"A sinister deception": Prosecution's closing address begins

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The lie that was supposed to die.

I'm ABC Investigative Reporter Rachel Brown.

And I'm Stephen Stockwell.

It's Monday the 16th of June and we've just finished the 31st day of this trial.

Welcome to Mushroom Chase 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.

It's a tragedy what happened.

I love them.

We're in for

a really

big week of the triple murder trial of Erin Patterson this week, Rach.

We're going into closing arguments.

We are.

It will be a big week.

It'll be where everything we've heard is hopefully contextualised.

Yeah, tied together, if you will.

Some of you have spoken about a lot over the course of the pod.

You will have heard over many, many weeks so many different bits of information, seemingly at times unrelated.

This is the moment where both the prosecution and the defence bring all of that back together.

There's a lot I want to talk about from today, Rach.

But before we get into it, can you give us a rundown of the day?

Sure.

So we're talking about contextualisation.

this is what i call the scaffolding of the story that both the prosecution and defence want to put forward the prosecution has outlined what it is calling the four deceptions how erin fabricated cancer claim the lethal doses it says she put in the beef wellington, her attempts to make herself look sick like the guests, and cover-ups to conceal the truth.

And this is things like feeding her children leftovers and disposing of the dehydrator and things like that.

And then we finished with this line from the prosecutor that, you know, the defence says that some of these things is out of panic.

I want you to reject all that.

These are lies that persisted over many days.

Thank you, Rach.

We went into the courtroom today and it looked a little bit different.

You know, very slightly different.

There are very small things that happened in that room that just sort of, to me, signified that we're now at a different stage of this trial.

And the thing for me that kind of showed me that was that the little lectern that Dr.

Annette Rogers, the prosecutor, has had pointed at the witness box for the last seven weeks is now tilted the other way.

It is pointing towards the jurors as we get into these final addresses.

And Dr.

Annette Rogers, in starting these closings, kind of spelt out these kind of four alleged deceptions.

The fabricated cancer claim, the poison in the Beef Wellington, the attempts to make Aaron Patterson look as sick as the guest that came to the lunch, and then the sustained cover-up of the truth.

That's right, Stockie.

And with these four alleged deceptions, she told the jury that she wanted to make three points with each of them.

And that is that each deception has been exposed, that you, the jury, can safely reject that it was a terrible accident,

and that you can be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Erin Patterson committed each of these crimes that's alleged against her.

So she's got a lot of work to do, and she began that work today.

And she started talking about control and that Erin Patterson has chosen to make this meal of individual portions so she can have complete control over the ingredients.

And the prosecutor, Dr.

Nanette Rogers, says Erin Patterson exercised this control with, quote, devastating effect.

And she said, what other possible reason can explain why her guests became gravely ill and she did not?

Yeah, it was the first kind of, I don't know, I guess like 10, 15 minutes as we got into the proceedings today,

some really kind of like dramatic statements.

And all of this, of course, is what the prosecution is alleging.

And, you know, there's the evidence that we've heard over the course of the last seven weeks.

This is tying it all together.

And it's the prosecution saying what that says to them, their version of events, basically, of how that's going.

And one of the points that we got to very early in the day was around the cancer claim.

And so we've heard earlier in this trial throughout the last seven weeks that Aaron Patterson had had the guests over for lunch to discuss a serious health issue.

And now, what this health issue was differs between whoever's telling that story.

Ian Wilkinson, who was a guest at that lunch, said that they were discussing a diagnosis of cancer, the results of some tests, and the best way to break that news to the children.

Aaron Patterson, as we've heard, does not have cancer, has never had cancer.

And so when we got to this point of today, it was basically just a discussion about lies, right?

And why they were told, according to the prosecutor, Dr.

Rogers.

So she said to the jury that Erin Patterson used a fake medical issue as the reason for the lunch.

And she backtracked a little bit and went into the history of the family and said it's very rare for you to invite people over in the first place.

You didn't usually go to Ian Wilkinson for support.

That was a evidence that came from her son.

So she said the scene of a woman that didn't invite guests over very much.

And then you've got this special lunch.

As you mentioned, Ian Wilkinson has given evidence that Erin spoke a diagnostic test that showed a spot that appeared to be a tumour.

In other evidence, Simon Patterson, her estranged husband's father, Don,

said to Simon on the Sunday that...

Erin had had tests on her elbow and that had led to a discovery of ovarian cancer.

This is the Sunday after the lunch, so as he's being taken to hospital or in hospital.

So the prosecutor asked the jury, I want you to reject the accused claim that she never said she had a diagnosis.

She said she planted the seed of this lie well in advance.

So we went back through the text with Gail Patterson.

Gail was asking after her welfare and she said, I think we better, it's better spoken about in person.

We also were reminded of screenshots that Erin Patterson is said to have taken on her computer of Google searches for stage four ovarian cancer and

metatastic brain disease.

And so Dr.

Rogers was saying, you used these searches to flesh out your lie.

As you said, Stocky, there was no biopsy, there was no MRI.

An interesting thing today, Dr.

Rogers made a point of saying to the jury that, you know, Erin Patterson has spoken about this family history of cancer, but that does not explain the lies that she told in 2023.

And Dr.

Rogers said to the jury, really bluntly, She never thought she'd have to account for the lie because guests wouldn't live to reveal it.

Her lie would die with them.

One of the things I noticed today, there were these big lines and this is one of the big lines that we had from today was that you know this lie would die with them.

There were moments that actually come out in the cross-examination of Aaron Patterson over the last week.

We'd heard that put to Aaron Patterson over the last week and it's this kind of realization of where they were going with some of that, that kind of tying up of all these different pieces that I mentioned earlier.

And as you said, like we did jump around a lot during the evidence and part of that was necessary depending on who the witnesses were and they're called in a different order.

Not necessarily chronologically, sometimes they were.

But that's why the closings are so important because it's the scaffolding of all these pieces of information that we've leapfrogged around for the last, what, six weeks.

And it's all

scaffolding is a perfect word because it's helping to contextualize everything, every little detail that the jury has heard so far.

Yeah, and I guess even though we've had all of this evidence, one point of today when we started talking about how the death cat mushrooms ended up in the meal that was cooked for these guests was that while there is all of this detail and all of this evidence, at this point, Dr.

Annette Rogers kind of left the jury a little bit of work that they had to do themselves.

Yeah, the simplest way to explain this is that, you know,

evidence, you might have A and you might have C, and they can't give you B.

So Dr.

Rogers is like, well, you can draw the inference when you consider the surrounding evidence.

So what I mean about this is the ties that Dr.

Rogers is trying to make between searches on

the computer on the iNaturalist website and possible visits to Loch and Outram.

So I'll step you back a little bit.

So it's alleged that Erin Patterson was navigating the iNaturalist website on her computer.

Apparently the same night that she did that, she also placed an order for the Corranborough Middle Pub for a couple of palmers, I think, and some garlic bread.

And they did that to try to say, well, you were obviously the one that put in the food order, so you've been the one googling, sorry, navigating the iNaturalist website.

We also heard evidence earlier in the trial and again today that there were only three reports of death cap sightings in the Gippsland area.

And two were posted on iNaturalist, and that was one from

Locke in April and Outram in May.

And so, this is where

this is what I mean by inference.

There's no direct evidence on Erin's devices,

you know, no snapshots of Christine Mackenzie's post from Locke or funky Tom May's post from Outram.

What they do have, Dr.

Rogers says, is those posts existed at that time,

death cap sightings in Lock and Outram.

And then 10 days after the Locke post, Erin Patterson has a possible visit to Locke

and then two hours later buys the dehydrator

and then in May there's a possible visit to Outram and Locke as well but Outram is important because that's the day after Tom May posted about a death cap sighting in May

and

funnily enough Dr.

Rogers said sorry I know this was a little bit tedious this whole section because she went through it

in time far longer than I just whipped through this, but she said it's an important part of the prosecution case about how to draw inferences.

The moment I found really interesting from this, there was, it took me back.

You know, I was transported, I don't know how many weeks back, to a conversation that we had with, I think it was Dr.

Matthew Sorrell talking about phone tower pings at Huong near basketball games for Aaron Patterson's children.

And we spent ages on this.

And I couldn't figure out why we were talking about like those phone tower pings today.

Now you can?

Now, today, this was the point where Dr.

Nanette Rogers said, Look, the reason we spend all this time talking about this is because it shows what a mobile phone is doing when it is visiting an area and staying in an area.

And this you can compare to this other result that we've shown you around some of this as well.

So, I thought that was that was really interesting as well.

I also thought, speaking of Dr.

Tom May,

the point about the smell of drying death cat mushrooms that Dr.

Nanette Rogers made, we heard Dr.

Tom May talking about how they smelt

when they dried, and it it was a really strong, quite unpleasant smell.

And basically putting to the jury that, look, if Erin Patterson had these other mushrooms that she thought were quite strong-smelling, why would you put these other mushrooms that are also smell incredibly strong in that same container?

Totally.

She was asking a lot of why-would you questions today.

So, you know, why would you resort to dried mushrooms or foraged mushrooms in the first place when, according to your supermarket bill, Erin Patterson, you had 1.75 kilos of mushrooms that you could have used?

We've heard earlier, earlier, Stocky, that Erin says she ate a kilo of that before the day of the lunch, so would only have had, what, 750 grams?

But that was one of them.

Why would you resort to dried mushrooms?

Why would you use dried mushrooms that you yourself have said that smelt funny and that you didn't put them in the dish that you initially were going to use them in because they would have overpowered that dish?

So why would you use them in this special lunch?

Dr.

Rogers, this was an interesting bit, was

reminding the jury of evidence from Celine Truong, the woman that takes her work home with her, remember?

So she examined

remnants of the leftovers through a microscope and also with tweezers and she was picking out bits of mushroom.

Now, the only ones she found were supermarket mushrooms, like your common variety.

Yeah, your little punnets, yeah.

So Dr.

Rogers was saying, you know, you knew how to dehydrate mushrooms and you've obviously, if you've left these button mushrooms or whatever they were chopped up you've obviously blitzed the death cat mushrooms into a powder

yeah and this is something that we had heard of um heard of aaron patterns doing previously and dr janette rogers took the jury to this today uh saying that you know i think it was when aaron patterns was in hospital her daughter was there um simon pattern her estranged husband was there as well and she was telling her daughter hey look up actually blitzed up mushrooms and put them in food that you've eaten before um she blitz them up i think put them into muffins

that's right and so this led to another one of Dr.

Rogers' big lines today, which she said this sinister deception was to use a nourishing meal as a vehicle to deliver the deadly poison.

You know, and that was quite stark as this idea of this home-cooked, family, hearty meal ends up leading to their death.

Yeah, the point that was made around a lot of this was this like element of control that Aaron Patterson had over this meal, that she had sourced all of the ingredients, that she had cooked everything herself, she had prepared the individual parcels of Beef Wellington as opposed to a large log, which you would normally prepare and was the recipe in the book that she used.

To kind of point to this fact that she had all of this control over it, and that level of control coming down today as well to the plates that the meal was served on.

We were taken to Ian Wilkinson's evidence, his memory of having large grey plates, Aaron Patterson having a slightly different coloured, smaller plate,

and the jury being reminded by Dr.

Janet Rogers quite directly that Ian Wilkinson was very confident in a number of different recollections of that day and that they could trust him in this instance.

That's right.

Dr.

Rogers said, you know, remember, jury, that Ian has spoken about a sick-looking tree outside, that the accused showed the women, Gail and Heather, her pantry.

He remembered where everyone sat.

You know, he remembered the meal and the mash and the beans.

So she was saying to the jury, he's a reliable witness and you should reject the accused's line,

which is that, you know,

the beef Wellingtons were served on this collection of mismatched plates.

And also, she told the jury that

the son's evidence, so remember the son said, oh, I picked up some white plates and put them in the dishwasher.

She made a point of saying, look, you know, that shouldn't cause you to reject Ian's evidence about the meal and the plates because he's such a compelling witness.

Yeah.

Yeah.

For all the people who have been emailing, mushroomcase daily at abc.net.au with inquiries around the different coloured plates and the white plates that Anne Patterson's son

has said he saw and then what Ian Wilkinson said he saw,

that's what Dr.

Nett Rogers thinks you should be thinking about.

So

there you go.

She also,

just before I forget, reminded people of Heather Wilkinson's memory as well.

And Heather allegedly mentioned the different coloured plates twice, once at her house and then once during a a trip to hospital where the prosecution says she made a comment that had clearly stuck in Heather's mind about an odd plate, you know, how there were uniform plates and then an odd one that she remembered Erin using because I think she said, you know,

is she short on crockery?

Yeah.

She allegedly asked Simon Patterson.

Yeah, talking to Simon Patterson as he was picking up the Wilkinson's taken to hospital after they'd fallen ill.

Speaking of people falling ill, we did get another reminder today of how sick the lunch guests were.

We have heard a lot about this already.

You know, we've heard evidence from the doctors that were treating them in the hospital that three of them passed away in, just how unwell they were.

Also, the recovery of Ian Wilkinson.

We've also heard the results over the course of the last seven weeks of Aaron Patterson's medical tests,

how, you know, people saying she didn't seem as sick as some of the other guests.

And today, Dr.

Nat Rogers kind of presented these timelines that drew, you know, drew this together quite clearly.

dueling timelines i think i would call them in literally yeah you know they were so different and so stark so dr rogers started by saying you know on this point on this deception um as she's calling them that erin patterson's good health would give her away that she had to look unwell like the others

and you know we we went through what happened at the hospital.

She presented Monday morning, you know, and then she leaves in a hurry.

And Dr.

Rogers says that's because you knew what you had done was going to be uncovered, you know, because you'd learned that the doctors were on to the fact that there was a lethal toxin in this meal,

most likely from death caps.

And so, Dr.

Rogers said you fled back to the house to work out how to manage the situation and how you were going to explain why you weren't as sick.

So, I just want to take you back, Stocky, where these dueling timelines start.

So, first, we have on the Saturday,

the Wilkinsons appeared well to their guests.

Remember they had a church, Ian Wilkinson had a church meeting in his house.

They appeared well around 4 p.m.

that afternoon, the afternoon of the lunch.

Conversely, Erin told Simon Patterson that she started having diarrhea and it was quite frequent from 4 or 4.30.

Now midnight on the Saturday is when the guests Don and Gail, Heather and Ian, start feeling really sick.

Now we move into Sunday and this is when the timelines were quite stark for me.

So the Wilkinsons presented on Sunday morning at 10.57 with nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.

And Dr.

Rogers says, this was the same morning the accused was sitting at a dining table drinking a coffee.

Although, as Aaron Patterson put it, a cup of tea.

Correct.

Correct.

She said that her son was mistaken, that she was drinking herbal tea from that cup.

Sunday afternoon, We heard this evidence.

It really struck me at the time, I think we spoke about this, on an earlier episode, Stocky.

Simon Patterson said this of his dad, Don.

He was lying on his side, he was hunched quite noticeably, really discoloured face.

Speaking was an effort, his voice was strained in a way that he just wasn't right inside, he was feeling pain.

Dr.

Rogers juxtaposes that with this was during the period Erin was driving her son to a flying lesson.

So that's Sunday afternoon.

Monday, we've got

Ian Wilkinson being transferred to Dandenong Hospital

while Erin is discharging herself from Lee and Gather Hospital to go home to pack her daughter's ballet bag and feed the animals.

That afternoon we've got Don Patterson critically ill and in multiple organ failure.

He had a tube down his lymph pipe at the same time that Erin Patterson

Dr.

Rogers says, was being transported by ambulance to Monash Hospital and was, quote, calm and chatty.

Now we move to Tuesday, stocky the 1st of august 2023 all four lunch guests had been conveyed to austin icu

all on life support in advanced stages of multiple organ failure dr rogers says this is the day the accused was discharged home with no clinical or biochemical evidence of amanita poisoning and no liver damage

we also had dr net rogers through some of this kind of pointing to what she thinks the defence might sort of suggest around some of the reason that Erin Patterson wasn't as sick and trying to kind of cover off some of those moments as well.

So, one of them was talking about how she had been, she was younger, she had, you know, slightly, weighed slightly more than the other lunch guests, so that may have had an impact on how it was absorbed.

Also, talking about how she had vomited after the lunch as well, how she had eaten the best part of an orange cake.

We'd heard previously in the trial that Erin Patterson had been binge eating for years leading up to the lunch as well, and

said she threw up sometime in between the lunch and dinner on the Saturday evening of the lunch.

And today, Dr.

Nett Rogers pointed out that there's no evidence that we've heard that vomiting can reduce the toxicity of death cat mushroom poisoning.

Yeah, no experts were actually asked that.

Whether vomiting could reduce the toxicity or at what point it would be too late for it to have any effect on how the toxin is absorbed into your body.

That was really interesting.

She was trying to preempt what the defence might use in its closing, which we might not know for a couple of days, Stocky.

Yeah,

we talked a bit before about Ian Wilkinson being referred to as quite a reliable witness.

There was a point in this section of the day where the jury was reminded to maybe treat Aaron Patterson's daughter's evidence with some caution because she didn't have a clear memory or didn't remember going for a drive the day after the lunch.

That's right.

Interestingly, though,

we didn't hear that about her son.

And to discount his evidence, even though he doesn't remember stops along the way to the flying lesson or back again, and it was that trip that was quite important because on the way, that's when she has told the jury that she had to pull over, that she did diarrhoea in the bush.

And then on the way back was that

stop at the donut van, but her son doesn't remember that either.

So interestingly, you know, which witnesses the jury is told to remember and forget.

Also the nine-second visit to the BP bathroom,

which Dr.

Annette Rogers pointed out today, would not have been enough time to go to the bathroom or really even wash your hands.

Rach, as well, today

we got to the kind of the final alleged deception.

Right towards the end of the day, there were four alleged deceptions that Dr.

Nanette Rogers has outlined.

And this is the sustained, what Dr.

Annette Rogers calls the sustained cover-up cover-up from Aaron Patterson.

It's the sort of the alleged lying about feeding her children the leftovers from the lunch, the alleged lying about getting stuff from the Asian grocers, the disposing of the dehydrator, and the allegedly concealing of a phone.

Now, it's important to remember when we say the lying about feeding the children and the leftovers, that is what Dr.

Annette Rogers is saying, is a lie.

And the moment from this that stuck with me was Dr.

Annette Rogers' way of kind of calling out Aaron Patterson's memory about how strong it is on some details and how poor it seemed to be on others.

This was actually, I don't know whether she meant this as a jibe or not, but you're right.

And she pointed out that you have a remarkable memory, Aaron Patterson, and you remember dates really easily and you've stayed across evidence over many days in the witness box.

And Dr.

Rogers cited the time, remember we talked about Stocky, that Dr.

Rogers got a day wrong and Aaron jumped in and said, no, no, that was a Friday.

I recall that was a Friday.

Yeah, it wasn't a Monday, that was a Friday.

I I remember it quite clearly, and like, really, really pulled Dr.

Nanette Rogers up on it.

Well, today, Dr.

Rogers has used that to her advantage.

And she said, you know, you've remembered, you've got this amazing recall that that day was a Friday, you know, and you remember that now in June 2025.

And yet, in August 2023, you couldn't remember the shop or the suburb that you say that you purchased the dried mushrooms from.

Dr.

Rogers told the jury that Erin Patterson led the health department on a wild goose chase, that it was all a big fabrication, you know, and Dr.

Rogers said that simply beggars belief that you can't remember where this shop is.

Was it Oakley?

Was it Clayton?

Was it Glen Waverly?

Was it Mount Waverly?

We went through all the Waverleys again today.

We heard 11 versions of this story, Stocky, that Dr.

Rogers says Aaron told to different health professionals and Department of Health workers and the poor guy that was like traipsing up and down the streets in three suburbs.

And Dr.

Rogers says, you know, Aaron Patterson also remembered the label on the mushrooms and the size of the label and the weight, and yet drew a complete blank to the shop and the suburb, you know, and she said that Erin Patterson did that to cast as much suspicion on the Asian grocer as possible.

As well as this kind of conversation around the

Asian grocers, you know, the leftovers as well.

Who went what?

What happened with the leftovers?

A big part of this section.

Yeah, the two things that really

hit me in that section were,

and it was back to Dr.

Rogers' theme of why would you do this?

So one was, why would you feed the leftovers of a meal to your children, knowing that it had or believing that it might have led to the hospitalisation of four people?

Dr.

Rogers said, I just don't understand that.

And the big second one was one would expect that

you know, when people are getting sick and you're learning that they are sick, that this would galvanise you into action and that it doesn't make sense that this doting mother was reluctant to have the children medically assessed as fast as possible and that she didn't bring them in when she returned to Lee and Gather Hospital.

Erin Patterson, of course, you know, we've heard she's told the court that she had scraped the mushrooms off and so she thought that they would be safe, but the medical staff were trying to say to her it could have been absorbed by the meat.

And I don't know whether I'd heard this before, but we learned today that even in a laboratory, not even a forensic toxicologist managed to separate the mushroom paste from the meat so that it would have absorbed in some capacity.

And so the children wouldn't have been safe from that if they did eat the leftovers, according to Dr.

Rogers.

Yeah,

I thought it was also interesting when Dr.

Rogers was talking through, you know, if you had a concern about this meal, like if you knew people were getting sick, you know, the most likely source of that would probably be the meat.

And that is what you fed your children.

So I thought that was something that just stuck with me today.

The thing I was thinking about the entire day, you know, we've just spoken through all of these different claims, this story that Dr.

Annette Rogers is presenting to the jury based off of the evidence that we've heard, their version of what Aaron Patterson has done prior to and after the lunch in July 2023.

Aaron Patterson is in the room listening to all of this.

Yeah, we're used to seeing her in the last eight days in the witness box.

Today she was at the back of the court, listening intently to everything that was going on,

putting her glasses on and off, and looking down a lot.

And I realised that I think she's been taking notes for a lot of today's evidence.

And I also noticed Ian Wilkinson.

And like I said to you last week, Stocky, he's been there for most days of this trial.

And I've looked at him occasionally, but today there was something

I don't know, it just felt heavier for me for him today.

It seemed like he was bracing himself for a very heavy day.

He often had his arms kind of protectively crossed across his chest.

And I don't want to impose my subjective thinking on that, but it just something about it struck me as very, as more vulnerable today than other days.

Like he, it was going to be a heavy day.

All the tying of this together.

Yeah.

No, it was, you know, the stories of, you know,

his sickness, you know, his wife's sickness, the, you know his his brother and sister-in-law um you know their passing and what they experienced as well so um that's everything that we're being you know it's kind of being laid out to the jury today and you say story and that's a perfect explanation it is a story to most people but this is his life he's lived this you know and his wife has died because of this incident yeah um

now it's important to remember through what we've talked through today this is the prosecution's closing argument now what we will see over the next over the next few days over this week will be the closing from the defence.

Now, Dr.

Nynette Rogers still has a little bit to go.

We didn't quite get to the end of everything today.

There's a couple of other points that she wants to raise.

And then once we move through all of that, the defence barrister, Colin Mandy, will be presenting the Defence's closing argument.

And this is where they're going to present the evidence and explain what in their mind, what Aaron Patterson was doing over those few days and how the evidence backs up their version.

of the events and then it will be up to the jury to make a decision based off all of that.

And that's really important because today's episode will sound very one-sided, and it has to, because that's Dr.

Rogers' job today.

Colin Mandy hasn't got to his job yet, but he will be trying to mitigate when it comes time for the defence closing a lot of the things that we've heard today.

Yep.

We are still getting a huge number of your questions into mushroomcase daily at abc.net.au.

It's one of the highlights of my day going through and seeing what wonderful thoughts you've all had.

The questions you've sent through, the feedback you've sent through, it really is a delight.

So if you have the capacity to use an email account, please send us an email, mushroomcasedaily at abc.net.au.

I want to start Rachel Day with a question from Jennifer.

Jennifer says, hi Rachel and Stephen, loving the podcast.

Thank you, Jennifer.

It seems to me that the defence case has been comprised solely of Erin's testimony.

Have I misunderstood that?

And if not, is it unusual?

Were there other witnesses called specifically by the defence, or was it only the prosecution witnesses who were questioned by the defence?

No, Jennifer, you've noticed correctly.

Erin Patterson was the only witness called for the defence,

but don't take anything from it.

They can call who they like, and they also remember have the chance to cross-examine all those other prosecution witnesses that came through the witness box.

Yep, so lots of information comprised in all of that as well.

So there's a lot that they can take from that and that the jury will hear from all those cross-examinations.

There were some cross-examinations that went for, you know, quite a long period of time.

I think you're like Sharman Fox Henry and Dr.

Matthew Sorrell.

They were questioned for...

I think days in the end.

So yeah, there's a lot that there's a lot that Colin Mandy has been doing.

You know, I've used the term a few times, going to work.

There's plenty of times when Colin Mandy went to work.

Rachel's got another question here from Caroline.

Hi, Rachel.

Hi, Stocky.

Love the pod.

You're welcome, Caroline.

Caroline says, we listen as a family and everyone is obsessed.

Question, after the jury arrives at its decision, will you two weigh in on whether you agree?

Not on this podcast.

Maybe you might at the pub or something, Stocky, but no, definitely not here.

And it's not up to us to prosecute the case, it's the jury's decision.

Yeah, I'm incredibly pleased that I am not a jury member on this, and we certainly won't be talking about whether we agree or disagree on the pod.

If you find me at the pub, though, maybe a different story.

Before we finish up for the day, Rach, I have a couple of little moments I'd like to highlight.

First one, hello to our friends of the pod who we met over lunch today.

Yeah, that was, I think we were talking too loud, but that was lovely, but they recognised our voices, so I should pipe down that lunchtime.

If you do decide to come and visit the proceedings out here in Morwell, feel free to come and say hello.

I'm a monster, but Rach is delightful.

So

say hello to her.

And I do want to do one quick correction.

In Friday's episode, I called Colin Mandy a solicitor.

Colin Mandy SC, a solicitor.

SC, KC.

SC, senior counsel.

Colin Mandy SC, a solicitor.

This is incorrect.

He is a barrister.

In the robes.

running the show, basically.

Yep.

So, Colin, I'm sorry.

And if you had noticed, I hope you forgive me.

Rach, what have we got coming up tomorrow?

More of the prosecution closing tomorrow's stocking.

As you mentioned earlier, the things that we haven't got to with the alleged cover-ups, which is the disposal of the dehydrator and the concealing of her usual mobile phone from the police.

Great.

Thank you so much.

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