You heard the accused say that she regrets telling lies, but that's what she did. She's not on trial for being a liar. And whether or not you agree or condone or think that what she did was morally correct, and you'd have your views about that, those things don't have any place in this trial.
Is Aaron Pattison a murderer or just a liar? It's been one of the central questions of this Mushroom cook trial throughout today. Her defense barrister Colin Mandy said his client did some things that could appear sinister in hindsight, but he said that doesn't make her a murderer. Mister Mandy continued with his closing address today as he tried to forensically pick apart the prosecution case. I'm Brook Greebt Craig,
and this is the Mushroom Cool. Day thirty four of Aaron Patterson's murder trial has just wrapped up, and I'm here with my colleague, court reporter Laura PLASSELLA.
Hey, Brook, let's get the show on the road.
Let's do it so. Mister Mandy began his closings today by reminding the jury of the themes of his address. He said they were misleading impressions, honest and mistaken memories, the burden of pruth, and the duty of fairness.
But in a similar fashion to Crown Prosecutor Nnette Rodgers when she gave her extra fifth deception, mister Mandy said there was also a fifth theme that he hadn't yet mentioned, and he said this was hindsight reasoning. He said this type of reasoning can create false clarity about ambiguous situations. He told the jury that Erin's actions might have been explicable given the information available to her at the time, but he said they can appear sinister when viewed through
the lens of what you know happened subsequently. Here's more of what he said about this. These are his words, but not his voice.
People react differently to situations based on their personalities, their experiences, the way they are. None of these things determines guilt. Your personality, your experiences of life, the patterns of your behavior doesn't determine whether or not you're guilty of something that happened in the past. And it is an invitation. Hindsight reasoning is an invitation to apply a moral judgment
to what someone has done. It is a distraction from your exercise, which you have to engage in using your heads and not your hearts, your intellectual analysis of the evidence. It doesn't matter what you may have done in a similar situation. No one knows what they would have done in a similar situation.
Up until this point, mister Mandy had really been talking about the themes we mentioned earlier, but at this stage in his closing address today, he wanted to take the jury back to the timeline of the lunch and the events leading up to the lunch, and that went back a number of years.
Mister Mandy started by transporting the jury back to twenty twenty when Aaron became interested in mushrooms during Victoria's COVID lockdowns. He said she photographed mushrooms in the wild, picked them, and took them home, where she ate them.
Mister Mandy then turned to the fungi at the center of this case, death cap mushrooms. He said it made sense that Aaron would come to hear about these toxic mushrooms since she was developing an interest in wild mushrooms. He confirmed she visited citizen science website I Naturalist in May twenty twenty two, specifically a world map showing the locations of death caps and a siding of death caps
in Marabin. But he said this was a very brief interaction with the website because she wanted to find out or make sure that there weren't any death caps growing in Gippsland. He described her visit to the website as idle curiosity.
So this was not a person carefully studying this information, doing research about it. This was not a deep and abiding interest in the subject matter. It was passing attention in exactly the same way as many of us would do on our devices. Something pops into your head in an idle moment and you go, I wonder about that.
Mister Mehdi said that in May twenty twenty two, there were no signings of death caps in the Gippsland area. He went on to say that there had only ever been two sidings of death caps in this area that were posted to the website, and this was in April and May twenty twenty three. These were the two posts by Christine McKenzie and doctor Tom may In Locke and Outram. He reminded the jury that the prosecution was alleging that Erin saw both these signings on our Naturalist and then
traveled to those areas to forage for death caps. It was at this point in his closing address mister Mandy actually became quite theatrical. At the lectern he was speaking from, he acted out the allegation that his client was waiting for these sightings to appear.
And on the Crown case, you might think remarkably extraordinarily, Aaron Patterson observed and acted on the only two sightings of death cap mushrooms ever in South Gippsland, as is their case, like she was sitting there waiting for them, never seen them before in South Gippsland. I Naturalist says that I grow here, refresh up, still not there, refresh still not there, refresh still not there. Ah, How likely
is that? And there's not one scrap of evidence that she actually saw those posts, not from mister fox Henry, not from the records, not from anyone else. There's no evidence she ever returned to the I Naturalist website after the single visit in May of twenty twenty two.
Moving away from mushrooms now now, mister Mandy took the jury to the evidence from Simon and Aaron, where they both spoke of Erin having a good relationship with Don and Gail. Mister Mandy told the jury there was no possible prospect she wanted to destroy her whole world and her whole life. Mister Mandy said there was no awkwardness between them until September twenty twenty two, about seven years
after their separation. Mister Mandy said the prosecution had attempted to undermine the loving, supportive relationship between Aaron and the Patterson family by presenting her as two faced. He said the only evidence of any kind of dispute between them were the messages over child support and Aaron's belief she had not been invited to Gaile's seventieth birthday celebrations. Here's what he said today in court about it.
Erin is feeling hurt and left out. It is a deplete misunderstanding. She's completely wrong, She's got the wrong end of the stick, and she's apologizing, totally inconsistent with the way a cold blooded, calculating person would behave.
Mister Mandy then said the spat about the tax return and child support was also resolved amicably.
It's, in fact, the only evidence of any kind of dispute or tension between Erin and Don and Gail was the tone of the messages that you can actually see in evidence, and our submission to you is that it is an entirely unremarkable minor blow up. Is minor blow up the right thing to say, It's a minor thing in family relationships. It stands out in this case because it's the only one, because these people are eternally polite to each other. It's the only evidence of any kind
of tension, so it jumps out. But looking at it, what kind of tension is it? It's not. It's not a significant one. It's not about very much at all.
Mister Mandy said the prosecution had tried to suggest that this was evidence of Erin leading a duplicitous life, but he said the messages actually showed that Erin was someone who didn't hide her true feelings, someone who was standing up for herself, and someone who is being direct but
not rude. Mister Mandy then took the jury to the messages between Erin and her Facebook friends, saying these messages were pretty normal for someone when they were ranting about things in their life, including the people they love.
Loving someone doesn't mean that you never feel frustrated with them, or upset with them, or hurt by them. The prosecution's argument assumes that human relationships are one dimensional. That is the way it always is. There is no nuance to it, there is no subtlety, and that's simply not realistic, they say to you. Ignore the long history of support and love and respect from the Patterson family for Erin from Erin.
Ignore all of that long history and actual real world observations made by the people closest to Aaron and Simon day after day for years and years and years. Ignore all that, and instead rely on three days of upset from Erin and the recollections of these online friends about things she might have said, of which there is no record other than those two weeks.
Mister Mandy then turned to the issue of Aaron's weight. He said the evidence showed she had a problem with her self image, She purchased diet books, she binge ate, and was embarrassed and depressed.
Mister Mandy said Erin contacted the Enrich Clinic in Melbourne in around April or May twenty twenty three for a consultation, and she booked an appointment that was scheduled for September. Erin told the jury last week that she booked this appointment because she wanted to explore gastric bypass surgery, but she later accepted under cross examination that the clinic never offered this procedure. However, mister Mandy reiterated today that the
clinic did offer liposuction in twenty twenty three. This is what he said about his client state of mind at the time.
Her understanding at the time that she booked it was that they offered the full range of weight loss treatment options, including liposuction, gastric bypass, and other surgery. She was mistaken, honestly mistaken, understandable, you might think, in circumstances where she ultimately canceled the appointment and hadn't had a consultation with them.
Mister Mandy moved onto the lump Aaron said she had on her elbow. He said she often thought there were things wrong with her. In her evidence, Aaron admitted to the jury she lied to Donn and Gale about having tests on her elbow in June twenty twenty three because she liked the attention they were giving her.
She's not on trial for lying. This is not a court of as I said to you, moral judgment, you shouldn't take the leap from this lie about a lump on her elbow to finding her guilty of triple murder. Those things are a very, very long way apart.
Mister Mandy then took the jury to the section of Erin's evidence. When she was asked about what she told the guests about cancer from the witness box, she said that she wasn't proud of it, but she led the guests to believe that she might be needing some treatment in relation to averian cancer. Later in her evidence, she explained that she was trying to communicate to them that
she was undergoing investigations around ovarian cancer. But under cross examination she was very firm and she denied telling the guests that she had cancer. Mister Mandy then took the jury to the evidence of Ian, who said that he remembers Aaron telling the guests at the table that she was in the diagnostic phase, but that maybe treatment was not yet specified. Our listeners may remember that Aarin said she misled her guests because she didn't want to tell
them she was planning on undergoing gastric bypass surgery. This is what mister Mandy said today.
Her concerns about her weight her body image were deeply personal, deeply embarrassing. Much easier to say I've got to go to hospital for a few days to get some surgery for some treatment than to tell people that you're going to get liposuction or a gastric bypass. Much easier to just continue this lie about the lump and hint at diagnosis and treatment rather than tell truth. Much easier to never tell anyone that you're a binge eater who makes
herself so sick from overeating that she throws up. Those kind of things are private and deeply embarrassing. So she did tell them a lie, but she did not say consistent with her evidence that she had a definitive cancer diagnosis.
Mister Mandy also argued that if the cancer story was a ruse to get the guests to the lunch, she would not have told them after they had eaten their beef Wellington's if this was a.
Ruse, So there was no need to have the conversation because the deed on the crown case, the consumption of the food had already happened. There was absolutely no need for Aaron to say anything about cancer at all. If it was a ruse that was related to deliberately poisoning people on the Crown case, her object had already been achieved by that point. So the only rational conclusion fact finding, drawing inferences, making logical connections, which is what you have
to do. The only rational conclusion is that the lie about cancer had absolutely nothing to do with any intention to kill. If there was one, what's the point in telling them at the end, after they've eaten the food. It is going to be some time before anyone gets sick from eating the meal. The guests could have told anyone about the conversation in the meantime.
Moving on to the meal itself, mister Mandy turned to the prosecution's claim that Aaron lied about buying mushrooms from an Asian grosser and purchasing a dehydrator with the sole intent of using it to dry death caps.
Mister Mandy actually said that the evidence doesn't seem to make any sense at all. He said Aaron didn't need to buy a dehydrator if it was just going to be used for that one meal. He told the jury that mushrooms can be dehydrated in an oven and it was more likely the purchase of the dehydrator was part
of a long term project for his client. He also said that the prosecution's claim that she was experimenting by dehydrating button mushrooms before turning her attention to the death caps was also implausible.
Why would you need to hide mushrooms in a mushroom paste. It doesn't make any sense. She could hide them in a brownie or a muffin where they don't belong. So that theory we submit to you doesn't make any sense at all, and it is one of the many, many logical implausibilities in the prosecution argument in this case.
Mister Mandy reminded the jury that it was the prosecution case that and cooked five poisoned beef Wellington's and one unpoisoned beef wellington. He said, if that was the case, it would have been very important for his client to not lose track of the one unpoisoned serve when putting it in the oven. Mister Mandy told the jury that there was only one logical way of getting around that problem,
and he said it wasn't using different plates. He said it made more sense to mark the pastry of the unpoisoned one, so you could identify which one was safe throughout the cooking process.
Speaking of plates, mister Mandy said it was a colorful piece of evidence pun non intended.
Referring to the argument he just made about marking the pastry. He said Ian had to be wrong about what he said about Aaron serving the guests on four gray plates and Aaron serving herself on a smaller orange tan plate.
But when you look at all the evidence on the issue of plates and what plates Erin had in her house, and what everyone says aboute it has to be the case that Ian Wilkinson is wrong about what he said. It makes no sense logically that you would use that method to deliver an unpoisoned parcel. But otherwise on all of the evidence, he's wrong, honestly mistaken.
He then took the jury to some of the other evidence about the plates. He reminded then that Simon said Aaron did not have a matching set of plates, that their son said he remembered cleaning up white plates after the lunch, and that Aaron said she had used two black, two white, and one black and red plate for the lunch. When plating up the meal, mister Mandy said, considering all this, it was likely there was at least three different colored plates at the lunch table.
Mister Mandy then turned to after the lunch and Aaron's evidence that once her guest left, she had binged the orange cake brought for dessert and then made herself sick. In her evidence, Aaron said, and she couldn't remember what was in her vomit.
If she was lying to you, she would say, oh, look, when I throw up, I could clearly recognize pastry and meat and mushrooms in there. Absolutely, categorically it all came up. If she was lying, that's what she would say. But instead she says, I don't know, it's vomit. If she was lying, she would have said icerop immediately and I could clearly see everything. She didn't say that to you.
Mister Mandy told the jury that Erin had not lied about falling ill after the lunch, but it was more the case of the progress of her illness being very different to that of her guests. He said it was plain enough that Erin's symptoms were different, so he took the jury to the evidence of toxicologist Dimitri Girista Mulis who said the severity of the symptoms was the result
of a number of factors. The court has previously heard that these factors include the amount of toxin consumed, the distribution of the toxin in the meal, the person weight, as well as their age. Mister Mandy explained to the jury that the dried mushrooms Erin added into the meal may not have been evenly spread throughout the paste, and he also said that while don Ian and Heather ate their entire serves Erin and Gail did not.
No one was measuring, so it's a bit hard after you have eaten a parcel to say how much of you already eaten, But that's a relevant factor. Some people ate a whole portion and some people ate one on one thirds or one and two thirds.
He also mentioned the fact that Aaron read more than one hundred kilos and was significantly younger than her guests. He said, together these factors meant that Aaron may have reacted much better after consuming death Caps compared to her guests. He reiterated to the jury that people can react differently after consuming this poison, and with.
That, mister Mandy was done for the day.
But he will continue his closing address tomorrow.
In the meantime, go to the mushroomcook dot com dot au for more
Doctor Do