The Trial: Servo snack stop

CCTV footage has been played to the jury, showing accused mushroom cook killer stopping at a service station and buying a sandwich and sour lollies day after 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.

The Mushroom Cook is a Herald Sun production for True Crime Australia.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today in the trial of Aaron Patterson, police officer Kwang
Tran took to the stand to show the jury some
CCTV of a service station on the South Gippsland Highway
in Coldermeined. It's one of those modern servos with a
macas and a parking area. You can just about see
from space in the footage, a little red MG car
pulls up outside the entry to the building. Dressed in

(00:23):
a gray top and cream pants, Aaron walks in and
goes to the ladies. Nine seconds later she exits. She
browses the food section, purchases items and then leaves. It's
a typical visit to a typical servo that could happen
anywhere in country Australia. But this visit happened on July thirty,

(00:44):
twenty twenty three, one day after the beef Wellington lunch
that led to the deaths of three people and the
charges of murder against the person who cooked the meal.
I'm Brook Greebert Craig, and this is the Mushroom Cook.
We've just finished day fifteen of Aaron Patterson's trial, and

(01:05):
I'm here as always with my colleague and court reporter
Laura Placella.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Another day, another podcast episode.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yes it is. It was a full day in court,
but majority of the day we heard again from doctor
Matthew Sirall, who continued his evidence from yesterday, but more
on him later. At the top of the episode, our
listeners heard about CCTV that was pulled from a BP
service station.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
That's right, but let's just take a step back for
a second and give our listeners a little bit more context.
It's been a while a few episodes actually, since we've
spoken about the events following the lunch. We've been spending
time focusing on phone records from the months before the
lunch and some scientific evidence about the leftovers from a

(01:49):
month after the lunch. So let's bring it back to
this meal. On July twenty nine, the court heard evidence
two weeks ago from Aaron's Sun who spoke about the
day's following that meal and what he remembers. He said
that the day after lunch, on July thirty, he woke
up and went into the kitchen where he saw his

(02:11):
mum drinking a coffee. He said that she told him
she had been unwell throughout the night, was feeling a
bit sick and had experienced diarrhea, and the court heard
they would not be going to church that Sunday like
they usually do, but our listeners might remember that her
son was taking flying lessons and one of those lessons
was booked for that Sunday. Her son explained that he

(02:34):
told his mom there was no pressure for her to
take him to this flying lesson, considering she was sick,
but he said that she insisted she would still take him.
So the jury heard that later that afternoon they set
off for the lesson, which is in Taiab, a town
in the Mornington Peninsula, which is over an hour's drive
from where they live in Leengatha. And on the way

(02:56):
they stopped at this BP service station in Cold Meat,
and this is where the CCTV footage was obtained. As
you mentioned earlier, Brooke, the jury heard today from Senior
Constable Quang Tran from the homicide squad, who said he
obtained the CCTV footage in August. That footage was then
played to the jury in the prosecution opening a few

(03:19):
weeks ago. The jury heard that that day she purchased
some sour confectionery, a ham, cheese and tomato sandwich, and
a sweet chili chicken rut. After three minutes, she left
the service station, but it was a short cameo by
Constable Tran. After this CCTV footage was played to the jury,
his evidence was done for the day and the jury

(03:41):
went home, but were expected to hear from him at
a later stage.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
Now that brings me back to doctor Serrell, the digital
forensic expert the jury heard from yesterday. He was cross
examined by Aaron's defense barrister Colin Mandy sc today.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
We heard yesterday that he specializes in mobile phone network
data and he really did give the jurors a lesson
in the mobile phone network and how it all works.
He confirmed that he had received years of phone records
relating to a handset belonging to Erin, and yesterday he
was questioned about these records, in particular certain dates in

(04:22):
April and May twenty twenty three. Today, as you mentioned, Brooke,
he was cross examined by the defense. They attempted to
cast out on the opinions that doctor Cerel had drawn
from these records. One of the first dates that doctor
Sorel was brought to was April twenty eight, twenty twenty three.

(04:42):
To give some context, around this date. This is ten
days after Christine McKenzie, who we heard from yesterday, posted
on our naturalist and observation of deathcat mushrooms growing near
an oval in Locke. Doctor Sorel told the court yesterday
that it was his opinion that Erin's phone made a
possible visit to Locke on April twenty eight, so again,

(05:06):
ten days after this post was made. Mister Mandy questioned
him today about that opinion, and doctor Soerell agreed with
mister Mandy that there were no records that he had
that showed the phone was definitively in the boundary of
the Locke township. He did go on to say, though,
that the records did show that the phone was certainly

(05:28):
to the east of the township. In a very similar fashion,
mister Mandy also asked doctor Sorel questions around one of
the other dates he was asked to analyze of Erin's
phone records, and this was May twenty two. This was
one day after mycologist doctor Tom May hosted a citing
of deathcat mushrooms in Outram on May twenty one. Mister

(05:49):
Mandy put a proposition to doctor Soerell today around that
date and asked whether Erin's phone records were consistent with
the proposition that the phone moved from lee Gatha down
the Bass Highway heading to Inverlocke and at some point
stopped for a period of time. Doctor Serell thought about

(06:10):
this hypothetical for a bit and he said he had
a concern with it, which was that there was one
base station. Just to remind our listeners, this is the
technical term for a telephone tower. He said that there
was no connection with the Kongwak base station during that journey,
and he said that was an anomaly with mister Mandy's proposition. However,
he did agree though with the defense that there remained

(06:33):
a possibility that the mobile phone did not enter the
Outram postcode on that day.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
So all this evidence sounds a little bit confusing.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
Yes, and it's safe to say that today was definitely
another dense day of evidence. But if I can put
it like this, during his evidence in chief yesterday, doctor
Cerel spoke about the possible visits that could have been
made to these areas by Erin's phone on a number
of days. Today, when it came to his cross examination,

(07:04):
he was really speaking about the fact that just because
these could be possible visits, it didn't mean that there
weren't other possibilities or other possible types of visits her
phone could have made on these days.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
Okay, that makes sense now. And on a lighter note,
we had a little intruder in the courtroom today.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
We did. It definitely broke up the evidence from doctor Serral,
even if it was just momentarily. There was a little
beetle that was crawling on the microphone that he was
speaking into in the witness box, and it managed to
catch his attention and he kind of stopped mid sentence
and told the court there's a nice little beetle crawling
across my microphone, which got some laughs from the courtroom,

(07:46):
and then soon after that his evidence continued.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yes, we did have a little chuckle with that. We
will be back tomorrow, but in the meantime go to
the mushroomcook dot com dot au to stay updated on
this case.