Members of the jury. The twenty ninth of July twenty twenty three. Lunch was arranged by the accused. Each of the guests were there by her invitation. She alone chose what to cook, obtained the ingredients, and prepared the meal.
Today, Nanette Rodgers rose to her feet and started summarizing the prosecution case against alleged mushroom Cook murderer Aaron Pattison. The heart of her argument was what she called Erin's four calculated deceptions. Her summation lasted all day, but we're here to break it all down. I'm Brook Greebert Craig, and this is the Mushroom Cook. It's day thirty two, week eight of Aaron Patterson's murder trial, and I'm here
with my colleague, court reporter Laura Plassella. It was a fall and day in court today, wasn't it, Laura, Yeah, it really was.
We all enjoyed a nice long weekend with the trial not sitting on Friday, but we returned today for a really jam packed day. As you mentioned at the top of the episode, Crown Prosecutor Nannette Rogers today started delivering
her closing address. This is really her chance to summarize the prosecution's case, especially considering the jury ended up hearing seven weeks of evidence, so there was a lot Doctor Rogers had to get through today, and she did that by breaking down the evidence into four categories, and she called these Erin's four calculated deceptions. The first, she said, was her fabricated cancer claim that she used as a reason for the lunch. The second was the lethal doses
of poison she secreted in the beef wellingtons. The third was her attempts to make it seem like she also suffered from deathcap mushroom poisoning, and the fourth was the sustained cover up she embarked on to conceal the truth.
Let's start with the first one, the fabricated cancer claim Aaron used as a reason for the lunch. Doctor Rogers said Arin lied about having cancer in order to provide her lunch guests with a reason to attend. Doctor Rogers said it was rare for Aaron to invite people to her home, in particular when inviting her estranged husband, Simon Patterson. Doctor Rogers said Erin gave him multiple incentives to attend.
Painting the picture of the gathering, which was not only social, but was also about important family business.
Doctor Rogers then took the jury to Ian's evidence, who said that while they were sitting around the table, Aaron told them that she had been diagnosed with cancer, and he rejected the possibility that Erin only told them that she had a possible diagnosis. In his evidence, he actually said that Erin discussed with them the possibility of chemotherapy. She said, with Ian's evidence, the jury could completely reject Erin's claim that she never told the guests she had a cancer diagnosis.
Doctor Rogers said Aaron planted the seed of this light far in advance when she told Donn and Gale before the lunch she was having medical tests on her elbow. Doctor Rogers said this was all a fabrication, since there was no lump on her elbow. These are doctor Rodgers's words read by our voice actor.
These lies were detailed. She was setting up a fiction that she was facing a serious health issue. She knew how to tell convincing lies when it came to the cancer because she had put in the research.
It was at this point that doctor Rogers referred to the screenshots that were extracted from Aaron's tablet detailing ovarian cancer symptoms. She then reminded the jury of the evidence of intensive care specialist Professor Andrew Burston, who confirmed that Aaron had never received a cancer diagnosis. This is something that Erin has also conceded. This is what doctor Rogers said today.
And of course here in court the accused agreed she'd never been diagnosed with cancer. You might be wondering why on earth would she tell such a lie. Execution says that the accused never thought she would have to account for this lie. She did not think her lunch guests would live to reveal it. Her lie would die with them.
Moving on now to the prosecution's second calculated deception. The lethal doses of poison are in secreted in the beef wellingtons.
This is the critical deception that the prosecution alleges against her, that she deliberately sought out and located death cap mushrooms and then secreted lethal doses of those deadly mushrooms into the individual beef wellingtons she had made for the lunch guests. At the same time, she made sure she would not suffer the same fate as her lunch guests by making herself an individual beef Wellington that did not contain any
death cap mushrooms. The sinister deception was to use a nourishing meal as the vehicle to deliver a deadly poison.
Doctor Rogers said Erin used a beef Wellington recipe from a recipe Tin EAT's cookbook that did not call for individual beef Wellington's. She said she deviated from the recipe to enable her to control what ingredients went into what serve. Doctor Rodgers said it was the only way that Aaron could ensure that she would not accidentally consume any death cap mushrooms.
It was at this point that doctor Rogers then took the jury to the source of the death cap mushrooms. She conceded that the prosecution had no direct evidence of where they came from, but she reminded them that Erin was aware of citizen science website I Naturalist that could be used to track down the toxic fungi. She told the jury that Erin had this knowledge because her computer records showed that in May twenty twenty two, a year before the lunch, someone in her house had searched for
iron naturalists on this device. Erin told the jury last week that while she didn't remember making this search, it was very possible that it could have been her. Dr Rogers went on to say that beyond knowing about this website, Erin also had the opportunity to source deathcap mushrooms before the lunch because two sightings were logged on the website in Lock and Outram on April eighteen and May twenty one.
In twenty twenty three, we won't comb back through the evidence of digital forensics expert Dr Matthew Surrell, but he said that Aaron's phone records showed a possible visit to Locke on April twenty eight and possible visits to Lock and Outram on May twenty two, when Aerin did not usually visit these areas. From here, Doctor Rogers laid out
a timeline for the jury. She said that the prosecution alleges that after finding death caps in lock on April twenty eight, Aaron traveled back to Lengatha to buy a dehydrator. She said she made this purchase for the purpose of dehydrating the death caps she had found. The jury were taken back to the photos of mushrooms on a de hydrated tray in Aaron's kitchen. One set of photos showed regular button mushrooms, while another set of photos showed yellow
tinged mushrooms. Doctor Rogers explained that it was the prosecution case that Aaron was doing a test run with the button mushrooms to make sure that she wouldn't waste the death caps. She also wanted to dehydrate and preserve. Doctor Rogers told the jury that after dehydrating the death caps, Aaron later returned to lock An Outram on May twenty
two looking for more. She then said it was open for the jury to infer that at some stage after she blitz the death caps into a powder to be able to hide them in the beef Wellington meal.
Doctor Rogers then moved onto the different colored plates. She told the jury that Ian was a compelling witness who gave clear evidence that Aaron served her full guests on one type of plate and herself on another. Here's what doctor Rogers said today.
He had a clue a memory of exactly what was served at the lunch. The individual wholly encased pasty type beef Wellington, mashed potato and green beans. You will have no trouble in being satisfied that he is a reliable witness, and you can confidently accept what he told you about the details of the lunch, including the four gray plates and the fifth odd plate.
Doctor Rogers told the jury that Erin deliberately served herself on a different plate to the others in order to identify which of the meals was not poisoned. She said the only reason she would do this was because she knew there were poisonous mushrooms in the meals, because she
had put them there. To summarize the second calculated deception, doctor Rogers said that the evidence showed Erin had the knowledge to locate deathcat mushrooms, the opportunity to source them at a time proximate to the lunch, the knowledge, skill and equipment to dehydrate them and then blo them into a powder, and complete control over the ingredients of the meal to make sure she did not accidentally consume death cap mushrooms.
Let's move on to the third calculated deception, Aaron's attempts to make it seem like she also suffered death cap mushroom poisoning. Doctor Rogers said Erin did this to disguise her crimes.
What that evidence shows is that the accused over a number of days deliberately and falsely represented to family members and medical personnel, both by her words and actions, that she was very unwell as a result of the lunch. Of course, the only reason she would do something like that pretend to be suffering from the same illness as the others, is because she knew she hadn't been poisoned.
She knew she was not going to exhibit symptoms of poisoning, and she knew how suspicious this would look to everyone. Her good health, in other words, would give her away about what she had done, so she had to try and look unwell like the others.
Doctor Rogers broke down this deception day by day, and first focused on the night of the lunch on July twenty nine. Aaron told the doctor that on that night she was experiencing explosive diarrhea every ten minutes. But doctor Rogers told the jury today that Erin still drove her son's friend home that very same evening. She told the court, you might think a person who genuinely fears pooing her pants, potentially in front of her son and his friend, would
not have taken such a risk. Doctor Rogers then moved on to the next day, July thirty, which was an Erin drove her son to his flying lesson in Tyab. Aaron told the jury last week that on their way to Tyab, she had to pull over because she needed to go to the toilet, and ended up going to the toilet in a bush. She said she cleaned herself up with some tissues that she placed in a dog pooh bag. However, Erin's son told an investigtion that he did not remember them making any stops on their way
to tie up. The jury has previously heard that they stopped at a BP service station, and CCTV shows Aerin entering the toilet in the store before exiting nine seconds later. But doctor Rogers told the jury today that it would take more than nine seconds for Aaron to clean herself up or at a minimum, wash her hands after going
to the toilet on the side of the road. She said it was very unlikely that Aaron would have chosen to take a two hour round car trip for an entirely optional activity on a day she claims to have been suffering diarrhea, she said the prosecution case where she did not have diarrhea at all on that day.
Doctor Rogers then moved on to July thirty one and the evidence that doctor Chris Webster gave to the jury. He said that he spoke to Erin when she arrived at lean Gatha Hospital and informed her that she had potentially been exposed to death caps. Doctor Rogers told the jury this was the momen that Aaron realized what she had done had not gone undetected. She said her reaction was that she wanted to leave the hospital and did so after five minutes.
She fled back to her house try and work out how she was going to manage the situation and how she might explain why she wasn't sick like the lunch guests. Of course, she could only have felt comfortable walking out of the hospital not receiving any of the life saving treatment that doctors were telling her was necessary and time critical, because she knew very well that she had not eaten death cap mushrooms.
Erin was then transferred from lean Gatha Hospital to Monash Medical Center, where she stayed overnight. The next day, on August one, Erin told doctor Laura Muldoon that she was feeling okay, and doctor Muldoon told the jury in her evidence that Erin was displaying no signs of death cap mushroom poisoning. Doctor Rogers said in total, Aaron spent just over twenty four hours in hospital receiving treatment, but not
one medical professional observed her appearing unwell. It was at this point that doctor Rogers compared aaron symptoms to those of the lunch guests. She said that by August one, all four lunch guests had been conveyed to the Austin Hospital and were in the ICU on life support in an advanced state of multiple organ failure, meaning their organs were essentially shutting down. But she reiterated that this was the same day that Erin was allowed to go home.
Doctor Rogers told the jury Aaron's story about how much of her beef Wellington portion she ate kept changing because she was trying to manufacture and explanation for why she wasn't as ill as her guests. Aarin initially told medical staff she had eaten about half of her meal. Her account later shifted to one third or even as little as a quarter. Doctor Rogers said it was the prosecution's case that Aaron was not sick because she didn't eat
any amount of death cap mushrooms. Finally, let's talk about the prosecution's fourth calculated deception, the sustained cover up. Aaron embarked on to conceal the truth.
When you examine the evidence of what the accused said and did following the lunch, and particularly as it was realized that the lunch guests had consumed death Cap mushrooms, you will see that the accused lied and acted deceptively in other ways to deflect blame and suspicion about what she'd done. This specifically includes four things.
As she had all day. Doctor Rogers went on to break down those four things. She said the cover up included erin lying about feeding her children leftovers of the beef Wellington with the mushroom scraped off, her lying about the mushrooms in the beef Wellington coming from Woolworth's and an Asian grosser, her disposing of her dehydrator at the tip a using it to dehydrate death caps, and deliberately
concealing her usual phone from police. When it came to the lie about the leftovers, Doctor Rogers said that this was a lie Aaron told over multiple days to multiple people, including family members, doctors, nurses, child protection workers and Department of Health advisers. Erin's sun recounted that the night after the lunch, his mum spoke to him about Don and Gale's illnesses and said that she thought it might have
been the lunch. The jury has previously heard that Aaron told doctors she went to hospital because she thought she had a case of food poisoning, but doctor Rogers questioned why Erin would feed her children leftovers of the beef Wellington meal Considering all of this, Here's what she said in court today.
The accused later told doctor Laura Muldoon that she had not presented to hospital before the Monday morning, thirty first of July as she thought she had a case of food poisoning and had children with her at home yesterday Sunday.
Why then, would the accused feed the leftovers of a meal to her children, knowing it had or even believing it might have led to the hospitalization of four people, and on her own account her own illness in particular, why would she feed them the meat portion of that meal, which, if she didn't know the mushrooms were the issue, would be the more obvious suspect for any food poisoning There is no reason to doubt that the children did eat steak,
mashed potato, and beans on Sunday night, but it certainly was not the steak that had been cooked in mushroom paste and pastry the day before.
Doctor Rogers went on to say that after Aarin was told her children needed urgent treatment, she didn't want to take them out of school because she didn't want to hassle them. Doctor Rogers said that was an extraordinary response from a mother. She said that Aaron's reluctance to have them brought to the hospital for medical assessment stemmed from the fact she knew they had not consumed death cap mushrooms.
One would expect a potentially life threatening danger to her children would have galvanized the accused's interactions on their behalf. But of course, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for why the accused. A doting mother, as you have heard, was reluctant to have her children medically assessed. She knew
they had not eaten death cap mushrooms at all. Her reluctance to have her children medically assessed is another piece of conduct by the accused, which we say is incriminating conduct.
Aeron told the jury last week that she scraped off the mushrooms and the pastry from the six beef Wellington she had prepared before giving it to her children. But doctor Rogers said today that the scientific evidence strongly suggested that simply scraping off the mushrooms would not have been enough to prevent the children from ingesting the toxins from the death caps if they were in the sixth serve. Here's what she said.
The meat from that dish carried beta ammanitan in it. Even when a forensic toxicologists tried to extract the meat portion for analysis, it could not be entirely separated from the mushroom paste. It is impossible, we suggest to you that the accused could have served up a piece of leftover steak with all of the poisonous mushrooms or mushroom paste removed. Not even a forensic toxicologist managed to do that in a laboratory.
Let's move on to the second point of the fourth deception, Aaron lying about all the mushrooms in the beef Wellington coming from Woolworths and an Asian groser. Doctor Rogers said this is a lie for three reasons. Number one, her story about the Asian Groser kept changing. Number two, she was not forthcoming with the Department of Health and number three death caps are highly unlikely to appear on store shelf.
Doctor Rogers did really make a lot of numbered points today, so we hope you're all following along. But when talking about the first reason of the second point of her fourth deception, doctor Rogers said that Aaron's story about the Asian Grocer evolved between July thirty one and August two. Doctor Rogers ran through the testimony of almost a dozen witnesses, particularly around what they said Aaron told them about the
location of the Asian Grocer. Aeron told doctor Webster at lean Gatha Hospital on July thirty one that she bought all the mushrooms in the meal from Woolworth's. Two and a half hours later, at ten thirty, she told Simon's brother Matthew Patterson that she also bought dried mushrooms from a Chinese grocer in the Oakley area. Around that time, she also spoke to doctor Veronica Foot and said to her that the dried mushrooms came from a Chinese grocer
in Melbourne. She didn't mention any suburbs About twenty minutes later, she spoke to doctor Connor McDermott from Austin Health, who said she bought button mushrooms from Woolworth's and dried mushrooms from a Chinese grocer in Oakley. She also mentioned at this point that the grocer may have been in Glen Waverley. At two forty pm, she told two paramedics that the
dried mushrooms came from an Asian grocer in Melbourne. When she got to Monash Medical Center, she told doctor Muldoon at four PM that the dried mushrooms may have come from an Asian grocer in Glen Waverley. Finally, two hours later, at six pm, she told Public Health Director Ronda Stewart that the dried mushrooms may have come from an Asian grocer in Oakley or Glen Waverley, but doctor Rogers said
Erin's story continued to evolve. The next day, she told Senior Public Health Advisor Sally Anne Atkinson that the dried mushrooms may have come from an Asian grocer in either Clayton, Mount Waverley or Oakley. Doctor Rogers said this was the
first time Aaron had mentioned Clayton or Mount Waverley. Later that day, she spoke to child protection worker Katrina Cripps and told her that the ride mushrooms may have come from an Asian grocer in Oakley or Clayton, but Doctor Rogers said she didn't mention Mount Waverley to Miss Cripps, despite mentioning it six hours earlier to Miss Atkinson. The next day, on August two, Erin again spoke to Miss Atkinson and mentioned Oakley and Clayton, but did not mention
Glen Waverley in her last example. Doctor Rogers said that Aaron spoke again to Miss Atkinson on August three and mentioned strip shopping in Oakley, but then this time mentioned Glen Waverley.
Okay, so that's a lot of suburbs, Laura, so let me summarize. She mentioned Oakley, Glen Waverley, Clayton, and Mount Waverley.
And Melbourne as well at large, but different combinations. It appears to different people. And this was something Doctor Rogers really wanted to make a point of. Here is what she told the jury.
Even if you could accept it is something you might not remember, you would think that if you were in a situation like this, for the sake of your very ill family men, and for anyone else who might be exposed, you would do everything you could to try and remember
the store. But the accused sat on her hands while Don, gail Ian, and Heather were all in Coma's She was slow to respond to the Department of Health, even totally non responsive at times, and as time passed, her description of the Chinese food store shifted and grew broader.
Then doctor Rogers described how remarkable Erin's memory was last week while she was giving evidence compared to her memory of the Asian grosser.
You might have noticed that when the accused was giving the evidence that she appeared to have a remarkable memory. She could recall dates, evidence, and details easily, as she was being asked questions over many days. Even now in June twenty twenty five, she could recall that twenty eighth of April twenty twenty three was a Friday and not a Monday, as I had suggested to her in cross examination.
Yet on August thirteenth, twenty twenty three, she could not recall the shop or even the suburb where she purchased the mushrooms from an Asian grocer in the same April of twenty twenty three. It's simply beggars belief.
So doctor Rogers will continue her closing address tomorrow, where she will cover the last two points of the fourth deception, those being that Erin disposed of the dehydrator and deliberately concealed her usual phone from police. We don't know how long doctor Rogers's address will go on for after that, but once she's done, it will then be the defense's turn. Defense barrister Colin Mandy will also deliver a closing address
to the jury. Erin is claiming that she may have accidentally added mushrooms she foraged into the meal with the dried mushrooms she purchased from the Asian grocer.
Thanks Laura. See you tomorrow for another episode, See you, Brooks