Body image, body fluids and body functions: Erin's evidence challenged

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Bodily fluids and functions.

This was the theme in today's tense cross-examination.

I'm ABC Investigative Reporter Rachel Brown.

And I'm Stephen Stockwell.

It's Tuesday, the 10th of June, and we've just started the seventh week of this trial.

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.

Rach, we woke up this morning in Morwell to a blanket of fog covering the town as we make our way into the seventh week of this trial.

Yep, the rhythms are back, the fog's back.

I should have been a double sock day today.

The rose pruners were out, so back for week seven.

Yep, back for week seven

and a big day in court today as the trial of accused triple murderer Erin Patterson continued.

Can you take us through what we've heard?

We started the day with one of the big moments of last week when Erin Patterson told the jury that she had booked in for a pre-assessment for gastric bypass surgery.

That led to talk about the cake and how much of that she threw up, how much she ate at the lunch.

Then we moved on to the hospital and what she did and didn't tell them, and why she didn't tell them she'd thrown up that day.

On the issue of mushrooms, that question was put to her again: Did she have a particular interest in death caps?

She says she doesn't remember using that iNaturalist website.

And this interlude led to a bit of a tetchy exchange with the prosecutor.

Thank you so much, Rach.

I want to start today's episode where we started in court today.

We heard Erin Patterson talking last week about how she had booked herself in for like a pre-assessment for some gastric bypass surgery.

This came up again today.

She named the clinic last week, the Enrich Clinic, and today basically was questioned about what she was heading to this clinic for by prosecutor Dr.

Nanette Rogers.

Yeah, she dropped that name Enrich last week, and and you and I were saying whether the informant Stephen Eppenstall would be sitting outside that clinic all weekend to check whether or not she did in fact have an appointment there.

That's how Nanette Rogers, the prosecutor, started the day.

She said, you did have an appointment scheduled at 11 a.m.

on the 13th of September 2023 in South Yarra.

Erin Patterson replied, I thought it was a different suburb.

Right.

Anyway, this appointment that for the 13th was apparently cancelled two days earlier on the 11th of September.

Then Dr.

Rogers put to her, her, Enrich doesn't offer gastric bypass or sleeve surgery.

And Erin said, look, I don't know.

I had an appointment with them and that's what my memory.

thought it was for.

Dr.

Rogers said, I put to you, it had nothing to do with gastric bypass.

And Erin Patterson said, look, it would have been related to weight loss surgery.

Perhaps it was a different procedure.

Perhaps it was something like glyposuction.

The reason that Erin Patterson was talking about this last week, she says the reason that she lied to the lunch guests about having cancer at that lunch was that she needed a cover for when she went in for a procedure that was separate to this and that you know this weightless procedure was the was the procedure that she needed to cover for.

She did tell the jury though she didn't end up telling them about the surgery.

So all they knew, all the guests knew at the lunch was that she potentially had cancer and needed help on what to tell the kids.

Erin Patterson's story is that she needed help with the kids, but for that time that she thought she'd be out of action having this surgery which she says she had the pre-assessment for she said she would need help like getting the kids to school and taking them to after-school activities and things like that yeah

when this came out last week when Aaron Patterson started talking about the plans for this surgery when she dropped the name of the clinic

lots of questions about where that might go the question today though from Dr.

Nynette Rogers I mean we've probably spent more time talking about it on the pod to this point than Dr.

Nynette Rogers spent questioning questioning Erin Patterson about it.

It was very fast, wasn't it?

It was, I think Dr.

Rogers just wanted it on the record that this clinic, according to Dr.

Rogers, doesn't do gastric bypass surgery, so it must have been something else, and that she'd cancelled that appointment anyway.

Yeah.

Rach, we had a whole day of questioning from Dr.

Nanette Rogers today.

Erin Patterson cross-examined

from woe to go, basically.

The other point that I'm really keen to spend a bit of time on today is the Erin's actions following the lunch and basically how she she vomited after eating a cake so just a content warning here we're going to be discussing some eating issues coming up Erin Patterson last week gave evidence that she had struggled with her body image for a period of time she'd had disordered eating for different periods of her life binge eating and that following the lunch there was a leftover cake she ate most the best part of it two-thirds of it three-quarters of it

and then following that felt sick and went to the bathroom and made herself vomit today Dr.

Nanette Rogers

being quite direct about the purpose for that and what that might have meant for the meals she'd eaten before, the beef Wellington.

Yeah, Dr.

Rogers put to Erin Patterson, the vomit was partly constituted by the beef Wellington.

And Erin replied, I've no idea what was in the vomit.

And Dr.

Rogers said, at all, like she really wanted scrutiny of what was in this vomit.

And Erin said, look, how could I?

It's just vomit unless you can see a bean or a piece of corn.

And Dr.

Rogers quickly fired back, well, you didn't have corn.

And Erin said, look, that was just an example.

You know, I didn't study my vomit.

Yeah.

But that was, she was pressed on that longer than the Enrich Clinic, actually.

On the time, you know, she was asked when, and she puts it sometime between 3 p.m.

and dinner, but she can't say exactly when.

And then Dr.

Rogers, you know, said to her, you didn't tell a single medical person that you'd vomited up after the lunch.

And Erin said, that's true.

I didn't do that.

Because she had a number of conversations with medical professionals in the days after this, as they're trying to ascertain whether or not she has consumed death cat mushrooms and what they might need to do to try and treat her.

Remember, last week, Erin Patterson said she'd never told anyone about this condition.

Dr.

Rogers put to her, Did you not tell them because of the embarrassment?

And Erin didn't say that that was the case.

The point of all that, Stocky, is Dr.

Rogers was trying to

ascertain, you know, how much she ate and she was trying to argue that Erin Patterson's story about how much she ate has shifted over time.

Okay.

And

Dr.

Rogers put to her that, you know, she said different things at different times.

Do you remember telling this person that you didn't eat at all?

Do you remember

telling this person you only ate about half?

And Erin Patterson said, look, I remember saying I didn't eat it all.

Maybe I ate half, but I didn't have a tape measure.

You know, and Dr.

Rogers put to her, you know, it's a very different thing between a quarter of a third, don't you?

And she said, well, yes, there definitely is, but I just can't.

I can't say it's, I can't say any more than that.

Yeah, yeah.

If this conversation about disordered eating has brought up anything for you, you can get in touch with the Butterfly Foundation.

You can find them at butterfly.org.au and also 1-800 ED Hope.

Rach, talking about the number of medical professionals that Aaron Patterson would have had contact with, would have spoken to or spoken, you know, spoken with, I guess, in the days following the lunch.

Something that Dr.

Nanette Rogers spent a bit of time today talking about was what happened in between Aaron Patterson's visits to the Lee and Gather Hospital.

Now, Aaron Patterson arrives to the Lee and Gather Hospital on the Monday after the lunch, sometime between 8 and 9 a.m.

and isn't there for very long.

and leaves and then comes back about an hour and 45 minutes later.

And

basically today, Dr.

Nanette Rogers was claiming that, you know, and put this very directly to Erin Patterson at one point, basically saying, look, the reason that you were gone from the hospital for that amount of time is that you had to come up with a plan of what you were going to do because you realized these people were sicker than you thought, that the hospital had clued into things you didn't expect them to clue into.

So Erin Patterson arrived at Lee and Gath Hospital, I think around 8 in the morning.

She only stayed until 8.10, as we've heard.

She says that she wasn't wasn't ready to be admitted.

She had things to do at home, feed the pets, get her daughter's bag ready for ballet for that night.

We heard again today the line of Dr.

Chris Webster that

he says he told her her life was at risk.

She denies that, that it was put that forcefully.

She did agree that he told her that death caps might have been the cause of the poisoning.

But she says, look, he didn't ask me where the mushrooms came from.

I said woollies in regards to the ingredients of the beef Wellington came from.

So she's saying to the jury, I didn't have this appreciation that you're putting to me that I did have that my life could be in danger.

So she says that she went home, as I said to you, fed the pets, moved the sheep away from the foxes.

packed a bag for a daughter.

But Dr.

Rogers put to her, as you said, you know,

you were using this time to suggest how to manage this situation you now found yourself in.

And Erin replied, incorrect.

Dr.

Rogers said, you hadn't expected doctors to work out it was death cap so fast.

You thought it would be treated as food poisoning.

You had to think quickly.

You had to try to explain why you weren't as sick as the others.

You needed to cover your tracks.

That's what you were doing.

That's what you were spending time doing.

And it was this rapid volley of that interspersed with Erin Patterson saying incorrect.

And then that

volley ended in Erin saying, is that, so you're saying I spent an hour and a half thinking?

Is that what you're suggesting?

She said, I'm sure I did some thinking, but it wasn't about covering my tracks.

And so when she returns to the hospital, Erin, at 9.45, which is about an hour and a half after she left, Dr.

Rogers says, you did so to maintain the fiction of you being similarly unwell.

Yeah.

And this is the kind of interesting thing about that exchange is that, you know, the interaction with Dr.

Webster is the first time that she is told by somebody else that they think the death cat mushrooms have been in the meal or are the cause of this this poisoning and and dr net rogers basically saying like look you thought yeah like you were saying this this was just going to be a food poisoning event you wouldn't need to actually have to deal with the fact there are death cat mushrooms in this and it's at this point that she kind of clocks it and goes oh hang on and that's why again dr net rogers is alleging she's she's taken that time yeah she's suggesting that she panicked and just didn't know what to do what to tell people yeah um speaking of dr chris webster um this is the man that you may remember from earlier in the trial um he was the, you know, the doctor on kind of the lead doctor, I guess, at the time that Aaron Patterson presents to Lee and Gather Hospital.

An incredibly loud voice that we commented on at the time.

And today we were reminded of that as Aaron Patterson was kind of recounting her interactions with this man.

Yeah, as I've mentioned, he said to her that he thought there were death cat mushrooms in the meal.

She goes home and comes back.

They have another conversation.

It was put to her, you know, he said to you, you need to get the children into a hospital because they can be scared and alive or dead.

And Dr.

Rogers said to Erin, Did he make clear their lives were at risk?

And she said, I guess.

I guess he made it clear he thought they might be at risk.

I was a bit confused.

It was a bit of a bizarre thing to say.

And then Erin Patterson said, I think I was confused because he was yelling at me.

And then she said, I've since discovered that's just his inside voice.

Would have been been an interesting, I suppose, moment when she realised that.

I suppose watching Dr.

Webster give evidence in court and being like, oh, he's he's shouting at everyone.

He's yelling at everyone.

Yeah.

And this was the guy, remember, like, this was the end of his shift, remember?

Like, imagine getting ready to go home and then this all erals.

Yeah, yeah.

Rach, we finished last week on a bit of a cliffhanger.

Justice Christopher Beale, the judge presiding over this case, as we were getting to Dr.

Nanette Nanette Rogers questioning Aaron Patterson about her interest in death cat mushrooms, Justice Christopher Beale called the session for the week and we all went home.

Did we get a resolution to Aaron Patterson's interest in death cat mushrooms today?

I think everyone was hanging for that answer, but Justice Beale is not here to appease our desire for long-form narratives, Docie.

He is not.

So everyone went home.

That was on Friday.

We came back to this today.

Dr.

Rogers said to Aaron Patterson, I suggest you had an interest in death cat mushrooms and that it wasn't limited to whether they grew in Gippsland.

And Erin Patterson said that's incorrect.

I was looking to see whether they grew in South Gippsland.

It moved on, the topic moved on to iNaturalist and the website that the prosecution alleges that she visited, that she navigated through.

She looked at global maps, she navigated through the maps, found a site in Morabin, navigated some more.

So she was pressed a lot on that today.

And one question was, you entered iNaturalist as the specific search term because you knew that site.

You'd visited it before.

Erin Patterson said I disagree.

Again, you'd visited it before May 2022.

She said, look, I still don't remember ever using that site.

So the prosecution was trying to imply that she perhaps used it on another device, not this computer that they found the

URLs on that they could, you know, they found in the metadata.

And Dr.

Rogers pressed her again and again, and she said, well, it looks like someone did.

Look at that.

And that somebody could have been me, but I don't remember using that site.

And there was this exchange between Dr.

Rogers and Erin Patterson at this point when she's like, I could have been me.

Where Dr.

Rogers said, Oh, was it your son that used it?

And Erin said, I don't know.

And then she said, Oh, was it your daughter?

And she said, I don't know.

And she says, Well, who was living in the house at this point?

And it's like, well, it was those three.

And something that we touched on earlier in the pod when we were talking about these web results was that these searches happened just before the visit to the Corron Barra Middle Pub for a dinner order as well.

And today, Annette Rogers made a point of going, oh look, well, these searches were done just before this order and you made that order, right?

And Aaron Hatterson just saying, oh, well, look, you know, I can't remember if she said, I don't remember or.

But she picked it a particular time.

She looked at what was up on her screen and said, oh, no, you know, you're meaning the second visit.

And she tried to argue with the prosecution about what it was actually alleging.

And Dr.

Rogers said, look, I'm the person who asked the question.

If something needs to be clarified, your barrister will do so.

Yeah, it will be interesting to see if

that is picked up when we get to the re-examination of Erin Patterson, once you finish the cross-examination of Erin Patterson.

We're seeing that quite a lot, though.

I remember I was talking to you on Friday about Erin Patterson's...

seeming need to be precise about certain words and the language and how she communicates things.

There was a couple of examples of this today.

Dr.

Rogers said that beef wellington found in the rubbish bin was found to contain death cat mushrooms.

Erin Patterson said, oh, I thought Dimitri Gerostomoulos said they found amanitin, which is the actual toxin, which is what he did say.

So, you know, there's been instances like that.

She was being asked if certain people said certain things and she said, well, they didn't say it like that.

Maybe you're putting to me something that they've paraphrased.

Very...

niggly about the language, Stocky, as this podcast has heard before.

Yeah.

thank you rach uh we are getting a huge number of questions through to mushroomcase daily at abc.net.au um some incredibly insightful questions some wonderful comments i'd love to go through a few of them with you now rach first one is here from emma she's writing from preston in the uk and emma says during the trip to take her son to his flying lesson erin has said she stopped the car by the side of the road as she had diarrhea and then disposed of this at the service station.

However, in your episode on on the 9th of May, you stated that her son's evidence was that she didn't stop to go to the toilet at all during this journey.

Am I misunderstanding the evidence, or is this a contradiction in the evidence?

Both are correct.

The son did give that evidence that they didn't stop on the way to the flying lesson.

But as we know, Erin Patterson has told the court she needed to stop, that she had diarrhea in the bush, used some tissues, put it in a dog poo bag, which she put that dog poo bag in her purse, that they then dropped off at the toilets at a BP station in Coldamere.

And we have seen CC TV vision of that BP station and of the nine seconds that she goes into the toilets and comes back out again.

Okay, great.

Thank you, Rach.

Thank you, Emma.

Incredible,

you know, eye to catch a detail from an episode a month ago and then bring it back to some of the evidence that we've heard in the last couple of days.

So potentially a career change if you're not already a prosecutor in your future.

Rach, another question to hear from Andrew.

Andrew says, dear Stocky and Rachel, thanks for the riveting podcast.

Thank you, Andrew.

Andrew says, my partner and I love listening to it around the breakfast table here in Hamburg in Germany.

Over breakfast, we unfortunately got stuck on a very gross question.

If Erin had such extreme diarrhea by the side of the road, how is she able to pick it up and put it in the plastic bag?

Please excuse the gross and disgusting question, but it seems to be an inconsistency of consistency, so to speak.

Thanks, Andrew.

It was consistent in its inconsistency, allegedly.

Erin told the court she used tissues, and it was those tissues that went into the dog poo bag.

But we have, sorry you're listening to this over breakfast because we have been hearing a lot about poo and vomit this week.

And the bow chart, Stocky, the Bristol Bow chart came up again today.

Bristol Steel chart, which I'm very familiar with, by the way, and would recommend anybody interested in their movements to familiarise themselves with.

Numbers one to seven.

You can choose different consistencies on that chart.

Give you a strong insight into your diet, that chart will.

But yeah, it was interesting seeing that again.

We heard today, actually,

well-timed question, Andrew, because

we heard Erin Passerson again question today, well, questioned for the first time again about her bowel movements when she was in hospital

about the wee that she said looked like a Pu and Chet.

She explained why she'd said that to the nurse.

She did.

She said she didn't want to look like an idiot, that she knew the difference between the two, that she'd had loose stools, that she agreed that they did look like urine, but she told the nurse that, that it was in fact a loose bowel movement.

Yeah.

Thank you, Andrew.

Thank you, Rach.

And our last question for today is from Cass.

Cass says, howdy team, long time listener, first time email.

Well, we welcome all, Cass.

Cass wanted to know how the questions are being asked by the prosecutor, Dr.

Annette Rogers.

Does the prosecutor do a long statement and then ask pointed questions?

Or there are many, or are there, many little questions throughout?

Cass, we spoke about about this last week as it being like a dance, but I was thinking about this today and it's almost, I used to play piano and it reminds me a lot of you have, you know, verses periods in between that are quite slow.

So let's call that lento and that's, you know, the building phase and you can see Dr.

Rogers thinking about things and trying to, you know, separate things into various clauses of questioning and then we get to what I'll call the chorus and we've often seen some very rapid, staccato-like fired volleys and questions.

Yeah, no,

it's been fascinating to see Dr.

Annette Rogers kind of framing these arcs in the way that she does.

So she's moving between different topics.

Again, like we spoke about on Friday, she'll go through these sort of like sharp periods of questioning, get to the end, and then very deliberately going, okay, I'm moving to a different topic now, like next topic.

And like really kind of clearly signposts it before moving into something else.

So it's been fascinating to see.

And thank you for asking the question, question, Cass, and thank you for answering Rach.

If you have any questions you would like us to answer, please get in touch.

Also, feedback is welcome.

Any general thoughts, if you want to tell us we're doing a wonderful job, that's fine.

If you want to tell us you think we can do a better job, also welcome.

With any clear guidance, please get in touch.

Mushroomcase Daily at abc.net.au.

Rach, what have we got coming up tomorrow?

More cross-examination, Stocky.

We're back.

We're back in the witness box with Erin Patterson.

Great.

Thank you so much.

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And finally, if today's discussion of eating issues is something that you would like to talk to someone about, you can get in touch with the Butterfly Foundation.

Butterfly.org.au is their website, and their number is 1-800-ED Hope.

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: our commissioning executive producer Tim Roxborough and supervising producer Yasmin Parry.

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