The Trial: A seized computer and a keyword search

Today in the trial of Erin Patterson, a device seized from the home of the accused mushroom cook killer was used to visit the iNaturalist website, which the jury heard earlier was used to record sightings of various fungi species, including death caps.

The Mushroom Cook team is Brooke Grebert-Craig, Laura Placella, Anthony Dowsley, Jordy Atkinson and Jonty Burton.
Editing assistance for this episode by our intern, Jasmine Geddes.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
On August fifteen, twenty twenty three, a Victoria Police digital
forensic officer named Sharman fox Henry was given a job.
His job was to uncover traces of digital information information
that had been found on a computer seized by police
from the home of Aaron Patterson. After extracting the data,

(00:26):
mister fox Henry ran a keyword search typing in terms
to see if there were any matches.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Deaf cap, deaf cab, mushroom, deaf cap, mushrooms, mushroom poison.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
Today in court, mister fox Henry was asked questions about
what he found. I'm Brooke Reebert Craig and this is
the Mushroom cook. Day sixteen of Aaron Patterson's murder trial
has wrapped up, and once again I'm joined by a
court reporter, Laura Plasseller.

Speaker 3 (01:07):
Good to be here with you. As always, It's.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
Been quite a day to day, hasn't it. Yes, it
has so. The jury has been given many lessons throughout
the trial, including lessons on mushrooms, but today it was
all about computers.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
That's right. At the top of the episode, our listeners
were introduced to Sharman fox Henry. He is part of
the Victoria Police Cybercrime Squad. And he took to the
stand today, like you said, Brooke, to give the jury
yet another lesson. It's fair to say that will be
pretty well versed I think in a number of topics
by the end of this trial. His evidence began with

(01:42):
a slide show and the first slide read what is
a computer? So we started very much with the basics,
and he slowly walked the jury through evidence around computers, files, folders, thumbnails,
and even some more technical things known as artifacts. And
he explained that artifacts can range from a Microsoft word

(02:05):
file to a web browser cookie.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
Now, a number of devices were seized from Aaron Patterson's
home and mister fox Henry was one of the officers
who examined them.

Speaker 3 (02:17):
Yes, so the jury previously heard that several devices were
seized by police from Aaron's home when warrants were executed
on August five and November two, twenty twenty three, August
five being about one week after the lunch and in particular, today,
mister fox Henry was questioned about a Cooler Master computer

(02:41):
that was found, Cooler Master being the brand of computer.
He walked the jury through his job as a digital
forensics officer and how he extracts data from devices. He
explained that the beginning of that process involves creating a
copy of the data which is the case, and from

(03:01):
that case he can run analysis for the investigators. He
told the court that he was asked to run a
keyword search for five terms. Those terms were the ones
you heard at the top of the episode, death cap,
death cap, mushroom, death cap, mushrooms, mushrooms, and poison.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
So what was actually found on the caller master computer then?

Speaker 3 (03:26):
So it was at this point today where a forensic
examination report was brought up on the screens in the
court for the jury to see, and this contained all
the records that were pulled from this device. The court
heard there were records in this report that related to
a search term. So you think about a search term
as something you would type into a browser, just like Google.

(03:49):
This search term was for a naturalists and the record
showed that this search was made on May twenty eight,
twenty twenty two, at around seven to twenty p so
that's about fourteen months before the lunch at the center
of this trial. To remind our listeners again, I Naturalist
is that citizen science website we've been referring to that

(04:11):
allows members of the public to post sightings of plants,
animals and fungi, which includes deathcap mushrooms.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yes, and doctor Tom May and Christine McKenzie both gave
evidence about this website previously.

Speaker 3 (04:25):
That's right. So mister fox Henry was asked what these
records meant and he told the court that it confirmed
a being search was done for iiurnaturalist on this day.
I mentioned Google before, Bing is another search engine. But
it is really important to note at this stage that
the court didn't hear today who made these searches. It

(04:46):
was simply evidence about the fact a search was made
on that device.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
And were there any other records relating to the Cooler
Master computer?

Speaker 3 (04:55):
Yes, there were. After mister fox Henry spoke about the
search term record, we moved on to some web history
records and the court heard that after the search term
I naturalist was made by seven twenty one pms. This
is about one minute later, the urliinaturalist dot org was

(05:16):
visited by a browser on this computer. Another record showed
that two minutes later, at seven twenty three pm, another
I naturalist url was accessed by the computer. So we've
spoken about URLs, but the court heard today that every
web page has a title as well, and the title

(05:38):
of the URL that was visited at seven twenty three
and I'll read this out here from my notes was
deathcap from Melbourne, Vic, Australia on May eighteenth, twenty twenty two,
at two thirty six pm by Ivan Margitter Bricker Reserve

(05:59):
Moravin iNaturalist. The court wasn't told too much more at
all about this web page and what all of those
words meant. But the jury have previously heard evidence from
doctor May and miss McKenzie who you mentioned earlier Brooke,
who have made posts on I Naturalists before when they've
observed fungi in the wild.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
And did the jury find out how many times these
web pages were actually visited?

Speaker 3 (06:26):
They did so. Mister Fox Henry explained that there was
data extracted that related to the visit count and he
told the court that for this particular web page, the
visit count was two, which indicated the web page had
been visited twice.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
And there was another search term that we heard more
about today, wasn't there there was?

Speaker 3 (06:45):
After the court heard about the naturalist search terms, they
were also brought to a search term made at seven
twenty three pm so on this same day, on May
twenty eighth, twenty twenty two, for the current Borough Middle Pub.
According to the records, this search was made on the
computer about two minutes after the search for OI Naturalist.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
That was a lot of detail, Laura, Can you summarize
it for our listeners.

Speaker 3 (07:11):
I'll definitely try. As I mentioned earlier, everything we heard
about today was a record that related to a computer
seized from Erin's home. While the court didn't hear who
made searches or who visited websites on this device, what
was made clear was that there were searches made for
Iron Naturalist, and after those searches were made, web pages

(07:34):
relating to I Naturalist were also accessed, in particular that
web page relating to a siding of Deathcap Mushrooms in Morabin,
which is a suburb in Melbourne.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
Great summary, Laura, Mister Fox Henry also examined another device.

Speaker 3 (07:50):
That's right. We didn't hear a lot about this today
because by the time it was mentioned it was close
to the end of the day. But he told the
court the cybercrime team analyzed the of Gail Patterson and
we're expected to hear more of what was found tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
That's right, and to end the day, Justice Christopher Bill
gave a bit of a warning to the jury, didn't
he He did.

Speaker 3 (08:11):
After there were those references made to the URLs which
were shown on the screen in the courtroom, he turned
to the jurors and gave them a gentle reminder that
they should not be going home and googling these URLs
to figure out where they went to, and they should
only be relying on the evidence they're hearing in court.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
Thanks Laura, and to stay updated on all our coverage
of this case, go to the mushroomcook dot com dot
au for more