I'm sick of this shit. I want nothing to do with them. I thought his parents would want him to do the right thing, but it seems they're concerned about not wanting to feel uncomfortable and not wanting to get involved in their son's personal matters are overriding that. So fuckam.
On August five, twenty twenty three, police search the home of Aaron Pattison, the woman who is now on trial for murder over the deadly Mushroom Mill. Investigators seized multiple devices, but on one particular mobile phone they found Facebook messages sent from an account linked to Erin messages sent to friends in a group chat.
So Don said they can't adjudicate if they don't know both sides, and Simon won't give his side, so he said all he can ask is that Simon and I get together and pray for the children this family. I swear to fooking God.
These messages, along with images, screenshots, and other evidence taken from different devices, were shown to the jury. Here in my well, I'm Brooke Greebert Craig, and this is the Mushroom Cook. And once again with my colleague, court reporter Laura passella Hey Brook, it was a busy day in court, wasn't it.
Yes, it was definitely a jam pack day.
Let's start with Digital forensic Officer Shaman fox Henry. We spoke about him yesterday. He was in court again today continuing his evidence.
That's right. Our listeners may remember that yesterday he was speaking about a Cooler Master computer that was seized from Aaron's house during one of the search warrants, and he spoke about what was found on that device. But today he focused on the phones and a tablet that was seized.
Let's talk about one of the mobile phones first. We heard grabs from a voice actor at the start of the episode that we're reading some of the messages that were found on that device.
Yes, that's right. This was a Samsung phone analyzed by one of mister fox Henry's colleagues, and there are a raft of messages that were extracted and they were all shown to the jury on screens in the courtroom and read out by Crown Prosecutor Jane Warren. As you would have heard at the top of the episode, these are messages from a Facebook group chat that had members including Danielle Barkley and Jenny Hay, who were witnesses who gave
evidence at the beginning of this trial. They were some of the friends Erin had made over the internet.
Now, these messages were sent from an account called Aaron Aaron Eron.
Yes, you've got that right. In the prosecution opening, the jury heard that Erin spoke to her online friends under three account names, and at the time the prosecution said these were Aaron Patterson Erin Erin and the one you just mentioned, Brook Aeron Erin Erin, And the messages that were brought up on the screen today were all in relation to that third account name. The messages were sent in early December twenty twenty two and reference the child
support dispute between Aaron and Simon. In the messages, Aaron Aaron, Aaron writes to her friends about Don's response to this ongoing dispute.
Here are some of those messages.
I said to him about fifty times yesterday that I didn't want them to adjudicate nobody bloody listens to me. At least I know they're a lost cause. I wonder if they've got any capacity for self reflection at all. I mean, clearly, the fact that Simon refused to talk about personal issues in part stems from the behavior of his parents and how they operate.
Days later, on December nine, another message was sent.
His mum was horrified I'd claimed child support. Why isn't she horrified her son is such a deadbeat that I had no choice but to claim.
So it's really important to note that these texts were read into the record today, but mister fox Henry wasn't asked anything about what they meant or anything about their contents. He simply explained that these messages were found on the device and linked to the account name Aaron eron Erin, and I will just add that there were other messages today shown to the jury.
Now, mister fox Henry continued his evidence and he was asked questions around a Samsung tablet seized from Aaron's home. The jury were then showed images that were extracted from that device. These images were of a black dehydrator from April thirty, twenty twenty three, and images of mushrooms on a set of kitchen scales from May four, twenty twenty three, so this was about two months before that deadly lunch.
Mister fox Henry explained that these photos were extracted from a Google Photos cash folder, and the dates that you mentioned just then, Brooke, were the last modified dates that were pulled from the tablet. Beyond these photos that were taken of the dehydrator and the kitchen scales, some photos were also extracted from the device that appeared to be screenshots taken of a web browser. The search results in the screenshot were shown to the jury and there were
four in total, all referencing cancer. There were three relating to ovarian cancer and one about lymphoma. One of the screenshots, which had a last modified date of May tenth, twenty twenty three, had reference to a website called Stage four ovarian Cancer, and the text on the screen read stage four ovarian cancer means the cancer has spread to other body organs some distance away from the ovaries, such as
the liver or the lungs. Again, mister Fox, Henry wasn't asked any questions about what these screenshots or these photos meant, simply that they were extracted from this tablet.
And just to remind the listeners, the prosecution alleges Aarin falsely claimed to have had cancer to explain why the children were not at that lunch on July twenty nine, while the defense has suggested Aaron only told the lunch guests she had as suspected diagnosis of cancer.
We've heard evidence as well from Professor Andrew Burston who has examined Aaron's medical records and confirmed she has never been diagnosed with cancer.
And there was another phone that mister fox Henry spoke about today, wasn't there?
There was? This was another Samsung mobile phone. So there are two Samsungs that have been seized in this case. And this phone is being referred to as Phone B. It was the phone that Aaron handed to investigators during the search warrant. It was analyzed by again one of mister fox Henry's colleagues, and he told the court that when it came time to examine the device, they found
that four factory resets had been conducted. A report was shown to the jury of those factory resets, and it could be seen that they were made on February twelve, August two, August five, and August eighth, twenty twenty three. August five was the date of the warrant itself, and August eighth was three days afterwards, after the phone had already been seized. Mister fox Henry told the court that no user data had been extracted from this device.
Now let's move on. The jury heard more about the investigation the City of Monash Council did into mushrooms at Asian grosers. Our listeners will remember that Erin claimed to multiple different medical experts that she bought the dried mushrooms that she used in the beef Wellington dish from an Asian grosser.
The jury heard about this investigation through one of the Monash City Council's Environmental health officers. His name was Troy schwan neckt I think I've pronounced that wrong, so I apologized Troy, So I'm just going to call him by his first name for this little bit of the episode. He explained to the jury that he was tasked with first coming up with a list of all of the Asian grossers in Oakley, Clayton and Matt Waverley were some of the suburbs Erin had mentioned to these experts. You
spoke about Brook. She said she couldn't remember which suburb the Asian grocer was located, but she said it may have been in one of these three.
So it was really up to him to attend those premises, take photos of the mushrooms and then establish a supply chain and understand whether there were any changes to it.
In total, he attended fourteen grocers. There were five in Oakley, five in Clayton, and four in Mount Waverley, and he told the court that across his investigation he took more than three hundred photos, and some of those were shown to the jury today on the screens.
The jury also heard that Aaron told officials that she bought mushrooms from a store in a strip shopping center. She said the mushrooms were in a sea through packet and the label on the packet was white with typing on it. She also said that the mushrooms were either Shitaki mushrooms or Porcini mushrooms.
So this really helped guide Troy's investigation. He made sure that when he was going to these premises he was really looking for mushrooms that matched this description. When it came time for him to write up his findings, which were again shown on the screen to the jury, he said that it was only one store in Oakley that
had repackaged mushrooms. He explained that this particular shop got the mushrooms in bulk and due to the preferences of their customers, put those mushrooms into smaller bags for sale.
And through cross examination, the jury heard that this was the store where some of the mushrooms were actually taken off the shelves for some time.
This was because of the similarities some of these repackaged mushrooms shared with the information Troy was provided, but the court heard that ultimately he was unable to find any product across these fourteen stores that exactly matched the description Aaron had provided.
Troy was also cross examined about something else, wasn't.
He Laura, Yeah, there was one final point that defense barrister Sophie Stafford wanted to make, which was in relation to the fact that Aaron had told some officials that the dried mushrooms could have been bought from an Asian grocer in glen Waverley, but Troy confirmed he was not asked to attend any Asian grocers in Glen Waverley.
Okay, Laura, now we're going to move on to a completely different topic. It's a bit jarring, but the jury was shown a chart of Aaron's BAO movements when she was in hospital on July thirty one, twenty twenty three. Now, Laura, this is a bit tmi, isn't it.
Yes? We have heard quite a lot of medical evidence in this case, but things definitely got into the nitty gritties today.
This evidence came through witness Mariam Cesspon, who was a nurse who assisted Aaron Attlean at the hospital on July thirty one.
This was two days after the lunch and to remind our listeners, Aaron had presented at the hospital around eight o'clock. She discharged herself against medical advice five minutes later, but ultimately returned by around nine point fifty. After she was admitted and brought into a room. Mariam said that she asked Erin to tell her every time she needed to go to the toilet so they could collect these bow motions and keep a record of them.
And something was mentioned about witch's hats, wasn't it Yes?
And this was something I'd never heard of before. But another term for the pan they used to collect this matter is actually called a witch's hat. So she explained how the witch's hat is like an inverted triangle. It's placed on the toilet seat to collect the bow movements for examination by a doctor or nurse.
Now, what were actually found on these charts?
There were five bow movements recorded from ten am to around eleven fifty am, just before Erin was taken by ambulance to Monash Medical Center. The three bower movements were actually in very close proximity, so ten am, ten oh four and ten o six and Miss Sesspond was tasked with observing these bower movements and writing a description of them.
Again, this is a bit TMI, but a few of them were described as medium and had the consistency of liquid.
And Miss Sespond recalled to the court that at one stage Erin told her it does look a little like a we, but it is a bowl motion.
And on that note, hopefully we don't have to talk about Aaron's bower movements ever.
Again yes, I hope so too. But just to flag it is mister Fox Henry who is set again to take the stand tomorrow for his third day of evidence.
We'll be back tomorrow, but in the meantime go to the mushroomcook dot com dot au for more