Mushroom Lunch: Victims’ pain laid bare at Erin Patterson plea hearing

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Seven weeks after Erin Patterson's guilty verdict, her victims tell the court how they really feel.

The fallout of the triple murder laid bare.

I'm ABC Court Reporter Christian Silver.

And I'm Investigative Reporter Rachel Brown.

And I'm Stephen Stockwell.

Welcome back to Mushroom Case Daily.

Just a week after four people sat down for a family lunch in rural Victoria, three of them were dead.

Homicide detectives are still piecing together what exactly happened at the lunch.

It's certainly looking like the symptoms are consistent with death cap mushrooms.

Erin Patterson said she bought the dried mushrooms at a supermarket and an Asian grocery store months earlier.

I cannot think of another investigation that has generated this level of media and public interest.

It's been over two years since Aaron Patterson served her lunch guests a poisoned beef Wellington, a dish filled with death cat mushrooms that resulted in the deaths of three of them and the near death of another guest, Ian Wilkinson.

Christian Silver, Rachel Brown, thank you for joining us again for Mushroom Case Daily to talk through the sentencing process of Aaron Patterson.

And Socky, you've made it from the warm climate of Darwin back down to Melbourne.

Oh, look, I can be many places at once.

So it's lovely to be back here with you.

And Rach, you've made the journey back from the Supreme Court of Melbourne.

Have a long way, but I'm here.

It's great to have both of you back with us for this episode where we talk through the plea hearing of Aaron Patterson.

Now, this is kind of like a pre-sentence hearing, basically.

And in this, we've heard from the victims.

Justice Christopher Beale has heard from the prosecution and defence for taking some time to consider the sentence that Aaron Patterson will be handed down for murdering three people and attempting to murder Ian Wilkinson.

In this episode, we're going to talk through those victim impact statements, Aaron's condition in prison and some of the factors that were presented.

And Christian, I want to start with the people at the center of this crime, the victims of it.

We heard a number of victim impact statements yesterday in court, principally that of Ian Wilkinson, the sole lunch survivor.

We did.

We actually thought we might be hearing upwards of 20 people giving statements to the court, which would have been incredibly emotionally draining.

And what actually ended up happening was only two people actually gave their statements in person.

There were another four others that were read on behalf of the authors, and the rest of the statements were actually directly handed up to Justice Christopher Beale and weren't read out in open court.

But definitely the key impact statement that was presented was that of Ian Wilkinson.

He was the first one called, and it was an incredibly emotional,

passionate, and at times quite a beautiful tribute to his late wife.

And there were some other moments in there, which I certainly will never forget.

The lunch that Aaron Patterson held in July 2023 led to the deaths of Don and Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson.

And Ian Wilkinson, the sole survivor, spent a long time in hospital basically trying to recover from the effects of death gap mushrooms that he'd eaten at that meal.

And Rach, Ian Wilkinson talked a lot about his late wife, Heather Wilkinson, in his victim impact statement.

He did.

And guys, as you know, like we talked a lot in the podcast about how there's no room for feelings in a court case, in a trial.

But this is their time.

This is the victim's time to stare down the defendant in the eye, if they like, and say, this is what you've done to me, to my life.

And my God, it was harrowing.

Did you like, I, I will, like.

there were a lot of tears in the courtroom i will never forget yesterday um he did such a brave job i'm not sure i could have done it his voice was wavering and i'm not sure whether that's to do with his health issues since the lunch or pain but there was one point he he's described heather beautifully her sense of humor her generosity her love of helping strugglers you know she used to teach migrants English,

just her care for the community.

And then he spoke about how he feels sad pottering around the house or in the garden because he misses her so much and he said I feel like I'm living half a life and then he went quiet and I was worried he'd fainted because I could only see the top of his head at that point.

Yeah, he took a long pause and he bent down and I think he had a sip of water,

wiped his eyes with some tissues and it was interesting that after paying tribute to his wife, he then turned the speech towards Erin Patterson and gave quite a critical assessment of this horrific crime that Patterson committed.

He said that she'd acted in a callous and calculated way with a disregard for his life and also the lives of the three other people who died.

And I really liked a couple of the quotes that he gave.

He said, What foolishness possesses a person to think that murder could be the solution to their problems.

And he said, Erin had brought deep sorrow and grief to his life and the lives of many others.

And then he also

kind of zoomed out a bit.

And I think this was probably a criticism of the wider attention of this case.

And fair enough, too,

when he said

it's some of the most distressing shortcomings of society that so much attention is showered on those who do evil and so little on those who do good.

And it makes you think about all the media coverage Erin Patterson and I mean this is the flaw of the legal system

so I don't think it's entirely the fault of the media but so much attention on Erin Patterson over the last two years and

really not as much on those victims.

He's right and victims do get lost in because it's a legal system it's not necessarily always a justice system and this is the one time that they have to have that moment.

And I just felt that there was this harrowing excavation of grief that he just laid bare on that Supreme Court floor.

I've never heard anything like it.

And then for him to offer her forgiveness and say, you know, I hope you accept it because you will be the victim of my kindness, we all spoke.

And this is something I think we did keep the victims in mind during the podcast.

We tried to ensure they weren't lost.

It's not a story.

It's their living nightmare, especially Ian's.

So we tried to not forget about that in our reporting, but a lot of people in these victim impact statements did make that criticism and probably rightly so, that they felt their trauma had become entertainment for others.

Yeah, I'm keen to talk through

what some of the people had to say about the media in their victim impact statements as we get a bit further into this episode.

I mean, one of the things, Rachel, you were talking about that stuck with me was, yeah, Ian Wilkinson basically offering forgiveness to Aaron Patterson for what she had done for murdering his wife, right?

Like this guy is

the pastor of the Coronborough Baptist Church.

He's a very religious man.

All the lunch guests were very religious people.

Erin Patterson herself has said that she's a religious person as well.

And yeah, for him to offer forgiveness to her,

saying he bared her no ill will and then praying that she uses her time in jail to become a better person

was, yeah, the thing that stuck with me.

It was one of the last things he said in his victim impact statement, I think.

And that, yeah, really, really landed and, you know, shows a lot of, I think, of his character in this situation.

It does.

It shows you the calibre of the man and

Don and Gail Patterson moved in similar circles.

We can only presume they were very similar too

and I guess it goes back to the fact that Aaron Patterson has killed these people who seemingly didn't have a bad bone in their body and that's just what makes it even more horrific.

And we spoke a lot about his grace during the podcast and

I don't, I'm not sure I know anyone else in the world who would have been capable of what he showed yesterday.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, talking about how emotional Ian Wilkinson's victim impact statement was, the other person who was reading out their own statement was Ruth Dubois.

She is the daughter of Heather and Ian Wilkinson.

And yeah, I mean, if Ian Wilkinson was an emotional listener, Ruth's victim impact statement as well, really painting a lovely picture of what her mother was like and then kind of detailing how much she misses her, and then what they've missed together as well, you know, the birthdays, the milestones, all these other things in their lives that have that they now don't enjoy together because of this lunch.

What struck me with Ruth's and also Tim Patterson, another victim impact statement, was

the act itself of doing the victim impact statement.

I hadn't really thought about that.

And Ruth said, how can you possibly reduce who these people were to just a few words on a page?

And that really affected me in thinking about, you know, Tim said the same thing, Tim Patterson, he said, is it in the volume of tears cried?

Is it in the doctor's bills, you know, because of my heart palpitation since, like, how can you possibly put this on paper to read out to a court?

So that

was very stark to me.

Ruth was another one that talked about the intrusion.

you know, and their trauma revoltingly turned into entertainment for the masses, she said, or for some people's own personal gain.

And

we do need to talk about that.

You know, we're both

I think it's an uncomfortable conversation for some people in our industry.

And

frankly, we've seen a wide range of behaviour

throughout the last two years, some of it

absolutely disgraceful from members of this industry, including just a matter of weeks ago when Simon Patterson was confronted and had a microphone shoved in his face and the reporter asked him, why did your wife try to kill you so many times?

It was a disgraceful bit of journalism

and you can understand why this family is

just distraught by the way they've been treated.

It is shameful to see the conduct of some of the people in this industry.

Now, I honestly think that most of us have conducted ourselves ethically and done the right thing with respect to the families.

But as the saying goes, you know, a few rotten eggs spoil it all.

And I think we've seen some appalling journalism over the last two years.

I can also understand how they'd be angry even if the media was doing a good job.

Like, even at our most sensitive...

I totally get it because they're angry that we're there because they're angry we need to be there in the first place.

Like this should never have happened in their mind.

You know, they're still scratching around thinking, trying to work out an explanation or a reason and there's been no remorse shown.

So not only are we there, but like they would also be thinking,

these people shouldn't even be, this should never have happened.

One really notable absence from yesterday was Simon Patterson.

We were all interested to see what he would say in his victim impact statement.

I mean, both of his parents were murdered and so was his aunt.

He wasn't there.

A statement was read out on his behalf and it was a lot shorter.

It didn't have the same emotion that Ian Wilkinson and Ruth Dubois did and that's not a criticism of Simon but the thing I took away from it was he spoke about the impact that this crime will have on his family.

It's broken his family and for

the two kids that he shares with Erin Patterson, he said something along the lines of, you know, everyone knows that their mum murdered their grandparents and that's something that's going to stay with them for a very long time.

And talking about the impact that kind of the media interest has had on all these people as well, I mean the thing that kind of stuck with me from Simon Patterson's victim impact statement was how him and the children kind of have this plan when they're out.

You know, if he says we need to leave somewhere quite quickly, they understand that they need to leave because someone's trying to record them or someone's trying to film them and that impacts and kind of how it's permeated their lives, how they react when they hear noises outside their house, all of that is, yeah, just really sad in the scheme of all of this as well.

And, you know, talked about Ruth Dubois earlier, her talking about how the kind of the light has gone out of the world in some senses and in some places, you know, she thinks the world is much colder now.

She doesn't trust people in a similar way because of how calculated Erin was in preparing this meal and preparing the lunch.

Another moment from the victim impact statements that I found was really interesting was Tim Patterson.

His victim impact statement was read out in court.

He is the nephew of Don Patterson, who was murdered at the lunch.

He is Simon Patterson's cousin, just to give you a sense of the family tree.

And something I found really interesting in his statement was this insight into what the family was thinking

in the immediate week following the lunch.

He recounted a diary entry he had made when he heard that Don and Gail were sick in hospital, said something along the lines of Don and Gail are sick in hospital following lunch at Aaron's, food poisoning, or something more sinister, which, you know, is not an insight we've had into the thinking of the family throughout this.

You know, we didn't get any idea of their suspicions through this period.

So that was, I thought, a really interesting insight into what they were thinking in the weeks following the lunch.

And they couldn't share it, remember?

So they were...

dissuaded from sharing with other family members as to not taint other people's memories before, you know, if they had to give statements or testify in court, so that'd be quite hard to

that was from Simon Patterson's victim impact statement that again was read out.

Yeah, him talking about how they haven't been able to kind of process the grief that they've experienced because they haven't been able to talk to each other for fear of kind of compromising the investigation and the court process that they've just been through.

Now, with all of this happening, Erin Patterson is in the courtroom sitting in the dock listening to these victim impact statements being read out.

All of them are about her and about her actions.

How was she?

This hearing was in the Melbourne Supreme Court, a historic old building, so a very different setting to where we were in Morwall.

So Erin Patterson was effectively brought into this courtroom, paraded through the room and up some stairs into a court dock.

The room was really packed.

It was at times a bit difficult to get a clear view of Erin's face, but what I could gather was that she did appear to be emotionally affected to some degree.

She clutched a tissue at one point.

I don't think she was visibly sobbing, not audibly anyway.

So it would appear she was somewhat affected by it.

Yeah.

I mean, certainly the people reading these statements, people affected by the crimes she committed, are feeling this really deeply.

And, I mean, something you've probably gotten a picture of as we've been talking through the people who've been giving these victim impact statements is the breadth of the harm that has been caused by this.

And, you know, you've got all these different generations of the Patterson and Wilkinson families.

And Rachel, at one point, Justice Beale kind of acknowledging the ripples or the waves that this has sent through those families.

Yeah, four generations.

He did comment.

He said, usually we say the ripples of a crime, but this is a tsunami.

So that also gives you an idea of where his sentencing is heading.

It's not just the families, too, it's entire communities affected, tarred

by this crime.

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure the people in Corranborough, where Don and Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson lived, and Ian Wilkinson continues to live, will feel this for a long time.

I think the people in Lee and Gatha, where Aaron Patterson lived, will feel this for a long time and have to deal with the stigma associated with it as well.

So that's something that, yeah, those communities have to manage too.

In the pre-sentence hearing yesterday, we also heard from corrections about the condition that Aaron Patterson is being held in at the moment.

So, you know, we know that she had been held in Dame Flus Frost, the prison in the northwest of Melbourne.

But Christian, yesterday we've got more detail on exactly where in that prison she is and what sort of access and kind of activities are available to her.

Yeah, this was the first time that we got an insight into what Erin Patterson's daily life has been since her arrest in November 2023.

So the lunch was in July 2023.

So she's been locked up for close to two years now.

And the court was told that Patterson has actually been isolated from nearly every inmate in this women's prison due to fears for her own safety.

She's in the highly restricted Gordon unit of the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre.

That's a women's prison on the outskirts of Melbourne and the court was told that there's only one other prisoner that Erin Patterson has permission to speak to.

And this conversation that she may be able to have is like through a wire mesh fence in a tiny exercise space outside a cell that's hardly going out for coffee.

That person that she is allowed to speak to is a convicted terrorist who has a history of attacking other prisoners.

So Colin Mandy, the defence barrister for Erin, said that, look, she's got the opportunity to speak to this person, but she's never done it.

She's not able to mix in with the general prison population.

In terms of what she's able to do during her days, apparently she's locked down for about 22 hours a day, sometimes a full day, completely locked in her cell.

She has things like a television.

There's plenty of room for her crochet

wool and other whatever you use to do crochet.

And she's got a computer, books, magazine, a hair straightener and a fan.

We heard that she'd gotten quite into crocheting and so had a number of blankets that she'd made as well in her cell.

Rach, what stood out to you from what we heard about the conditions that Aaron Patterson is living in at the moment and basically has been for the last kind of 400 odd days?

What stood out to me was that it seemed like that's all the defence had to work with in terms of mitigation.

So the defence usually is role to try to mitigate the sentence why their client deserves a lesser sentence.

It's the prosecution's role to list aggravating factors that we'll get to.

But this is really, correct me if I'm wrong, all we really heard about a potential mitigating factor that she's in isolation for so long.

This could continue for the foreseeable future.

So he used that to say this is something that Justice Beale should consider when he's considering the sentence.

And Colin Mandy was arguing for a non-parole period.

And of of course, the prosecution thinks that there shouldn't be one.

There should be a life sentence and that's it.

And that's interesting to me because all the other plea hearings that I've gone to, especially recent ones, you hear character references.

They might have fostered a child.

They might have taken church classes.

We heard none of that.

We heard nothing about, I really thought I would learn about Erin's background yesterday.

Didn't hear a thing.

Usually like to reference the good character,

you know, the nice things that they've done in society, but none of that was brought up.

And often what they do is also point out health problems that the accused person has.

Usually in these pre-sentence hearings, we hear about psychological reports or things, or mental health assessments.

But Colin Mandy yesterday said Erin Patterson had Asperger's and that would make her time in custody more difficult.

And he asked Justice Christopher Beale to take that into account.

Now he didn't really provide any medical evidence to back that up, which I thought was really unusual.

Instead, what he presented were other people's secondhand accounts that Erin had this condition.

It just struck me as very odd that you wouldn't go and get her assessed.

They've had seven weeks to do so, and if they needed more time, they could have asked the court for that.

Courts generally, at this point in the process, when they know that the accused person is going away for a very long time they're willing to grant those extensions so that the judge has the full gamut of information so they can sentence so it really struck me as weird that

he said she had this but gave no evidence and i mean this is when beal was quite candid at this point too because at one point i think it was mentioned her claim to have been diagnosed and justice beal piped in with well she doesn't have a lot of credibility no well she had cancer at one point too didn't she

Christian you're talking about the psychological assessments that you know often get done.

I mean that's that's quite a common practice right like ordinarily in a situation like this you would expect someone like Aaron Patterson in a similar position to come to court with that right?

Yeah because what the defence lawyers do is they use

that potential diagnosis to argue to the judge that, look, prison's going to be worse for them than for a quote-unquote normal person.

So you should give them a small discount or factor that in yeah and i mean we're at the process now where we're talking through kind of the aggravating and the mitigating factors for the sentence that aaron patterson will be handed down for murdering three people and attempting to murder someone um i mean you were talking a bit before about a non-parole period now just so i've got that clear in my mind um that is a period where someone isn't eligible for parole but then after that would be have i got that right

Effectively, it's a date when they could potentially walk free.

They still need the parole board to conduct an assessment and determine that this person has been rehabilitated and is fit to be released into the community.

But what it does is it gives an accused person that glimmer of hope that they'll one day walk out.

And what Colin Mandy was pleading with the judge was to give Erin Patterson a date to look forward to at some point in the future.

Both Colin Mandy and the prosecutor agreed that for a crime where a jury has found someone guilty of a triple murder and an attempted murder, that the only appropriate sentence is a life sentence.

But he's calling for that parole option to give her that glimmer of hope.

Whereas the prosecutor, Jane Warren, mentioned a sentence handed down by Justice Lazari and said, sometimes a crime's so horrific and so cruel that a step towards mercy becomes too difficult to take.

And Jane Warren was arguing that this is one of those cases.

And she said, the offender is not deserving of this court's mercy and Justice Beale said I agree with you that the offending here is horrendous.

One thing to note, all of this makes it sound as if Colin Mandy is making submissions that Erin accepts this.

She does not.

She maintains her innocence.

They have not formally lodged an appeal yet, but they have

some time to do so.

So

these are delicate submissions he's making.

He's saying, you know, look, given the fact the jury has has found her guilty of this,

they have found her guilty of a horrific crime, but that's not to say we admit that she did it, if that makes sense.

Maybe that's why they didn't submit a psychiatric report, perhaps.

And I mean, we're talking life in prison here.

Something I have learnt over my several years of existence is that when you say life imprisonment, it doesn't actually mean life.

There's a number of years that tends to be associated with that.

When we say life in this instance, are we talking about a number of years?

No, so you're right.

Across the country,

this term life imprisonment doesn't necessarily mean the same thing.

But in the state of Victoria, if you say someone's got a life sentence

as the head sentence, that is life behind bars.

So the critical thing is that non-parole period.

And it's up to the court to set that.

Colin Mandy said that the standard is 30 years, but it's it's really up to the court to decide whether they give her the 30, they add a few more, or they give her none at all.

So if she gets a life sentence with no parole, that's it.

She's locked up forever.

She will never step out of prison again for the rest of her life.

Wow.

You know, we've talked through the mitigating factors that have been presented by Erin Patterson's defence.

What have been some of the aggravating factors that the prosecution has put forward in this hearing?

The prosecution put forward four.

One, that Erin had an intention for a long time.

Two, that she knowingly submitted victims to a slow and painful death.

Three, she took steps to cover up the offences.

And that included four, that she didn't say anything about death cat mushrooms at all.

The prosecutor said even if she had have said wild mushrooms, that would have changed the course of their treatment.

And this particularly bit stuck with me.

We've all spoken about psilobinin a lot, the antidote to amatoxin, death cat mushroom poisoning.

And on Sunday night, so the night after the lunch, doctors were debating whether to give two of the patients psilobinin, but they weren't sure because they didn't know for sure that it was death cat mushroom poisoning.

And so they held off on that.

And then when they did make the call

to administer this antidote, it was hard for the hospitals to find it and to get it.

So that the prosecutor was saying maybe it wouldn't have made a difference, but maybe it would have.

And this came back to actually a comment that Ruth Dubois, Ian Wilkinson's daughter, made in her victim impact statement when she was denouncing Erin Patterson.

And she said, along the way, you had so many opportunities to call off this evil plan right up until the moment you served them this lunch.

And even afterwards,

you could have said something, it might have made a difference.

You know, we've talked a little bit about,

you know, Erin Patterson not admitting guilt in this state, maintaining her innocence.

You talked a little bit about kind of how candid Justice Beale has been in this process as well.

And it sounded like

he will not look favourably on the fact that Aaron Patterson has not admitted guilt in this instance when coming to his sentence.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: Remorse is something that the judges do take into account, or lack of remorse, which is what this appears to be.

They also obviously look at the circumstances of the crime and the context of what happened around it.

And the fact that Patterson took so many steps to cover it up,

threw the investigation off,

pleaded not guilty, which she's entitled to do.

But when you plead not guilty, you waive the right to a discount for pleading guilty early, if that makes sense.

So she will get the full whack.

Yeah.

Rachel, is there anything that Justice Beale said that surprised you in yesterday's hearing?

He was just,

like you said, very candid.

We've spoken about some of the things he said that I agree with you that the crime was,

the offending was horrendous.

He said, you know, he piped up and said she maintains her innocence.

And we spoke about before the tsunami effect through the four generations.

And he pointed out various

facts, like, you know, asking questions about, well, what about the invitation given at church?

You know, was she planning it that early?

Not to mention the lies Erin told Gayle Patterson in the lead-up to the lunch.

And then the one bit that I think stuck with you, Stocky, was when he said, I place a lot of store in what Pastor Wilkinson said about the plates.

And then Colin Mandy said, who?

And he said, I do.

I do.

I place a lot of store in that.

And that's, of course, Ian Wilkinson's testimony about how there were different plates.

There were four grey plates for the guests and one orangey, tanny one for Erin.

Yeah, hearing him offer an opinion on the weight of evidence and what he thought had happened in those situations was surprising.

I I did not expect that.

Well, I guess this is his chance to.

He's had to be that neutral umpire right through the case and now the verdict has come in from that jury.

It's his job to sentence.

So I think he might have given us a little preview as to some of the main points that he'll be making when he passes that sentence.

It's going to be a comprehensive sentence.

There's so many things to go over.

There's going to be many topics that he'll have to address before finally

revealing the penalty that Aaron Patterson will receive.

Yeah, he's got a couple of weeks that he's going to spend sitting through absorbing the victim impact statements that we heard yesterday.

Also, the 28 that weren't presented to the court that he will, he was given.

He will go through and read them and then he'll think through the mitigating and the aggravating factors that have been presented by defence and prosecution.

And on September 8 in the morning, he will hand down the sentence of Aaron Patterson.

And just quickly, props to him.

This is pretty quick.

It's in a fortnight.

Usually we can wait months between pre-sentence hearing and the actual sentence.

I believe he's got a trial starting in late September.

So he has been one to run a tight ship.

And true to form, he'll do it right till the very end.

Yeah, and when we get to that stage, how does that process look?

You know, we'll get there in the morning.

Will he just come out and hand down a sentence?

Or is there a bit of reading that goes on?

Are there reasons that he takes us through?

What happens on that day, Christian?

Well, that day is going to be a hectic day, a big logistical exercise because Patterson will be brought into court in a prison van.

There'll be lots of people trying to get photos and get vision of that.

This is going to be realistically the last snap, the last picture that people are going to have of Erin Patterson potentially for a very long time.

Now we do know an appeal is possible, whether she shows her face.

Let's think about that down the track.

But if she doesn't, it could be the last time we see her for ages.

When she's brought into court, I expect the courtroom will be full.

They'll have to assign seats for family members, media, public.

Erin will be brought in, and once everything is in place, then the judge will come into the courtroom.

And generally what happens is the judge checks with the lawyers.

Are we right to go?

Is there any last-minute thing that I need to know about?

If the answer is no, he'll launch straight into a written sentence and he will begin reading it out.

Now, whether he chooses to read an abridged version or the entire sentence, that is up to him.

Generally, these things tend to go for a couple of hours, but this is an unusual case with

four victims, three of whom were murdered and quite extraordinary circumstances.

So I would say it will go for a few hours.

Yeah.

Rach, what will you be thinking about between now and September 8 when that sentence is handed down?

I guess how the families and the community of Corramborough regroups and tries to find a way forward through all of this.

And I mean with Pastor Ian Wilkinson, you know that that community will hopefully look to him given the show of strength and grace that he's shown.

But man, yeah,

it's going to be a tough road ahead for everyone, I think.

We'll be back in your feed on September 8th with an episode of Mushroom Case Daily, to bring you everything from the sentencing of Aaron Patterson.

Christian, Rach, thank you so much for being here and taking us through this.

Thanks for having us back.

Thank you.

To make sure you don't miss that episode, wrap your ears around the ABC Listen App.

It's the best place to find a whole bunch of ABC content, including this podcast.

And if you need something to tide you over between now and then, we do have the case of the crock wrangler coming out in this feed as well.

And on Thursday, we'll be back with that one with the details of the closing arguments.

Mushroom Case Daily is produced by ABC Audio Studios and ABC News.

It's presented by me, Christian Silver, Rachel Brown, and producer Stephen Stockwell.

Our executive producer is Claire Rawlinson.

This episode was produced on the land of the Wurundjeri people.

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