The Trial: Location, location, location

A digital forensics expert spoke to the jury about  Erin Patterson’s phone records and revealed that she may have visited the areas where death cap mushrooms had been spotted in the months before the deadly lunch.

The Mushroom Cook team is Brooke Grebert-Craig, Laura Placella, Anthony Dowsley, Jordy Atkinson and Jonty Burton.  Our intern is Jasmine Geddes.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
A retired pharmacist and poisons expert, Christine McKenzie, went on

(00:04):
a walk in the Gippsland town of Locke. She had
gone to visit her daughter, but while she was there
she took a stroll at the local oval to see
what interesting fungi she could find. She told the court today, we're.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
On the recreation oval, the sports ground at Locke. There
it's surrounded by oak trees. I observed some amanita feloides
around the roots or around underneath one of the oak
trees on the western side. I believe of the oval.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Seeing the danger of a potentially toxic mushroom colony, she
plucked as many as she could find and as she
explained today in court, she took photos of them. She
then posted the phottos to a citizen website courti Naturalist,
a resource that asks its users to share their observations
from the natural world.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
I was fascinated by how few fungi have been really
identified in Australia, and I just find them personally beautiful
and it's a lovely way to go for a bushward
with an expert and you suddenly become much more aware
of the variety of fungi that there are, so I'm
not a forager. I don't go for a walk to
find them to eat. It's just pure fascination.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
What became of that post and how the prosecution alleges
Aaron Patterson later used it was at the center of
today's testimony. I'm Brook Creebert Craig, and this is the
mushroom Cook. It's the start of week four of Aaron
Patterson's murder trial, and I'm back with my colleague, court
reporter Laura Placella.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
Hi, Laura, Hey, it's great to be back. We are
more than halfway through, it seems.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yes, we are. As you heard at the top of
the episode. A former poisons information specialist was the first
person to give evidence today. Christine McKenzie told the jury
she spotted deathcat mushrooms while she was on a walk
with her husband and grandson in Locke.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
That's right, and as you mentioned, she is an expert
and she worked for seventeen years at the Victorian Poisons
in five Mation Center. While working at the center, Miss
mackenzie told the court that she developed quite a fascination
with fungi and she did a lot of research herself
and went on a lot of bushwalks, and it was

(02:13):
on this day on April eighteen, twenty twenty three, where
she wasn't so much on a bushwalk, but just a
nice family walk with her grandson and their dog, where
she spotted these deathcat mushrooms growing just to the side
of an oval in Locke. She told the jury she
wanted to remove the mushrooms because she knew how toxic

(02:34):
they were, so she described taking out and I quote
the dog pooh bag she had with her and putting
the mushrooms into the bag. But before she did that,
she made sure to take those photos that she could
then reference later.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
Yes, she then posted those photos to Iron Naturalists, which
is a citizen website, which we've heard before when my
cologist Tom May was giving his evidence last week.

Speaker 3 (02:59):
She was really concers earned that people walking their dogs
or children who were playing near the oval would accidentally
consume the mushrooms, or people who were foraging would mistakenly
believe them to be edible mushrooms and pick them. She
also told the court that she was worried that fresh
death cap mushrooms may grow in that same place over

(03:19):
the coming weeks, So this was the reason she posted
their location to our naturalist to make sure anyone that
was using that website knew that there were death caps
growing in that area. The photos she posted to our
Naturalists were shown to the jury today and Miss mackenzie
took the opportunity to describe what the death cap mushrooms
looked like. These are her words, it's not her voice.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
So this is, if I may say so myself, quite
a nice image of a death cap mushroom. It shows,
first of all, the cap which is white with a
bit of a yellow olive green tinge. You can't quite
see in that one, but in a subsequent photo the
gills underneath are white. The stuff or stem is sitting
in quite a bulb bulbus structure and there's just hanging

(04:04):
down underneath the gills there's the remnants of a veil
where it was connected when it was popping through the ground.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
Now, Miss Mackenzie's evidence really set the jury up for
the next witness, who was digital forensic expert Dr Matthew Serell.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
The court heard he runs a consulting company that relates
to digital forensics and has actually been involved in more
than four hundred criminal matters, giving evidence for both the
prosecution and the defense. He told the court that his
area of expertise was around mobile phone network data. Last week,
our listeners may remember that the jury got a lesson

(04:39):
in deathcat mushrooms and all things related. But this week
it's fair to say that they started getting a lesson
in telecommunications networks. It was some pretty dense evidence today,
but doctor Sorel walked the jury through it. He started
by describing how a base station, which is pretty much
a phone tower, provides a connection between a mobile phone

(05:00):
and a network through antennas. He said they could be
located on top of a tall commercial building, a grain silo,
or even a large water tank. He then walked the
jury through all the different types of records that telephone
companies keep. There were really basic records, he said, called
call charge records, which contain the details around the phone

(05:23):
calls you make, the texts you send, and the data
you use. But then there was also some high level
records called event based monitoring records, and the shorthand for
this was EBMs. I won't bore our listeners with the details,
but he explained how these types of records were a
lot more rich with information, especially relating to timestamps.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
Doctor Sorel told the jury he had been provided four
and a half years of core charge records from January
twenty nineteen to August twenty twenty three relating to a
phone belonging to error.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
That's right, So these are those basic records I just
referred to. But doctor Cerel also told the court that
he was given some specific EBM records relating to a
few dates in April and May twenty twenty three concerning
the Lock and Outram areas, which are two townships near
Lee Andngatha.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
Let's begin with Lock April twenty eight, twenty twenty three.

Speaker 3 (06:25):
Before we dive into doctor Cerel's evidence, Let's just remember
that miss McKenzie's iinatchalist post was made on April eighteen,
twenty twenty three, and she observed those death caps in Lock.
Doctor Cerel told the court today that it was his
opinion that the records from Erin's phone indicated that there

(06:46):
was a possible visit to the Loch area on April
twenty eight, from about nine o'clock in the morning to
about ten o'clock. He said that when you looked at
those EBM records, the mobile phone connected to Bay Station
at Lock and Lock South at nine oh eight, nine
oh nine, and again at ten oh one.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
So the court also heard that Aaron's phone was in
Lock on May twenty two.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
Yes, that's right. So doctor Serrel then walked the jury
through the fact that on May twenty two, this phone
made repeated connections to some of these base stations in Lock,
and on this occasion the connections were happening every five minutes,
and he told the court that this was consistent with
the phone being relatively stationary in this area, which indicates

(07:35):
a possible visit.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
So we've mentioned May twenty two already, where else was
Erin's phone located?

Speaker 2 (07:42):
Laura?

Speaker 3 (07:43):
To answer this question, we might just take a step
back and remind our listeners of some of the evidence
from last week. The jury heard from mycologist or fungi specialist,
doctor Tom May, who was asked about an I natchalist
post he made on May twenty one, twenty twenty five.
He was in the Outram area going for a walk

(08:03):
and he told the court he observed death caps along
a street called Nielson Street. He then took some photos
of the death cap mushrooms and posted them to our naturalist,
just like miss Mackenzie did exactly. The court then heard
today from doctor Serraul, who said it was his opinion
that again this mobile phone belonging to Erin made a
possible visit to northern Outram, that is where Nielson Street

(08:27):
is located, one day later after doctor May's post on
May twenty two. He said this visit was no earlier
than eleven twenty four am and no later than eleven
forty nine am, using the same sort of language he
referred to when talking about the possible visit to Locke,

(08:48):
He said that the mobile phone was relatively stationary in
the area until about eleven forty nine due to its
repeated connections to one of the nearby base stations before
it returned tillian Gatha, which is where Eron lives at midday.
We did refer to this May twenty two date earlier.
So it appears from the records that doctor Sorell has

(09:09):
analyzed that Erin's phone was first in Lock on the
morning of May twenty two, before it traveled to Outram
later that morning.

Speaker 1 (09:18):
So, in summary, it's the prosecution case that Aaron traveled
to Locke and Outrim in April and May twenty twenty three,
in the days after these deathcap sightings were posted on
the I Naturalist website. That's right, but it's really important
to mention at this stage that doctor Sorel will return
to the witness box tomorrow and will be cross examined

(09:39):
by Erin's defense team, where they will have a chance
to question doctor Sorel about these records and the conclusions
he can draw from them. We'll talk more about that
after he gives evidence tomorrow.

Speaker 3 (09:50):
See then Brook.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
Thanks Laura, and remember go to the mushroomcook dot com
dot au to stay up to date with all the
latest in this case.