July 7, 2025 • 23 mins
Mushroom cook Erin Patterson has been found guilty of murder. The Mushroom Cook team breaks down what this means.
The Mushroom Cook team is Brooke Grebert-Craig, Laura Placella, Anthony Dowsley, Jordy Atkinson and Jonty Burton
The Mushroom Cook is a Herald Sun production for True Crime Australia.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The Mushroom trial is over and the jury have found
Aaron Patterson guilty of murder and attempted murder. Laura, you
were in court. What did you see?
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I was seated right in front of the dock, only
a few meters away from Erin. The jury came into
the room and the judges associate asked them for their verdicts.
One by one. The jury foreman said guilty. I looked
at Erin. She sat expressionless, She didn't cry, There was
no expression whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
There's a lot of media outside La Trovelli Law courts
at the moment or waiting to speak to anyone who
will come out.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
We don't know the next time Erin will be in court,
but soon she will have to face a plea hearing
before she is sentenced.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
But let's head back to the studio and discuss it
in more depth. I'm Brook Greybert.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Craig, I'm Laura Placella.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
And this is the Mushroom Cook. Hi, Laura, we're back
in our podcast studio. So Aaron Patterson has been found guilty.
What does this mean?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
So she's been found guilty of three charges of murder
relating to Don Patterson, Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson. And
she's also been found guilty of the attempted murder of
Ian Wilkinson. And it has been a long time in
Victoria since we've had someone been found guilty of a
triple murder, especially a female. So this is quite a
(01:21):
big moment. And what this also means is that the
jury have rejected her story that this was a tragic accident.
They didn't buy it. They heard all of the evidence
that we're about to go through, and they concluded that
she deliberately put death caps in that meal with the
intention of killing all of her.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Guests and Laura. I guess for the last thirty episodes,
we broke down the evidence for our listeners and we
had to be quite careful in what we were saying.
I guess now we can be a bit more candid.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, for sure, when you're covering a trial, there are
a lot of rules that you have to follow, and
we're not going to go into all the law now,
But in this point in time, since we have a verdict,
we can speak a bit more freely about the evidence
and what it means. I know some of our listeners
were really wanting us to talk more about the evidence.
They wanted to hear our analysis of it, and that
makes sense. You know, people who are really interested in
(02:12):
the trial wanted all of those things really broken down
and explained to them. But now we're in a position
where we really can start to analyze the evidence and
see how the jury came to the verdict that they did.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Okay, Laura, Now let's talk about the seven most damning
pieces of evidence that brought down Erin.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
And these are the pieces of evidence that we think
brought her down. We're actually not sure what happened in
that jury room. We're not privy to the discussions the
jurors had, but these are certainly the pieces of evidence
that I think stuck out in both of our minds
when we were listening to it, and probably in our listeners'
minds when we were bringing it to them as well.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
I think the first one would definitely have to be
the different colored plates and the individual beef Wellington's that
Aaron cooked for her guests.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
I think the colored plates was almost like the smoking
gun for some people. They just couldn't wrap their head
around why you would invite people over to your house
for a lunch and then proceed to serve the meals
on different plates. Why wouldn't you just use a matching
set of plates that you had.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
So E Wilkinson, as we've touched on many times before,
was the only guest that survived the meal, and he
said that Aaron served their beef Wellingtons on stone gray plates,
but served herself on an orange tanned plate. He also
said the morning after the lunch, Heather remarked, is Aaron
short of crockery? I was wondering why she served herself
(03:34):
on a different plate to the rest of us. So
here's two people with the same account of Aaron serving
her guests on different colored plates compared to herself.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
And during the trial, Aaron's defense barrister Colin Mandy tried
to argue that it would have been really dumb for
her to use different colored plates if she was trying
to commit a murder. He said, it would have been
so much smarter for her to just mark the pastry.
But it seems like the jury wasn't buying that argument
and they've taken Ian Addy's word.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
And another point is Aaron cooked individual beef Wellington's for
her guests rather than cooking up a usual beef Wellington log.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
We learned that Aaron used the best selling recipe Tin
Eats cookbook called Dinner, and there were photos in that
recipe of the log you've just described, So it didn't
really make sense that someone would follow a recipe one
that she's actually never made. Before. Aaron admitted she'd never
made a beef Wellington, but makes such a massive change
to the recipe, and I guess now we have our
(04:33):
answer why she decided to do that. Crown Prosecutor Nannette
Rodgers said to the jury that it was the prosecution
case that she served individual beef Wellington so she could
have complete control of all the ingredients in all the serves.
And what we can take away from the jury's verdict
is that they agree that her serve of beef Wellington
must either have had no mushrooms at all or just
(04:55):
regular mushrooms.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Now, let's move on to the fabricated cancer claim. And
this is a little bit complex, right, Laura.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah, it is a little bit. When Erin gave evidence
during the trial, she had a whole range of reasons
why she was telling people she had medical issues and
trying to explain away why she would announce at the
table that she had cancer when she really didn't. So
Simon told the jury that when he was invited to
the lunch two weeks earlier, Aaron did flag that she
(05:26):
wanted to discuss some important medical news, but it was
only until the day of the lunch. Obviously Simon didn't attend,
but it was at the end of the meal that
Ian recalled Aaron making an announcement.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Yes, he said that Aaron said that she had cancer
and she described it as life threatening.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
And he said in court that that was the moment
he realized why they had been invited to the lunch,
because the four guests weren't told that Aaron wanted to
discuss medical news. She only told that to Simon.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
The prosecution very much claimed that Aaron planted this seed
of this lie far in advance when she told Don
and Gale earlier in June that she was having medical
tests on her elbow.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
But this is where I felt like it became a
bit confusing, because with Don and Gail, she was talking
to them about this lump, and then all of a
sudden at the lunch, she starts bringing up ovarian cancer.
Seems like she dialed things up to ten during that conversation,
but she claimed that she'd only ever brought up cancer
at the lunch because she was exploring gastric bypass surgery
(06:33):
and she wanted to cover for that procedure when it
came time for her to go under the knife. Mister
Mandy made a good point during his closing address that
she didn't tell the lunch guests about the medical news,
and they seemed to just come to the lunch with
no reason at all provided. And then she served them
the beef Wellington and they ate it before she even
told them about the cancer. So I'm not quite sure
(06:55):
myself if she really did manufacture this story about cancer
to get them to the lunch. It seems like they
would have come regardless.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
And you know, I've seen a lot of questions floating
around as to why then Heather and Ian were invited
to the lunch, and I think it's quite safe to
say that they were really collateral damage in Aaron's plans.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yeah, I would really agree with that. It did appear
that Aaron really wanted Simon at the lunch, and it
also appeared that she thought the best chance of that
happening would be to have both his parents there. And
also his aunt and uncle. I think the term I'd
used before with you Brook is safety in numbers. If
there are five people sitting around that table, plus erin,
(07:35):
I think in everyone's minds, it would have been a
lot less likely that something awful would have happened.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Now, let's chat about Aaron's lack of symptoms. I think
it's safe to say that she wasn't really sick at all,
despite the jury hearing that she had diarrhea the day
after the lunch.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yet it almost seems now that some of the lies
she told on the stand were for nothing, because they
were actually pretty embarrassing lies she told the and I'd
go one to say the world at large, considering how
many people have been following this case, that she had
to pull over on the side of the road the
day after the lunch and essentially take a poo in
(08:11):
the bush, and then she spoke about cleaning herself up,
and then spoke about having to drive to a service
station to get rid of those soil tissues. So Noel
would really want to be recounting any of this. But
it seems now that that was just a lie.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
I know this wasn't really mentioned in court, a lot,
but it's something we all as journalists spoke about in
Corton in the overflow room. Why did Aaron wear white
pants the day after the lunch if she had explosive diarrhea?
Speaker 2 (08:39):
And we really really wanted the prosecution to make this
point in their closing address when they were touching on
the trip to Taiab. We were just waiting, like, mention
the white pants, mention the white pants. They didn't get mentioned.
But you never know, this could have been something that
the jurors could have been discussing themselves when you are
having one of those days, you're not wearing white pants
(09:00):
just in case you do have an accident, which Arin
was talking to people about. She was talking about the
fact she was scared over the night of the lunch
and the next day that she could have an accident.
I think the word she used at one point was
hoping sitting in the car would feel like a cork.
So this was something clearly on her mind, or so
she said. It appears the night of and the next
(09:22):
day she wasn't really suffering from anything. But I think
you've mentioned to me before Brook that you felt like
maybe she started to get stressed by the Monday.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Yeah, I definitely think that would have been the case.
And you know, we heard that she went to the
hospital and she had tests done of her bower movements,
and personally, I do think you know, when you're under
so much pressure and anxiety, it can really force your
body to do things that you're not really used to.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Well, yeah, I mean essentially, in those days after the lunch,
things were unraveling for Erin. I think she was starting
to realize that there was a chance she was going
to get found out, and I can imagine that would
have been in credibly stress inducing and anxiety inducing. So
she gets to the hospital on July thirty one, the Monday,
she gets taken to Monash Medical Center. Pretty quickly they
(10:11):
realize that she's not suffering from death cap mushroom poisoning.
But another thing here that we haven't touched on yet
was the fact that Aaron told the jury that she
vomited after the lunch. But very interestingly, and it makes
sense now, she didn't tell anyone else that she vomited
after the lunch. It appears that it was a story
(10:31):
she concocted to explain to the jury why she wasn't
as sick as everyone else.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
And I think this is a difficulty issue to actually
speak upon in any other case. Obviously, when someone is
suffering body image and bolimia, you would want to believe them.
But I think in Aaron's case, she has proven that
she is a liar. So really, did she suffer from bolimia?
Did she vomit on that day? Who knows? We don't know.
(10:59):
And the jury didn't believe her.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
I must admit it was a very convenient lie, and
one it appears that no one really saw coming. But
I think they did a very good job of proving
to the jury that it was nothing but a baseless lie.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Now let's move on to the citizen website I Naturalists,
which we have spoken a lot in detail, and Aaron's
phone pings to Outram and Locke.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
And this is probably one of my favorite parts of
the evidence because it really sets out a very compelling timeline.
And when I heard about this timeline for the first time,
I just couldn't ignore it. I just kept coming back
to it and how and how incriminating I.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Thought it was.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
So we have spoken a lot about these dates before,
but I really try and do it now in a
way that I think will really make sense. So April
eighteen is the day that Christine McKenzie posts on Our
Naturalists and says she's found death caps in Locke. Ten
days later, we now know that Aaron traveled to the
area and foraged for death caps. Only a few hours
(11:59):
after she in lock, she is at better home living
in Lea and Gatha buying.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
A dehydrator crazy.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Only a few hours she'd found what she was looking for.
And then she's thought, I need to preserve these because
we heard from my collegist, doctor Tom May that death caps,
after they've been picked, they only have a certain shelf
life before they will start to decompose. So she thought
to herself, I need to buy something to help me
preserve my eventual murder weapon. So she goes, she gets
(12:29):
the dehydrator, then she comes home. Then two days later
she takes some photos of her dehydrata, including some photos
of some button mushrooms on one of the trays. And
this was a really smart argument I thought. From the prosecution,
they said that Erin was doing a test run. She
was practicing with just some regular woolies mushrooms to try
(12:53):
to figure out the best way to dehydrate a mushroom
because she wouldn't want to stuff it up. You know,
we heard evidence in the trial that death caps had
never before been posted to our naturalists in the Gippsland region,
So I think she was probably thinking, this is really rare.
I want to make sure I don't waste these. Then
a few days later she takes some more photos, and
(13:13):
this time it appears that those photos were of the
death caps sitting on her dehydrator tray. So she had
done her test run with the button mushrooms and she
was ready to dehydrate the real thing.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
But it's really crazy to me that she would take
photos of this.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, and this was something mister Mandy did point out.
He goes, if my client has been planning this murder,
why on earth is she taking photos of again the
murder weapon, not only the mushrooms, but the dehydrader itself.
So that was a little bit strange, I will say.
But someone did actually tell me that they thought she
had taken the photos as trophy photos. She may not
(13:50):
have thought she'd get caught, and they'd actually offer almost
a little keepsake of what she was able to find
and what she was able to do with those mushrooms.
So it seems like Erin a few weeks and perhaps
she thinks, I want more death caps, I don't have enough.
So she then travels to Locke, where she first went
to see if any more death caps were growing, before
(14:11):
she travels to Outram after seeing doctor May's post that
he had posted only one day beforehand. Mister Manny almost
mocked the prosecution case during his closing address, saying that
it was extraordinary to suggest that Erin would have been
sitting there refreshing our naturalist every day. But it appears
with this verdict that the jury has ruled that that's
(14:32):
exactly what she did.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
And we touched upon the dehydrader a bit before, but
Aaron did dump it on August two, so this was
four days after the lunch and in her evidence, Aaron
said that she dumped it because she panicked, but I
think it's safe to say that it wasn't so much panic,
but more that Aaron was getting rid of the evidence,
getting rid of her murder weapon.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
She knew that she had used the dehydrator to dry
death caps, and she's really into true crime. She was
probably thinking to herself, if they find this dehydrator in
my home. They're gonna run tests on it and they
might find traces of death caps in there. So I'm
just gonna distance myself from this appliance, dump it and
hope no one finds it. But police were onto it
(15:15):
very quickly. I think they found it within only two
days of her dumping it.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Now let's move on to the Asian grocer and the
lies that Aaron told about this. So we heard during
the trial that she told almost a dozen witnesses that
mushrooms in the beef Wellington came from a local wooworths
and an Asian grocer in Melbourne Southeast, and she was
throwing around different suburbs like Clayton, Oakley Mount Waverley. But
(15:42):
really she did this to send the Department of Health
on a wild goose chase, because she in fact did
not buy any mushrooms from any Asian grocer in Melbourne Southeast.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Yeah, these poor Asian grocers became scapegoats. Almost in the
days after the lunch, she was starting to realize that
she needed to deflect blame. She needed to come up
with a story to explain why death caps were in
the meal she cooked. I think she cottoned on pretty
fast that no one would believe her if she said
she just bought the mushrooms from Woolworths, so she needed
(16:16):
another element. And we do know that she did shop
at these sorts of Asian grocers before, so they probably
popped into her mind and she's like, great, I'm going
to throw them under the bus. But during the trial
things kind of took a turn, and when Erin was
giving evidence, she then all of a sudden revealed that
when she was cooking the mushroom duckt cells for the
beef Wellington, she had gone to her pantry to grab
(16:39):
a container of the dried mushrooms from the Asian grocer.
She explained that she threw them in, but then she
said that after a few days she realized that maybe
that container also had foraged mushrooms in there. So by
this stage, Erin's story had evolved from only Woolworths mushrooms
being in the meal, to Wolworth's mushrooms plus dried mushrooms
(17:02):
from an Asian groser, to finally, in its final evolution,
Woolworth's mushrooms plus dried mushrooms from an Asian groser plus
forage mushrooms that she had accidentally put into this container
after one of her foraging trips.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
And you know, I think she really had to add
in that element of the forage mushrooms because she knew
that she would be caught out for lying about Asian grosers.
I think we have to consider if there were death
cap mushrooms at Asian grocers, why didn't anyone else get
sick in Victoria.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
It really did seem like Erin was hedging her bets
because she was trying to leave open the possibility that
maybe the death caps did come from the Asian groser,
or maybe she had accidentally foraged death caps when it
came to her trying to spin this story about it
being an accident. I don't think she wanted to just
lock herself into one source of mushrooms. She wanted to
give herself as many options as possible.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
And really create that doubt within the jury.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
But again they really didn't.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Now let's finish off with something that we've dubbed the
game of phones.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Our producer was really happy with that phrase, and it's
a really good one and it really describes what was
going on here. So we have phone a phone, b
and Phone C. We won't crap on about them too
much more. But essentially what this verdict really shows was
that Phone A, which was Erin's usual phone, was disposed
of by Erin at some stage. We don't know where
(18:25):
she put it.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
She wanted to get rid of that evidence.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Yeah, she really did. The prosecution had always argued that
that was probably the phone she used to search our naturalist.
It was the phone she took to lock an outrum,
considering that there were those phone pings, so it was
very likely that she is looking on her phone at
I Naturalist trying to figure out what tree did. Doctor
may say the death caps are under it's almost like
(18:50):
her guide. So she's gotten rid of Phone A. But
then she's thought to herself when the police come knocking,
which I think she realized they would, she needed a
dumb phone, so she had a lot of devices, it seemed,
laying around her house. So she's grabbed Phone B and
she started to set it up to appear like it's
her phone. She's done that around August two, August three.
(19:13):
By August five they do come knocking, and she's probably thinking, great,
I'm prepared. Now she has to pull a little bit
of a sneaky and take out her SIM card from
Phone A, her usual phone. I don't think she wanted
to lose her number, so she's taken out her SIMP card,
hid in Phone A somewhere in the house at least
for now, and then she's just handed over Phone B
(19:34):
to police and said, yep, this is my phone here,
you can have it. But maybe panic took over in
that moment, because she's then gone and factory reset Phone
B two times. It may have been panic and she's
just thought maybe I'll just, you know, wipe my dummy
phone for the sake of it. Or maybe she thought
wiping the dummy phone would delay police a little bit.
(19:57):
Maybe they wouldn't actually realize that that her phone until
later when they got back to police HQ. So again
we go back to this game of phones idea.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
I think this really speaks to Aaron's level of sophistication. Really,
she was really thinking ahead and planning out her moves.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Yeah, that's right. And when she was giving evidence, she
actually had some explanations to the switching of the phones
that I must admit at some points did seem to
make a bit of sense. She said that police didn't
touch one of the phones in her house and left
it on a window sill, and she claimed that was
Phone A. Clearly no one was buying that. And then
she also argued that she was simply setting up Phone
(20:36):
B because fon A was for some reason damaged despite
being six months old, and she also wanted to get
a new phone number. But I think you know, if
you've served up a lunch that is about to claim
the lives of almost all of your guests. I don't
think that is the time you're setting up a new phone.
It would be the last thing on your mind, really,
But in this case, Aaron was spending those days trying
(20:58):
to figure out a way to get away with murder.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
So now that Erin has been found guilty of murder,
she will be taken back to a woman's maximum security prison,
Dame Phyllis Frost. But Laura, what's next? Can she appeal?
Speaker 2 (21:12):
So she can appeal, But before that can happen, there
are a few final stages that she needs to undergo
in the trial process. So here in Victoria, someone is
found guilty of a serious crime, they will face what's
called a plea. Hearing the word please sometimes confuses people.
Sometimes people think that means they've pleaded guilty, but it's
(21:32):
just what the hearing is called. But effectively, it's when
the prosecution will present their arguments to the judge about
how long they think she should spend in jail. They'll
put forward some aggravating factors as well, things they say
that makes this crime really bad and really heinous. But
then on the flip side, the defense will get a
chance to argue why she should spend a little bit
(21:53):
less time in jail. They're likely to commission many psychiatric
reports about Erin and they'll go into her past. And
then after that, after those arguments are had, the judge
will go away and think about the sentence he will
hand down. This is justice Christopher Biale, and then she'll
be back to court for sentencing.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
And when do you reckon, we'll get a sentence.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
This whole process could take a number of months. Like
I mentioned before, there are are psychiatric reports that might
need to be completed, so it could be potentially six
months until she is sentenced. But in Victoria, murder carries
a maximum penalty of life imprisonment, and Erin isn't just
facing one count of murder. She's facing three plus the
(22:36):
attempted murder of Ian. So I don't have a crystal ball.
I can't sit here and say exactly what she will
be sentenced to. But it is very likely that Erin
will die in prison.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yes, but that's unless she wins her appeal.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Yeah, so you did ask me that before Brook about
the appeals process that can take even longer. So after
Erin is sentenced, she does have that opportunity to appeal.
You can appeal on two grounds, so she can appeal
her conviction, and she can also appeal her sentence. If
she goes down the first route, that's her essentially arguing
that something has happened in the trial that hasn't been fair.
(23:13):
It's not so much her having a goal at the jury,
but more so them arguing that the trial wasn't run properly.
And if that appeal is successful, we could actually potentially
have a retrial. The Court of appeal might rule that
this all needs to happen again because Erin didn't get
a fair trial the first time, or she can go
down a second route of appealing her sentence to try
and get a few years or months shaved off in
(23:35):
the hope that she can potentially see the light of
day again.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
So that's Erin's future. But as for us, we'll be
back with a couple more episodes, but in the meantime
for more, go to the mushroomcook dot com dot au
The Mushroom trial is over and the jury have found
Aaron Patterson guilty of murder and attempted murder. Laura, you
were in court. What did you see?
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I was seated right in front of the dock, only
a few meters away from Erin. The jury came into
the room and the judges associate asked them for their verdicts.
One by one. The jury foreman said guilty. I looked
at Erin. She sat expressionless, She didn't cry, There was
no expression whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
There's a lot of media outside La Trovelli Law courts
at the moment or waiting to speak to anyone who
will come out.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
We don't know the next time Erin will be in court,
but soon she will have to face a plea hearing
before she is sentenced.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
But let's head back to the studio and discuss it
in more depth. I'm Brook Greybert.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Craig, I'm Laura Placella.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
And this is the Mushroom Cook. Hi, Laura, we're back
in our podcast studio. So Aaron Patterson has been found guilty.
What does this mean?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
So she's been found guilty of three charges of murder
relating to Don Patterson, Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson. And
she's also been found guilty of the attempted murder of
Ian Wilkinson. And it has been a long time in
Victoria since we've had someone been found guilty of a
triple murder, especially a female. So this is quite a
(01:21):
big moment. And what this also means is that the
jury have rejected her story that this was a tragic accident.
They didn't buy it. They heard all of the evidence
that we're about to go through, and they concluded that
she deliberately put death caps in that meal with the
intention of killing all of her.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Guests and Laura. I guess for the last thirty episodes,
we broke down the evidence for our listeners and we
had to be quite careful in what we were saying.
I guess now we can be a bit more candid.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, for sure, when you're covering a trial, there are
a lot of rules that you have to follow, and
we're not going to go into all the law now,
But in this point in time, since we have a verdict,
we can speak a bit more freely about the evidence
and what it means. I know some of our listeners
were really wanting us to talk more about the evidence.
They wanted to hear our analysis of it, and that
makes sense. You know, people who are really interested in
(02:12):
the trial wanted all of those things really broken down
and explained to them. But now we're in a position
where we really can start to analyze the evidence and
see how the jury came to the verdict that they did.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Okay, Laura, Now let's talk about the seven most damning
pieces of evidence that brought down Erin.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
And these are the pieces of evidence that we think
brought her down. We're actually not sure what happened in
that jury room. We're not privy to the discussions the
jurors had, but these are certainly the pieces of evidence
that I think stuck out in both of our minds
when we were listening to it, and probably in our listeners'
minds when we were bringing it to them as well.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
I think the first one would definitely have to be
the different colored plates and the individual beef Wellington's that
Aaron cooked for her guests.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
I think the colored plates was almost like the smoking
gun for some people. They just couldn't wrap their head
around why you would invite people over to your house
for a lunch and then proceed to serve the meals
on different plates. Why wouldn't you just use a matching
set of plates that you had.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
So E Wilkinson, as we've touched on many times before,
was the only guest that survived the meal, and he
said that Aaron served their beef Wellingtons on stone gray plates,
but served herself on an orange tanned plate. He also
said the morning after the lunch, Heather remarked, is Aaron
short of crockery? I was wondering why she served herself
(03:34):
on a different plate to the rest of us. So
here's two people with the same account of Aaron serving
her guests on different colored plates compared to herself.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
And during the trial, Aaron's defense barrister Colin Mandy tried
to argue that it would have been really dumb for
her to use different colored plates if she was trying
to commit a murder. He said, it would have been
so much smarter for her to just mark the pastry.
But it seems like the jury wasn't buying that argument
and they've taken Ian Addy's word.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
And another point is Aaron cooked individual beef Wellington's for
her guests rather than cooking up a usual beef Wellington log.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
We learned that Aaron used the best selling recipe Tin
Eats cookbook called Dinner, and there were photos in that
recipe of the log you've just described, So it didn't
really make sense that someone would follow a recipe one
that she's actually never made. Before. Aaron admitted she'd never
made a beef Wellington, but makes such a massive change
to the recipe, and I guess now we have our
(04:33):
answer why she decided to do that. Crown Prosecutor Nannette
Rodgers said to the jury that it was the prosecution
case that she served individual beef Wellington so she could
have complete control of all the ingredients in all the serves.
And what we can take away from the jury's verdict
is that they agree that her serve of beef Wellington
must either have had no mushrooms at all or just
(04:55):
regular mushrooms.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Now, let's move on to the fabricated cancer claim. And
this is a little bit complex, right, Laura.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah, it is a little bit. When Erin gave evidence
during the trial, she had a whole range of reasons
why she was telling people she had medical issues and
trying to explain away why she would announce at the
table that she had cancer when she really didn't. So
Simon told the jury that when he was invited to
the lunch two weeks earlier, Aaron did flag that she
(05:26):
wanted to discuss some important medical news, but it was
only until the day of the lunch. Obviously Simon didn't attend,
but it was at the end of the meal that
Ian recalled Aaron making an announcement.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Yes, he said that Aaron said that she had cancer
and she described it as life threatening.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
And he said in court that that was the moment
he realized why they had been invited to the lunch,
because the four guests weren't told that Aaron wanted to
discuss medical news. She only told that to Simon.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
The prosecution very much claimed that Aaron planted this seed
of this lie far in advance when she told Don
and Gale earlier in June that she was having medical
tests on her elbow.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
But this is where I felt like it became a
bit confusing, because with Don and Gail, she was talking
to them about this lump, and then all of a
sudden at the lunch, she starts bringing up ovarian cancer.
Seems like she dialed things up to ten during that conversation,
but she claimed that she'd only ever brought up cancer
at the lunch because she was exploring gastric bypass surgery
(06:33):
and she wanted to cover for that procedure when it
came time for her to go under the knife. Mister
Mandy made a good point during his closing address that
she didn't tell the lunch guests about the medical news,
and they seemed to just come to the lunch with
no reason at all provided. And then she served them
the beef Wellington and they ate it before she even
told them about the cancer. So I'm not quite sure
(06:55):
myself if she really did manufacture this story about cancer
to get them to the lunch. It seems like they
would have come regardless.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
And you know, I've seen a lot of questions floating
around as to why then Heather and Ian were invited
to the lunch, and I think it's quite safe to
say that they were really collateral damage in Aaron's plans.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yeah, I would really agree with that. It did appear
that Aaron really wanted Simon at the lunch, and it
also appeared that she thought the best chance of that
happening would be to have both his parents there. And
also his aunt and uncle. I think the term I'd
used before with you Brook is safety in numbers. If
there are five people sitting around that table, plus erin,
(07:35):
I think in everyone's minds, it would have been a
lot less likely that something awful would have happened.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Now, let's chat about Aaron's lack of symptoms. I think
it's safe to say that she wasn't really sick at all,
despite the jury hearing that she had diarrhea the day
after the lunch.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yet it almost seems now that some of the lies
she told on the stand were for nothing, because they
were actually pretty embarrassing lies she told the and I'd
go one to say the world at large, considering how
many people have been following this case, that she had
to pull over on the side of the road the
day after the lunch and essentially take a poo in
(08:11):
the bush, and then she spoke about cleaning herself up,
and then spoke about having to drive to a service
station to get rid of those soil tissues. So Noel
would really want to be recounting any of this. But
it seems now that that was just a lie.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
I know this wasn't really mentioned in court, a lot,
but it's something we all as journalists spoke about in
Corton in the overflow room. Why did Aaron wear white
pants the day after the lunch if she had explosive diarrhea?
Speaker 2 (08:39):
And we really really wanted the prosecution to make this
point in their closing address when they were touching on
the trip to Taiab. We were just waiting, like, mention
the white pants, mention the white pants. They didn't get mentioned.
But you never know, this could have been something that
the jurors could have been discussing themselves when you are
having one of those days, you're not wearing white pants
(09:00):
just in case you do have an accident, which Arin
was talking to people about. She was talking about the
fact she was scared over the night of the lunch
and the next day that she could have an accident.
I think the word she used at one point was
hoping sitting in the car would feel like a cork.
So this was something clearly on her mind, or so
she said. It appears the night of and the next
(09:22):
day she wasn't really suffering from anything. But I think
you've mentioned to me before Brook that you felt like
maybe she started to get stressed by the Monday.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Yeah, I definitely think that would have been the case.
And you know, we heard that she went to the
hospital and she had tests done of her bower movements,
and personally, I do think you know, when you're under
so much pressure and anxiety, it can really force your
body to do things that you're not really used to.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Well, yeah, I mean essentially, in those days after the lunch,
things were unraveling for Erin. I think she was starting
to realize that there was a chance she was going
to get found out, and I can imagine that would
have been in credibly stress inducing and anxiety inducing. So
she gets to the hospital on July thirty one, the Monday,
she gets taken to Monash Medical Center. Pretty quickly they
(10:11):
realize that she's not suffering from death cap mushroom poisoning.
But another thing here that we haven't touched on yet
was the fact that Aaron told the jury that she
vomited after the lunch. But very interestingly, and it makes
sense now, she didn't tell anyone else that she vomited
after the lunch. It appears that it was a story
(10:31):
she concocted to explain to the jury why she wasn't
as sick as everyone else.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
And I think this is a difficulty issue to actually
speak upon in any other case. Obviously, when someone is
suffering body image and bolimia, you would want to believe them.
But I think in Aaron's case, she has proven that
she is a liar. So really, did she suffer from bolimia?
Did she vomit on that day? Who knows? We don't know.
(10:59):
And the jury didn't believe her.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
I must admit it was a very convenient lie, and
one it appears that no one really saw coming. But
I think they did a very good job of proving
to the jury that it was nothing but a baseless lie.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Now let's move on to the citizen website I Naturalists,
which we have spoken a lot in detail, and Aaron's
phone pings to Outram and Locke.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
And this is probably one of my favorite parts of
the evidence because it really sets out a very compelling timeline.
And when I heard about this timeline for the first time,
I just couldn't ignore it. I just kept coming back
to it and how and how incriminating I.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Thought it was.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
So we have spoken a lot about these dates before,
but I really try and do it now in a
way that I think will really make sense. So April
eighteen is the day that Christine McKenzie posts on Our
Naturalists and says she's found death caps in Locke. Ten
days later, we now know that Aaron traveled to the
area and foraged for death caps. Only a few hours
(11:59):
after she in lock, she is at better home living
in Lea and Gatha buying.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
A dehydrator crazy.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Only a few hours she'd found what she was looking for.
And then she's thought, I need to preserve these because
we heard from my collegist, doctor Tom May that death caps,
after they've been picked, they only have a certain shelf
life before they will start to decompose. So she thought
to herself, I need to buy something to help me
preserve my eventual murder weapon. So she goes, she gets
(12:29):
the dehydrator, then she comes home. Then two days later
she takes some photos of her dehydrata, including some photos
of some button mushrooms on one of the trays. And
this was a really smart argument I thought. From the prosecution,
they said that Erin was doing a test run. She
was practicing with just some regular woolies mushrooms to try
(12:53):
to figure out the best way to dehydrate a mushroom
because she wouldn't want to stuff it up. You know,
we heard evidence in the trial that death caps had
never before been posted to our naturalists in the Gippsland region,
So I think she was probably thinking, this is really rare.
I want to make sure I don't waste these. Then
a few days later she takes some more photos, and
(13:13):
this time it appears that those photos were of the
death caps sitting on her dehydrator tray. So she had
done her test run with the button mushrooms and she
was ready to dehydrate the real thing.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
But it's really crazy to me that she would take
photos of this.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, and this was something mister Mandy did point out.
He goes, if my client has been planning this murder,
why on earth is she taking photos of again the
murder weapon, not only the mushrooms, but the dehydrader itself.
So that was a little bit strange, I will say.
But someone did actually tell me that they thought she
had taken the photos as trophy photos. She may not
(13:50):
have thought she'd get caught, and they'd actually offer almost
a little keepsake of what she was able to find
and what she was able to do with those mushrooms.
So it seems like Erin a few weeks and perhaps
she thinks, I want more death caps, I don't have enough.
So she then travels to Locke, where she first went
to see if any more death caps were growing, before
(14:11):
she travels to Outram after seeing doctor May's post that
he had posted only one day beforehand. Mister Manny almost
mocked the prosecution case during his closing address, saying that
it was extraordinary to suggest that Erin would have been
sitting there refreshing our naturalist every day. But it appears
with this verdict that the jury has ruled that that's
(14:32):
exactly what she did.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
And we touched upon the dehydrader a bit before, but
Aaron did dump it on August two, so this was
four days after the lunch and in her evidence, Aaron
said that she dumped it because she panicked, but I
think it's safe to say that it wasn't so much panic,
but more that Aaron was getting rid of the evidence,
getting rid of her murder weapon.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
She knew that she had used the dehydrator to dry
death caps, and she's really into true crime. She was
probably thinking to herself, if they find this dehydrator in
my home. They're gonna run tests on it and they
might find traces of death caps in there. So I'm
just gonna distance myself from this appliance, dump it and
hope no one finds it. But police were onto it
(15:15):
very quickly. I think they found it within only two
days of her dumping it.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Now let's move on to the Asian grocer and the
lies that Aaron told about this. So we heard during
the trial that she told almost a dozen witnesses that
mushrooms in the beef Wellington came from a local wooworths
and an Asian grocer in Melbourne Southeast, and she was
throwing around different suburbs like Clayton, Oakley Mount Waverley. But
(15:42):
really she did this to send the Department of Health
on a wild goose chase, because she in fact did
not buy any mushrooms from any Asian grocer in Melbourne Southeast.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Yeah, these poor Asian grocers became scapegoats. Almost in the
days after the lunch, she was starting to realize that
she needed to deflect blame. She needed to come up
with a story to explain why death caps were in
the meal she cooked. I think she cottoned on pretty
fast that no one would believe her if she said
she just bought the mushrooms from Woolworths, so she needed
(16:16):
another element. And we do know that she did shop
at these sorts of Asian grocers before, so they probably
popped into her mind and she's like, great, I'm going
to throw them under the bus. But during the trial
things kind of took a turn, and when Erin was
giving evidence, she then all of a sudden revealed that
when she was cooking the mushroom duckt cells for the
beef Wellington, she had gone to her pantry to grab
(16:39):
a container of the dried mushrooms from the Asian grocer.
She explained that she threw them in, but then she
said that after a few days she realized that maybe
that container also had foraged mushrooms in there. So by
this stage, Erin's story had evolved from only Woolworths mushrooms
being in the meal, to Wolworth's mushrooms plus dried mushrooms
(17:02):
from an Asian groser, to finally, in its final evolution,
Woolworth's mushrooms plus dried mushrooms from an Asian groser plus
forage mushrooms that she had accidentally put into this container
after one of her foraging trips.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
And you know, I think she really had to add
in that element of the forage mushrooms because she knew
that she would be caught out for lying about Asian grosers.
I think we have to consider if there were death
cap mushrooms at Asian grocers, why didn't anyone else get
sick in Victoria.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
It really did seem like Erin was hedging her bets
because she was trying to leave open the possibility that
maybe the death caps did come from the Asian groser,
or maybe she had accidentally foraged death caps when it
came to her trying to spin this story about it
being an accident. I don't think she wanted to just
lock herself into one source of mushrooms. She wanted to
give herself as many options as possible.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
And really create that doubt within the jury.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
But again they really didn't.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Now let's finish off with something that we've dubbed the
game of phones.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Our producer was really happy with that phrase, and it's
a really good one and it really describes what was
going on here. So we have phone a phone, b
and Phone C. We won't crap on about them too
much more. But essentially what this verdict really shows was
that Phone A, which was Erin's usual phone, was disposed
of by Erin at some stage. We don't know where
(18:25):
she put it.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
She wanted to get rid of that evidence.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Yeah, she really did. The prosecution had always argued that
that was probably the phone she used to search our naturalist.
It was the phone she took to lock an outrum,
considering that there were those phone pings, so it was
very likely that she is looking on her phone at
I Naturalist trying to figure out what tree did. Doctor
may say the death caps are under it's almost like
(18:50):
her guide. So she's gotten rid of Phone A. But
then she's thought to herself when the police come knocking,
which I think she realized they would, she needed a
dumb phone, so she had a lot of devices, it seemed,
laying around her house. So she's grabbed Phone B and
she started to set it up to appear like it's
her phone. She's done that around August two, August three.
(19:13):
By August five they do come knocking, and she's probably thinking, great,
I'm prepared. Now she has to pull a little bit
of a sneaky and take out her SIM card from
Phone A, her usual phone. I don't think she wanted
to lose her number, so she's taken out her SIMP card,
hid in Phone A somewhere in the house at least
for now, and then she's just handed over Phone B
(19:34):
to police and said, yep, this is my phone here,
you can have it. But maybe panic took over in
that moment, because she's then gone and factory reset Phone
B two times. It may have been panic and she's
just thought maybe I'll just, you know, wipe my dummy
phone for the sake of it. Or maybe she thought
wiping the dummy phone would delay police a little bit.
(19:57):
Maybe they wouldn't actually realize that that her phone until
later when they got back to police HQ. So again
we go back to this game of phones idea.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
I think this really speaks to Aaron's level of sophistication. Really,
she was really thinking ahead and planning out her moves.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Yeah, that's right. And when she was giving evidence, she
actually had some explanations to the switching of the phones
that I must admit at some points did seem to
make a bit of sense. She said that police didn't
touch one of the phones in her house and left
it on a window sill, and she claimed that was
Phone A. Clearly no one was buying that. And then
she also argued that she was simply setting up Phone
(20:36):
B because fon A was for some reason damaged despite
being six months old, and she also wanted to get
a new phone number. But I think you know, if
you've served up a lunch that is about to claim
the lives of almost all of your guests. I don't
think that is the time you're setting up a new phone.
It would be the last thing on your mind, really,
But in this case, Aaron was spending those days trying
(20:58):
to figure out a way to get away with murder.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
So now that Erin has been found guilty of murder,
she will be taken back to a woman's maximum security prison,
Dame Phyllis Frost. But Laura, what's next? Can she appeal?
Speaker 2 (21:12):
So she can appeal, But before that can happen, there
are a few final stages that she needs to undergo
in the trial process. So here in Victoria, someone is
found guilty of a serious crime, they will face what's
called a plea. Hearing the word please sometimes confuses people.
Sometimes people think that means they've pleaded guilty, but it's
(21:32):
just what the hearing is called. But effectively, it's when
the prosecution will present their arguments to the judge about
how long they think she should spend in jail. They'll
put forward some aggravating factors as well, things they say
that makes this crime really bad and really heinous. But
then on the flip side, the defense will get a
chance to argue why she should spend a little bit
(21:53):
less time in jail. They're likely to commission many psychiatric
reports about Erin and they'll go into her past. And
then after that, after those arguments are had, the judge
will go away and think about the sentence he will
hand down. This is justice Christopher Biale, and then she'll
be back to court for sentencing.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
And when do you reckon, we'll get a sentence.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
This whole process could take a number of months. Like
I mentioned before, there are are psychiatric reports that might
need to be completed, so it could be potentially six
months until she is sentenced. But in Victoria, murder carries
a maximum penalty of life imprisonment, and Erin isn't just
facing one count of murder. She's facing three plus the
(22:36):
attempted murder of Ian. So I don't have a crystal ball.
I can't sit here and say exactly what she will
be sentenced to. But it is very likely that Erin
will die in prison.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yes, but that's unless she wins her appeal.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Yeah, so you did ask me that before Brook about
the appeals process that can take even longer. So after
Erin is sentenced, she does have that opportunity to appeal.
You can appeal on two grounds, so she can appeal
her conviction, and she can also appeal her sentence. If
she goes down the first route, that's her essentially arguing
that something has happened in the trial that hasn't been fair.
(23:13):
It's not so much her having a goal at the jury,
but more so them arguing that the trial wasn't run properly.
And if that appeal is successful, we could actually potentially
have a retrial. The Court of appeal might rule that
this all needs to happen again because Erin didn't get
a fair trial the first time, or she can go
down a second route of appealing her sentence to try
and get a few years or months shaved off in
(23:35):
the hope that she can potentially see the light of
day again.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
So that's Erin's future. But as for us, we'll be
back with a couple more episodes, but in the meantime
for more, go to the mushroomcook dot com dot au
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