Today in the trial of Aaron Patterson, police officer Kwang Tran took to the stand to show the jury some CCTV of a service station on the South Gippsland Highway in Coldermeined. It's one of those modern servos with a macas and a parking area. You can just about see from space in the footage, a little red MG car pulls up outside the entry to the building. Dressed in a gray top and cream pants, Aaron walks in and goes to the ladies. Nine seconds later she exits. She
browses the food section, purchases items and then leaves. It's a typical visit to a typical servo that could happen anywhere in country Australia. But this visit happened on July thirty, twenty twenty three, one day after the beef Wellington lunch that led to the deaths of three people and the charges of murder against the person who cooked the meal. I'm Brook Greebert Craig, and this is the Mushroom Cook.
We've just finished day fifteen of Aaron Patterson's trial, and I'm here as always with my colleague and court reporter Laura Placella.
Another day, another podcast episode.
Yes it is. It was a full day in court, but majority of the day we heard again from doctor Matthew Sirall, who continued his evidence from yesterday, but more on him later. At the top of the episode, our listeners heard about CCTV that was pulled from a BP service station.
That's right, but let's just take a step back for a second and give our listeners a little bit more context. It's been a while a few episodes actually, since we've spoken about the events following the lunch. We've been spending time focusing on phone records from the months before the lunch and some scientific evidence about the leftovers from a month after the lunch. So let's bring it back to
this meal. On July twenty nine, the court heard evidence two weeks ago from Aaron's Sun who spoke about the day's following that meal and what he remembers. He said that the day after lunch, on July thirty, he woke up and went into the kitchen where he saw his
mum drinking a coffee. He said that she told him she had been unwell throughout the night, was feeling a bit sick and had experienced diarrhea, and the court heard they would not be going to church that Sunday like they usually do, but our listeners might remember that her son was taking flying lessons and one of those lessons
was booked for that Sunday. Her son explained that he told his mom there was no pressure for her to take him to this flying lesson, considering she was sick, but he said that she insisted she would still take him. So the jury heard that later that afternoon they set off for the lesson, which is in Taiab, a town in the Mornington Peninsula, which is over an hour's drive from where they live in Leengatha. And on the way they stopped at this BP service station in Cold Meat,
and this is where the CCTV footage was obtained. As you mentioned earlier, Brooke, the jury heard today from Senior Constable Quang Tran from the homicide squad, who said he obtained the CCTV footage in August. That footage was then played to the jury in the prosecution opening a few weeks ago. The jury heard that that day she purchased some sour confectionery, a ham, cheese and tomato sandwich, and
a sweet chili chicken rut. After three minutes, she left the service station, but it was a short cameo by Constable Tran. After this CCTV footage was played to the jury, his evidence was done for the day and the jury went home, but were expected to hear from him at a later stage.
Now that brings me back to doctor Serrell, the digital forensic expert the jury heard from yesterday. He was cross examined by Aaron's defense barrister Colin Mandy sc today.
We heard yesterday that he specializes in mobile phone network data and he really did give the jurors a lesson in the mobile phone network and how it all works. He confirmed that he had received years of phone records relating to a handset belonging to Erin, and yesterday he was questioned about these records, in particular certain dates in April and May twenty twenty three. Today, as you mentioned, Brooke,
he was cross examined by the defense. They attempted to cast out on the opinions that doctor Cerel had drawn from these records. One of the first dates that doctor Sorel was brought to was April twenty eight, twenty twenty three. To give some context, around this date. This is ten days after Christine McKenzie, who we heard from yesterday, posted on our naturalist and observation of deathcat mushrooms growing near
an oval in Locke. Doctor Sorel told the court yesterday that it was his opinion that Erin's phone made a possible visit to Locke on April twenty eight, so again, ten days after this post was made. Mister Mandy questioned him today about that opinion, and doctor Soerell agreed with mister Mandy that there were no records that he had that showed the phone was definitively in the boundary of the Locke township. He did go on to say, though, that the records did show that the phone was certainly
to the east of the township. In a very similar fashion, mister Mandy also asked doctor Sorel questions around one of the other dates he was asked to analyze of Erin's phone records, and this was May twenty two. This was one day after mycologist doctor Tom May hosted a citing
of deathcat mushrooms in Outram on May twenty one. Mister Mandy put a proposition to doctor Soerell today around that date and asked whether Erin's phone records were consistent with the proposition that the phone moved from lee Gatha down the Bass Highway heading to Inverlocke and at some point stopped for a period of time. Doctor Serell thought about this hypothetical for a bit and he said he had a concern with it, which was that there was one
base station. Just to remind our listeners, this is the technical term for a telephone tower. He said that there was no connection with the Kongwak base station during that journey, and he said that was an anomaly with mister Mandy's proposition. However, he did agree though with the defense that there remained a possibility that the mobile phone did not enter the Outram postcode on that day.
So all this evidence sounds a little bit confusing.
Yes, and it's safe to say that today was definitely another dense day of evidence. But if I can put it like this, during his evidence in chief yesterday, doctor Cerel spoke about the possible visits that could have been made to these areas by Erin's phone on a number
of days. Today, when it came to his cross examination, he was really speaking about the fact that just because these could be possible visits, it didn't mean that there weren't other possibilities or other possible types of visits her phone could have made on these days.
Okay, that makes sense now. And on a lighter note, we had a little intruder in the courtroom today.
We did. It definitely broke up the evidence from doctor Serral, even if it was just momentarily. There was a little beetle that was crawling on the microphone that he was speaking into in the witness box, and it managed to catch his attention and he kind of stopped mid sentence and told the court there's a nice little beetle crawling across my microphone, which got some laughs from the courtroom, and then soon after that his evidence continued.
Yes, we did have a little chuckle with that. We will be back tomorrow, but in the meantime go to the mushroomcook dot com dot au to stay updated on this case.