On July thirty one, twenty twenty three, mushroom expert Camille Truong was searching for answers. There'd been a poisoning at a lunch in a small country town, and she had been asked to examine a sample of leftover food. She'd left work when a request came in to test the meal. Luckily, doctor Chruong had a home set up and the sample was sent over to her. She cleaned a bench and pulled out her equipment.
I have a small microscope setting in my house, so I went there. I always clean up the bench and then I use gloves. I use a small tray and tweezes that are also sterilized with alcohol wipes. I opened the package, saw it was a food item which contained mushrooms inside. So with tweezers, I carefully picked out the little pieces of mushroom on the tray, and then I studied them under the microscope.
After she examined the food, she put them in her fridge and she tested them again on August two. What she found, along with her other investigations into death caps, she told to the court today in the trial of Aaron Patterson. I'm brook Greebert Craig and this is the Mushroom Cook. We've just finished day eleven and once again I'm joined by my colleague, court reporter Laura PLASSELLA Hey Brook, how are you going?
Yeah?
Not bad getting through now, Laura.
We've had some luck finding voice actors that sound like the witnesses on the stand, but unfortunately not this time.
No, unfortunately not. As our listeners heard at the top of the episode, we heard from a second mushroom expert today and she speaks with a French accent. But alas, we don't have any French speakers in our office, so we had to make.
Do that's right. So doctor Treong was the OnCore my college at Victorian Poisons Information Center on July thirty one. She was sent the leftovers of that beef Wellington dish that was fished out of Aaron's bin by a local police officer.
We heard last week some details around this operation. One of the local cops spoke to Erin over the phone and got the access code to her front gate. Erin directed him to one of her outside bins and said that would be the place he would most likely find leftovers of the beef Wellington and after donning some gloves and having a search through the bin, he found a Woolworth's bag that contained the leftovers.
But today the jury was told more about where the leftovers of that meal ended up after it was taken in an ambulance with Aaron to Monash Medical Center.
Yes, these leftovers have gone on quite the journey. So from the bin at Erin's lean Gatha home, like you said, Brook, they've been taken to lean Gatha Hospital from their transported in an ambulance with Erin to Monash Medical Center in Melbourne, and then from Monash Medical Center they've been ferried in an urgent taxi to the city to the office of the Royal Botanic Gardens.
And then what happened with them.
So doctor Truong works for the Royal Botanic Gardens and she's a mycologist, just like doctor Tom May who we heard from yesterday, and she received a phone call from doctor Laura Muldoon who worked at Monash Medical Center about these leftovers. Doctor Muldoon had sent doctor Truong a photo and asked her whether or not from that photo she could identify whether there were death caps in that meal. Considering four people had fallen seriously ill after consuming the
beef Wellington lunch. But doctor Truong said that there was not enough information from that photo for her to be able to draw any conclusions, and the court heard more today about her thought process after she spoke with doctor Mildoon.
These are her words, it's not her voice. I did indicate to her that if the mushroom were coming from a shop or a supermarket, it was extremely unlikely and probably impossible to be death cap mushrooms because those mushrooms only grow in the wild, whereas the mushrooms that you buy in the supermarket are cultivated, are grown in culture, and death cap mushrooms cannot be grown in cultures. She went on to say.
I also told her that there were absolutely no sighting of death cap mushrooms in Victoria during the last months, So based on the information that I received, it was highly unlikely to be a case of death cap poisoning.
So, Laura, you said, doctor Truan couldn't make any conclusions. What was her next steps?
So I mentioned earlier that the leftovers were ferried to her office at the Royal Botanic Gardens, but she hadn't heard from staff at Monash Medical Center for a while, so she actually went home. The leftovers arrived at her office and she wasn't there, so she then had to arrange for them to be brought to her home. But
rest assured. Doctor Trung had a microscope at home, as our listeners would have heard at the top of the episode, so she was well equipped to be able to take a look at these leftovers from the comfort of her house.
And what did she find?
So after she used some tweezers to extract some pieces of the mushroom, she popped them under her microscope and took a look. She was asked today and caught by Crown Prosecutor Nnette Rodgers, whether or not she found any pieces of death cat mushrooms, and she said she didn't. Now, this may be a good time to remind our listeners that the prosecution allege erin served individual Beef Wellington's that
day at that lunch. Beyond that, the prosecution also alleged that her serve of that Beef Wellington that individual serve did not contain death cat mushrooms. But again to also remind our listeners, the defense claimed that what happened at that lunch was a tragedy and a terrible accident, and Erin has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
That's right, Laura. So doctor Truon did find another type of mushroom in those leftovers that she was examining.
What were they, so, she told the court. After examining these mushrooms on July thirty one at her home, she put them in her own fridge at her house, and it was two days later that she took them out and brought them back to her office to examine them further. She told the court today, upon examining them for the second time, she identified them as field mushrooms, and she went on to say that these are mushrooms that are very typically found at your everyday supermarket.
The leftovers were then collected by the Department of Health on August two, So before the jury heard from doctor Truong, my collogist Tom May returned to the stand and continued his evidence from yesterday. Laura, can you remind the listeners who doctor May is.
So, he is an internationally recognized fungi specialist, and he's actually colleagues with doctor Truong. They both work at Royal Botanic Gardens, where doctor May has worked for over thirty years. His cross examination continued today and he was brought to another fatal case of death cap mushroom poisoning. The court heard last year there was a Victorian woman who picked some mushrooms from her front yard that she cooked in a meal that she served to her and her son.
The jury heard that she first picked mushrooms from her yard in April twenty twenty four and she cooked them and everything was fine. Her and her son didn't fall ill. But then a month later she noticed that mushrooms were growing in the same location in her yard, so she picked them again and cooked them again, but this time they both got very ill following the meal. They were both taken to hospital, but unfortunately the woman died.
And doctor May told the jury that he was familiar with this particular case. Why is that, Laura?
The court heard that this was the subject of a cronial finding. The coroner recommended there to be more public health messaging about the dangers of consuming wild mushrooms.
And in particular, he was contacted by the Department of Health to help with these public health messages, and doctor May was also asked about the smell of death cap mushrooms.
He told the court that he's actually dried deathcap mushrooms before and he was asked by the prosecution what they smell like, and he said very unpleasant in his opinion.
Okay, Now moving on to more medical evidence, the jury heard from an intensive care specialist. His name was Professor Andrew Burston. He actually examined Aaron's medical records. What did he find.
The first thing he was questioned about today was whether or not Erin had ever been diagnosed with cancer. And to remind our listeners, it's the prosecution case that Arin invited her lunch guests over to her house on the pretense that she had cancer as a way to expl blained to them why the children were not in attendance. However, the defense have suggested that Eron never told the lunch guests she had cancer, but rather that she had a
suspected diagnosis. So Professor Burston was asked today about this and he said that after reviewing Erin's medical records, he found no evidence that she had been diagnosed with cancer. The court specifically heard that Erin had completed a cervical screening test in March twenty twenty three, and the results of that had come back normal. Professor Burston told the court that these tests are only required every five years, and she would most likely have been told that.
Through Aaron's medical records. Professor Burston also found no evidence of toxic mushroom poisoning after she was admitted to hospital following the lunch. We touched upon that in yesterday's episode, Now Laura, we saw the return of the dehydrator being mentioned in court.
Yes, the dehydrator has been missing an action, but it made a return today and that was through the evidence of Darren Canty. He is an operations manager at the Dasma Group and this organization run the Kunwara transfer Station and landfill, so essentially one of the local tips in the area. Now our listeners might remember the tip from the opening addresses. Defense barrister Colin Mandy said that Aaron admitted she lied to police about dumping the dehydrator at
the tip. Mister Canty told the court that he got a call from police on August four, who were making inquiries about a person who had gone to their tip to drop something off on August two, so two days earlier. He said he reviewed the CCTV footage from that day. This footage was shown to the jury and in it you can see a red fooel drive pull up to the tip. A woman who was dressed in a gray sweater and cream pants is seen getting out of the car,
going to a boot and taking out an item. She then walks into a shed at the tip and about twenty seconds later re emerges without that item. She then gets back into her car and the footage stops.
Mister Canty then got his colleague to go through the tip and find this item that was dropped off. The colleague then found a dehydrator and he told his boss.
The jury was then shown a photo of the dehydrator. It was lying on its side, and mister Canty then said he rang the police to tell them what he had found, and before long they had come to the site to pick it up.
That's right, so the police actually sees that dehydrator on August four.
But I'm sure this won't be the last we hear about the dehydrator.
So that's all the evidence from today and tomorrow we're expected to hear more from expert witnesses. So we'll be back then with another episode, and in the meantime, go to the mushroomcook dot com dot au for more