May 8, 2025 • 11 mins
Among the evidence today from doctors and police, the court heard from Erin Patterson's daughter.
The Mushroom Cook team is Brooke Grebert-Craig, Laura Placella, Anthony Dowsley, Jordy Atkinson and Jonty Burton
Go to themushroomcook.com.au for news, features, previous episodes and more
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Two days after the Mushroom Lunch and lean gather, a
local senior constable was sent on a job to Aaron
Patterson's home. He was there to do a welfare check
on her. She was the cook of the Beef Wellington mill.
Her home was deserted, or at least that's what it
looked like to the cop. He stopped at the gate
(00:21):
and made a call to get an access code. He
was looking for something. Guided by Aaron at the other
end of the phone, he started searching. He had gloves
on two pairs. His search took him to a bin
with a red lid that sat outside the house. Inside
that bin, inside a Woolworth's bag, he found it some
(00:45):
samples of what he described as tainted food. It was
what was left of a beef Wellington. I'm Brooke Greebert
Craig and this is the Mushroom Cook. So it's day eight, Laura.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
I can't believe it's Thursday. This week has gone very fast.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
I know we're almost at the end of week two. Indeed,
what you heard at the top of the episode was
a description of a local police officer fetching the leftovers
of the Beef Wellington from Aaron's house.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
He gave evidence today in court. His name was Adrian
Martinez Villalobos and I'm annunciation thank you. I'm relieved I
got through that one. He told the jury today that
he attended Aaron's property after that triple zero call from
doctor Chris Webster which we spoke about yesterday. He arrived
at the house but no one appeared to be home,
(01:39):
so he rang doctor Webster back to get an update,
and it was at that point that he found out
that Aaron had returned to lean Gatha Hospital. But as
we heard yesterday, while doctor Webster had the police officer
on the phone, he thought he should ask him to
have a look around to see if he could find
any of the leftover beef Wellington specifically.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
In court, the police officer said that he was asked
to find any tainted food.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
And as you described Brook, he double gloved and needed
some information from erin which we heard in court she
was happy to provide. He described her as being quite
cooperative over the phone and he was able to gain
access into her property to search one of her waistbins.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
So he said in court today that he didn't actually
need to go inside her house because he found the
leftovers in a bin on the outside of.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Her house, and he described sifting through the bin and
finding the bag that Erin had described. She had told
him that a brown paper Woolworth's bag was most likely
the one that would contain the leftovers, and once he
found a bag that matched that description, he fished it
out and he noted to the court that it was
actually seeping a little bit and had to find another
(02:54):
bag so he could pop it in the police van.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
He then transported those leftovers to lean Gatha Hospital where
the bag was taken into the urgent care department.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
And yesterday we touched on the evidence of doctor Veronica
Foot who then retrieved that bag and took photos of
the beef Wellington for the doctors at Monash Medical Center.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
And Laura, where did that bag of leftovers end up?
Speaker 2 (03:19):
We learned a little bit more about that today Paramedic
Alan Spencer, she gave evidence about transferring Erin from lean
Gatha Hospital to Monash Medical Center and in her evidence
she explained how when they were getting her ready for transfer,
her and her colleague were also handed this brown Woolworths
bag with the leftover beef Wellington, so it could be
(03:41):
brought into Melbourne to Monash Medical Center for testing.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
And did she say anything about Aaron.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
She was asked a few questions about how Aaron presented
during this trip. She said the journey from lean Gatha
to Monash Medical Center was about an hour and forty minutes.
She asked if at any point in that journey Aaron
asked them to pull over because she needed to use
the bathroom, and she said that didn't happen.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Aaron complained about feeling nauseous, and she also complained about
having a headache.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
And they wanted to give her panadol, but they needed
to check first whether or not that was a smart
idea given she was already starting to receive some treatment
for suspected mushroom poisoning. They rang the poisons hotline and
they suggested fentanyl instead, so Miss Spencer told the court
they gave her some fentanyl and then described the rest
(04:31):
of their journey as non eventful. When asked how Erin
was during the journey, she said that she was fairly
calm and nonchalant.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
She also said that Aaron was quite chatty throughout the trip. Now, Laura,
I think it's a good time to talk about the
evidence that Aaron Patterson's daughter gave today in court.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I think I'll start off by noting that while she
did give evidence today in court, she actually wasn't there
in person. So when children give evidence in trials, it
is it's fairly common for their evidence to be pre
recorded so they don't need to be there in person
and subjected to cross examination by the defense. Erin's daughter's
evidence was recorded back in August twenty twenty three, so
(05:12):
only a month after the lunch, and that was played
today in front of the jury, and things did become emotional.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Now, that was a thirty three minute video that we
saw in court today. How was Erin throughout it?
Speaker 2 (05:25):
When the video started to play, she did become emotional.
She has a screen in front of her where she
can watch the footage, and when her daughter popped up
on the screen, she did become quite tearful. She did
reach for a tissue at one stage and clutch that.
Throughout the recording, her daughter's evidence got underway with her
(05:46):
simply being asked by the interviewer for her name, and
when she said the name to the interviewer, you could
see Erin malving her daughter's name from the dock.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
At the start of the interview Eron's daughter was asked
to describe what happened at the lunch, and she simply replied,
I wasn't there, so I don't know what happened.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
But while she said she wasn't there, the interviewer did
ask her some questions about the things that happened both
before and after. She was asked whether she was told
about the lunch in advance, and she said her mum
told her about it the day before, and she said
that it was her understanding that the guests would come
over so they could talk about adult stuff. She was
(06:27):
then asked if she remembered what they ate for lunch,
and she said she didn't know what it was called,
but she recalled seeing it in the oven that morning
and saying it involved some sort of meat. She described
going to the movies that Saturday afternoon, and then after
that she saw her dad, and then by the evening
she was back at home at her mum's.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
In the interview, Aaron's daughter was asked about Aaron's sickness
the morning after the lunch. This is what she said.
It's her words, but not her voice.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
She just needed to go to the toilet a lot,
and she felt seek in her gut.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
Did she tell you she wasn't feeling well?
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (07:05):
And what did she tell you?
Speaker 3 (07:07):
She said that she had diarrhea and her tummy was sore.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
Okay, she had diarrhea and her tummy was sore. Did
she tell you she vomited or anything like that.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
I don't think she told me.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
Did you see her going to the toilet a lot?
How many times do you think she went to the toilet?
Speaker 3 (07:28):
I saw her go like ten times.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
Ten times, okay? And was that in the morning?
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Was it that was.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
In the morning through to the afternoon.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
She said that they didn't go to church that day
because her mum wasn't feeling well, and then talked about
having the leftovers. She mentioned remembering eating steak, mashed potato,
and green beans, and she also said that they played
Monopoly on the Sunday.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
And Laura, the interviewer also asked about the plates at
Aaron's home.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
She was asked to describe the plates at her mum's home,
and at first she just said they were round plates.
The interviewer prompted her further and she said there was
a black and red plate and some white ones, before
saying I think that's all the colors we have, just
to remind our listeners. Ian, the only guest to survive
(08:20):
the meal, gave evidence earlier this week about the lunch
and said he remembers the guests eating their meals off
gray plates while Aaron ate her serve off an orange
tan plate.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
And we'll hear more of Aaron's daughter's evidence tomorrow in court.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
That's right. So who else spoke in court today? We
heard from a number of medical witnesses. We've heard from
quite a few so far in this trial. We had
a nurse called Cindy Munro take to the witness box
today and she treated both Heather and Ian when they
arrived at Lee and Gath Hospital and then later on
(08:57):
also treated Erin when she represented. But she was asked
today to describe Erin when she was treating her and
how she appeared, and she said that she did not
believe she looked as unwell as Heather and Ian did.
She said she recalled Ian being so unwell that he
could barely lift his head off his pillow, and said
(09:18):
Heather was quite unsteady on her feet, but said in comparison,
Aaron was sitting up in her bed and didn't look
unwell to her.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Miss Munroe also said that initially Aaron did not want
any medical intervention and Aaron said I don't want any
of this multiple times.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
By the end of Miss Monroe's evidence, she did say, though,
that Aaron agreed to treatment before she was transferred to
Monash Medical Center.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
After Aaron was brought to Monash Medical Center by the
paramedic that we heard from earlier, what happened.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Tanya Patterson, who is the wife of Matthew Patterson, So
stay with me here, guys. Who is so Jimond's brother,
Simon being Erin's estranged husband, I think we got that.
She gave evidence in court today about the conversations she
had with Erin when she was visiting, and one of
the things she said was that Aaron asked how the
(10:15):
lunch guests were. But Tanya said she had had a
discussion with her husband previously about not wanting to tell
Erin too much because they wanted to leave that up
to her husband Simon. So all Tanya said she told
Erin was that they were going downhill, but that was
all the information she really had.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
And she also mentioned something about cruises, didn't she.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
That's right. She said she had recently been on a
cruise and Erin was interested in taking her children on one,
so they had a conversation about that as well. So
that's a wrap for today. Was there anything else that
we missed? Yes, there was something that the jury heard
at the start of the day that I will mention,
just as Christopher Beale, who is the judge presiding over
this case, he told them that there was some work
(11:00):
happening in the background between both the prosecution and the
defense that was speeding things along, and he said to
the jurors that he expects the case to conclude earlier
than he initially thought.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
So that means the trial will be done before the
sixth week mark.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Well maybe, but we'll definitely have to wait and see.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Thanks Laura, but rest assured, until the trial is over,
we will be here every day giving you new podcast episodes.
So for all the latest on this case, go to
the mushroomcook dot com dot au
Two days after the Mushroom Lunch and lean gather, a
local senior constable was sent on a job to Aaron
Patterson's home. He was there to do a welfare check
on her. She was the cook of the Beef Wellington mill.
Her home was deserted, or at least that's what it
looked like to the cop. He stopped at the gate
(00:21):
and made a call to get an access code. He
was looking for something. Guided by Aaron at the other
end of the phone, he started searching. He had gloves
on two pairs. His search took him to a bin
with a red lid that sat outside the house. Inside
that bin, inside a Woolworth's bag, he found it some
(00:45):
samples of what he described as tainted food. It was
what was left of a beef Wellington. I'm Brooke Greebert
Craig and this is the Mushroom Cook. So it's day eight, Laura.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
I can't believe it's Thursday. This week has gone very fast.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
I know we're almost at the end of week two. Indeed,
what you heard at the top of the episode was
a description of a local police officer fetching the leftovers
of the Beef Wellington from Aaron's house.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
He gave evidence today in court. His name was Adrian
Martinez Villalobos and I'm annunciation thank you. I'm relieved I
got through that one. He told the jury today that
he attended Aaron's property after that triple zero call from
doctor Chris Webster which we spoke about yesterday. He arrived
at the house but no one appeared to be home,
(01:39):
so he rang doctor Webster back to get an update,
and it was at that point that he found out
that Aaron had returned to lean Gatha Hospital. But as
we heard yesterday, while doctor Webster had the police officer
on the phone, he thought he should ask him to
have a look around to see if he could find
any of the leftover beef Wellington specifically.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
In court, the police officer said that he was asked
to find any tainted food.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
And as you described Brook, he double gloved and needed
some information from erin which we heard in court she
was happy to provide. He described her as being quite
cooperative over the phone and he was able to gain
access into her property to search one of her waistbins.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
So he said in court today that he didn't actually
need to go inside her house because he found the
leftovers in a bin on the outside of.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Her house, and he described sifting through the bin and
finding the bag that Erin had described. She had told
him that a brown paper Woolworth's bag was most likely
the one that would contain the leftovers, and once he
found a bag that matched that description, he fished it
out and he noted to the court that it was
actually seeping a little bit and had to find another
(02:54):
bag so he could pop it in the police van.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
He then transported those leftovers to lean Gatha Hospital where
the bag was taken into the urgent care department.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
And yesterday we touched on the evidence of doctor Veronica
Foot who then retrieved that bag and took photos of
the beef Wellington for the doctors at Monash Medical Center.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
And Laura, where did that bag of leftovers end up?
Speaker 2 (03:19):
We learned a little bit more about that today Paramedic
Alan Spencer, she gave evidence about transferring Erin from lean
Gatha Hospital to Monash Medical Center and in her evidence
she explained how when they were getting her ready for transfer,
her and her colleague were also handed this brown Woolworths
bag with the leftover beef Wellington, so it could be
(03:41):
brought into Melbourne to Monash Medical Center for testing.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
And did she say anything about Aaron.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
She was asked a few questions about how Aaron presented
during this trip. She said the journey from lean Gatha
to Monash Medical Center was about an hour and forty minutes.
She asked if at any point in that journey Aaron
asked them to pull over because she needed to use
the bathroom, and she said that didn't happen.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Aaron complained about feeling nauseous, and she also complained about
having a headache.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
And they wanted to give her panadol, but they needed
to check first whether or not that was a smart
idea given she was already starting to receive some treatment
for suspected mushroom poisoning. They rang the poisons hotline and
they suggested fentanyl instead, so Miss Spencer told the court
they gave her some fentanyl and then described the rest
(04:31):
of their journey as non eventful. When asked how Erin
was during the journey, she said that she was fairly
calm and nonchalant.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
She also said that Aaron was quite chatty throughout the trip. Now, Laura,
I think it's a good time to talk about the
evidence that Aaron Patterson's daughter gave today in court.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I think I'll start off by noting that while she
did give evidence today in court, she actually wasn't there
in person. So when children give evidence in trials, it
is it's fairly common for their evidence to be pre
recorded so they don't need to be there in person
and subjected to cross examination by the defense. Erin's daughter's
evidence was recorded back in August twenty twenty three, so
(05:12):
only a month after the lunch, and that was played
today in front of the jury, and things did become emotional.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Now, that was a thirty three minute video that we
saw in court today. How was Erin throughout it?
Speaker 2 (05:25):
When the video started to play, she did become emotional.
She has a screen in front of her where she
can watch the footage, and when her daughter popped up
on the screen, she did become quite tearful. She did
reach for a tissue at one stage and clutch that.
Throughout the recording, her daughter's evidence got underway with her
(05:46):
simply being asked by the interviewer for her name, and
when she said the name to the interviewer, you could
see Erin malving her daughter's name from the dock.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
At the start of the interview Eron's daughter was asked
to describe what happened at the lunch, and she simply replied,
I wasn't there, so I don't know what happened.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
But while she said she wasn't there, the interviewer did
ask her some questions about the things that happened both
before and after. She was asked whether she was told
about the lunch in advance, and she said her mum
told her about it the day before, and she said
that it was her understanding that the guests would come
over so they could talk about adult stuff. She was
(06:27):
then asked if she remembered what they ate for lunch,
and she said she didn't know what it was called,
but she recalled seeing it in the oven that morning
and saying it involved some sort of meat. She described
going to the movies that Saturday afternoon, and then after
that she saw her dad, and then by the evening
she was back at home at her mum's.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
In the interview, Aaron's daughter was asked about Aaron's sickness
the morning after the lunch. This is what she said.
It's her words, but not her voice.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
She just needed to go to the toilet a lot,
and she felt seek in her gut.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
Did she tell you she wasn't feeling well?
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (07:05):
And what did she tell you?
Speaker 3 (07:07):
She said that she had diarrhea and her tummy was sore.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
Okay, she had diarrhea and her tummy was sore. Did
she tell you she vomited or anything like that.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
I don't think she told me.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
Did you see her going to the toilet a lot?
How many times do you think she went to the toilet?
Speaker 3 (07:28):
I saw her go like ten times.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
Ten times, okay? And was that in the morning?
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Was it that was.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
In the morning through to the afternoon.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
She said that they didn't go to church that day
because her mum wasn't feeling well, and then talked about
having the leftovers. She mentioned remembering eating steak, mashed potato,
and green beans, and she also said that they played
Monopoly on the Sunday.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
And Laura, the interviewer also asked about the plates at
Aaron's home.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
She was asked to describe the plates at her mum's home,
and at first she just said they were round plates.
The interviewer prompted her further and she said there was
a black and red plate and some white ones, before
saying I think that's all the colors we have, just
to remind our listeners. Ian, the only guest to survive
(08:20):
the meal, gave evidence earlier this week about the lunch
and said he remembers the guests eating their meals off
gray plates while Aaron ate her serve off an orange
tan plate.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
And we'll hear more of Aaron's daughter's evidence tomorrow in court.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
That's right. So who else spoke in court today? We
heard from a number of medical witnesses. We've heard from
quite a few so far in this trial. We had
a nurse called Cindy Munro take to the witness box
today and she treated both Heather and Ian when they
arrived at Lee and Gath Hospital and then later on
(08:57):
also treated Erin when she represented. But she was asked
today to describe Erin when she was treating her and
how she appeared, and she said that she did not
believe she looked as unwell as Heather and Ian did.
She said she recalled Ian being so unwell that he
could barely lift his head off his pillow, and said
(09:18):
Heather was quite unsteady on her feet, but said in comparison,
Aaron was sitting up in her bed and didn't look
unwell to her.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Miss Munroe also said that initially Aaron did not want
any medical intervention and Aaron said I don't want any
of this multiple times.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
By the end of Miss Monroe's evidence, she did say, though,
that Aaron agreed to treatment before she was transferred to
Monash Medical Center.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
After Aaron was brought to Monash Medical Center by the
paramedic that we heard from earlier, what happened.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Tanya Patterson, who is the wife of Matthew Patterson, So
stay with me here, guys. Who is so Jimond's brother,
Simon being Erin's estranged husband, I think we got that.
She gave evidence in court today about the conversations she
had with Erin when she was visiting, and one of
the things she said was that Aaron asked how the
(10:15):
lunch guests were. But Tanya said she had had a
discussion with her husband previously about not wanting to tell
Erin too much because they wanted to leave that up
to her husband Simon. So all Tanya said she told
Erin was that they were going downhill, but that was
all the information she really had.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
And she also mentioned something about cruises, didn't she.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
That's right. She said she had recently been on a
cruise and Erin was interested in taking her children on one,
so they had a conversation about that as well. So
that's a wrap for today. Was there anything else that
we missed? Yes, there was something that the jury heard
at the start of the day that I will mention,
just as Christopher Beale, who is the judge presiding over
this case, he told them that there was some work
(11:00):
happening in the background between both the prosecution and the
defense that was speeding things along, and he said to
the jurors that he expects the case to conclude earlier
than he initially thought.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
So that means the trial will be done before the
sixth week mark.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Well maybe, but we'll definitely have to wait and see.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Thanks Laura, but rest assured, until the trial is over,
we will be here every day giving you new podcast episodes.
So for all the latest on this case, go to
the mushroomcook dot com dot au
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