Hear Erin's lies to police: record of interview released

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The lies from her own mouth.

I'm ABC Investigative Reporter Rachel Brown.

And I'm Stephen Stockwell.

Welcome 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.

We have been back in court today, Rach, for the trial of Aaron Patterson, and a lot has happened.

I mean, we've had the lifting of a suppression order.

We've had the details and the next stages of the sentencing and the release of Aaron Patterson's police interview.

Yeah, the ripples from this mushroom lunch continue to flow, Stocky.

Yeah, I want to start by talking through this video.

Now, this is an interview that was done with Erin Patterson exactly a week after the lunch.

This is right after police have gone through and searched her home in Lee and Gatha.

That's right.

Yeah, and you've heard about this in the podcast.

This is where she tells some of the lies that the prosecution played quite heavily on.

Things like telling police she doesn't have a dehydrator, that she's never foraged for mushrooms.

And this is also the same day she gives them a dummy phone, phone B, and says, yep, that's my phone.

Now, Erin Patterson did admit at trial that she lied.

She said it was because she panicked and feared being wrongly accused of committing the charged offences.

But the prosecution said the only reason for these lies was that she believed she was guilty of the charged offences.

The interview that we're actually going to play you some audio of now was what we discussed on Tuesday the 27th of May when it was played to the court.

I'll link to the episode in the show notes so you can kind of hear how it was presented and the context it was presented in.

But instead of describing that for you now,

you can hear Erin's voice as she talks to the lead investigator on this case, Stephen Eppenstahl.

Could you please state your full name for me?

Erin Freddie Patterson.

All right.

Erin, I intend to interview you today in relation to the death of two people, being Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson.

This police interview went for about 50 minutes, so just under an hour.

But what was played to the court was excerpts of about 20 minutes.

And we're going to play you some today.

And these are the key moments where the prosecution said that she lied.

So one of the big lies that you might remember is about foraging.

Was she a forager?

Was it something that that was common that she did in the past?

And she was asked this by Stephen Eppenstall.

Obviously we've got concerns in relation to the mushrooms and where they've come from.

Is that something you've done in the past foraging for mushrooms or anything?

Never.

Never.

Never.

Right.

Do you preserve food or anything like that?

Have you ever dehydrated food or things like that?

And Rachel spoke about this when we produced the series, looking back at all of the events around Erin Patterson's fatal mushroom lunch,

you know, the poker face of Stephen Eppenstahl, how he's sitting there listening to her deny ever owning a dehydrator, despite having the dehydrator that she has dumped at the tip a few days prior to this.

You know, they've just searched their house.

They found the instruction manual for this appliance.

Like, they know she's got this.

That's right.

And Stephen Eppenstahl comes back to this in the interview.

and

asks her about the manuals that they've found in a drawer.

Like I said, we'll give you a look at the copy of this, everything we received,

kitchen file button drawer, the instruction manual for a sunbeam,

electronic dehydrator.

What's that in the list?

Do you know anything about a dehydrator in your house?

Okay.

Do you own a dehydrator?

No.

I've got manuals of

lots of stuff I've collected over the years.

I've had all sorts of appliances and I just keep them all in.

Oh, okay.

When do you do fire and I take quite a barrier?

No,

I don't know.

I've had one years ago.

Seeing the crafts and I mean hearing the craft of how they go about these interviews is

so interesting as well and you know we we go from in this instance her talking about you know I guess kind of like starting to walk back from oh no I've got I've got lots of manuals to then talking about you know how helpful she's been.

I find police interviews fascinating for the strategy and any interview I see is kind of a dance.

And you've got to pick your moves and you've got to pick the right times.

And so it has to be very cleverly done.

And as you say, it moved on to the health department.

Erin Patterson was said by the end to have sent the health department on a wild goose chase looking for an Asian grocer that sold dry mushrooms that perhaps she never even visited.

So she was asked about her dealings with the health department at that time.

I've

been very, very

helpful with the health department through the week because I wanted to help that side of things as much as possible because I do want to know what happened.

So I've given them as much information as they've asked for and offered up all the food and all the information about where the food came from.

Yeah, the Asian grocer story.

I mean, we could have done two episodes on the Asian grocers.

If there's any of this that you're kind of looking for more context around, jump into the series we've just produced.

I'll link in the episode description to kind of flesh this out.

But yeah, the way that Erin Patterson, you know, kind of led authorities on this sort of, you know, basically wild mushroom chase through the various suburbs of Melbourne was quite incredible.

And then, you know, we hear this spoken about in the chat.

And then it moves from, you know, I guess kind of, you know, inverted commas being helpful to the relationship that she had with the lunch guests.

It's so important because at this point, if they're looking at her as a suspect, they want to know the relationships.

And if this was deliberate, what might have sparked this.

So Erin Patterson is asked about her relationships with Don and Gail Patterson.

I've gotten out of the family so they're

the only support I've got

and they've always been really good to me.

I want to maintain those relationships with them in spite of what's happened with Simon.

I love them a lot.

They've always been really good to me and they always said to me that they would support me with love and emotional support even though Simon and I were separated and I really appreciated that yeah because I my parents are both gone

my grandparents are all gone they're the only family that I've got yeah

and they're the only

grandparents that my children have and I want them to stay in my kids life

and that's really important to me and

I think Simon hated that I still had a relationship with his parents but I love them.

Nothing that's ever happened between us, nothing he's ever done to me will change the fact that they're good decent people that have never done anything wrong for me to ever.

We're only playing you short sections of this but these are the real key moments.

These are the lies that Erin Patterson told.

You know, in this instance you can hear her telling these lies to the police and then going on and explaining some of her behaviour and giving the police really important context to the relationship that she says she had with the lunch guests.

You'll be able to watch longer versions of this video on the ABC News website.

But I mean, Rach, why have we got access to this now?

I mean, this is something we asked for at the end of the trial.

We saw a lot of exhibits released at the end of the trial.

We thought this was going to be one of them, but it wasn't.

Why do we have to wait until today?

This was one of the exhibits that Justice Spiel wanted to have a little bit of a mullova.

And he has to think about things like: will the victims or the victims' families oppose such a release?

Is that going to cause them more trauma?

Are there any graphic or gratuitous details on this tape?

So he has to think about things like this.

He said today that the family doesn't oppose the release.

There's no graphic details.

The children's names and other details will be redacted to protect them.

So he decided, look, there's strong public interest in this case.

And in the interest of fair and accurate reporting, rather than the public having to depend on interpretations by journalists and commentators, that they can hear it and see it for themselves and decide on content and demeanor.

Yeah.

No, look, yeah, very understandable.

I mean, it's hard not to take that personally.

I think the descriptions that we gave of Aaron Patterson's interview on Mushroom Case Daily were quite good.

Rach, it has been a big day in court.

I mean, a relatively short court hearing this morning.

It was, I think, less than an hour maybe.

But yeah, went through so much.

The lifting of a suppression order that had stopped us reporting a lot of details around previous alleged poisonings.

All of that is in another episode we published today.

today, so jump in and have a look if you want some of that.

But Rach,

in the hearing today, we also got some dates and details around the next stages of the sentencing process for Erin Patterson.

That's right.

The next stage is what's called a pre-sentence hearing.

So it's when the defence raises mitigating factors.

to help lessen her sentence.

The prosecution will raise aggravating ones to try to increase it.

So the prosecution also flagged that there will be a number of victim impact statements.

And they wouldn't say how many, but they said there's quite a number.

And that's why this is going to take this pre-sentence hearing a couple of days.

So it's been set down for August 25 and 26, so later this month.

Okay, yeah, we spoke in an episode on Tuesday about victim impact statements as well, you know, the process of that, how that works.

So again, if you're interested in that, it's from Tuesday, the 4th of August.

So yeah, jump back, have a listen if you want to know a little bit more about how the victim impact statement works.

Rachel, are we going back to Morwell for this hearing?

No, and sorry to the security guards that might be looking forward to seeing us or the cafe staff, or maybe they don't want to see us, maybe they're happy we're gone no justice beales said that there's maintenance going on at the Morwell Court so the pre-sentence hearing will be at the Melbourne Supreme Court okay yeah just down the road from from where we are at the ABC

and this you know this this sentence pre-sentence hearing I mean I'm assuming that's not the whole thing this is like a precursor to the the actual sentencing of Aaron Patterson that's right and we should hear at that pre-sentence hearing a date for the sentence.

Usually there are a couple of months after.

It just depends on how complicated the material is that gets submitted.

If the defence submits any reports or this is when the psychiatric reports can be submitted if the defence wishes.

I have no whispers yet on whether that's happening or not.

But Justice Beer will have to consider that.

Also if the sentence, we don't know yet, but if the sentencing is immoral, obviously they'd need to check that court diary to see.

when a room there might be free.

So lots of things, but I presume that the sentencing will happen before the end of this year.

Great.

Okay.

Thank you very much, Rach.

Please keep in in touch.

Send us your emails if you have questions for us.

Mushroomcasedaily at abc.net.au is the best way to get in touch with us.

As this pod turns into the case of, soon our email will be thecaseof at abc.net.au.

I'm assuming there'll be someone in my orbit that can set up a forward of some sort.

So, you know, just use whichever one you feel comfortable with.

Rach, I do have one quick email that I'd like to get to from Jodi.

Jody says, morning team, love the podcast.

I've listened to everything.

At the start of the trial, were there not more charges?

I think attempted murder of Aaron Patterson's ex-husband, who had gone to hospital multiple times leading up to the dinner?

Or is this one of the topics you can't discuss?

It was one of the topics we couldn't discuss for a very long time.

We couldn't even allude to it because we could only give you what the jury heard.

They were told at the very start, put it out of your mind, these attempted murder charges that related to Simon Patterson.

Three, I believe.

And lots more information about those alleged poisonings is in the episode that we dropped earlier today.

But we heard about that at pre-trial Simon Patterson's allegations that Erin tried to poison him with a Penne Bolognese, a chicken comma curry, and a vegetable wrap.

Yeah, there's a lot more that is in that episode from this morning.

I mean, I will give Jodi, you know, a bit of grace here because she did email before we had dropped that episode this morning.

It's a good question.

And basically, we never heard about them and couldn't talk about them because those charges were discontinued.

Yeah.

There's those details and so much more in the episode we've dropped this morning.

So jump into the feed, have a look at that as well.

And I mean, one of the things that is so important in journalism, Rach, is admitting when you have made a mistake.

And I drove a correction for an episode we produced on Tuesday.

I said it was Harrison Ford, I thought, who was in Double Jeopardy, a film that I watched 30 years ago.

Turns out my memory, when you stretch it back 30 years, not great.

Turns out it was Tommy Lee Jones and that's a film.

You would have been what?

Five?

Barely even born.

But in your defense, Tommy Lee Jones and Harrison Ford were in the fugitive.

So you might have been thinking about that.

Also an excellent film.

I was definitely thinking about Double Jeopardy, but I appreciate you trying to help me out there, Rach.

We will keep you in the loop with everything that's going on around the trial of Aaron Patterson.

And soon, other high-profile cases in Australia.

Next week, we will start our coverage of the trial of Matt Wright.

This podcast will transition to being called The Case Of.

So make sure you find yourself in the ABC Listen app searching for mushroom case daily until Monday.

And then the case of after that, you'll find us, you'll follow us.

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

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

Our executive producer is Claire Rawlinson, and a big thank you to our true crime colleagues colleagues who keep helping us out, our commissioning executive producer Tim Roxborough and supervising producer Yasmin Parry.

This episode was produced on the land, the Rundry people.

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