Exhibits revealed: the evidence that swayed the jury

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The evidence that helped convict Erin Patterson.

I'm ABC Investigative Journalist Rachel Brown.

And I'm Stephen Stockwell.

It is Tuesday, the 8th of July, and we've finished the trial of Erin Patterson.

Just a heads up, there's some strong language in this episode.

Welcome to Mushroom Case Daily.

The small town mystery that's gripped the nation and made headlines around the world.

On the menu was Beef Wellington, a pastry filled with beef and a pate made of mushrooms.

At the heart of this case will be the jury's interpretation of Erin Patterson's intentions.

Erin Patterson has strongly maintained her innocence.

The tragedy will happen.

I love them.

Erin Patterson has spent her first night in prison as a a convicted murderer.

Yesterday, found guilty of murder and attempted murder following the deaths of Don and Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson from death cat mushroom poisoning in mid-2023.

Today we are bringing you the details of the trial's exhibits, things the public has never seen or heard.

This includes a triple zero call from the Lean Gather Hospital and Aaron Patterson's interview with the police.

as well as the community's reaction to yesterday's verdict.

Yeah, a lot of the exhibits we saw during the trial, Stockie, was

things that the prosecution relied on and leaned on in their case against Erin.

So a lot of those have been released to us now.

And yesterday following the verdict, we've had statements made from various members of the community recognising, acknowledging, mourning the deaths of the people who've been affected by that lunch in 2023.

Yesterday afternoon, the Victoria Police gave a short statement with Detective Inspector Dean Thomas thanking investigators and specialist services who'd helped them with this investigation.

I'd also like to acknowledge and thank the Office of Public Prosecutions, the prosecution team in particular, for the work that they have put in in the lead up to this trial and obviously during this trial.

I think it's very important that we remember that we've had three people.

Three people have died and we've had a person that nearly died and was seriously injured.

as a result and that has led to these charges.

I ask that we acknowledge those people and not forget them.

That's Detective Dean Thomas from the Victoria Police speaking outside court yesterday.

We've also had a statement from the Corranborough Baptist Church.

This was pinned to the notice board outside the church in Corranborough.

It reads, We all greatly miss Heather, Don and Gail.

Whether we were friends for a short time or over 20 years, they were very special people who loved God and loved to bless others.

It's been a long journey and we continue to lovingly support Ian, Simon and all the Wilkinson and Patterson family members through this difficult time.

We appreciate all the care from our local communities, special support from individuals and from the Baptist Union of Victoria and the churches and people from all over the world who've been praying for us.

As our pastor Ian has said, life can be hard, but God is faithful and He is always with us.

The Wilkinson and Paterson families have asked that people respect their privacy at this time.

Please also respect the privacy of our church families.

Yeah, Stocky, I'm not expecting the Paterson or Wilkinson families to speak.

They've been such a tight-knit community up until this point.

We have seen them at court most days, both families.

Ian Wilkinson was there most days as well.

And we've spoken about this in the series a lot, the toll that it would have taken listening to that testimony.

You know, their small community was torn apart, friendships have imploded.

So it would be a very weighty time for them.

I also found myself yesterday thinking a lot about Erin's kids.

They'll be without their mum for the foreseeable future, perhaps.

Yeah, and you know, those statements as well, Rach, just a reminder of, yeah, the deaths that have resulted from that lunch and you know the the long illness of Ian Wilkinson as well.

With the conclusion of the trial yesterday Rach we had exhibits released.

There were a lot of exhibits that were presented to the court throughout this trial.

You know we had over 10 weeks of this trial, all up 125 exhibits total shown to the jury.

As these were being shown Rach yourself, other journalists were noting down those exhibit numbers so we could put in a request at the end of the trial, at the end of the proceedings, to get some of those exhibits, to share them with you.

And we've got that now.

You know, if you've been following the ABC News website, following other ABC News stories, you would have seen a lot of that.

There were photos from some of Aaron Patterson's devices, lots of pictures of mushrooms, things being dried on dehydrated trays, all of that, things we've described throughout this podcast.

Also, a lot of CCTV footage as well, different scenes at different times,

going to server stations, going to the Koomara transfer station where the dehydrator was dumped, all sorts of things.

Yeah, that's right, Stocky.

There was a long list that we applied for.

I've been looking through them this morning.

You know, things, photographs we saw during the trial, like the different coloured plates,

the table where that fateful lunch was served and who was sitting in which seat, the cookbook that Erin Patterson, you know, found the recipe for this beef Wellington.

She did individual portions.

The beef Wellington in this book is a whole log.

We saw the flowchart of Game of Phones, Stocky,

which we tried to work out at the time.

It was very confusing, but it's actually a very interesting flowchart of where the different sims and the different handsets went at different times.

Then there's a video that only goes for two minutes, 10, but it's a long two minutes, 10.

It's that conversation that Erin Patterson had at Liam Gather Hospital when she arrives at about 8 o'clock in the morning and thinks that she needs saline.

And then two nurses

try to tell, try to convince her to stay, really.

Now it's silent, but you can tell a lot from body language.

We have heard these nurses give evidence in court, so we know what they were saying, but you watch the vision and one woman is just reaching out to her arm as if trying to get her to stay and trying to get her to move away from the exit.

So she's in the, Erin Patterson's in the airlock, pressing the button on the side to open the doors.

There's a conversation.

Erin Patterson ends up signing.

eventually a discharge against medical advice form.

And, you know, as well as some of the vision that we've had released, Rach, we've had audio released, and we have audio not of that moment, but of the triple zero call that Dr.

Chris Webster made following that.

So Dr.

Chris Webster was the doctor in charge of the Lee and Cather Hospital at that time.

He was keen for Aaron Patterson to stay.

You know, she was someone that had eaten that meal that they knew had given, you know, the other people that had eaten it, dead cat mushroom poisoning.

So obviously he was keen for her to stay and get treatment for that.

This is on Monday, the 31st of July, the Monday after the lunch.

And then when Aaron Patterson leaves, he calls Tri000 to try and get the police to bring her back.

This is Dr.

Chris Webster calling from Lee and Gatha Hospital.

And I have a concern regarding a patient that presented here earlier but has left the building and is potentially exposed to a fatal toxin from mushroom poisoning.

In this call you can hear Dr.

Webster explaining that he's tried to call Erin Patterson a few times and couldn't get a hold of her, that she came in just after eight o'clock and then has left again.

Mushroom poisoning, you said.

Yeah, so there were five people that ate a meal on Saturday, and two of them are in intensive care at Dandenong Hospital.

Two have just been transferred from Leon Gatha Hospital to Dandenong Hospital.

And Erin presented this morning with symptoms of poisoning.

Bear with me.

And what happened when she presented?

She just got up and left?

No,

there was time for the nurse to begin observations and

I was managing the other critically unwell patients so I had a brief chat to her about where the mushrooms were obtained.

And

after that,

while I was attending the other patients, the nurse informed me that she had discharged herself against medical advice.

So I don't know exactly.

We've got a form here.

Hang on, let's tell me what time she left.

No, it doesn't have a time.

She left at

10 past.

She was only here for five minutes.

And just to clarify, you said there were four other people who ate the same meal.

Is that correct?

Yeah, so the meal was consumed by five people

and four of those people are now hospitalised

and

Aaron presented this morning.

That's Dr.

Chris Webster speaking to a triple zero operator after Aaron Patterson presented to hospital and then left.

It's one of the audio exhibits that has been provided to the media following the guilty verdict in Aaron Patterson's murder trial.

That's right, and you can hear the urgency in his voice can't you Stocky because you know the small knit community he knows these other people are really sick and I think there's a bit of, and we heard this in the witness stand as well, incredulity that Erin Patterson would discharge herself, having been told the possibility that she's ingested a lethal toxin.

Now, Erin, obviously, is so different in the stand that she didn't understand the gravity at that point at 8.05.

And then we know that police do go to her house and recover the beef Wellington.

The leftovers were in the bin.

And we saw the pictures of these as well, Stocky.

There were pictures of the beef Wellingtons in exhibits, both the leftovers

and what was sent to Camille Truong.

She's the woman that took her work home with her and was studying those leftovers under a microscope.

Now, under the microscope, she didn't find death cat mushrooms.

But then these

leftovers were also studied by the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine.

And we saw photos of them in the exhibits and the the matter in like vials or test tubes.

Dimitri Gerostomula said that beta amanitins were found in samples of mushroom paste and beef, and also in vegetable matter that was found in the dehydrator.

Yeah, having a look at those photos, you know, on the news websites, it was an interesting reminder.

Like, something I've noticed as we were doing this, all these photos get released, and it's like, yeah, these are photos that Rachu and I have been looking at for weeks, but it's the first time people are seeing them.

You know, we've tried to describe them as best we can throughout the pod.

But if you're interested in seeing seeing what the leftover beef wellingtons look like head to the abc news website they've got photos up there so you can have a look at you know what was actually presented to the court what the jury was basing their decision off of what evidence they were considering at that time i've even found it interesting stocky looking at them close up because a lot of the time i was in court and i know this sounds strange but could barely see them at all because they're on a screen at the other side of the room from me and in the overflow room if you were up the back was especially with that phone chart it was really hard to see so it was it was interesting seeing them again

up close and personal yeah give it having the same perspective as the jurors would have had when they're looking at they've got these exhibits on the ipads that they have when they're sitting in the um in the in their seats in the court you know we getting them projected on a screen briefly um you know kind of across a room or from a little while away so yeah it's a different it's a different experience seeing them and and you can have that experience as well if you jump onto the abc news website and have a look at um some of the articles they've been producing there.

Rage, speaking of Dr.

Chris Webster, he's actually spoken to the Herald Sun saying when Aaron Patterson told him that the source of the mushrooms put in the meal was Woolworths and a language warning here, he told the sun, if she said she picked them, it would have been a very different mindset for me because there would have been an instant assumption that it was all a tragic accident.

But when she said that answer, my thoughts were, holy fucking shit, you fucking did it.

You crazy bitch, you poisoned them all.

Dr.

Chris Webster in this Herald Sun article described Aaron Patterson as a sociopathic nutbag.

And when he looked into her eyes, he thought, I don't know what planet you're you're on but you're not on earth that's reporting from brooke rebert craig who we've actually gotten to know a bit while we've been living and working in warworld uh she's actually the host of one of the other trial podcasts

another um story about dr chris webster that i read in the age by our one of our co-reporters martyr he spoke about the last words that heather wilkinson said to him before she got in the ambulance and they were, thank you for looking after me.

And he told The Age, these two words stuck in my brain and will haunt me because I know that she was going off to her death he said and he said heather was one of the gentlest souls the kindest person her liver's falling apart inside her body and the thing that she makes sure she does before she leaves the hospital in an ambulance thank the doctor It's interesting as well, Rach, hearing Dr.

Webster talking about that story as well, because there was a dispute.

You know, when Erin Patterson was giving evidence, she was telling a different story to the one that Dr.

Webster's told when he was in the witness stand or the one that he's kind of retelling here.

Yeah, Stocky, remember we learned about him saying to Erin about her children that their lives are at risk, that they could be scared and alive or dead.

Now, Erin told the jurors, I thought that was a bizarre thing to say.

I think he was yelling at me.

I've since discovered that's his inside voice.

And at the time, you know, we had a bit of a chuckle because Chris Webster even admits, oh, you know, I'm not the most secretive person.

If I need to have private conversations, I need to have them in the car park because I do have a very loud voice.

And this, Erin told the jurors, rattled her, that he, she didn't hear it as a warning.

She just felt like she was being yelled at.

But these articles paint a very different picture, that it was perhaps evasiveness.

And, you know, and then also she told the jury she thought he was asking.

where she got the ingredients from.

That's why she said woollies.

But he made it very clear in the witness box that he said, where did you get the mushrooms from?

We got some other exhibits as well, Rach.

One of them we were hoping to bring you the audio of, but we haven't actually been provided that yet.

There's still basically legal discussion going on about whether or not that will be released.

But this is, you know, following the police searching Aaron Patterson's home.

This is exactly one week after the lunch.

This is the 5th of August, Saturday, the 5th of August.

The police have been in Aaron Patterson's house.

They've searched her home.

You know, she has basically during this process reset a phone, given police a dummy phone, and then she has sat down for this interview at the police station following that.

Rach, what were the the kind of key moments from this interview for you?

Yeah, that's right.

I guess the one that sticks with me most is that she's told in the police interview, you know, this comes as news to you that both Heather and Gail have passed away,

which would be a pretty climactic thing to learn in a police interview.

One of the detectives may have also have told her when they arrived for the search warrant, but that was repeated in this interview.

And so she talks about her in-laws and she says, I have no other family.

They're the only support I've got I want them in my kids lives I love them they're good decent people that have never done anything wrong by me so that will always stick with me then other things that she's pressed on is foraging she's asked is that something that you've done in the past foraging she says never and then she's asked about the dehydrator she's asked have you ever owned a dehydrator she said no i might have had one years ago Now Rachel, you said yesterday on the pod, you know, interim suppression order was limiting some of the things that we can talk about at the moment.

What kind of happens from here though?

Can you talk us through some of the timelines that we're looking at?

Yeah, I checked and there's no statement as yet from the defence team and nothing has been flagged yet regarding whether or not there'll be an appeal.

Now the defence doesn't have to flag it this early.

The window to lodge an appeal is 28 days after sentence and sentencing is usually two or three months after the verdict's stocky.

So this window might run over October and November.

Yeah, thank you Rach.

Now we do have a lot more coming for Mushroom Case Daily.

In a couple of weeks, we're going to go back and recap this whole case from start to finish over about five or so episodes, this time with far fewer restrictions on what we can say.

We're going to tell you basically the whole story again, but in a way you have never heard it before, basically unfolding what happened moment by moment with a heap of new details.

We're going to dive into Erin's past, like her job as an air traffic controller, where a former colleague is quoted in an ABC article today as saying she wasn't necessarily always unpleasant to be around, but you tended to be wary that she could snap or say something unpleasant at the drop of a hat.

We've also kept a list of questions as well, Rach, that we weren't able to answer during the trial.

So we'll actually be dropping that episode into your feeds tomorrow.

Yeah, we've had a lot of questions on, you know, why wasn't manslaughter an option in this trial?

Other ones include, you know, did she have a psychiatric assessment?

Has that been done?

And was Erin Patterson in custody?

The custody arrangements of Erin Patterson, Rach, I have been

just very keen to share.

It's not something we could share until this point.

I won't give away too much, but it involves a tunnel.

So keep an eye out for that.

We'll have all of those details for you in our episode tomorrow.

That is going to be dropping exclusively on ABC Listen tomorrow.

That's the only place you'll be able to hear it until next week.

I know you probably already have the ABC Listen app.

You would have heard me endorse this, how much I love and respect this application.

I highly recommend you get behind it because that is going to be the only place you can listen to this episode from tomorrow.

If that doesn't sway you, the episode will drop into every other feed from next week.

So, if you want to wait, you can wait.

If you are listening somewhere outside of ABC Listen, you can at least rate and review us.

That's all I would ask.

And on Friday, we've got something special for you.

We've got an episode of analysis with one of the pioneers of this pod, Christian Silver.

I'm really looking forward to that one.

There's so much I want to reflect on from this process.

There's so many moments that could have turned this case either way that really paint a picture of the evidence that convicted Aaron Patterson.

So we'll be going through all of that, Rach, with you, with Christian.

I'm really excited to get into some of the analysis of that and pick out the key moments.

I also have some omissions to make.

There were things that I pointed out that I thought would be important that turned out were not important at all.

This case has been full of surprises, Stocky.

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 huge thanks to our true crime colleagues who keep helping us out.

Commissioning executive producer Tim Roxborough and supervising producer Yasmin Parry.

This episode was produced on the land of the Gunai-Kurnai people.

Hey, I'm Sana Kadar and I host All in the Mind on ABC Radio National.

It's a show where we investigate why people behave the way they do.

But there's some perspectives we don't often hear about, like what makes people cross the line into criminal behavior.

Are they evil or are they damaged?

Are they both?

After the stealing, they often will describe a sense of pleasure or gratification.

Join us on Criminal Psychology, a special series exploring some of these questions.

Hear it now on the ABC Listen app.