It was a showdown today in the mushroom murder trial. The lead barristers of both the prosecution and the defense addressed the jury, with Nannette Rodgers finalizing the Crown's argument that Aaron Patterson told lies upon lies when her murder plot started to unravel.
We say there is no reasonable alternative explanation for what happened to the lunch guests other than the accused deliberately sourced death cap mushrooms and deliberately included them in the meal. She served them with an intention to kill them. In the lead up to the lunch and in the periods after the lunch, Aaron Patterson told so many lies it's hard to keep track of them. She has told lies upon lies because she knew the truth would implicate her.
Meanwhile, Colin Mandy started the defense case by saying his client never planned to kill her lunch guests and had a motive to keep them in her world.
She didn't plan it. She never planned to kill anyone, and when they did get very, very sick, she panicked because that's when she realized that it might have been the meal and the spotlight would be on her. And that's a very powerful reason why you can't, in our submission, find this element of intention. It's why you should have a reasonable doubt about it. It is an implausible theory when you take a step back and look at the big picture.
In Room four of the La Trobe Valley Law Courts, both sides came out swinging. I'm Brook Greebert Craig, and this is the mushroom cook We just finished day thirty three of Aaron Patterson's trial, and as always I'm joined by court reporter Laura Placella. We've had a big day, Yes,
another one this morning. Doctor Rogers continued with the prosecution's fourth calculated deception, which was the sustained cover Aaron embarked on to conceal the truth to remind listeners the other three with a fabricated cancer claim Aaron used as a reason for the lunch, the lethal doses of poison Aaron secreted in the beef Wellington's and Aaron's attempts to make it seem like she also suffered death cap mushroom poisoning.
So there were four elements to the sustained cover up, two of which doctor Rogers mentioned yesterday. But today she turned to the disposing of the dehydrator that she said Erin had used to dehydrate death caps. Erin has admitted that she dumped the appliance the day after she was released from Monash Medical Center, but doctor Rogers said today the only reason that Aaron dumped it was because she knew she had used it to prepare the deadly meal.
This is what doctor Rogers said today. These are her words, but not her voice.
If there was nothing incriminating about the dehydrator, why hide it? And there is only one reasonable explanation. She knew it would incriminate her. She knew that she had dehydrated death cap mushrooms in that appliance, and that she had deliberately done so, and she knew that keeping it was going to be far too risky. So one of the first things that she did after getting back from the Monash Hospital was to race out to the tip and dump it,
try to make it disappear. If not for the careful analysis of the accused spank records conducted by Senior Constable Meg Crawford, no one would ever have known about the dehydrator. Aaron Patterson certainly wasn't telling anyone about it. In fact, when she was asked by police during the record of interview on fifth of August whether she knew anything about a dehydrator in her house. She answered with a completely straight face no.
Doctor Rogers then moved on to the last element of the sustained cover up, which was Aaron deliberately concealing her usual mobile phone from police. Rogers talked the jury through Phone A, which was her usual phone, Phone B, which was her dummy phone, and Phone C, which was her NOKIAF phone. Laura, let's start with Phone A.
The game of phones continues, so with Phone A, as you just said, brook Erin's usual phone. Doctor Rogers explained today that this phone was using the SIM card ending in seven eighty three in the lead up to the lunch and she said this simcard was also infhone A right up until the start of the search warrant, which was executed at Aaron's house on August five. But doctor Rogers told the jury today that while detectives were at Erin's house, Phone A was being handled without their knowledge.
She reminded the jury of the evidence that the simcard lost connection with the network at some point that day between twelve oh one pm and one forty five PM, and she alleged this was because Aeron removed the SIM card before concealing Phone A from police. She reiterated to the jury today that police have never been able to recover Phone A, even after returning to Aaron's house for a second time in November.
Let's move on to Phone B. What did doctor Rogers say about that device?
For the first time, we heard doctor Rogers call Phone B the dummy phone, and this was the device that Erin handed to police at the end of the search on August five, and she accused Erin today of setting up this dummy phone to deliberately trick the police. She said that police found nothing on Phone B because it had been factory reset multiple times by Erin, including on August five and August six, the day after the search.
She then turned to the SIM card that was in Phone B when it was handed over, and that was a SIM card ending in eight three five. Erin claimed last week that she was setting up a new phone the week of the search, but doctor Rogers said that the jury could reject her claim because it was not a phone or a phone number that the accused could say she was truthfully using.
Great let's finish with Phone C, which was the Nokia phone.
Doctor Rogers told the jury that after Erin took the SIM card ending in seven eighty three, which was her usual SIM card, out of Phone A, she then later placed it into Phone C, the Nochia. She said that Erin continued to use this number in Phone C even after she returned home from her record of interview on
August five. She said, Erin's usage of this simcard made it quite clear that this was her usual SIM card and not the SIM card ending in eight three five that was in Phone B when Aaron handed it over. Here's doctor Rogers's explanation for why Aaron did what she did with the phones.
All of this conduct, the factory resets, the handing over of the blank dummy phone, pretending that Phone B was her phone number. All of this was designed to frustrate the police investigation of this matter. It was all done so that the police would never see the contents of
the accused's real mobile phone. We suggest to you that the only reasonable explanation for engaging in all of this deceptive conduct is that she knew that the information on Phone A, her usual mobile phone, would implicate her in the deliberate poisoning of the lunch guests.
After doctor Rogers finished her four calculated deceptions, she moved on to Aeron's claim that she must have accidentally foraged death cat mushrooms.
Doctor Rogers said that she anticipated the defense would argue that the jury cannot discount the possibility that Erin had innocently foraged for wild mushrooms for a family meal, but accidentally collected death cap mushrooms in that process before dehydrating them, placing them into a tupperware container with other dehydrated mushrooms,
and therefore unknowingly including them in the beef wellingtons. But doctor Rogers said the only evidence of Erin ever foraging for mushrooms came from her Her children told an investigator that they did not know their mum to pick and eat wild mushrooms, and Erin never discussed foraging with her Facebook friends. Doctor Rogers explained to the jury why the prosecution say Aarin lied about foraging.
The suggestion now that these mushrooms may have been accidentally foraged, we suggest, is a very late change to the accused's story. You might think that at some point it dawned on her that the Asian grocery story didn't add up, particularly when faced with the evidence about the remnants of the death cap mushrooms having been found in her dehydrator, she
had to come up with something new. You should simply disregard this new claim that this was a horrible foraging accident as nothing more than an attempt by the accused to get her story to fit the evidence that the police compiled in this case.
Doctor Rodgers then moved onto motive. She said the evidence didn't demonstrate that Aaron had any particular motive.
Motive is not an element of the crime of murder or the crime of attempted murder, and it is only the elements of the offense that you must find proven beyond reasonable doubt that makes sense. People do different things for different reasons. Sometimes the reason is obvious enough to others. At other times, the internal motivations are only known by the person themself. You don't have to know why a person does something in order to know they did it.
While doctor Rodgers said the prosecution didn't need to prove motive, she still took the jury to evidence about the relationship between Aaron Simon and Donn and Gale she told the jurors they had heard evidence over the course of the
trial that showed that they loved each other. Doctor Rogers added that Aaron professed her love for Donni Gale in her record of interview, and Simon testified that Aaron seemed to love his parents, but she said the relationship between Aaron and her parents in law was not always a harmonious one. After a child support dispute arose between Aaron and Simon in October twenty twenty two.
Don and Gail were dragged unwillingly into the conflict between the accused and Simon over child support. That was Simon's evidence. Simon said he noticed a substantial change in his relationship with the accused in late twenty twenty two over the issue of child support, which had not abated by the
end of that year. As you have heard, child support became a significant source of tension between the accused and Simon Patterson, how much Simon Patterson was paying, whether it covered the school fees, and the payment of the children's medical bills.
Doctor Rogers said that the evidence showed that the divide between Erin and don and Gale was deeper than they ever She said that Aaron expressed her true feelings to her Facebook friends in bitter, angry messages she wrote about her parents in law, where she called them a lost cause and said fuck em.
The point of this evidence is that it shows we say that the accused was leading a duplicitous life when it came to the Pattersons, she presented one side while expressing contrary beliefs to others.
Then doctor Rodgers asked the fourteen jurors to personally think about what they would do if this was a horrible accident that happened to them Laura. As doctor Rogers explains, our listeners may also think about what they would do if they were in this situation.
If you were told that the meal you had cooked and served to your family was thought to have possibly contained deathcat mushrooms, what would you do. Would you go into self preservation mode, just worrying about protecting yourself from blame. Would you race away from the hospital and do who knows what for an hour and a half. Would you be reluctant to receive treatment. Would you take two and a half hours to eventually agree to get your kids
to hospital? Would you lie about the source of the ingredients to medical practitioners and the health department officials for days, even though the truth might help those you claim to love. No, that's not what you do. You would do everything you could to help the people you love.
She went on to say, you would tell.
The treating medical practitioners every scheric of information that might help to identify the cause of the illness, so that they could get the right treatment to your loved ones, regardless of any risk of blame that might fall on you. If your children had come within cooi of the same meal, you would move mountains to get them to hospital as quickly as possible. And if you yourself had truly consumed the same meal, you would gladly receive all of the
medical treatment you could get your hands on. Aaron Patterson acted the way she did because she knew what she had done.
Doctor Rogers said that Aaron panicked not because she realized she had made a grave foraging mistake, but because doctors had figured out that death caps were behind the illnesses of the guests. She said, innocent panic did not explain the extensive and prolonged efforts that Erin went to in order to cover up what she had done. She said. It also did not explain why Erin chose to persist with her lies when the lives of the guests were at stake.
Doctor Rogers first took the jury through the lies Erin has omitted, lies about never owning a dehydrator and never having forage from mushrooms.
But then doctor Rogers turned to the lies Erin hasn't admitted.
She said.
These included lying in a record of interview about being very helpful to the Department of Health, lying about why she held the lunch, and lying when she said she never told the lunch guests that she had been diagnosed with cancer. Doctor Rogers said her starkest lie was the one she told about having an appointment to explore gastric bypass surgery.
The prosecution says that you cannot accept the accused as a truthful, honest and trustworthy witness. She has told too many lies and you should reject her evidence.
Doctor Rogers told the jury to think of the case like a jigsaw puzzle. One piece on its own may not tell you very much about what the picture is, but when you start putting more together and looking at it as a whole, the picture becomes clearer.
Doctor Rogers then revealed to the jury that there was one final deception, a fifth that she had not previously mentioned.
The deception she has tried to play on you the jury with her untruthful evidence. When she knew her lies had been uncovered, she came up with a carefully constructed narrative to fit with the evidence. Almost there are some inconsistencies that she just came do not account for, so she ignores them, says she can't remember those conversations, or says other people are just wrong, even her own children.
As she neared the end of her closing address, doctor Rogers said that the evidence in this case showed that Erin prepared and allocated the meal, that she was the only person who consumed the meal but did not fall seriously ill, that she was familiar with the i Naturalist website, that her phone was in the very two locations in Gippsland where death caps had been cited and recorded in April and May twenty twenty three, that she was dehydrating
mushrooms consistent with death caps, and remnants of death caps were found in her dehydrator. That she concealed her actions, including by dumping her dehydrator, and finally that she told many, many lies about the true source of the mushrooms. Doctor Rogers told the jury, when they consider all of this evidence, they will be satisfied that the used deliberately sourced death caps, serve them to Don, gail Ian and Heather, and did
so intending to kill them. She then thanked the jury before returning to her seat.
Aaron's barrister, Colin Mandy, then began his closing address.
He started by telling the jurors there were two simple issues that they had to determine. The first was is there a reasonable possibility that death caps were put into this meal accidentally? And the second was is it a reasonable possibility that Erin did not intend to kill or cause serious injury to her guests. He said if either of those were reasonable possibilities, then the jury would have reasonable doubt and must acquit his client of all charges.
He then met a criticism of the approach taken by the prosecution in this trial.
Their approach is this working from the assumption that Aaron Patterson is guilty of these crimes, pick and choose the evidence that fits that theory, and then tie it all together in an attempt to present a coherent narrative and ignore the things that don't fit. So they have constructed that case theory by, as I say, picking and choosing evidence while ignoring the context, cherry picking convenient fragments while discarding inconvenient truths.
Mister Mandy then went on to tell the jury what happened in the wake of the lunch was a terrible tragedy. He said, since the four guests were good, innocent people, the jurors may have a desire to punish whoever caused their deaths, but he told the jurors they must fiercely guard against that kind of reasoning.
Mister Mandy then moved on to motive, or more specifically, a lack of motive, and so that it made it more likely what happened was an accident. He told the jury that the defense had actually presented positive evidence of a lack of motive, dubbing it an antimotive. It was at this point that mister Manny pointed to Don tutoring, Erin's son, and the pair also completing science experiments together. He said that Erin had a motive to keep Doningale in her world. This is what he went on to say.
Absolutely no doubt that Erin was devoted to her children. Why would she take wonderful, active, loving grandparents away from her own children. At the time the middle of twenty twenty three, she was in a good place. Aaron was in a good place. She had a big, beautiful house. She had just landscaped the garden. She had her children, who she loves deeply. She had them with her most of the time, effectively sole custody. She was very comfortable financially.
Her body image wasn't great, it hadn't been for a long time, but she was planning to do something about that. She was looking forward to returning to study. All things considered, she was in a good place, and in that context we submit to you that she is most unlikely to have planned to murder people, especially if it is inevitable that it would be discovered.
Mister Mandy then took the jury to the dehydrator. He said, if Aaron had been planning this murder from April twenty twenty three, she would not have bought the dehydrator in her own name, with her own details, using her own credit card, taken photos of the dehydrator, taken photos of the mushrooms in the Dehydrata, shared the photos in a Facebook chat and waited so long before getting rid of
the dehydrator itself. Mister Mandy added that if she had planned to kill the guests, she would not have sent the images of the murder weapon and the murder method to her own Facebook fronts.
Mister Mandy told the jury that an intelligent person carefully planning a murder would know if you poisoned four people at a lunch at your house, the meal would be under suspicion and the focus would be on the cook very very quickly. But he said, according to the prosecution theory, Aaron pushed ahead with her lunch regardless. He admitted she panicked in the days after the lunch when, as the cook,
the spotlight was on her. He said she dumped the dehydrator not to dispose of evidence, but because she panicked following conversation she had with Simon where he accused her of poisoning his parents with the dehydrator. He said her actions on the day she drove to the tip to dump it spoke volumes about her state of mind.
She drives to the tip in her own car, pays for disposal of the dehydrator with her own bank card doesn't attempt to disguise those actions in any way. It could only have been panic, not because she was guilty, but because that's what people might think. It was a deep shock to her how these four people became so seriously unwell. It was a deep shock to her because she never intended it to happen. And if that's a reasonable possibility, then she must be found not guilty.
Mister Mandy then moved on to the leftovers of the meal. He refuted the prosecution's claim that Aaron had been forced to tell police where the leftovers were.
She told the police where to find them without hesitation. She must have been confident that there was no poison in order to do that, He went on to say, a guilty person on the Crown case, being at the premises for some time that morning, would have already thrown them out. You might think, get rid of them, put them in the neighbor's bin or a public bin, bury them in the backyard, or do something else. There had
been two days to do all of that. Instead directing the police where to find the evidence that there were deathcap mushrooms in the meal, at that time on Monday morning. The inference that you can draw from that is that she genuinely believed that there were not deathcap mushrooms inside that bin, inside those leftovers.
Mister Mandy then spoke about erin taking to the witness box. He said she didn't have to do this. He reminded the jury that she was cross examined for five hours a day over five days, recounting information from two years ago, and was questioned about every minutia of her movements and every single conversation she had with the witnesses. In this case, she has the right to silence.
She didn't have to answer any questions. She could have stayed in the dock and said absolutely nothing, not given evidence. In the case, the prosecution has to prove the case, and that's part of the exercise. She doesn't have to prove anything. And yet she decided to give evidence, to give her account, and to subject herself to several days
of cross examination by a very experienced ba arister. Let's consider her position in choosing to do that, not only your scrutiny, of course, but the scrutiny of the whole world being closely cross examined about the fine details of her account and about every word that she said to other people two years ago in twenty four hours to forty eight hours.
Mister Mandy's closing address finished early today because he was starting to cough and his voice was failing him, but he will continue tomorrow.
And before we jump off the Mikes, I will add that Justice Christopher Biale gave the jurors and us an update on the trial timeline. He said he won't commence his charge or his instructions to the jury until Monday next week, flagging that he might finish on Tuesday afternoon or maybe he'll spill over into Wednesday. He said he wanted to provide them with this update so they could get their affairs in order before deliberations begin.
So, Laura, it looks like the jury won't retire to consider a verdict until midnext week.
So we have a few more days left to go.
We sure do. To stay updated on this case, go to the mushroomcook dot com dot au