June 17, 2025 • 24 mins
Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC and defence barrister Colin Mandy SC went head-to-head today in a Morwell courtroom as they delivered their closing addresses to the jury in the trial of Erin Patterson.
The Mushroom Cook team is Brooke Grebert-Craig, Laura Placella, Anthony Dowsley, Jordy Atkinson and Jonty Burton.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It was a showdown today in the mushroom murder trial.
The lead barristers of both the prosecution and the defense
addressed the jury, with Nannette Rodgers finalizing the Crown's argument
that Aaron Patterson told lies upon lies when her murder
plot started to unravel.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
We say there is no reasonable alternative explanation for what
happened to the lunch guests other than the accused deliberately
sourced death cap mushrooms and deliberately included them in the meal.
She served them with an intention to kill them. In
the lead up to the lunch and in the periods
after the lunch, Aaron Patterson told so many lies it's
(00:41):
hard to keep track of them. She has told lies
upon lies because she knew the truth would implicate her.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Meanwhile, Colin Mandy started the defense case by saying his
client never planned to kill her lunch guests and had
a motive to keep them in her world.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
She didn't plan it. She never planned to kill anyone,
and when they did get very, very sick, she panicked
because that's when she realized that it might have been
the meal and the spotlight would be on her. And
that's a very powerful reason why you can't, in our submission,
find this element of intention. It's why you should have
(01:22):
a reasonable doubt about it. It is an implausible theory
when you take a step back and look at the
big picture.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
In Room four of the La Trobe Valley Law Courts,
both sides came out swinging. I'm Brook Greebert Craig, and
this is the mushroom cook We just finished day thirty
three of Aaron Patterson's trial, and as always I'm joined
by court reporter Laura Placella. We've had a big day, Yes,
(01:51):
another one this morning. Doctor Rogers continued with the prosecution's
fourth calculated deception, which was the sustained cover Aaron embarked
on to conceal the truth to remind listeners the other
three with a fabricated cancer claim Aaron used as a
reason for the lunch, the lethal doses of poison Aaron
(02:13):
secreted in the beef Wellington's and Aaron's attempts to make
it seem like she also suffered death cap mushroom poisoning.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
So there were four elements to the sustained cover up,
two of which doctor Rogers mentioned yesterday. But today she
turned to the disposing of the dehydrator that she said
Erin had used to dehydrate death caps. Erin has admitted
that she dumped the appliance the day after she was
released from Monash Medical Center, but doctor Rogers said today
(02:42):
the only reason that Aaron dumped it was because she
knew she had used it to prepare the deadly meal.
This is what doctor Rogers said today. These are her words,
but not her voice.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
If there was nothing incriminating about the dehydrator, why hide it?
And there is only one reasonable explanation. She knew it
would incriminate her. She knew that she had dehydrated death
cap mushrooms in that appliance, and that she had deliberately
done so, and she knew that keeping it was going
to be far too risky. So one of the first
(03:15):
things that she did after getting back from the Monash
Hospital was to race out to the tip and dump it,
try to make it disappear. If not for the careful
analysis of the accused spank records conducted by Senior Constable
Meg Crawford, no one would ever have known about the dehydrator.
Aaron Patterson certainly wasn't telling anyone about it. In fact,
(03:37):
when she was asked by police during the record of
interview on fifth of August whether she knew anything about
a dehydrator in her house. She answered with a completely
straight face no.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Doctor Rogers then moved on to the last element of
the sustained cover up, which was Aaron deliberately concealing her
usual mobile phone from police. Rogers talked the jury through
Phone A, which was her usual phone, Phone B, which
was her dummy phone, and Phone C, which was her
NOKIAF phone. Laura, let's start with Phone A.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
The game of phones continues, so with Phone A, as
you just said, brook Erin's usual phone. Doctor Rogers explained
today that this phone was using the SIM card ending
in seven eighty three in the lead up to the
lunch and she said this simcard was also infhone A
right up until the start of the search warrant, which
(04:32):
was executed at Aaron's house on August five. But doctor
Rogers told the jury today that while detectives were at
Erin's house, Phone A was being handled without their knowledge.
She reminded the jury of the evidence that the simcard
lost connection with the network at some point that day
between twelve oh one pm and one forty five PM,
(04:55):
and she alleged this was because Aeron removed the SIM
card before concealing Phone A from police. She reiterated to
the jury today that police have never been able to
recover Phone A, even after returning to Aaron's house for
a second time in November.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Let's move on to Phone B. What did doctor Rogers
say about that device?
Speaker 4 (05:17):
For the first time, we heard doctor Rogers call Phone
B the dummy phone, and this was the device that
Erin handed to police at the end of the search
on August five, and she accused Erin today of setting
up this dummy phone to deliberately trick the police. She
said that police found nothing on Phone B because it
had been factory reset multiple times by Erin, including on
(05:40):
August five and August six, the day after the search.
She then turned to the SIM card that was in
Phone B when it was handed over, and that was
a SIM card ending in eight three five. Erin claimed
last week that she was setting up a new phone
the week of the search, but doctor Rogers said that
the jury could reject her claim because it was not
(06:02):
a phone or a phone number that the accused could
say she was truthfully using.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Great let's finish with Phone C, which was the Nokia phone.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
Doctor Rogers told the jury that after Erin took the
SIM card ending in seven eighty three, which was her
usual SIM card, out of Phone A, she then later
placed it into Phone C, the Nochia. She said that
Erin continued to use this number in Phone C even
after she returned home from her record of interview on
August five. She said, Erin's usage of this simcard made
(06:36):
it quite clear that this was her usual SIM card
and not the SIM card ending in eight three five
that was in Phone B when Aaron handed it over.
Here's doctor Rogers's explanation for why Aaron did what she
did with the phones.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
All of this conduct, the factory resets, the handing over
of the blank dummy phone, pretending that Phone B was
her phone number. All of this was designed to frustrate
the police investigation of this matter. It was all done
so that the police would never see the contents of
the accused's real mobile phone. We suggest to you that
(07:13):
the only reasonable explanation for engaging in all of this
deceptive conduct is that she knew that the information on
Phone A, her usual mobile phone, would implicate her in
the deliberate poisoning of the lunch guests.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
After doctor Rogers finished her four calculated deceptions, she moved
on to Aeron's claim that she must have accidentally foraged
death cat mushrooms.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
Doctor Rogers said that she anticipated the defense would argue
that the jury cannot discount the possibility that Erin had
innocently foraged for wild mushrooms for a family meal, but
accidentally collected death cap mushrooms in that process before dehydrating them,
placing them into a tupperware container with other dehydrated mushrooms,
(07:58):
and therefore unknowingly including them in the beef wellingtons. But
doctor Rogers said the only evidence of Erin ever foraging
for mushrooms came from her Her children told an investigator
that they did not know their mum to pick and
eat wild mushrooms, and Erin never discussed foraging with her
Facebook friends. Doctor Rogers explained to the jury why the
(08:20):
prosecution say Aarin lied about foraging.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
The suggestion now that these mushrooms may have been accidentally foraged,
we suggest, is a very late change to the accused's story.
You might think that at some point it dawned on
her that the Asian grocery story didn't add up, particularly
when faced with the evidence about the remnants of the
death cap mushrooms having been found in her dehydrator, she
(08:46):
had to come up with something new. You should simply
disregard this new claim that this was a horrible foraging
accident as nothing more than an attempt by the accused
to get her story to fit the evidence that the
police compiled in this case.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Doctor Rodgers then moved onto motive. She said the evidence
didn't demonstrate that Aaron had any particular motive.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Motive is not an element of the crime of murder
or the crime of attempted murder, and it is only
the elements of the offense that you must find proven
beyond reasonable doubt that makes sense. People do different things
for different reasons. Sometimes the reason is obvious enough to others.
At other times, the internal motivations are only known by
(09:32):
the person themself. You don't have to know why a
person does something in order to know they did it.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
While doctor Rodgers said the prosecution didn't need to prove motive,
she still took the jury to evidence about the relationship
between Aaron Simon and Donn and Gale she told the
jurors they had heard evidence over the course of the
trial that showed that they loved each other. Doctor Rogers
added that Aaron professed her love for Donni Gale in
(10:00):
her record of interview, and Simon testified that Aaron seemed
to love his parents, but she said the relationship between
Aaron and her parents in law was not always a
harmonious one. After a child support dispute arose between Aaron
and Simon in October twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Don and Gail were dragged unwillingly into the conflict between
the accused and Simon over child support. That was Simon's evidence.
Simon said he noticed a substantial change in his relationship
with the accused in late twenty twenty two over the
issue of child support, which had not abated by the
end of that year. As you have heard, child support
(10:42):
became a significant source of tension between the accused and
Simon Patterson, how much Simon Patterson was paying, whether it
covered the school fees, and the payment of the children's
medical bills.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
Doctor Rogers said that the evidence showed that the divide
between Erin and don and Gale was deeper than they
ever She said that Aaron expressed her true feelings to
her Facebook friends in bitter, angry messages she wrote about
her parents in law, where she called them a lost
cause and said fuck em.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
The point of this evidence is that it shows we
say that the accused was leading a duplicitous life when
it came to the Pattersons, she presented one side while
expressing contrary beliefs to others.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Then doctor Rodgers asked the fourteen jurors to personally think
about what they would do if this was a horrible
accident that happened to them Laura. As doctor Rogers explains,
our listeners may also think about what they would do
if they were in this situation.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
If you were told that the meal you had cooked
and served to your family was thought to have possibly
contained deathcat mushrooms, what would you do. Would you go
into self preservation mode, just worrying about protecting yourself from blame.
Would you race away from the hospital and do who
knows what for an hour and a half. Would you
be reluctant to receive treatment. Would you take two and
(12:05):
a half hours to eventually agree to get your kids
to hospital? Would you lie about the source of the
ingredients to medical practitioners and the health department officials for days,
even though the truth might help those you claim to love. No,
that's not what you do. You would do everything you
could to help the people you love.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
She went on to say, you would tell.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
The treating medical practitioners every scheric of information that might
help to identify the cause of the illness, so that
they could get the right treatment to your loved ones,
regardless of any risk of blame that might fall on you.
If your children had come within cooi of the same meal,
you would move mountains to get them to hospital as
quickly as possible. And if you yourself had truly consumed
(12:52):
the same meal, you would gladly receive all of the
medical treatment you could get your hands on. Aaron Patterson
acted the way she did because she knew what she
had done.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
Doctor Rogers said that Aaron panicked not because she realized
she had made a grave foraging mistake, but because doctors
had figured out that death caps were behind the illnesses
of the guests. She said, innocent panic did not explain
the extensive and prolonged efforts that Erin went to in
order to cover up what she had done. She said.
(13:23):
It also did not explain why Erin chose to persist
with her lies when the lives of the guests were
at stake.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Doctor Rogers first took the jury through the lies Erin
has omitted, lies about never owning a dehydrator and never
having forage from mushrooms.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
But then doctor Rogers turned to the lies Erin hasn't admitted.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
She said.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
These included lying in a record of interview about being
very helpful to the Department of Health, lying about why
she held the lunch, and lying when she said she
never told the lunch guests that she had been diagnosed
with cancer. Doctor Rogers said her starkest lie was the
one she told about having an appointment to explore gastric
(14:06):
bypass surgery.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
The prosecution says that you cannot accept the accused as
a truthful, honest and trustworthy witness. She has told too
many lies and you should reject her evidence.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Doctor Rogers told the jury to think of the case
like a jigsaw puzzle. One piece on its own may
not tell you very much about what the picture is,
but when you start putting more together and looking at
it as a whole, the picture becomes clearer.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
Doctor Rogers then revealed to the jury that there was
one final deception, a fifth that she had not previously mentioned.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
The deception she has tried to play on you the
jury with her untruthful evidence. When she knew her lies
had been uncovered, she came up with a carefully constructed
narrative to fit with the evidence. Almost there are some
inconsistencies that she just came do not account for, so
she ignores them, says she can't remember those conversations, or
(15:05):
says other people are just wrong, even her own children.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
As she neared the end of her closing address, doctor
Rogers said that the evidence in this case showed that
Erin prepared and allocated the meal, that she was the
only person who consumed the meal but did not fall
seriously ill, that she was familiar with the i Naturalist website,
that her phone was in the very two locations in
(15:30):
Gippsland where death caps had been cited and recorded in
April and May twenty twenty three, that she was dehydrating
mushrooms consistent with death caps, and remnants of death caps
were found in her dehydrator. That she concealed her actions,
including by dumping her dehydrator, and finally that she told many,
(15:50):
many lies about the true source of the mushrooms. Doctor
Rogers told the jury, when they consider all of this evidence,
they will be satisfied that the used deliberately sourced death caps,
serve them to Don, gail Ian and Heather, and did
so intending to kill them. She then thanked the jury
before returning to her seat.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Aaron's barrister, Colin Mandy, then began his closing address.
Speaker 4 (16:16):
He started by telling the jurors there were two simple
issues that they had to determine. The first was is
there a reasonable possibility that death caps were put into
this meal accidentally? And the second was is it a
reasonable possibility that Erin did not intend to kill or
cause serious injury to her guests. He said if either
(16:37):
of those were reasonable possibilities, then the jury would have
reasonable doubt and must acquit his client of all charges.
He then met a criticism of the approach taken by
the prosecution in this trial.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Their approach is this working from the assumption that Aaron
Patterson is guilty of these crimes, pick and choose the
evidence that fits that theory, and then tie it all
together in an attempt to present a coherent narrative and
ignore the things that don't fit. So they have constructed
that case theory by, as I say, picking and choosing
(17:14):
evidence while ignoring the context, cherry picking convenient fragments while
discarding inconvenient truths.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Mister Mandy then went on to tell the jury what
happened in the wake of the lunch was a terrible tragedy.
He said, since the four guests were good, innocent people,
the jurors may have a desire to punish whoever caused
their deaths, but he told the jurors they must fiercely
guard against that kind of reasoning.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
Mister Mandy then moved on to motive, or more specifically,
a lack of motive, and so that it made it
more likely what happened was an accident. He told the
jury that the defense had actually presented positive evidence of
a lack of motive, dubbing it an antimotive. It was
at this point that mister Manny pointed to Don tutoring,
(18:03):
Erin's son, and the pair also completing science experiments together.
He said that Erin had a motive to keep Doningale
in her world. This is what he went on to say.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Absolutely no doubt that Erin was devoted to her children.
Why would she take wonderful, active, loving grandparents away from
her own children. At the time the middle of twenty
twenty three, she was in a good place. Aaron was
in a good place. She had a big, beautiful house.
She had just landscaped the garden. She had her children,
(18:37):
who she loves deeply. She had them with her most
of the time, effectively sole custody. She was very comfortable financially.
Her body image wasn't great, it hadn't been for a
long time, but she was planning to do something about that.
She was looking forward to returning to study. All things considered,
(18:57):
she was in a good place, and in that context
we submit to you that she is most unlikely to
have planned to murder people, especially if it is inevitable
that it would be discovered.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Mister Mandy then took the jury to the dehydrator. He said,
if Aaron had been planning this murder from April twenty
twenty three, she would not have bought the dehydrator in
her own name, with her own details, using her own
credit card, taken photos of the dehydrator, taken photos of
the mushrooms in the Dehydrata, shared the photos in a
(19:33):
Facebook chat and waited so long before getting rid of
the dehydrator itself. Mister Mandy added that if she had
planned to kill the guests, she would not have sent
the images of the murder weapon and the murder method
to her own Facebook fronts.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
Mister Mandy told the jury that an intelligent person carefully
planning a murder would know if you poisoned four people
at a lunch at your house, the meal would be
under suspicion and the focus would be on the cook
very very quickly. But he said, according to the prosecution theory,
Aaron pushed ahead with her lunch regardless. He admitted she
(20:11):
panicked in the days after the lunch when, as the cook,
the spotlight was on her. He said she dumped the
dehydrator not to dispose of evidence, but because she panicked
following conversation she had with Simon where he accused her
of poisoning his parents with the dehydrator. He said her
actions on the day she drove to the tip to
(20:32):
dump it spoke volumes about her state of mind.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
She drives to the tip in her own car, pays
for disposal of the dehydrator with her own bank card
doesn't attempt to disguise those actions in any way. It
could only have been panic, not because she was guilty,
but because that's what people might think. It was a
deep shock to her how these four people became so
(20:59):
seriously unwell. It was a deep shock to her because
she never intended it to happen. And if that's a
reasonable possibility, then she must be found not guilty.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Mister Mandy then moved on to the leftovers of the meal.
He refuted the prosecution's claim that Aaron had been forced
to tell police where the leftovers were.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
She told the police where to find them without hesitation.
She must have been confident that there was no poison
in order to do that, He went on to say,
a guilty person on the Crown case, being at the
premises for some time that morning, would have already thrown
them out. You might think, get rid of them, put
them in the neighbor's bin or a public bin, bury
(21:45):
them in the backyard, or do something else. There had
been two days to do all of that. Instead directing
the police where to find the evidence that there were
deathcap mushrooms in the meal, at that time on Monday morning.
The inference that you can draw from that is that
she genuinely believed that there were not deathcap mushrooms inside
(22:06):
that bin, inside those leftovers.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
Mister Mandy then spoke about erin taking to the witness box.
He said she didn't have to do this. He reminded
the jury that she was cross examined for five hours
a day over five days, recounting information from two years ago,
and was questioned about every minutia of her movements and
every single conversation she had with the witnesses. In this case,
(22:32):
she has the right to silence.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
She didn't have to answer any questions. She could have
stayed in the dock and said absolutely nothing, not given evidence.
In the case, the prosecution has to prove the case,
and that's part of the exercise. She doesn't have to
prove anything. And yet she decided to give evidence, to
give her account, and to subject herself to several days
(22:56):
of cross examination by a very experienced ba arister. Let's
consider her position in choosing to do that, not only
your scrutiny, of course, but the scrutiny of the whole
world being closely cross examined about the fine details of
her account and about every word that she said to
other people two years ago in twenty four hours to
(23:18):
forty eight hours.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Mister Mandy's closing address finished early today because he was
starting to cough and his voice was failing him, but
he will continue tomorrow.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
And before we jump off the Mikes, I will add
that Justice Christopher Biale gave the jurors and us an
update on the trial timeline. He said he won't commence
his charge or his instructions to the jury until Monday
next week, flagging that he might finish on Tuesday afternoon
or maybe he'll spill over into Wednesday. He said he
(23:50):
wanted to provide them with this update so they could
get their affairs in order before deliberations begin.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
So, Laura, it looks like the jury won't retire to
consider a verdict until midnext week.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
So we have a few more days left to go.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
We sure do. To stay updated on this case, go
to the mushroomcook dot com dot au
It was a showdown today in the mushroom murder trial.
The lead barristers of both the prosecution and the defense
addressed the jury, with Nannette Rodgers finalizing the Crown's argument
that Aaron Patterson told lies upon lies when her murder
plot started to unravel.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
We say there is no reasonable alternative explanation for what
happened to the lunch guests other than the accused deliberately
sourced death cap mushrooms and deliberately included them in the meal.
She served them with an intention to kill them. In
the lead up to the lunch and in the periods
after the lunch, Aaron Patterson told so many lies it's
(00:41):
hard to keep track of them. She has told lies
upon lies because she knew the truth would implicate her.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Meanwhile, Colin Mandy started the defense case by saying his
client never planned to kill her lunch guests and had
a motive to keep them in her world.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
She didn't plan it. She never planned to kill anyone,
and when they did get very, very sick, she panicked
because that's when she realized that it might have been
the meal and the spotlight would be on her. And
that's a very powerful reason why you can't, in our submission,
find this element of intention. It's why you should have
(01:22):
a reasonable doubt about it. It is an implausible theory
when you take a step back and look at the
big picture.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
In Room four of the La Trobe Valley Law Courts,
both sides came out swinging. I'm Brook Greebert Craig, and
this is the mushroom cook We just finished day thirty
three of Aaron Patterson's trial, and as always I'm joined
by court reporter Laura Placella. We've had a big day, Yes,
(01:51):
another one this morning. Doctor Rogers continued with the prosecution's
fourth calculated deception, which was the sustained cover Aaron embarked
on to conceal the truth to remind listeners the other
three with a fabricated cancer claim Aaron used as a
reason for the lunch, the lethal doses of poison Aaron
(02:13):
secreted in the beef Wellington's and Aaron's attempts to make
it seem like she also suffered death cap mushroom poisoning.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
So there were four elements to the sustained cover up,
two of which doctor Rogers mentioned yesterday. But today she
turned to the disposing of the dehydrator that she said
Erin had used to dehydrate death caps. Erin has admitted
that she dumped the appliance the day after she was
released from Monash Medical Center, but doctor Rogers said today
(02:42):
the only reason that Aaron dumped it was because she
knew she had used it to prepare the deadly meal.
This is what doctor Rogers said today. These are her words,
but not her voice.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
If there was nothing incriminating about the dehydrator, why hide it?
And there is only one reasonable explanation. She knew it
would incriminate her. She knew that she had dehydrated death
cap mushrooms in that appliance, and that she had deliberately
done so, and she knew that keeping it was going
to be far too risky. So one of the first
(03:15):
things that she did after getting back from the Monash
Hospital was to race out to the tip and dump it,
try to make it disappear. If not for the careful
analysis of the accused spank records conducted by Senior Constable
Meg Crawford, no one would ever have known about the dehydrator.
Aaron Patterson certainly wasn't telling anyone about it. In fact,
(03:37):
when she was asked by police during the record of
interview on fifth of August whether she knew anything about
a dehydrator in her house. She answered with a completely
straight face no.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Doctor Rogers then moved on to the last element of
the sustained cover up, which was Aaron deliberately concealing her
usual mobile phone from police. Rogers talked the jury through
Phone A, which was her usual phone, Phone B, which
was her dummy phone, and Phone C, which was her
NOKIAF phone. Laura, let's start with Phone A.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
The game of phones continues, so with Phone A, as
you just said, brook Erin's usual phone. Doctor Rogers explained
today that this phone was using the SIM card ending
in seven eighty three in the lead up to the
lunch and she said this simcard was also infhone A
right up until the start of the search warrant, which
(04:32):
was executed at Aaron's house on August five. But doctor
Rogers told the jury today that while detectives were at
Erin's house, Phone A was being handled without their knowledge.
She reminded the jury of the evidence that the simcard
lost connection with the network at some point that day
between twelve oh one pm and one forty five PM,
(04:55):
and she alleged this was because Aeron removed the SIM
card before concealing Phone A from police. She reiterated to
the jury today that police have never been able to
recover Phone A, even after returning to Aaron's house for
a second time in November.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Let's move on to Phone B. What did doctor Rogers
say about that device?
Speaker 4 (05:17):
For the first time, we heard doctor Rogers call Phone
B the dummy phone, and this was the device that
Erin handed to police at the end of the search
on August five, and she accused Erin today of setting
up this dummy phone to deliberately trick the police. She
said that police found nothing on Phone B because it
had been factory reset multiple times by Erin, including on
(05:40):
August five and August six, the day after the search.
She then turned to the SIM card that was in
Phone B when it was handed over, and that was
a SIM card ending in eight three five. Erin claimed
last week that she was setting up a new phone
the week of the search, but doctor Rogers said that
the jury could reject her claim because it was not
(06:02):
a phone or a phone number that the accused could
say she was truthfully using.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Great let's finish with Phone C, which was the Nokia phone.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
Doctor Rogers told the jury that after Erin took the
SIM card ending in seven eighty three, which was her
usual SIM card, out of Phone A, she then later
placed it into Phone C, the Nochia. She said that
Erin continued to use this number in Phone C even
after she returned home from her record of interview on
August five. She said, Erin's usage of this simcard made
(06:36):
it quite clear that this was her usual SIM card
and not the SIM card ending in eight three five
that was in Phone B when Aaron handed it over.
Here's doctor Rogers's explanation for why Aaron did what she
did with the phones.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
All of this conduct, the factory resets, the handing over
of the blank dummy phone, pretending that Phone B was
her phone number. All of this was designed to frustrate
the police investigation of this matter. It was all done
so that the police would never see the contents of
the accused's real mobile phone. We suggest to you that
(07:13):
the only reasonable explanation for engaging in all of this
deceptive conduct is that she knew that the information on
Phone A, her usual mobile phone, would implicate her in
the deliberate poisoning of the lunch guests.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
After doctor Rogers finished her four calculated deceptions, she moved
on to Aeron's claim that she must have accidentally foraged
death cat mushrooms.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
Doctor Rogers said that she anticipated the defense would argue
that the jury cannot discount the possibility that Erin had
innocently foraged for wild mushrooms for a family meal, but
accidentally collected death cap mushrooms in that process before dehydrating them,
placing them into a tupperware container with other dehydrated mushrooms,
(07:58):
and therefore unknowingly including them in the beef wellingtons. But
doctor Rogers said the only evidence of Erin ever foraging
for mushrooms came from her Her children told an investigator
that they did not know their mum to pick and
eat wild mushrooms, and Erin never discussed foraging with her
Facebook friends. Doctor Rogers explained to the jury why the
(08:20):
prosecution say Aarin lied about foraging.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
The suggestion now that these mushrooms may have been accidentally foraged,
we suggest, is a very late change to the accused's story.
You might think that at some point it dawned on
her that the Asian grocery story didn't add up, particularly
when faced with the evidence about the remnants of the
death cap mushrooms having been found in her dehydrator, she
(08:46):
had to come up with something new. You should simply
disregard this new claim that this was a horrible foraging
accident as nothing more than an attempt by the accused
to get her story to fit the evidence that the
police compiled in this case.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Doctor Rodgers then moved onto motive. She said the evidence
didn't demonstrate that Aaron had any particular motive.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Motive is not an element of the crime of murder
or the crime of attempted murder, and it is only
the elements of the offense that you must find proven
beyond reasonable doubt that makes sense. People do different things
for different reasons. Sometimes the reason is obvious enough to others.
At other times, the internal motivations are only known by
(09:32):
the person themself. You don't have to know why a
person does something in order to know they did it.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
While doctor Rodgers said the prosecution didn't need to prove motive,
she still took the jury to evidence about the relationship
between Aaron Simon and Donn and Gale she told the
jurors they had heard evidence over the course of the
trial that showed that they loved each other. Doctor Rogers
added that Aaron professed her love for Donni Gale in
(10:00):
her record of interview, and Simon testified that Aaron seemed
to love his parents, but she said the relationship between
Aaron and her parents in law was not always a
harmonious one. After a child support dispute arose between Aaron
and Simon in October twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Don and Gail were dragged unwillingly into the conflict between
the accused and Simon over child support. That was Simon's evidence.
Simon said he noticed a substantial change in his relationship
with the accused in late twenty twenty two over the
issue of child support, which had not abated by the
end of that year. As you have heard, child support
(10:42):
became a significant source of tension between the accused and
Simon Patterson, how much Simon Patterson was paying, whether it
covered the school fees, and the payment of the children's
medical bills.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
Doctor Rogers said that the evidence showed that the divide
between Erin and don and Gale was deeper than they
ever She said that Aaron expressed her true feelings to
her Facebook friends in bitter, angry messages she wrote about
her parents in law, where she called them a lost
cause and said fuck em.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
The point of this evidence is that it shows we
say that the accused was leading a duplicitous life when
it came to the Pattersons, she presented one side while
expressing contrary beliefs to others.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Then doctor Rodgers asked the fourteen jurors to personally think
about what they would do if this was a horrible
accident that happened to them Laura. As doctor Rogers explains,
our listeners may also think about what they would do
if they were in this situation.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
If you were told that the meal you had cooked
and served to your family was thought to have possibly
contained deathcat mushrooms, what would you do. Would you go
into self preservation mode, just worrying about protecting yourself from blame.
Would you race away from the hospital and do who
knows what for an hour and a half. Would you
be reluctant to receive treatment. Would you take two and
(12:05):
a half hours to eventually agree to get your kids
to hospital? Would you lie about the source of the
ingredients to medical practitioners and the health department officials for days,
even though the truth might help those you claim to love. No,
that's not what you do. You would do everything you
could to help the people you love.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
She went on to say, you would tell.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
The treating medical practitioners every scheric of information that might
help to identify the cause of the illness, so that
they could get the right treatment to your loved ones,
regardless of any risk of blame that might fall on you.
If your children had come within cooi of the same meal,
you would move mountains to get them to hospital as
quickly as possible. And if you yourself had truly consumed
(12:52):
the same meal, you would gladly receive all of the
medical treatment you could get your hands on. Aaron Patterson
acted the way she did because she knew what she
had done.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
Doctor Rogers said that Aaron panicked not because she realized
she had made a grave foraging mistake, but because doctors
had figured out that death caps were behind the illnesses
of the guests. She said, innocent panic did not explain
the extensive and prolonged efforts that Erin went to in
order to cover up what she had done. She said.
(13:23):
It also did not explain why Erin chose to persist
with her lies when the lives of the guests were
at stake.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Doctor Rogers first took the jury through the lies Erin
has omitted, lies about never owning a dehydrator and never
having forage from mushrooms.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
But then doctor Rogers turned to the lies Erin hasn't admitted.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
She said.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
These included lying in a record of interview about being
very helpful to the Department of Health, lying about why
she held the lunch, and lying when she said she
never told the lunch guests that she had been diagnosed
with cancer. Doctor Rogers said her starkest lie was the
one she told about having an appointment to explore gastric
(14:06):
bypass surgery.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
The prosecution says that you cannot accept the accused as
a truthful, honest and trustworthy witness. She has told too
many lies and you should reject her evidence.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Doctor Rogers told the jury to think of the case
like a jigsaw puzzle. One piece on its own may
not tell you very much about what the picture is,
but when you start putting more together and looking at
it as a whole, the picture becomes clearer.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
Doctor Rogers then revealed to the jury that there was
one final deception, a fifth that she had not previously mentioned.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
The deception she has tried to play on you the
jury with her untruthful evidence. When she knew her lies
had been uncovered, she came up with a carefully constructed
narrative to fit with the evidence. Almost there are some
inconsistencies that she just came do not account for, so
she ignores them, says she can't remember those conversations, or
(15:05):
says other people are just wrong, even her own children.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
As she neared the end of her closing address, doctor
Rogers said that the evidence in this case showed that
Erin prepared and allocated the meal, that she was the
only person who consumed the meal but did not fall
seriously ill, that she was familiar with the i Naturalist website,
that her phone was in the very two locations in
(15:30):
Gippsland where death caps had been cited and recorded in
April and May twenty twenty three, that she was dehydrating
mushrooms consistent with death caps, and remnants of death caps
were found in her dehydrator. That she concealed her actions,
including by dumping her dehydrator, and finally that she told many,
(15:50):
many lies about the true source of the mushrooms. Doctor
Rogers told the jury, when they consider all of this evidence,
they will be satisfied that the used deliberately sourced death caps,
serve them to Don, gail Ian and Heather, and did
so intending to kill them. She then thanked the jury
before returning to her seat.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Aaron's barrister, Colin Mandy, then began his closing address.
Speaker 4 (16:16):
He started by telling the jurors there were two simple
issues that they had to determine. The first was is
there a reasonable possibility that death caps were put into
this meal accidentally? And the second was is it a
reasonable possibility that Erin did not intend to kill or
cause serious injury to her guests. He said if either
(16:37):
of those were reasonable possibilities, then the jury would have
reasonable doubt and must acquit his client of all charges.
He then met a criticism of the approach taken by
the prosecution in this trial.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Their approach is this working from the assumption that Aaron
Patterson is guilty of these crimes, pick and choose the
evidence that fits that theory, and then tie it all
together in an attempt to present a coherent narrative and
ignore the things that don't fit. So they have constructed
that case theory by, as I say, picking and choosing
(17:14):
evidence while ignoring the context, cherry picking convenient fragments while
discarding inconvenient truths.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Mister Mandy then went on to tell the jury what
happened in the wake of the lunch was a terrible tragedy.
He said, since the four guests were good, innocent people,
the jurors may have a desire to punish whoever caused
their deaths, but he told the jurors they must fiercely
guard against that kind of reasoning.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
Mister Mandy then moved on to motive, or more specifically,
a lack of motive, and so that it made it
more likely what happened was an accident. He told the
jury that the defense had actually presented positive evidence of
a lack of motive, dubbing it an antimotive. It was
at this point that mister Manny pointed to Don tutoring,
(18:03):
Erin's son, and the pair also completing science experiments together.
He said that Erin had a motive to keep Doningale
in her world. This is what he went on to say.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Absolutely no doubt that Erin was devoted to her children.
Why would she take wonderful, active, loving grandparents away from
her own children. At the time the middle of twenty
twenty three, she was in a good place. Aaron was
in a good place. She had a big, beautiful house.
She had just landscaped the garden. She had her children,
(18:37):
who she loves deeply. She had them with her most
of the time, effectively sole custody. She was very comfortable financially.
Her body image wasn't great, it hadn't been for a
long time, but she was planning to do something about that.
She was looking forward to returning to study. All things considered,
(18:57):
she was in a good place, and in that context
we submit to you that she is most unlikely to
have planned to murder people, especially if it is inevitable
that it would be discovered.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Mister Mandy then took the jury to the dehydrator. He said,
if Aaron had been planning this murder from April twenty
twenty three, she would not have bought the dehydrator in
her own name, with her own details, using her own
credit card, taken photos of the dehydrator, taken photos of
the mushrooms in the Dehydrata, shared the photos in a
(19:33):
Facebook chat and waited so long before getting rid of
the dehydrator itself. Mister Mandy added that if she had
planned to kill the guests, she would not have sent
the images of the murder weapon and the murder method
to her own Facebook fronts.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
Mister Mandy told the jury that an intelligent person carefully
planning a murder would know if you poisoned four people
at a lunch at your house, the meal would be
under suspicion and the focus would be on the cook
very very quickly. But he said, according to the prosecution theory,
Aaron pushed ahead with her lunch regardless. He admitted she
(20:11):
panicked in the days after the lunch when, as the cook,
the spotlight was on her. He said she dumped the
dehydrator not to dispose of evidence, but because she panicked
following conversation she had with Simon where he accused her
of poisoning his parents with the dehydrator. He said her
actions on the day she drove to the tip to
(20:32):
dump it spoke volumes about her state of mind.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
She drives to the tip in her own car, pays
for disposal of the dehydrator with her own bank card
doesn't attempt to disguise those actions in any way. It
could only have been panic, not because she was guilty,
but because that's what people might think. It was a
deep shock to her how these four people became so
(20:59):
seriously unwell. It was a deep shock to her because
she never intended it to happen. And if that's a
reasonable possibility, then she must be found not guilty.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Mister Mandy then moved on to the leftovers of the meal.
He refuted the prosecution's claim that Aaron had been forced
to tell police where the leftovers were.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
She told the police where to find them without hesitation.
She must have been confident that there was no poison
in order to do that, He went on to say,
a guilty person on the Crown case, being at the
premises for some time that morning, would have already thrown
them out. You might think, get rid of them, put
them in the neighbor's bin or a public bin, bury
(21:45):
them in the backyard, or do something else. There had
been two days to do all of that. Instead directing
the police where to find the evidence that there were
deathcap mushrooms in the meal, at that time on Monday morning.
The inference that you can draw from that is that
she genuinely believed that there were not deathcap mushrooms inside
(22:06):
that bin, inside those leftovers.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
Mister Mandy then spoke about erin taking to the witness box.
He said she didn't have to do this. He reminded
the jury that she was cross examined for five hours
a day over five days, recounting information from two years ago,
and was questioned about every minutia of her movements and
every single conversation she had with the witnesses. In this case,
(22:32):
she has the right to silence.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
She didn't have to answer any questions. She could have
stayed in the dock and said absolutely nothing, not given evidence.
In the case, the prosecution has to prove the case,
and that's part of the exercise. She doesn't have to
prove anything. And yet she decided to give evidence, to
give her account, and to subject herself to several days
(22:56):
of cross examination by a very experienced ba arister. Let's
consider her position in choosing to do that, not only
your scrutiny, of course, but the scrutiny of the whole
world being closely cross examined about the fine details of
her account and about every word that she said to
other people two years ago in twenty four hours to
(23:18):
forty eight hours.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Mister Mandy's closing address finished early today because he was
starting to cough and his voice was failing him, but
he will continue tomorrow.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
And before we jump off the Mikes, I will add
that Justice Christopher Biale gave the jurors and us an
update on the trial timeline. He said he won't commence
his charge or his instructions to the jury until Monday
next week, flagging that he might finish on Tuesday afternoon
or maybe he'll spill over into Wednesday. He said he
(23:50):
wanted to provide them with this update so they could
get their affairs in order before deliberations begin.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
So, Laura, it looks like the jury won't retire to
consider a verdict until midnext week.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
So we have a few more days left to go.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
We sure do. To stay updated on this case, go
to the mushroomcook dot com dot au
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