaron Patterson and Jane Warren from the prosecution was taking her through all of these different points, and we'll take you through
the same way. The jury heard this chronological sequence of evidence that Sally Ann Atkinson was giving in relation to all of the phone conversations. Text conversations that she was having at the time as she was sort of being prompted and questioned by Jane Warren.
Initially, she said she reached out to Simon Patterson and the next of kin for those that were in hospital, and initially she said, Simon didn't really want to speak to her, which wasn't an uncommon thing, so instead that she sent him an email with like an official letterhead that said that she was from the Department of Health, and she said at this time he was then happy to speak and she asked him whether or not Aaron Patterson was known to forage mushrooms, and Simon Patterson's response
to her memory was, it wasn't something.
That I ever really knowed her to do.
And when I asked if the lunch guests were was commonplace for them to eat together, he said, no, it would have been years ago, if at all.
Yeah, and that that was probably some sort of family meal if they had eaten together at all. But as you mentioned, Simon Patterson was contacted. Sally Ane Atkinson said as the next of kin for Don and Gale. She noted that there were two next of kin details that she took, so also for Heather and Ian Wilkinson, because when someone is so unwell, they probably can't answer the questions. And as people have heard sort of earlier in this episode and throughout the trial, by the time these people
were in hospital, they were very unwell. And she said through her evidence, Sally Ane Atkinson, she was aware that there were four people quite ill in hospital, and that she was aware there was a fifth person at least on their way to hospital. And she then when she picked up what had happened with her conversations around Aaron Patterson.
She was asked about a conversation they had over the phone on the first of August twenty twenty three, while Aaron Patterson was still in hospital, and she said that she had basically said, oh, I'm sort of feeling okay at the moment. But here's a little bit more of the evidence as the court heard it. This is Sally Anne Atkinson while being questioned by Jane Warren from the prosecution. It's voiced by actors.
At that stage. Where was she she was still in the hospital. Did she say how she was feeling?
She said she was feeling okay, okay.
Did you ask her about her symptoms?
I did?
She told me that her symptoms that she had experienced some diarrhea. She said she started to feel a bit unwell slightly before midnight of the twenty ninth and thirtieth, and then about midnight she said she had started to experience explosive diarrhea, which she said went pretty much throughout the evening throughout that night every fifteen to twenty minutes, and then throughout the rest of Sunday she said it
was more approximately every forty five minutes. She then said, towards the end of Sunday afternoon evening she started to feel better, so she had a little bit of something to eat, a bowl of cereal, I believe, and then she said she started to feel worse again.
So this Feige conversation Sally Natkinson record went for about fifteen minutes, and she'd got the phone number from medical staff for Aaron Patterson as part of her investigation to try and find out what was going on and whether or not there was some sort of outbreak of a deathcap mushroom poisoning, and whether or not there could be
other people that may be unwell. And as their conversation continued, the witness said that Aaron Patterson told her she started to feel a little bit better after initially feeling unwell after the lunch around about the end of Sunday, and she even went ate a bowl of cereal, but then began to feel a lot worse and it was that point she dropped her kids off at the bus stop, got them ready for school, and said that she then
took herself to hospital. Atkinson then went on to ask more details, she said, of Aaron Patterson about what was in the lunch.
So here's the more of the evidence as the court heard it from Sally Anne Atkinson.
Did you ask her any details to provide you any details about the meal that she served on the twenty ninth of July I did?
She confirmed that it was beef Wellington, Yes, and she'd also served mashed potato and beans, and that she'd also had a packet of gravy that was one of those reheatable packets, so she didn't make it herself. She explained that it was a meal she had never made before and that she wanted to do something fancy, and she explained that the majority of the ingredients she had purchased were from leon Gatha Woolworth's.
Yeah, Aaron Patterson told the witness that she'd use woolworst mushrooms and then also dried mushrooms that she'd purchased from an Asian grosser. But Atkinson said Aaron Patterson was unable to recall exactly where she bought the dried mushrooms, but she believed that it was sometime in April twenty twenty three during the school holidays.
Perhaps.
She said that she may have dropped her children off an activity.
It was an unusual thing for her to go.
They would go and stay down in Melbourne and she would drop her children off for these school holiday activities and then she would go and drive around for a little while until it was time to pick them up again. And she said, that's what happened on this occasion. She drove around and then later I took the purchase home that the dried mushrooms. She said, we're in a small clear bag and she bought them. She told the witness for a specific meal which she thought was possibly a pasta dish.
Yeah, And then this witness gave some evidence which she will continue to hear throughout this episode of text messages she exchanged with Aaron Patterson as well as these phone calls, and she said later that sort of after they'd had this conversation, which was about eight thirty in the morning on that first of August, that later in that day she also followed up with a text message that she sort of was alerting her to a number of questions that she needed to ask her because she hadn't hadn't
been able to sort of get on to her again to answer those questions. So let's hear a little bit more of what Sally Anne Atkinson told the court in her evidence regarding this first sort of text message exchange she had with Aaron Patterson.
At the top of that, we see text message Tuesday one August at three point thirty pm. So this is a message you were referring to just prior in your evidence, Is that right?
Yes? Yep?
And can you please read out what you wrote in that message?
Hi, erin, Sally from the Department of Health here. I spoke with you this morning. I have left a message for you to call me, but thought it might be helpful if I let you know this sort of information I wanted to discuss. I need to know what drinks were served at the lunch. I also need to know what type of shalots you purchased, and if you could please give me a basic description of the packaging of the mushrooms from the Asian grocer, that would be good.
Approximately the weight and size of the packaging. Was it partially see through or not? And if you can think of the names of the roads you were parked on or near when you went to the different grocery stores, then I can get officers out looking around those areas. Even a landmark you might have remembered at the time would be helpful. Just things to think about for when I talk to you again. Thank you, Sally.
Now did you receive a response to that text message from Patterson? I did, and that was at what time? Please?
Four eight pm?
And could you read out the response please?
Hi, Sally. Sure, I will try to get that information all to you as soon as possible. I'm just dealing with trying to manage and look after the kids in hospital here and a bit snowed under trying to manage that. I'll get this info to you as soon as I can, but I've just been in a couple of meetings with people at the hospital when you've been trying to call.
Okay and then you responded, yes, at what time please?
Shortly after I think at four ten. I said, thanks so much. I understand. Are your kids doing okay at the moment. I will try calling you later this afternoon around five.
Okay, And she replied, at what time please?
Her reply was eleven minutes past four pm. She said, yeah, they're fine. Thanks, thank you, And I said very pleased to hear that.
Yes, that's okay. Now, did you that afternoon or evening make any further attempts to contact Aaron Patterson by phone?
I did. At five twenty two pm.
I tried to call her, okay. Did she answer?
No? She did not.
Did you leave her?
I left a voice message for her asking her to call me.
Back, okay. Did you receive a response that day?
No? I did not.
It was during this early phone conversation Penny as well that Aaron Patterson recalled to the witness that everybody, all the lunch guests that arrived at about twelve twenty pm in the afternoon, and she said everybody had been served individually and they had.
All made they'd all had their own meals.
But when asked if Atkinson had been told at any point of what the purpose of the lunch was she said at that point, no, she wasn't.
And she followed up this part of her evidence where she was talking about that text messaging before onto the next morning, so this is now the second of August.
She said that she called Aaron Patterson and she hadn't got an answer, so she'd left her a voice mail, and that she said she said in that message that followed another text message following up about half an hour later, that she really needed to get the investigation under way, and that she was going to send Aaron Patterson some questions or if she wanted to send her her email address, she could do it that way as well, but that she really needed to start to get this information. It
was becoming quite urgent. And she then sent Aaron Patterson a list of seven questions via this text message and she was taken through them. She's basically reading them out as they were being shown up on the screens in the courtroom as well through her evidence. So let's hear a little bit more of Sally Anne Atkinson explaining this element of the text messages. It's while she's been questioned
by Jane Warren from the prosecution. I understand you probably have a lot going on, so I thought i'd message with my questions so you can respond with what you do know and work on the rest. Alternatively, I am also happy to email you if you provide me with your email address, if that is an easier way to type your responses. One can you please confirm that it was definitely only the one other time you cooked with
the dried mushrooms when you first opened them. No one else reported symptoms or issues when consumed.
Then.
Two, please advise what drinks were served at lunch. Three please confirm what kind of charlots were used in the beef Wellington. Were they spring onions or the small individual Charlotte type onions? Please?
Four?
Did you possibly use your card to purchase the mushrooms? And can you please check your bank statements for the shop? That would be amazingly helpful. Five could there possibly be any other food left over still in the fridge? We could get counsel to meet your children on site and collect for testing. Six can you look at the maps and think of the streets you parked on or near? That would be helpful for the shops in Oakley, Mount Waverley or Clayton. We are urgently organizing sampling to get
started today. Seven. Can you recall the size and type of packaging including color? What made you pick that brand over any others? Thanks again for your assistance and please feel free to call me back if you prefer.
And then if we go to the next page, you finished it all.
Off, yeah, I said, regards Sally Department of Health.
Okay, now just to remind ourselves that was sent at nine twenty nine am on Wednesday to August. Is that right correct? Did you receive any response from Aaron Patterson to that?
I did not.
Yeah.
The witness actually struggled to get hold of Aaron Patterson on the phone, making phone calls on and off for a number of days and continue to send her text messages. And this is when she said she learned that there was a child protection worker, a Katrina Crips, who was visiting the family home after the accused and her kids had been released from hospital, and she asked between her cryps if she could put them in touch.
Yeah. So, as you mentioned, the number of days, this sort of evidence from Sally ane Atkinson did span quite a period and it was brought up a number of times to her that she would send these texts often, especially if she hadn't been able to reach Erin on the phone immediately, or sometimes that she was then sending text saying can I call you now, just to try and touch base. But this was on the second of
August again as well. She noted after Aaron Patterson and the children had been discharged from hospital, that this child protection worker was going to visit the home, and she said that she asked if she would basically facilitate a phone call because she needed to get some more of
these questions answered. And it was in her evidence to the jury that this phone call was made at one fourteen pm of that day, the second of August, and she told the court that, yes, while this sort of colleague was there, she handed the phone to Aaron, that Aaron was with her and that they had this discussion, and she went through a number of points of that discussion. Let's hear a little bit more of the evidence. As the court was told.
You had asked her in the text messages to confirm that it was definitely only the one other time that she cooked with the dried mushrooms. What did she say in relation to that?
She stated they had not the mushrooms had not been used in any other.
Meal, okay? Did she say why?
She said that they smelt funny when she'd originally opened them, so she decided not to use them. She felt they smelt strong and funny, so thought they might be too overpowering for the meal she'd originally planned for them, and so just put them in a tupperware container to decide what to do with them and not use them.
And that meal she originally planned before, is that the meal you described earlier, the pasta dish.
The pasta type dish, yes, okay.
Was this information consistent or different to what she had told you in the first commas about that?
Different in what way? The initial conversation seemed to indicate she'd use some of them in the first dish, and then saying, you know, she was saying that she had not, but she wasn't very clear.
So there was quite a few questions at different times through Sali Anne Atkinson's evidence that she said she was asking Aaron Patterson any detail you can remember about where these mushrooms came from. So here's some more of the evidence as the court heard it from Sally Ane Atkinson.
Did you ask her another question about any other possible sources for the mushrooms.
I did ask her if she had foraged for mushrooms and.
Picked them herself, and what was her response.
And she said no, she had bought them all right.
And in relation to the beef Wellington that was served for lunch, did you ask some further questions about that?
During the conversation, we had a discussion, yes, about the beef Wellington, and she made it clear that they the meat she had purchased. She'd made the beef Wellington's as individual beef Wellington serves.
And she also mentioned that Troy Shanick, who previously has given evidence that he was involved on a council level as an environmental officer, and that she could send through some different some photos that have come from him to try and establish if she recognized any of the mushrooms he'd been out looking at in different shops.
And we heard from the witness that know that the mushrooms that were in the photographs were of a different coloring.
And she continued to explain that they kept texting back and forth trying to locate this Asian grocery store, and then the conversation switched a little bit to more about the cooking process of the beef Wellington Penny and Atkinson said she was asking about the mushroom paste, the pace that Aaron Patterson said was used to coat this tenderloin steak, and there was questions about when it was cooked and how many batches of the mushroom pace did you make,
and she recalled that Aaron said, no, only one batch of this mushroom paste was cooked. And then the there was more information back and forth in another phone conversation, and this was at about eleven twenty Ampenny the next day, moving to August three, twenty twenty three, and the witness said that Peter had another phone call at this at this point and it went for about fourteen or so minutes. Atkinson said this was the first time she really recalled
one of the suburbs of interest changing. She was explaining that it was Clayton, Mount Waverly. These areas were where they wore, Cly and Oakley where they were they had their search going at the time and they were trying to get in touch with other investigators to sort of help on the ground, and she was explaining to Aaron Patterson that we have people ready to go out onto the streets. Is there any street names you remember, any places you remember, any street corners, things.
Like this to help.
But Atkinson said this was different, and at this point she believed that Aaron Patterson had not mentioned Glenn Waverley to her before, and it was in this fourteen minute phone conversation on the third of August that she said glen Waverley, not Mount Waverley, was mentioned for the first time.
And let's hear a little bit more from Sally An Atkinson's evidence about that particular phone call again, talking about what she says Aaron Patterson relayed to her about how she'd cooked this particular meal, what sort of amounts she'd cooked it in, whether it was all in one batch or not, and why it was that she'd been asking those particular questions.
In respect to the paste, did she say anything about how much was used?
She said that she used up all of the paste to coat all of the tenderloin steaks that she had used, and all of it was used up.
Did she describe how she coated them, what did she do to coat them? She didn't explain that. She just said that they were She just used it to cover.
Them, okay?
And then what was done with the steaks once they were covered in the mushroom paste? Then they were wrapped in pastry okay. Did she say if there was any of the paste leftover?
No, she said she'd used up all the paste.
Did you ask her about how many batches of paste she cooked?
I did.
I asked her if she'd cooked.
More than one batch, and her answer was.
No, she only cooked one batch.
Was there a particular reason why you asked that question?
In case there had been some which had had the mushrooms in from the dried mushrooms that might have been causing illness and others not, and so would explain why some people were sick and some were not. Or did she just not factor in enough mushrooms so she purchased more? Just to make sure I covered everything.
Sally at Atkinson finished the evidence of what the jury has heard so far by mentioning and being asked a little bit about pastry.
Now.
She said that after she'd asked all of these questions over various days and gone back and forth with text messages covering things from not only what was the main meal at the lunch and how it was served, but the cake that had been eaten, the fruit, the drinks, all of these different elements that she realized that she hadn't actually confirmed the pastry where that had come from, how it was used, And she said she spoke to Aaron Patterson to confirm that what type of pastry was it?
Had you also bought this from the shops or had you got it from from your freezer? And she said Aaron Patterson said it was Pampus puff pastry, that she had some in the freezer, but then she'd also bought more. And then she also added in a follow up exchange that she'd also used a roll of Philo pastry that
was sort of in a round cylinder shape. So that's what the jury's sort of heard so far, going back and forth over these what Sally Anne Atkinson recalls as being Aaron Patterson's shopping habits of the times that she'd gone not only the source of the Asian grosser mushrooms they were trying to find, but also how often and not she might have gone to the local Woolworths and when exactly different ingredients had been purchased. That's what the jury has heard so far from her evidence. But we
expect that we more to come. Thank you for listening to this episode of Say Grace. Please press the follow button in your app to get our next episodes as soon as we publish.
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We'd like to acknowledge the traditional owner of the land that this podcast was recorded on and wherever you're listening to it now. Say Grace is created and hosted by me Penelope Lish and me Erin Piercing. This podcast is produced by Genevieve Rule