What a day.
It's the first time we heard exactly how Aaron Patterson is alleged to have murdered her lunch guests. The prosecution says she deliberately poisoned the beef Wellington mill she served her estranged husband's family, but the defense is something very different happened that day. They say the lunch was a tragedy and a terrible accident. I'm Brooke Greebert Craig, and this is the Mushroom Cook. Wow, Laura, what a big day in court.
Oh my goodness. I'm almost relieved that we're sitting down to record this episode because I feel like we learnt so much today that I need to unpack it all with you.
My mind is literally exploding. I just can't believe it.
Yeah, So we're going to try our hardest today to break it all down for our listairs, but you might need to bear with us because there is a lot we have to get through.
So broadly, Laura, what happened today?
So today was the first time we heard the prosecution put their case against Erin. They did that in their opening address and I'm just going to repeat myself again, but it's important we get this out of the way. Erin has been charged with three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder and she has pleaded not guilty. So the prosecution today put forward their case and that contained a lot of allegations, which is what we will be unpacking today.
Okay, let's start with lunch. What do the prosecution say happened the lunch?
We know what happened at Leanngatha, at Erin's home on July twenty ninth, twenty twenty three. Five people were invited to this lunch, Simon Patterson, her former husband, Simon's parents, John and Gail Patterson, and Simon's aunt and uncle, Ian and Heather Wilkinson. Simon never went to the lunch, but Don, Gail, Ian and Heather all attended and they were all invited at a church service. Yes, we did hear that today. Eron went up to everyone at church and invited them to her house for this lunch.
Simon initially said yes, that he was going to attend, but he later texted Erin a day before the lunch and said that he would not be going.
Yes, so we did hear that from Nannette Roger's sc She is the Crown prosecutor, so she was the one today walking the jury through the prosecution case.
So, Laura, all four guests arrived to Aaron Patterson's house together.
Yes, that's right, and Ian and Heather actually had never been to her house before, so the lunch almost started with a little bit of a tour. Aaron showed them around the house and then soon after lunch was served.
And I think we should make it clear that Aaron and Simon's kids were not present at the lunch at all.
Yes, that is important to note.
So Aeron served her guests individual beef Wellington's on different colored plates.
The prosecution described to us how when the lunch was being served, there were four gray plates and then there was another plate. The prosecution says this was a tanned orange plate, and when it came time for everyone to sit at the ten, it was the four lunch guests who had the gray plate, and Aaron ate her serve of the beef Wellington off that tanned orange plate.
As well as the beef Wellington. They also had mashed potato and green beans on their plates. We heard from the prosecution that Ian and Heather ate their whole portion of their beef Wellington. We heard that Gail ate half and don ate his portion and Gale's half.
Yes, And then after that we also heard there was some cake and a fruit platter to finish off the lunch.
So Laura, for the first time we heard why Aaron invited the guests to a house for lunch.
Yes, so we heard that she wanted their advice. She mentioned there being a medical issue that had cropped up in her life and she was wondering the best way to tell her children about it.
Aaron then said that she had an ovarian cancer diagnosis, and the guest said it was best to be honest with the kids about it.
And I think it's important at this point to say that the prosecutions say this claim was deliberately false. Arin does not have cancer. Her defense barrister Colin Mandy, and we will talk more about what he had to say in his opening address today, but he made it clear in his address that Aaron does not have cancer and that claim was false.
And then the prosecution said that Erin used this false claim to ensure and explain then why the children would not be present at that lunch on July twenty nine.
All right, so I think we should take a step back now and let's talk about the mushrooms. It's not in dispute that Don, Gail and Heather all passed away after falling victim to death cat mushroom poisoning. That was made pretty clear today in court, wasn't it.
Yes, that's correct. So what we heard from the prosecution is that Aaron told multiple doctors, nurses and also the Department of Health that she actually sourced the mushrooms from a local Woolworths in lean Gatha, and then she also sourced dried mushrooms from a Chinese grosser and that was in either Oaklegh, glen Waverley, Mount Waverley or Layton, but she couldn't remember where exactly she got those dried mushrooms from.
And for our listeners who don't know, those final four suburbs are located in Melbourne Southeast.
Erin was also asked by doctors whether she actually foraged the mushrooms and she denied those allegations multiple times. I think it's also important to note that the prosecution says that the Department of Health received no other reports of people falling ill and no mushroom products were pulled or record Okay, Laura, now let's move on to the dehydrator. Can you tell me what we learned from the prosecution.
The prosecution walked us through what happened after the lunch, and one part of this was surrounding the dehydrator. A dehydrator is a kitchen appliance that you can use for various purposes, but mainly, like its name suggests, it's to dehydrate food items. So the dehydrada that Erin had at her house, it was found by police days later at a local tip near her home. It was forensically examined and there were found to be traces of deathcap mushrooms
on this dehydrata. But I will just say at this point that the defense admits that Erin did get rid of this dehydrada. They're not trying to shy away from it. They admit she got rid of it at the tip. The defense told the jury today in their opening address that their client did tell a number of lies in the aftermath of the lunch. They say she panicked because she was overwhelmed by the fact that three guests, three people close to her, had died following a meal at
her home. Another lie that the defense admits their client told was that she had never foraged for mushrooms before she told police that she had never done it. But mister Mandy said today that she admits she did forage for ushrooms, but she denies that she ever deliberately sought out death cap mushrooms. Just to reiterate, though, the defense says that the lunch was a terrible accident and that miss Pattison did not deliberately poison that meal with death cap mushrooms.
Okay, Laura, So moving on to the next topic. The prosecution says that Aaron said her two kids ate leftovers of the beef welling to mill the next day for dinner.
Is that right, Yes, So, according to the prosecution, Aaron scraped off the mushrooms because the children didn't like them, and she told them as well that these were leftovers from that Saturday lunch. But again, it is important to note that the children did not fall ill and they did not have any symptoms of death cap mushroom poisoning.
Now, let's go back to our lunch guests, Don Gale Patterson and Heather and Ian Wilkinson. They got really sick days after that lunch.
Yes, very sick. Indeed, we had a lot of detail in court today about their symptoms and what the final day of their lives were like.
So in the days following the lunch, all four guests moved around to different hospitals and they all ended up at the Austin Hospital and they were all critically unwell.
Don, Gail, and Heather continued to deteriorate over those final days, and they got to a point where the doctors that were taking care of them were of the opinion that the illness was unsurvivable, that there was nothing they could do for them.
So, sadly, Heather and Gail died on August four, and then Don died a day later on August five.
But Ian's condition did improve over the following days and he was eventually discharged following weeks of treatment in hospital. So the prosecution spoke a bit today about Aaron's presentation at Lee and Gatha Hospital two days after the lunch. By this stage, the lunch guests had been admitted and were quite unwell, and Erin arrived at the hospital and very quickly one of the doctors there realized that she was the fifth person at this lunch and that she
was the person who hosted it. He explained that they were worried the guests had fallen ill with death cap mushroom poisoning and that she was at risk herself. But the prosecution told the jury that Erin told doctors that she had experienced symptoms they included diarrhea, but she reiterated to them that she needed to leave and that she was not prepared to stay in hospital. But it is really important here to note that the defense said it
was disputed that Erin feigned sickness after the lunch. They said that she wasn't pretending to be sick. Their case was that she was sick too, just not as sick.
Okay. So now a website was mentioned to the jury. It's called Eye Naturalist. So the website is a platform about plants, animals and fungi, and in particular in this case, you can log mushrooms that you find across Victoria. Can you tell me a little bit more how this relates to the case.
Yes, And I'll just say from the top that dates are really important here. So on April eighteen, the prosecution said there was a mushroom expert who found death caps under an oak tree in Locke, which is near ly On Gutha, and posted it on this website Our Naturalist About ten days later, the prosecution said Erin's phone data suggested she was in this same area. A month later, there was a second post on this website by another expert.
This post was made on May twenty one. The expert said they had found death caps along a street in Outram, which is another area close to lean Gatha.
And so did Aarin travel to this area as well?
Well? The prosecutions say the very next day, on May twenty two, she traveled to this area as well as going back to Locke, the place where those first mushrooms were posted by the first expert.
So, in summary, the prosecution as saying that Aaron travel to both of these locations after she saw these posts on the Eye Naturalist website.
Yes, and that is the prosecution case.
Now let's move on. The prosecution said today that Aaron had two phones. Can you talk more about that? Yes.
The allegation is that she had two phones and one phone was never recovered from police and including with that, the simcard was never recovered. The phone that police did recover, they believe it was factory reset on three separate occasions, including remotely after it was seized by police.
Gosh, that was a lot from the prosecution. Was there anything else that they said that we needed to know? Yeah?
One final thing to note was the prosecution did not offer a motive, but it is important to remember that the prosecution don't need to prove a motive in murder trials.
Okay, so we've talked about the prosecution. I reckon we should move on to the defense. They didn't have a lot to say, did they, Laura.
No, they didn't, and that is really standard. The opening address made by the defense in any trial is usually a lot shorter than the prosecutions. It's just a response. They don't have to start arguing over the allegations the prosecution made. They just need to summarize how they put their case. We mentioned him before Erin's defense, barrister Colin Mandy. He said today that it was important that the jury remembered that Erin was innocent until proven guilty.
So we haven't really been able to speak about everything that happened in court today. There was a lot of information, but we will touch upon different points later on.
Yes, this trial is going for six weeks, so the day of the openings is always a very big day for jurors as well. There's a lot that they are taking in for the first time, but both parties will walk the jurors through all of this evidence across the trial, so rest assured there will be plenty of detail to come.
Thanks Laura, so make sure you stay tuned for all our coverage heading to the mushroomcook dot com dot au m