Hello, what address do you need the police? It is doctor Chris Webster calling from Lea and geth a hospital. I have a concern regarding a patient that presented here earlier, that has left the building and is potentially exposed to fratal toxin from mushroom posing and I've tried several times to get a hold of her on i'm mobile phone before I get all that information.
What you just heard is a recreation of a calm but quick triple zero call from a doctor who first treated some of the guests of that fateful beef Wellington lunch. It was also the phone call that led local police to Aaron Patterson's home. I'm Brook Reybert Craig, and this is the mushroom cook. I'm back at the Herald Sign headquarters in Morwell with my colleague court reporter Laura Placella. Once again.
Good to be back as always.
Yes, it is so today we are on day seven of Aaron Patterson's murder trial. There were two types of testimony in court today. There were family testimonies and medical testimonies. Let's begin with the medical ones and we'll play a little bit more from the recreation of the triple zero call that we heard earlier.
Much room poisoning. You said there were four people that had a meal on said day and two of them are intended care at Daniel Hospital. Two have just been transferred from Daniel Hospital and Aaron presented this morning with symptoms of poisoning.
So, Laura, can you explain to our listeners who called Triple zero?
So what our listeners just heard both at the top of the episode and just then was the phone conversation doctor Chris Webster had with a Triple zero operator. For some context here, doctor Webster works at lean Gatha Hospital and on July thirty he was one of the on call doctors. July thirty was the day after the lethal lunch and Ian and Heather both presented here after they were driven over by their nephew, Simon Patterson.
So today in court he mentioned about the Beef Wellington. Is that right?
Once Ian and Heather had arrived and were admitted and triaged, he spoke to them about what they had eaten, considering they were presenting with food poisoning symptoms. They mentioned they had eaten at Beef Wellington the day before, and in doctor Webster's mind, he first thought the culprit of their
illness was actually the meat. They remained in hospital over the following hours and were treated by doctors at lean Gatha Hospital, But it wasn't until the following day, so July thirty one, that doctors over at dan in On Hospital communicated with these doctors at lean Gatha and said that they suspected it was mushroom poisoning.
And on that day Aaron Patterson presented herself to hospital, didn't.
She Yes, that's right. We did hear that today from doctor Webster. He said it was about eight oh five when Aaron arrived at the front door of the hospital and rang the doorbell, and he was the person he went over to speak to her. He told the jury that Aaron said she had gastro so he welcomed her into the hospital and started speaking to her about her symptoms, but very quickly upon her telling him her name, he
realized that she was at this lunch. Doctor Webster was asked today by Crown Prosecutor Jane Warren whether he recognized her as the fifth guest, but he actually said in court, no, I recognized her as the chef of the meal. He asked her a few more questions, one of them concerning where she got the mushrooms from.
And Aaron gave a very short reply back, didn't she She did?
According to doctor Webster's answer, she just said Woolworth's. It was at this point that doctor Webster told Erin that he was worried she may have also been exposed to deathcap mushroom poisoning, keeping in mind that he had just heard from the doctors at Daniynong who had raised those concerns, and he really urged her to stay at hospital so she could be treated.
And then essentially Aaron discharged herself from hospital against medical advice.
That's correct. The jury were actually shown CCTV footage today of the moment Aaron walks towards the exit of the hospital. She's stopped by another doctor. This doctor was Veronica Foot, and you can see the two of them engaging in a brief conversation before some paperwork arrives for Eron to sign, which the jury was told was the discharge against medical advice form.
And doctor Foot was also another witness in today's hearing. Wasn't she she was?
And when the footage was played to the court today, the comment was made that Aaron discharged herself at eight ten, keeping in mind she only arrived at eight oh five, so she only spent five minutes at the hospital before leaving.
Now, this is when doctor Webster makes that triple zero call that we heard earlier.
That's right. It's clear from the discussion he has with the triple zero operator that he's worried for Erin's health. She's discharged herself. He doesn't know where she is, so he's asking police to find her and bring her back to the hospital so she can be treated.
But Arin, on her own accord, came back to the hospital herself, didn't she.
That's right. By nine point fifty am, she was back at Leaingngatha Hospital. Doctor Webster told the court that when she arrived, he decided he should call police to just explain to them that they no longer were going to find her at her home because she was back at hospital. But in the process of doing that, he realized that if they were at her house, they might have a good opportunity to find some of the leftovers from the
beef Wellington lunch so they could be tested. And you would have heard us mention her before, doctor Foot she was the doctor who had that conversation with Aaron at the door before she did leave. Earlier in the morning. It was doctor Foot who received these samples of beef Wellington. They were in a brown Woolworth's bag. They arrived at the hospital and the jury was shown some CCTV footage of her putting on some gloves, fishing the leftovers out
of the bag and taking photographs. This was because staff at Monash Medical Center were hoping to have a look at the mushrooms and these samples as soon as possible.
And probably something that our listeners are thinking, what did the beef Wellington look like at this point?
That's a good question. From the CCTV footage, we really couldn't see a lot. It was taken from quite far away, but from what we could see, it looked like doctor Foot had fished out a small brown mush out of the bag, but as well as that, a larger pastry that could have been half a beef Wellington.
Okay, Now moving on to more medical evidence. The prosecution read a statement on behalf of Daniella Ramans. Now she works at the Department of Health.
And I think this is the first time a statement has been read into the transcript and just to explain to our listeners, this process is very standard in trials and it just helps speed things along. Instead of calling every single person relevant to a trial to give evidence in court, if the evidence isn't in dish, a simple statement will be read out to the jury.
In her statement, she said that Victoria, the state, has a mandatory reporting of cancer diagnosises and detections. So Miss Raman said she did a search of the Victorian Cancer Registry in March this year, so she was looking for entries relating to Aaron Patterson with her date of birth, but she said in her statement that no entries were found. Now, we also heard from Don and Glee's son and daughter,
and Heather and Ian's daughter. All three of them gave evidence today and while the medical testimony was quite clinical, the family's evidence was a lot more personal.
That's right, and I'll start with the evidence of Anna Terrington, the youngest daughter of Don and Gail. She told the jury that she spoke to her parents after the lunch and at the time they said the lunch went well, but by the Sunday they had been transferred to Danilong Hospital with quite serious symptoms.
In court, Anna told the jury that she was with her mum, Gail for long periods of time.
Yeah, she went to the hospital to be by her bedside her brother Simon, who is Erin's estranged husband. He was spending time with Don, their dad, and Anna said to the jury that she had to help her mother go to the bathroom several times throughout that night. Anna told the court that while she was at hospital with
her mum, they spoke about the lunch. She recalled that her mom had said Aaron wanted to tell them about a medical issue, but she said her mum never told her what the medical issue was, and she didn't ask her mum either. Now let's move on to Matthew Pattison. He's the oldest son of Don and Gail, so he's Simon Pattison's brother and Anna's brother. Also.
Matthew told the jury that he and Aaron had a lunch in twenty twenty one, and this is where Erin actually opened up about her relationship with Simon. So just remember we said this last week that Simon and Aaron separated in twenty fifteen. The court heard that Aaron asked Matthew for advice on how to get Simon to participate in counseling.
Later on in his evidence, Matthew was asked about the days after the lunch, he was also at Danyong Hospital. He took over from Anna after she went home having spent Sunday night with their parents, and it was on Monday that the doctors asked if they knew where the mushrooms in the beef Wellington had come from, and Matthew volunteered to call erin to find out. He told the court that it was a very quick conversation. I think
it was actually mentioned. It only went for one minute and thirteen seconds, and in that brief phone call he asked where she had gotten the mushrooms from. He told the court that Aaron mentioned that there were fresh mushrooms from Woolies and there were also dried mushrooms from a Chinese grocer or supermarket from the Oakley Air. After Aaron told him that information, he passed it on to the doctors at the hospital.
The jury heard that both Anna and Matthew confirmed that Aaron and Simon had loaned them each hundreds of thousands of dollars to help them both purchase their homes. We heard it a little bit about this. Last week the court heard these loans were index to inflation, but no interest was charged. Now let's move on to Heather and Ian's daughter.
Yes, we also heard from Ruth du Bois. She spoke about talking with her parents in the weeks before the lunch, keeping in mind that Aaron invited her guests to the lunch in early July at a church service. When Heather was explaining this to Ruth, she said that after church, Aaron had approached her in Gale and said, just the two I was looking for. She then continued on and
said that she wanted to invite them to lunch. Ruth told the court that she was quite surprised to hear Aeron and had invited her parents to lunch, considering that had never happened before.
So with multiple family members in court today, it was always going to be an emotional day, right.
Yeah, that's right, and particularly when Anna gave evidence, there was a lot of emotion in the court. When she was being questioned about the final days of her parents, she started to become tearful. She clutched her chest at one point and had to take a few pauses before giving her answers. And she also reached for a tissue to blow her nose. And last week our listeners might remember that her brother Simon also became emotional when speaking about their parents as well.
Now, lastly, Laura, the dehydrata has been mentioned in court every single day. Was it raised today?
Now that I think about it, I don't think it was. You're right, we have heard about it most days of the trial, so we'll have to wait and see when it pops up next.
Well, the dehydrata has had a day off, it seems we'll have to wait to see when it returned. But we'll definitely be back tomorrow with our daily update and if you want more reports, features and podcast episodes, head over to the mushroomcook dot com dot au