Erin Patterson's final words to the jury

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Erin's final words to jurors before they decide guilty or not guilty.

I'm ABC Investigative Reporter Rachel Brown.

And I'm Stephen Stockwell.

It is Thursday, the 12th of June, and we have just finished the 30th day of this trial.

Welcome to Mushroom Case Day.

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's happened.

I love them.

Rach,

we woke up to a cold day in sunny Morewell,

but we found ourselves with, I guess, a half day of sorts.

Yeah, treat for the jury today.

They got sent home before lunchtime.

Still plenty going on, though.

Can you take us through what we've seen today?

So the prosecution finished its wrap-up.

Dr.

Rogers jumped around different points, but basically across again that Asian grocer story, which the prosecution says is a lie.

It pointed out points where Erin Patterson and her son's evidence have differed.

And then we went back to that game of phones that we've spoken about so often.

Then Colin Mandy, SC, stood up, Erin Patterson's lawyer, to do re-examination.

We heard more about whether or not she had an appointment for gastric bypass surgery.

And then he covered some other things as well that he wanted to leave with the jury, countering ideas that she wasn't a forager, coming back to why perhaps she couldn't remember the name of the Asian grocer store.

And then the jury was sent home early with legal arguments ending the day.

Thank you, Rach.

Big day today, really, in the scheme of this trial.

We have had the closing of the defense case.

Now, Aaron Patterson stepped out of the witness box, finished giving evidence, and that is it as far as the evidence goes, we believe.

And so I'd love to go through kind of what we've seen unfold in court today.

We started with the end of Aaron Patterson's re-examination by Dr.

Danette Rogers.

And yeah, really kind of rolling through four or five different topics, maybe even more, before we got to the morning break.

Yeah, no climactic issues today, Stocky.

I think that's what the closings are for.

But we noticed both lawyers trying to cover off points that the jury, they think, needs to remember as they go and do their deliberations, whenever that may be.

So first of all, I want to start with the Asian grocer.

The prosecution has long said, that's a lie.

Dr.

Nanette Rogers put to her today, that's a lie you made up on the spot.

And Erin Patterson said incorrect.

And the Asian grocers, this is a place that Erin Patterson says she has sourced mushrooms from that she put into the Beef Wellington that she cooked for the lunch guests on July 2023.

That's right.

And the prosecution has tried to make a case that Erin Patterson has been hedging her bets, trying to make it sound like there's multiple possible sources for the death cat mushrooms.

Right.

And Erin Patterson in the past has said, I've never said, I got the death cat mushrooms from there.

I got dried.

mushrooms from this Asian grocer.

It was never able to be found.

The interesting thing today was we heard again that

Erin Patterson says she put them in the dehydrator at a time between buying them and using them in the lunch.

These are the mushrooms that she claims she got from the grocer.

Because she noticed how crisp other ones were coming out.

And these ones that she said were in a Tupperware container were

seemingly a bit rubbery.

She thought maybe air got in.

So she said, I whacked them in the dehydrator for a couple of hours.

And that's another point that Dr.

Rogers has picked up and said, oh, you've...

Why are we hearing about this now?

And Erin said, well, I hadn't been asked it before.

Yeah.

yeah um interesting as well you know there was you know Asian grocers there was questions about foraging a question about having tea in a coffee cup yeah there was a couple of points where the prosecution pressed her on differences in the evidence that she's given compared to her son

so one is that Her son gave evidence, he woke up and saw her drinking coffee on the Sunday morning.

It was put to Erin, well, you wouldn't be drinking coffee with diarrhea, would you?

And she said, yeah I agree with that you wouldn't um but she says my son has seen me drinking out of a coffee cup so I've made an assumption that it was coffee but she said it was herbal tea yeah you I think she said she drinks coffee most morning so it's like you know it's a reasonable assumption to make she drink your coffee correct on that morning she says it wasn't the case the there's a moment as well we didn't spend a long time on this in the scheme of the kind of cross-examinate the final cross-examination of Erin Patterson um but Dr.

Nanette Rogers brought Erin Patterson back to her claim that she had taken a MODIM, I think it was, this like anti-diarrhea medication

following the lunch when she thought she had, when she says she thought she had gastro.

But despite her saying that, she doesn't tell that to any of the medical professionals that she sees over the course of the next couple of days.

And again, she said, I don't remember anyone asking me.

Yep.

So that's why I didn't tell them.

The other thing that happened in hospital that she's been pressed on is Erin Patterson has told the court that part of the reason she ditched the dehydrator at the tip was in hospital.

Her estranged husband, Simon Patterson, said to her, is that how you poisoned my parents?

And that was put to her again today.

She was reminded that in the witness box, Simon Patterson said, no, I never said that.

I deny saying that.

Dr.

Rogers said, that's just another lie.

to try to explain why you dumped it.

And Erin Patterson said, no, I disagree.

Yep.

The subject, I suppose, that Dr.

Nanette Rogers spent the most time on today,

potentially even like maybe half the time that she would have been going through the cross-examination around Patterson in the kind of the morning session.

It was, you know, we're talking like an hour or so, maybe two hours total that that cross-examination went on today.

Maybe half of it, it felt like, was this discussion about,

as you flagged, the kind of game of phones that we've seen unfold through this trial.

And it's been really confusing, hasn't it?

And we've seen a flowchart that's been prepared for the court.

There's a lot of phones.

There's a lot of Sims.

There's a lot of Sims going into different phones.

Some phones were found, some weren't.

It's been hard to keep track of.

Yeah, it has.

So I think that was the point today, that Dr.

Rogers wanted to crystallise

the context of her argument around these phones and what was happening to them and why it was important.

what was happening at certain times.

Yeah, kind of taking her to Phone A, kind of billing that, framing that as her primary phone that she had been using in the kind of like maybe year, maybe a little bit longer, maybe a bit less kind of leading leading up to the lunch and just after the lunch.

Is that right?

That's right.

Dr.

Rogers said you've been using this since February 2023.

This was the phone that we saw in one of the CCTV Steele's pictures when Erin Patterson goes to Lee and Gather Hospital and she's using her phone that's in a pink phone case.

So they're calling that phone A.

Right.

Yep.

Now, Erin Patterson says, look, there was damage to the screen.

that made it non-responsive at times.

So that's explaining why she changed the handset eventually, why why she changed the number eventually.

We've learned in the past that she had privacy concerns given Simon's behaviour, she said.

So she told a child protection worker she wanted to change her number.

So keep that in the back of your mind.

The prosecution says,

it's less than six months old.

You were using it all day on Wednesday the 3rd of August, all day on Thursday the 4th of August.

And the court saw pages and pages and pages of

phone records from this phone.

This is,

you know, I kind of chuckle at this because

it was, it was pages.

Like, it, you know, there was, I can't remember what number we started at, but it was just like scrolling through all these different call records, these data records, all of that, kind of over these several days.

After Erin Patterson, I think, had said she stopped using that phone on maybe the second or third of August.

And it, the kind of the call, the call records sort of went past that time a little bit.

Yeah, there was about five pages of records with pretty small print for each of those days.

Now, the prosecution, remember, is alleging that Erin Patterson used this phone, phone A, to look up posts on iNaturalist from Dr.

Tom May,

Christine McKenzie, where they posted death caps were in Lock and Outram.

Yeah, two locations that the prosecution alleges that Erin Patterson visited shortly after looking at those posts, again, alleging that she saw death cap mushrooms from those areas.

That's right.

Now, it was put to her: this phone was never recovered during the execution of the warrant.

Erin Patterson says, well, you know, she points to a photograph where where a black rectangular

object is that perhaps was the phone

that police allegedly overlooked.

Prosecution says that's nonsense.

You deliberately concealed this phone.

And we learned again the time that this phone lost connection to the network, which was at the same time police were at her house executing the warrant.

So the prosecution's allegation is that you removed this sim

from the phone, from phone A, when you were afforded privacy to speak with a lawyer.

Erin Patterson disagreed.

So

we move on to the phone that she did give police, which is phone B.

And this is the one that we saw a video of earlier in the trial.

We actually saw a screenshot of this video today.

She is sitting at the dining table, I think, in her house with one of the police officers, I think an officer called Luke Farrell, who was executing this search warrant.

They're sitting opposite sides of the table, and she kind of slides a device over the table to him.

This is the phone that police are calling.

I think everyone agrees actually is phone B.

Yeah.

So this, as I mentioned earlier, just to remind you, this is because Erin says there was damage to phone A's screen, making it unresponsive.

She says she switched to phone B.

The prosecution says, well, that was blank when you handed it to police.

It wasn't your unusual number.

Erin said, well, I wasn't asked if it was my usual number.

They asked me for the phone I was using at the time.

this was the phone and then we heard again about the factory resets that there was a factory reset on this phone on the wednesday now that stocky as we know is the same day

she dumped the dehydrator at the tip.

There's another factory reset of phone B at 1.20 on the Saturday of the warrant.

Yep, when the police are at her house searching her house.

That's right.

And then there's one the next morning that she did remotely at 5.16 a.m.

So when that phone was in a police locker at police headquarters.

And we have had a bit of discussion around whether or not the times are local time or if they're UTC, which would put it 10 hours in the future of Australian time.

And I don't know whether we ever really got to the bottom of that, did we?

No, it was kind of an open question and an open point around a number of the times associated with a few of these things as well.

Thank you, Rach.

Appreciate the Game of Phones recap, if you will.

That drew us very close to the end of Dr.

Nanette Rogers' cross-examination of Erin Patterson.

And she wrapped up with...

three final questions.

She did.

She said to the jury, you'll be pleased to know I have three more questions.

And I think there was a relieved sigh from some of them.

They weren't the only ones who were pleased.

She said, you deliberately sourced death cat mushrooms in 2023.

Erin, I disagree.

You deliberately included them in the beef Wellington you served.

She disagreed.

And the final one, you did so intending to kill them.

And Erin disagreed.

A kind of dramatic conclusion.

I mean, as dramatic as you see in a courtroom, this is the thing I've kind of learnt over the course of covering this trial, watching the evidence unfold and the testimony unfold in the courtroom, is that there aren't the moments of kind of high drama that I had come to expect from courtroom TV dramas.

No, it's not TV, Stocky, but this was Nanette Rogers' version of a mic drop.

Yeah, this is about as dramatic as it gets in the courtroom.

With the prosecution finishing that cross-examination, we saw Colin Mandiercy, Aaron Patterson's defense barrister, step up for a re-examination.

Now, the way that, you know, these work, these kind of like the interrogation, well, I shouldn't say interrogation, wrong word, the questioning of witnesses unfolds is that you will have someone deliver evidence in chief.

That'll be, you know, usually most cases, the prosecution asking witnesses that they are brought.

In this case, with Erin, Erin is a defence witness.

So the defence team, Colin Mandy, questioned her first.

Nanette Rogers cross-examined.

And then Colin Mandy Day had the opportunity to come up and kind of clarify a few things.

And he started with some, I'm going to go there, some enriching evidence

he did he just wanted to clarify the issue around erin patterson's potential gastric band surgery or gastric sleeve surgery that we've heard about earlier in the week she said she'd booked a pre-assessment at a clinic called enrich

and she was tested on that because the prosecution yesterday produced a statement from the practice manager that said it didn't do gastric band or sleeve surgery, never has, doesn't do pre-assessments for them.

So she saw that yesterday.

So Colin Mandy SC wanted to address that.

He put to her, you know, were you mistaken that it offered gastric bypass surgery?

And she said, yes, I was obviously mistaken.

She said that she was looking at treatments that they could offer.

She hadn't yet had an in-person consult.

And she said perhaps she was also looking at things like liposuction, with that.

which that clinic back then did offer, Colin Mandy told the court.

Yeah, we saw a screenshot actually presented to the court.

The first bit like at the top of the page you sort of drew our attention to was that the clinic had moved.

Initially when Dr.

Nett Rogers was questioning Erin Patterson about whether she had this booking, she said it was in South Yarra.

And Erin Patterson said, I thought it was in a different suburb.

We learnt yesterday, and it was clarified again today, that the clinic had actually moved since Erin Patterson had made that booking and, you know, now.

basically.

And then you went down and there was a kind of another, it was this page sort of going, look, from this period, we're not going to be offering liposuction anymore.

And she confirmed that she did have an appointment, but that she cancelled it on the 11th of September, two days before she was said to go in.

And she was asked why she cancelled it.

And she said, and I quote, it was a difficult time.

It was a very difficult time.

And that date stocky stuck in my mind.

And I went back to the timeline to look at why I remember this date.

And it was actually the date that Ian Wilkinson was released from the ward and into a rehab hospital, the surviving guest from the lunch.

And he'd just been moved.

And obviously, as we know, sadly, two months before that, three lunch guests had died.

Yeah, obviously,

yeah, a very

busy time in a number of people's lives around that point.

And if you're keen for a bit more detail on the, you know, the kind of the weight loss claims from Aaron Patterson, the story, jump back into episodes in the last few days, there's a whole bunch of detail in there,

as well as the enriching evidence from Colin Mandy, were presented by Colin Mandy SC.

He covered a few other things.

It wasn't a long period of a re-examination.

We were talking like 30 minutes or so.

What stuck out to you from the kind of the rest of that, I suppose?

Yeah, there were two main ones, Stocky.

One is on foraging because it's been put to her by the prosecution.

That's something you never did.

No one knew you did that.

Even Simon Patterson, your estranged husband, didn't know you did that.

They mentioned evidence from from the health department, Sally Ann Atkinson, who had spoken to Simon Patterson on the Sunday night, the day after the lunch.

And Ms.

Atkinson gave evidence to the court that Simon had told her, quote, that's not something he had ever known Erin to do.

So Colin Mandy SC wanted to address that today.

We looked at,

he reminded jurors of 4,000 pages of signal messages between Erin and Simon between June 2021 and December 2022.

So it's a year and a half.

Yep.

There was no mention of foraging, picking mushrooms or eating wild mushrooms in all of them.

Erin's reply to that was, well, that's one season of one autumn season in 2022 of March, April, May, which is when, as we know by now, mushrooms grow.

As we know very well.

Well, all too well.

And so

she was asked during that season, that one season, how often might you have picked mushrooms?

And she said, well, at most a handful of times, maybe not even that much.

And we didn't really text about what we're cooking.

That's not something that we would do.

So that's her reason why Simon might not know her as a forager.

What about her friends?

So it was put to her, the Facebook friends, in 600 pages of messages between a Facebook chat group.

But in December 2022, in two weeks of that December, there was no mention.

And Erin said, well, it's December, you know, not a very productive month for foraging.

That's probably why I didn't mention it.

and also half of that time I was away in New Zealand for Christmas holidays.

Yeah

One of the moments that sort of stuck with me from that that conversation

we heard a bit about Aaron Patterson's daughter's ballet lessons

dr.

Nanette Rogers kind of questioning whether or not that she had ballet lessons on the nights that Aaron Patterson said she had ballet lessons.

Colin Mandy SC

kind of repeated Dr.

Annette Rogers' words while recounting some of that evidence.

Slight change in the the tone of his voice during that process.

For parents who are maybe reading storybooks to children in the evenings, it might be a change that you are familiar with as you go through that.

I think that's all I'll say on that, but it was just a moment that stuck with me.

And Rach, you know, we saw the closing of this case.

You know, you mentioned Erin's final words to the jury at the

start of this episode.

What did she, what did you kind of wrap up on?

Yeah, this was after one of Colin Mandier C's other points that he wanted to clarify because it was put to her, you

you should have been familiar with Glen Waverley, the place that you said the Asian grocer was, because you used to live there.

And she said, look, my familiarity with Glen Waverley comes from working there in 2006, which is a while ago.

Since then, I occasionally shop there in Kingsway, so I don't really consider that area familiar, you know, in 2025.

But then she added, and these were her last words that I recall to the jury.

She says, but I might have been being pedantic.

I do do that.

And we've spoken about that a lot, haven't we?

Her need for specificity and getting things right and having questions worded and ordered in a particular way.

Yeah,

I hadn't reflected on those being her final words until you started the episode with them today.

And it was this moment of like, oh, this will be the last thing that the jury, jury hears from Aaron Patterson.

There were some agreed facts following Aaron Patterson leaving the witness box, just kind of some clarifications around, you know, like really small things around the change to, I think, whether or not a message should have been included in the brief around Facebook messages and then a slight tweak to the flowchart of the phones that you mentioned earlier.

And that was it.

Yeah, just more administrative.

Yeah, and legal arguments through the rest of the afternoon.

That all kind of wrapped up about 3 p.m.

Rach, to round out our episode of the day.

I'd love to jump into some questions.

We really appreciate getting all of your questions.

It is a moment of the day I do really enjoy seeing what wonderful things you've heard or you've taken from the things that we're talking about on this pod.

So please do get in touch.

Mushroomcase Daily at abc.net.au.

The email server appears to be coping fine, despite the influx of emails that appear at all times through the day as they match your listening habits.

But Rach, I want to start with a question here from Sharon from Canberra.

Sharon says, hi, love the podcast.

Thank you, Sharon.

Sharon loves it so much that she started to listen to Unravel on the ABC Listen App.

Ah, good work, Sharon.

And she's just heard Rach asking questions in the bonus episode of the Mr.

Big series, which is fascinated.

And Rach is awesome.

That's very kind, Sharon.

Sharon says, anyway, I get to the actual point of the email.

I was just wondering if one of your emails contains the questions that is just so good.

Would it ever get passed on to the prosecutors to see if it helps?

There have been many great questions, and I know these lawyers are good, but can they get any outside help?

I'm not expecting my question to be that good, but I am really wondering if Erin has a reason for wearing the white pants on the day when she said she had diarrhea.

Sharon, I don't know whether prosecutors would really love a list of questions from me.

In the past, in other trials, I have had very burning questions that I was annoyed I didn't feel were being answered, but I just thought I don't, I don't know whether they'd really appreciate that.

I think they know what they're doing.

And if there's a reason why something hasn't been addressed, perhaps there's a reason for that that we'll just never know about in terms of strategy or protocols and things like that.

There are times

that, you know, we as journalists might be compelled to hand things over and that's if evidence is being concealed.

And this question, Sharon, reminded me of a case in America where a documentary crew who was working on a story about a murderer over there,

they ended up facing questions about the timing of evidence discovery and whether they deliberately withheld evidence to help boost that show's impact and marketing right so that's a no-no um but yeah if it's not concealing evidence if it's just my my two cents uh i think it's our responsibility to keep that to ourselves uh as much as i think we're very smart people and we know what we're doing um i do trust that the people sitting around the bar table know this a lot better than we know it um and so while there's things that we might be wondering about um and there's questions that we're getting you know it's very likely they have already thought through a lot of this stuff.

Thank you, Rach.

Thank you for the excellent question, Sharon.

I appreciate that one.

I've got another question here, Rach, from Georgina.

Georgina says, hi, really enjoying the podcast and I look forward to the daily updates.

I wonder whether you could tell us a little bit about the jury.

That is how many men and women and their approximate ages.

I'm curious, as a number of years ago, I was a juror in a New South Wales Supreme Court trial.

Yeah, thanks, Georgina.

No, sadly, I can't.

Other than 10 men and five women were initially chosen.

As we know, that's gone down to nine men and five women because of loose lips.

You might remember very early in this trial, one of the jurors was discharged and the jury was reminded, please, any discussions about this case has to be had in the jury room with only your fellow jurors.

You can't talk about it at home.

Please don't read stories about it.

Don't listen to this podcast or any podcasts and don't read news reports.

So I think they'll be reminded of that again as we head into deliberations because it's so important that their

thinking and their decisions are quarantined.

But so now it's yes, it's nine men, five women, and of course two will be balloted off when it comes time for deliberations.

But in terms of the breakdown, occupations, ages, I can't give you any of that information because it's actually illegal to identify jury members for their protection.

Yep.

So so we don't want to give you anything that means that you might be able to figure out who these people are because you're not supposed to know who they are.

Thank you, Georgina.

Thank you, Rach.

Thanks, Stocky.

That brings us to the end of today's episode of Mushroom Case Daily.

We're going to be rocketing back into your feed through the ABC Listen app or wherever else you find yourself enjoying Mushroom Case Daily tomorrow for our Friday wrap.

Have a wonderful evening or day, depending on when you're enjoying this.

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 huge thanks to our true crime colleagues who continue to help us out.

That is our commissioning editor, Tim Roxborough, and our supervising producer, Yasmin Harry.

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

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