May 7, 2025 • 12 mins
The team that first treated the victims of the deadly mushroom meal took the stand today, along with members of the Patterson and Wilkinson families.
The Mushroom Cook team is Brooke Grebert-Craig, Laura Placella, Anthony Dowsley, Jordy Atkinson and Jonty Burton. Our intern is Jasmine Geddes.
Go to themushroomcook.com.au for news, features, previous episodes and more
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello, what address do you need the police? It is
doctor Chris Webster calling from Lea and geth a hospital.
I have a concern regarding a patient that presented here earlier,
that has left the building and is potentially exposed to
fratal toxin from mushroom posing and I've tried several times
to get a hold of her on i'm mobile phone
before I get all that information.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
What you just heard is a recreation of a calm
but quick triple zero call from a doctor who first
treated some of the guests of that fateful beef Wellington lunch.
It was also the phone call that led local police
to Aaron Patterson's home. I'm Brook Reybert Craig, and this
is the mushroom cook. I'm back at the Herald Sign
(00:45):
headquarters in Morwell with my colleague court reporter Laura Placella.
Once again.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Good to be back as always.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Yes, it is so today we are on day seven
of Aaron Patterson's murder trial. There were two types of
testimony in court today. There were family testimonies and medical testimonies.
Let's begin with the medical ones and we'll play a
little bit more from the recreation of the triple zero
call that we heard earlier.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Much room poisoning. You said there were four people that
had a meal on said day and two of them
are intended care at Daniel Hospital. Two have just been
transferred from Daniel Hospital and Aaron presented this morning with
symptoms of poisoning.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
So, Laura, can you explain to our listeners who called
Triple zero?
Speaker 3 (01:32):
So what our listeners just heard both at the top
of the episode and just then was the phone conversation
doctor Chris Webster had with a Triple zero operator. For
some context here, doctor Webster works at lean Gatha Hospital
and on July thirty he was one of the on
call doctors. July thirty was the day after the lethal
(01:53):
lunch and Ian and Heather both presented here after they
were driven over by their nephew, Simon Patterson.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
So today in court he mentioned about the Beef Wellington.
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Once Ian and Heather had arrived and were admitted and triaged,
he spoke to them about what they had eaten, considering
they were presenting with food poisoning symptoms. They mentioned they
had eaten at Beef Wellington the day before, and in
doctor Webster's mind, he first thought the culprit of their
illness was actually the meat. They remained in hospital over
(02:25):
the following hours and were treated by doctors at lean
Gatha Hospital, But it wasn't until the following day, so
July thirty one, that doctors over at dan in On
Hospital communicated with these doctors at lean Gatha and said
that they suspected it was mushroom poisoning.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
And on that day Aaron Patterson presented herself to hospital, didn't.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
She Yes, that's right. We did hear that today from
doctor Webster. He said it was about eight oh five
when Aaron arrived at the front door of the hospital
and rang the doorbell, and he was the person he
went over to speak to her. He told the jury
that Aaron said she had gastro so he welcomed her
into the hospital and started speaking to her about her symptoms,
(03:07):
but very quickly upon her telling him her name, he
realized that she was at this lunch. Doctor Webster was
asked today by Crown Prosecutor Jane Warren whether he recognized
her as the fifth guest, but he actually said in court, no,
I recognized her as the chef of the meal. He
asked her a few more questions, one of them concerning
where she got the mushrooms from.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
And Aaron gave a very short reply back, didn't she
She did?
Speaker 3 (03:33):
According to doctor Webster's answer, she just said Woolworth's. It
was at this point that doctor Webster told Erin that
he was worried she may have also been exposed to
deathcap mushroom poisoning, keeping in mind that he had just
heard from the doctors at Daniynong who had raised those concerns,
and he really urged her to stay at hospital so
she could be treated.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
And then essentially Aaron discharged herself from hospital against medical advice.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
That's correct. The jury were actually shown CCTV footage today
of the moment Aaron walks towards the exit of the hospital.
She's stopped by another doctor. This doctor was Veronica Foot,
and you can see the two of them engaging in
a brief conversation before some paperwork arrives for Eron to sign,
which the jury was told was the discharge against medical
(04:22):
advice form.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
And doctor Foot was also another witness in today's hearing.
Wasn't she she was?
Speaker 3 (04:29):
And when the footage was played to the court today,
the comment was made that Aaron discharged herself at eight ten,
keeping in mind she only arrived at eight oh five,
so she only spent five minutes at the hospital before leaving.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Now, this is when doctor Webster makes that triple zero
call that we heard earlier.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
That's right. It's clear from the discussion he has with
the triple zero operator that he's worried for Erin's health.
She's discharged herself. He doesn't know where she is, so
he's asking police to find her and bring her back
to the hospital so she can be treated.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
But Arin, on her own accord, came back to the
hospital herself, didn't she.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
That's right. By nine point fifty am, she was back
at Leaingngatha Hospital. Doctor Webster told the court that when
she arrived, he decided he should call police to just
explain to them that they no longer were going to
find her at her home because she was back at hospital.
But in the process of doing that, he realized that
if they were at her house, they might have a
good opportunity to find some of the leftovers from the
(05:31):
beef Wellington lunch so they could be tested. And you
would have heard us mention her before, doctor Foot she
was the doctor who had that conversation with Aaron at
the door before she did leave. Earlier in the morning.
It was doctor Foot who received these samples of beef Wellington.
They were in a brown Woolworth's bag. They arrived at
the hospital and the jury was shown some CCTV footage
(05:55):
of her putting on some gloves, fishing the leftovers out
of the bag and taking photographs. This was because staff
at Monash Medical Center were hoping to have a look
at the mushrooms and these samples as soon as possible.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
And probably something that our listeners are thinking, what did
the beef Wellington look like at this point?
Speaker 3 (06:15):
That's a good question. From the CCTV footage, we really
couldn't see a lot. It was taken from quite far away,
but from what we could see, it looked like doctor
Foot had fished out a small brown mush out of
the bag, but as well as that, a larger pastry
that could have been half a beef Wellington.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Okay, Now moving on to more medical evidence. The prosecution
read a statement on behalf of Daniella Ramans. Now she
works at the Department of Health.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
And I think this is the first time a statement
has been read into the transcript and just to explain
to our listeners, this process is very standard in trials
and it just helps speed things along. Instead of calling
every single person relevant to a trial to give evidence
in court, if the evidence isn't in dish, a simple
statement will be read out to the jury.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
In her statement, she said that Victoria, the state, has
a mandatory reporting of cancer diagnosises and detections. So Miss
Raman said she did a search of the Victorian Cancer
Registry in March this year, so she was looking for
entries relating to Aaron Patterson with her date of birth,
but she said in her statement that no entries were found. Now,
(07:26):
we also heard from Don and Glee's son and daughter,
and Heather and Ian's daughter. All three of them gave
evidence today and while the medical testimony was quite clinical,
the family's evidence was a lot more personal.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
That's right, and I'll start with the evidence of Anna Terrington,
the youngest daughter of Don and Gail. She told the
jury that she spoke to her parents after the lunch
and at the time they said the lunch went well,
but by the Sunday they had been transferred to Danilong
Hospital with quite serious symptoms.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
In court, Anna told the jury that she was with
her mum, Gail for long periods of time.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, she went to the hospital to be by her
bedside her brother Simon, who is Erin's estranged husband. He
was spending time with Don, their dad, and Anna said
to the jury that she had to help her mother
go to the bathroom several times throughout that night. Anna
told the court that while she was at hospital with
her mum, they spoke about the lunch. She recalled that
(08:31):
her mom had said Aaron wanted to tell them about
a medical issue, but she said her mum never told
her what the medical issue was, and she didn't ask
her mum either. Now let's move on to Matthew Pattison.
He's the oldest son of Don and Gail, so he's
Simon Pattison's brother and Anna's brother. Also.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Matthew told the jury that he and Aaron had a
lunch in twenty twenty one, and this is where Erin
actually opened up about her relationship with Simon. So just
remember we said this last week that Simon and Aaron
separated in twenty fifteen. The court heard that Aaron asked
Matthew for advice on how to get Simon to participate
(09:12):
in counseling.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Later on in his evidence, Matthew was asked about the
days after the lunch, he was also at Danyong Hospital.
He took over from Anna after she went home having
spent Sunday night with their parents, and it was on
Monday that the doctors asked if they knew where the
mushrooms in the beef Wellington had come from, and Matthew
(09:35):
volunteered to call erin to find out. He told the
court that it was a very quick conversation. I think
it was actually mentioned. It only went for one minute
and thirteen seconds, and in that brief phone call he
asked where she had gotten the mushrooms from. He told
the court that Aaron mentioned that there were fresh mushrooms
from Woolies and there were also dried mushrooms from a
(09:57):
Chinese grocer or supermarket from the Oakley Air. After Aaron
told him that information, he passed it on to the
doctors at the hospital.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
The jury heard that both Anna and Matthew confirmed that
Aaron and Simon had loaned them each hundreds of thousands
of dollars to help them both purchase their homes. We
heard it a little bit about this. Last week the
court heard these loans were index to inflation, but no
interest was charged. Now let's move on to Heather and
(10:27):
Ian's daughter.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Yes, we also heard from Ruth du Bois. She spoke
about talking with her parents in the weeks before the lunch,
keeping in mind that Aaron invited her guests to the
lunch in early July at a church service. When Heather
was explaining this to Ruth, she said that after church,
Aaron had approached her in Gale and said, just the
(10:50):
two I was looking for. She then continued on and
said that she wanted to invite them to lunch. Ruth
told the court that she was quite surprised to hear
Aeron and had invited her parents to lunch, considering that
had never happened before.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
So with multiple family members in court today, it was
always going to be an emotional day, right.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Yeah, that's right, and particularly when Anna gave evidence, there
was a lot of emotion in the court. When she
was being questioned about the final days of her parents,
she started to become tearful. She clutched her chest at
one point and had to take a few pauses before
giving her answers. And she also reached for a tissue
(11:31):
to blow her nose. And last week our listeners might
remember that her brother Simon also became emotional when speaking
about their parents as well.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Now, lastly, Laura, the dehydrata has been mentioned in court
every single day. Was it raised today?
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Now that I think about it, I don't think it was.
You're right, we have heard about it most days of
the trial, so we'll have to wait and see when
it pops up next.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Well, the dehydrata has had a day off, it seems
we'll have to wait to see when it returned. But
we'll definitely be back tomorrow with our daily update and
if you want more reports, features and podcast episodes, head
over to the mushroomcook dot com dot au
Hello, what address do you need the police? It is
doctor Chris Webster calling from Lea and geth a hospital.
I have a concern regarding a patient that presented here earlier,
that has left the building and is potentially exposed to
fratal toxin from mushroom posing and I've tried several times
to get a hold of her on i'm mobile phone
before I get all that information.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
What you just heard is a recreation of a calm
but quick triple zero call from a doctor who first
treated some of the guests of that fateful beef Wellington lunch.
It was also the phone call that led local police
to Aaron Patterson's home. I'm Brook Reybert Craig, and this
is the mushroom cook. I'm back at the Herald Sign
(00:45):
headquarters in Morwell with my colleague court reporter Laura Placella.
Once again.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Good to be back as always.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Yes, it is so today we are on day seven
of Aaron Patterson's murder trial. There were two types of
testimony in court today. There were family testimonies and medical testimonies.
Let's begin with the medical ones and we'll play a
little bit more from the recreation of the triple zero
call that we heard earlier.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Much room poisoning. You said there were four people that
had a meal on said day and two of them
are intended care at Daniel Hospital. Two have just been
transferred from Daniel Hospital and Aaron presented this morning with
symptoms of poisoning.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
So, Laura, can you explain to our listeners who called
Triple zero?
Speaker 3 (01:32):
So what our listeners just heard both at the top
of the episode and just then was the phone conversation
doctor Chris Webster had with a Triple zero operator. For
some context here, doctor Webster works at lean Gatha Hospital
and on July thirty he was one of the on
call doctors. July thirty was the day after the lethal
(01:53):
lunch and Ian and Heather both presented here after they
were driven over by their nephew, Simon Patterson.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
So today in court he mentioned about the Beef Wellington.
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Once Ian and Heather had arrived and were admitted and triaged,
he spoke to them about what they had eaten, considering
they were presenting with food poisoning symptoms. They mentioned they
had eaten at Beef Wellington the day before, and in
doctor Webster's mind, he first thought the culprit of their
illness was actually the meat. They remained in hospital over
(02:25):
the following hours and were treated by doctors at lean
Gatha Hospital, But it wasn't until the following day, so
July thirty one, that doctors over at dan in On
Hospital communicated with these doctors at lean Gatha and said
that they suspected it was mushroom poisoning.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
And on that day Aaron Patterson presented herself to hospital, didn't.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
She Yes, that's right. We did hear that today from
doctor Webster. He said it was about eight oh five
when Aaron arrived at the front door of the hospital
and rang the doorbell, and he was the person he
went over to speak to her. He told the jury
that Aaron said she had gastro so he welcomed her
into the hospital and started speaking to her about her symptoms,
(03:07):
but very quickly upon her telling him her name, he
realized that she was at this lunch. Doctor Webster was
asked today by Crown Prosecutor Jane Warren whether he recognized
her as the fifth guest, but he actually said in court, no,
I recognized her as the chef of the meal. He
asked her a few more questions, one of them concerning
where she got the mushrooms from.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
And Aaron gave a very short reply back, didn't she
She did?
Speaker 3 (03:33):
According to doctor Webster's answer, she just said Woolworth's. It
was at this point that doctor Webster told Erin that
he was worried she may have also been exposed to
deathcap mushroom poisoning, keeping in mind that he had just
heard from the doctors at Daniynong who had raised those concerns,
and he really urged her to stay at hospital so
she could be treated.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
And then essentially Aaron discharged herself from hospital against medical advice.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
That's correct. The jury were actually shown CCTV footage today
of the moment Aaron walks towards the exit of the hospital.
She's stopped by another doctor. This doctor was Veronica Foot,
and you can see the two of them engaging in
a brief conversation before some paperwork arrives for Eron to sign,
which the jury was told was the discharge against medical
(04:22):
advice form.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
And doctor Foot was also another witness in today's hearing.
Wasn't she she was?
Speaker 3 (04:29):
And when the footage was played to the court today,
the comment was made that Aaron discharged herself at eight ten,
keeping in mind she only arrived at eight oh five,
so she only spent five minutes at the hospital before leaving.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Now, this is when doctor Webster makes that triple zero
call that we heard earlier.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
That's right. It's clear from the discussion he has with
the triple zero operator that he's worried for Erin's health.
She's discharged herself. He doesn't know where she is, so
he's asking police to find her and bring her back
to the hospital so she can be treated.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
But Arin, on her own accord, came back to the
hospital herself, didn't she.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
That's right. By nine point fifty am, she was back
at Leaingngatha Hospital. Doctor Webster told the court that when
she arrived, he decided he should call police to just
explain to them that they no longer were going to
find her at her home because she was back at hospital.
But in the process of doing that, he realized that
if they were at her house, they might have a
good opportunity to find some of the leftovers from the
(05:31):
beef Wellington lunch so they could be tested. And you
would have heard us mention her before, doctor Foot she
was the doctor who had that conversation with Aaron at
the door before she did leave. Earlier in the morning.
It was doctor Foot who received these samples of beef Wellington.
They were in a brown Woolworth's bag. They arrived at
the hospital and the jury was shown some CCTV footage
(05:55):
of her putting on some gloves, fishing the leftovers out
of the bag and taking photographs. This was because staff
at Monash Medical Center were hoping to have a look
at the mushrooms and these samples as soon as possible.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
And probably something that our listeners are thinking, what did
the beef Wellington look like at this point?
Speaker 3 (06:15):
That's a good question. From the CCTV footage, we really
couldn't see a lot. It was taken from quite far away,
but from what we could see, it looked like doctor
Foot had fished out a small brown mush out of
the bag, but as well as that, a larger pastry
that could have been half a beef Wellington.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Okay, Now moving on to more medical evidence. The prosecution
read a statement on behalf of Daniella Ramans. Now she
works at the Department of Health.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
And I think this is the first time a statement
has been read into the transcript and just to explain
to our listeners, this process is very standard in trials
and it just helps speed things along. Instead of calling
every single person relevant to a trial to give evidence
in court, if the evidence isn't in dish, a simple
statement will be read out to the jury.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
In her statement, she said that Victoria, the state, has
a mandatory reporting of cancer diagnosises and detections. So Miss
Raman said she did a search of the Victorian Cancer
Registry in March this year, so she was looking for
entries relating to Aaron Patterson with her date of birth,
but she said in her statement that no entries were found. Now,
(07:26):
we also heard from Don and Glee's son and daughter,
and Heather and Ian's daughter. All three of them gave
evidence today and while the medical testimony was quite clinical,
the family's evidence was a lot more personal.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
That's right, and I'll start with the evidence of Anna Terrington,
the youngest daughter of Don and Gail. She told the
jury that she spoke to her parents after the lunch
and at the time they said the lunch went well,
but by the Sunday they had been transferred to Danilong
Hospital with quite serious symptoms.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
In court, Anna told the jury that she was with
her mum, Gail for long periods of time.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, she went to the hospital to be by her
bedside her brother Simon, who is Erin's estranged husband. He
was spending time with Don, their dad, and Anna said
to the jury that she had to help her mother
go to the bathroom several times throughout that night. Anna
told the court that while she was at hospital with
her mum, they spoke about the lunch. She recalled that
(08:31):
her mom had said Aaron wanted to tell them about
a medical issue, but she said her mum never told
her what the medical issue was, and she didn't ask
her mum either. Now let's move on to Matthew Pattison.
He's the oldest son of Don and Gail, so he's
Simon Pattison's brother and Anna's brother. Also.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Matthew told the jury that he and Aaron had a
lunch in twenty twenty one, and this is where Erin
actually opened up about her relationship with Simon. So just
remember we said this last week that Simon and Aaron
separated in twenty fifteen. The court heard that Aaron asked
Matthew for advice on how to get Simon to participate
(09:12):
in counseling.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Later on in his evidence, Matthew was asked about the
days after the lunch, he was also at Danyong Hospital.
He took over from Anna after she went home having
spent Sunday night with their parents, and it was on
Monday that the doctors asked if they knew where the
mushrooms in the beef Wellington had come from, and Matthew
(09:35):
volunteered to call erin to find out. He told the
court that it was a very quick conversation. I think
it was actually mentioned. It only went for one minute
and thirteen seconds, and in that brief phone call he
asked where she had gotten the mushrooms from. He told
the court that Aaron mentioned that there were fresh mushrooms
from Woolies and there were also dried mushrooms from a
(09:57):
Chinese grocer or supermarket from the Oakley Air. After Aaron
told him that information, he passed it on to the
doctors at the hospital.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
The jury heard that both Anna and Matthew confirmed that
Aaron and Simon had loaned them each hundreds of thousands
of dollars to help them both purchase their homes. We
heard it a little bit about this. Last week the
court heard these loans were index to inflation, but no
interest was charged. Now let's move on to Heather and
(10:27):
Ian's daughter.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Yes, we also heard from Ruth du Bois. She spoke
about talking with her parents in the weeks before the lunch,
keeping in mind that Aaron invited her guests to the
lunch in early July at a church service. When Heather
was explaining this to Ruth, she said that after church,
Aaron had approached her in Gale and said, just the
(10:50):
two I was looking for. She then continued on and
said that she wanted to invite them to lunch. Ruth
told the court that she was quite surprised to hear
Aeron and had invited her parents to lunch, considering that
had never happened before.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
So with multiple family members in court today, it was
always going to be an emotional day, right.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Yeah, that's right, and particularly when Anna gave evidence, there
was a lot of emotion in the court. When she
was being questioned about the final days of her parents,
she started to become tearful. She clutched her chest at
one point and had to take a few pauses before
giving her answers. And she also reached for a tissue
(11:31):
to blow her nose. And last week our listeners might
remember that her brother Simon also became emotional when speaking
about their parents as well.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Now, lastly, Laura, the dehydrata has been mentioned in court
every single day. Was it raised today?
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Now that I think about it, I don't think it was.
You're right, we have heard about it most days of
the trial, so we'll have to wait and see when
it pops up next.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Well, the dehydrata has had a day off, it seems
we'll have to wait to see when it returned. But
we'll definitely be back tomorrow with our daily update and
if you want more reports, features and podcast episodes, head
over to the mushroomcook dot com dot au
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