Explaining Erin's evidence: Our Friday wrap

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The two faces of Erin Patterson.

I'm ABC Investigative Reporter Rachel Brown.

And I'm Stephen Stockwell.

It's Friday, June 6th, and we've just finished week six of this trial.

Just a heads up, there is 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.

It's a tragedy what happened.

I love them.

Rach, it has been almost an entire week of Erin Patterson in the witness box as we've cruised through through the sixth week of this tribal murder trial.

Before we get into what we heard today and before we wrap up the week, can you take me through just the kind of key points of what happened in court today?

Today, Erin Patterson was pressed on her various relationships with the four dinner guests.

So that's her estranged husband's parents and his aunt and uncle.

Now, some of that tension was due to childcare support and a new school that her children were going to.

She was pressed on why she allegedly didn't ask after them when they were in hospital.

She was also asked why she didn't tell anyone that forage mushrooms might have gone into that fatal meal.

Dr.

Nanette Rogers, the prosecutor, put to her that she has two faces: one that she puts on for her family and one for Facebook friends.

And then finally, we moved on to that iNaturalist site, the Citizen Science website.

And the prosecution is trying to say that she had a very keen interest in death cat mushrooms in May 2022.

Thank you, Rach.

Great breakdown.

What was actually, you know, a kind of pretty intense day of cross-examination of Erin Patterson.

We are now into the second day of cross-examination of Erin Patterson, and Dr.

Nanette Rogers, the prosecutor, did spend most of it focusing on a relationship with Don and Gail, also her estranged husband, Simon Patterson.

And there were a lot of questions about this.

It really was the focus of the day.

It was stocky.

And the prosecutor, Dr.

Rogers, was trying to put to Erin Patterson that she was trying to get Don and Gail Patterson to intervene or to mediate in certain disputes.

She said, I suggest you were seeking Don and Gail to influence Simon to pay half the school fees.

And she said, that wasn't what I was doing.

I was just trying to get them to help mediate communication between the two of us.

Now, she said that it had deteriorated at the end of 2022 when he listed himself as single on a tax return form, which meant that it enabled her to claim certain tax benefits and also apply for childcare.

And also the new school seems to be an issue of contention.

Simon Patterson gave testimony early in the trial that he didn't know that the kids were going to a new school.

Erin Patterson said, today that's not true.

Me and the kids told him in March 2023.

There was this whole back and forth about, did you have a conversation about it?

Did you tell him?

And I was like, well, yeah, we were in the conversation.

I said, yeah, they're going to a different school after he dropped off one of their children one day.

And she added, in fact, he went on the school fees form before that term started, which is something that we hadn't heard before.

So it's interesting because it all goes back to this record of interview that she did with Stephen Eppenstall, the informer.

The police interview, yeah.

That's correct.

And she's told him, look, they're the only family I've got.

They're the only grandparents my kids have, and that's really important to me.

And she said to him, nothing that Simon has ever done to me will change that they're good, decent people who've never done anything wrong by me.

Nanette Rogers put to her, I suggest you didn't love them, you know, and that you were angry that they took Simon's side in arguments with him about child allowance and that feeling continued.

And Dr.

Rogers put to her, which was a big moment of the day, you have two faces, Erin Patterson.

You have a public face of appearing to have a good relationship with your in-laws, as shown to people like Simon.

Then she mentioned some other siblings or in-laws of his that have given evidence.

But then Dr.

Rogers said, there's a private face, and that's the one that you showed in the private messenger group, you know, people on a Facebook chat.

And she ended that

to and fro saying, you know,

you didn't regard Simon as being a decent human being to his core.

And Erin replied, I do, and I still believe that now.

Yeah.

And the two sort of groups they're talking about is like there's the kind of, I guess, like the Signal Patterson family chat, which is where she's saying, look, I love these people and she's, you know, keeping up appearances is what Dr.

Annette Rogers says.

And the other chat is the chat with the Facebook friends with the really strong language about what she thinks of that family when they weren't, as you were saying before, intervening in the

dispute that she was having with Simon over childcare and schooling.

And yeah, Donna Gale, Simon's parents not kind of reacting

in the way that she had hoped.

So it was interesting, yeah, hearing that and hearing it framed in that way because Dr.

Annette Rogers really did.

did push that.

She really did.

And she, pardon my language here, but she said a couple of times, you meant that, didn't you, you, when you said in messages to your Facebook friends, fuck them, you meant that.

And she said, look, I'm very angry and ashamed about that.

But no, I didn't mean that.

I was just venting.

And Dr.

Nanette Rogers, the prosecutor, was really putting this to Erin Patterson that, you know, she had these kind of two faces and she wasn't a fan of this family.

She did.

Dr.

Rogers, and...

Bit of a language warning here, excuse my French, but Dr.

Rogers said to Erin Patterson, that's how you felt about them, didn't you, Don and Gail?

You thought, fuck them, you know, and that's what she said in one of her messages.

Erin Patterson replied, I didn't feel like that.

I was just frustrated and venting, and I regret that, and I'm ashamed of that.

The other thing that we've seen a lot of as Dr.

Nanette Rogers has been cross-examining Erin Patterson is she's been taking her to different evidence from other witnesses throughout this trial.

She has been putting different things that witnesses have said to Erin Patterson, saying, did you say that to them?

Did you present that fact?

And at this point, Erin Patterson has disagreed with evidence we've heard from a number of witnesses.

So she's disagreed with things that Ian Wilkinson, the surviving lunch guest, has said, Katrina Cripps, the child protection worker, Simon Patterson, her estranged husband, and also some of her Facebook friends.

We're getting to a bit of a list now.

Yeah, we are.

And some, look, some are more minor.

So with the Facebook friends, there was some things she agreed with, you know, like she said, I did say that I wasn't happy with Simon's cleanliness.

I didn't really like the kids staying over there.

She was asked if she agreed that Simon became nasty after the whole childcare dispute.

Erin said, yes, I did say that.

But things like there was one woman that testified that she said that Simon was coercive.

Remember that day?

That was a quite big testimony that day.

Erin Patterson told the court today, no, I never said that.

Yeah, right.

It was put to her, you posted that Simon was a bad father.

She said, no.

I didn't do that.

So, and then we move on to, you mentioned Ian.

One of the big disputes today has been the purpose of the lunch and whether she told people that medical issues were the reason for the invitation

and here's where we come to the specifics of questions like particular questions shall we say yeah so She was asked, did you tell Simon that you were inviting him to the lunch because of important medical issues and that you were nervous about how to tell the kids?

And she said no.

Now, there are three clauses in that sentence that I just put to you.

She said no over and over and over.

No, there were no important medical issues.

I did, that's not what I told Simon.

And then later in the morning, she said, no, I did tell him about medical issues.

And everyone kind of went, oh, but you didn't, what?

I thought you said no to that.

And this is a perfect example of Erin being very specific and precise with her language.

So Dr.

Rogers had said to her, did you tell Simon that you had important medical issues to talk about

and that you wanted to do that at the lunch?

She said, look, I told him about medical issues coming up, but I didn't say that was the reason for the lunch.

It wasn't the purpose of the lunch and I didn't say that

I wanted to discuss how to break it to the children.

So Erin's trying to be very precise with her language.

And we've seen this a number of times over the last couple of days as Erin Patterson has been cross-examined by Dr.

Deanette Rogers is this kind of back and forth on the specific of a question.

You know, Erin Patterson might say, oh, hang on, no, I didn't say that.

I think I said said this.

It's like it's a very small change to what has been put to her by Dr.

Rogers.

Yeah, it came up, it's come up a lot, actually.

It came up again today.

Simon Patterson, early in his testimony, said that he was intrigued that Aaron Patterson never asked after the welfare of Don and Gale.

So

Simon Patterson alleges that he told Aaron on the Sunday, that's the day after the lunch, that his parents were in hospital getting fluids.

He says, I was intrigued that Erin never asked me after them or about them or how they were going.

Now, a point that Erin made today was, well, no, I wouldn't have asked after them if we were having a conversation about that already.

You know, it would be like if you and I, Stocky, were talking about your dad and you said, oh, dad's sick.

I wouldn't then ask you, is your dad sick?

Because you're already in that discussion.

So this is the kind of hair splitting that we're getting down to at the moment.

Yeah, and that was the point that Erin Patterson was making today when she was making those points is that, oh, look, yeah, we were having, already in that conversation.

Yeah, so perhaps, maybe, yeah, perhaps I didn't ask that question because we were already talking about it.

Yeah, yeah.

Towards the end of the day, as Erin Patterson was being questioned by Dr.

Nett Rogers, there was a medical expert, one of the doctors, I think, at Monash Health, she was asked about, and then also searches of iNaturalist.

And we fell into this kind of like, oh, I don't remember.

territory.

Yeah, towards the end, she was saying that quite a bit.

We moved back to the iNaturalist website.

So the prosecution alleges that she used that website to do different searches of where death caps are or were growing.

Now,

there's one particular URL that the detectives followed that led them to a page of geographic locations of death cap sightings.

So it was put to Erin, did you visit this page?

And she said, look, it's possible, because I was wanting to find if death cap mushrooms were grown in South Gippsland.

And I found out that they don't.

So that might have been this search.

And that was in May 2022.

And then they went, Dr.

Rogers went one step further and she said, well, we've got a URL that your computer has recorded that you navigated through this site to here's another post by a guy in Morabin on the 18th of May 2022 saying that he's found some death caps on this particular reserve in Morabbin.

And she said, look, I agree it's possible, but I can't comment because I don't remember doing that.

And then this is what rounded off the day.

Dr.

Nanette Rogers said to Erin Patterson, I suggest you had an interest in death cap mushrooms in May 2022.

And Erin replied, well, it depends what you mean by interest.

Right.

And

Justice Christopher Beale, with all of his dramatic timing, at that moment, decided that was the end of the day.

That's it, week over.

And court wrapped for the week.

Rach, before we move on to kind of talking through the big moments of the week, we can't forget,

I guess, well, as I suppose, in the process of talking about the big moments of the week, we do need to jump back and have a quick look at Monday.

We've had Aaron Patterson in the witness box for most of this week, but we did have the prosecution case wrapping up on Monday, really just kind of tying up some loose ends.

That was Stephen Eppenstall, the informant, the detective leading the case, and some agreed facts that were presented.

Anything I've missed in that?

No, sir.

Great.

As Eppenstall would say.

He would say that.

If you want to hear a bit more about the prosecution case, we hit this in our episodes last week.

So episodes on Thursday and Friday last week, we were wrapping up the prosecution case because we, as predicted, didn't expect we were going to get time for it this week.

So jump back into them to have a look at that.

Rach, to kind of wrap up this week in a slightly more fulsome way,

It's been mostly the evidence for Aaron Patterson.

And I think to do kind of wrap this up, I want to go through some of the things that Erin evident, things that Erin's evidence has kind of filled in for us in this story.

There have been gaps in what we've understood about what happened at the lunch and following the lunch in July 2023.

And through Erin Patterson's evidence this week,

we've had some gaps filled in, at least what she says happened in some of those instances.

One of the big ones I want to start with, and this is a question that we've had a lot, is why there were individual beef wellingtons served.

Now, Erin Patterson has said, and we've heard evidence from a number of people, that Erin Patterson used a recipe from the Recipe Tin Eats cookbook for Beef Wellington, which is normally prepared in a long log.

Erin Patterson instead prepared individual Wellingtons.

What did we hear about the reason for that?

She said that's because she couldn't find a suitable cut of meat that's big enough for that log that we saw in that recipe book.

So she ended up getting twin packs of iPhillets and using them instead and rolling them in fillo pastry

and then with the mushroom paste, the duck sell, and then puff pastry.

So she says that's why she moved to individual portions.

Plates have also been an issue in this trial.

Ian Wilkinson gave evidence they ate off four grey plates.

Erin said that wasn't the case.

And she said the women moved the plates to the table and that she can't even remember what plate she was given because she was making the gravy.

Yeah, Erin Patterson said there were a number of changes to the recipe for the Beef Wellington.

Yeah, number one, individual portions.

The other one, the phyllo pastry replacing the prosciutto because Don Patterson didn't eat pork.

So that was the change in the recipe there as well.

Also saying that she cooked six beef Wellingtons, preparing one for her estranged husband, Simon Patterson, who didn't attend the lunch.

So it gave us a bit more of an insight into, you know, when Erin Patterson said that she gave the leftovers to the children the following day,

saying that that was the same meal that was prepared for all the other people as well.

She'd just taken off the pastry and the mushrooms.

Yeah, she said there was one that was in the fridge.

That would have been Simon's.

And then there was the rest of the one of hers that she says she didn't eat.

Yep, yep.

We heard as well from Aaron Patterson why she had lied to the lunch guest about having cancer.

Now, we had heard early in this trial, in the prosecution openings, that Aaron Patterson had told people that they were there,

she wanted to discuss a cancer diagnosis with them at the lunch and the best way to break that news to the children.

And then we heard that Aaron Patterson had never had cancer.

In Aaron Patterson's evidence, she was trying to explain why she had lied about that.

Yeah, she admitted that she has never had a needle biopsy for a lump on her elbow.

She said that she had a while ago, never had an MRI.

She said that Don and Gail had showed so much compassion and care asking after her and how did your appointment go?

She said, look, I'm not proud of this, but I really loved getting that.

care.

So I kept it going.

I kept the lie going.

Yeah, yeah.

She also spoke about, you know, her disordered eating and this is another warning that we should offer as well.

This, you know, we're going to talk about some disordered eating.

If that raises any issues for you,

please chase up the Butterfly Foundation.

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

Yeah, Aaron Patterson was talking about, you know, basically, yeah, her disordered eating and some weight loss surgery that she had planned.

Yeah, we heard during the week that she had booked a pre-appointment for gastric bypass surgery.

So she's admitted admitted she doesn't have cancer, but at this lunch, Don mentions a family member who does have cancer and the talk moves to Erin Patterson.

And she said, yes, I let them believe that I had treatment coming up or possible investigations for cancer.

Now, I remember this was a matter of contention too.

Ian Wilkinson remembers her using the word diagnosis or something like that.

Erin said no, but I did lead them to believe that I would have to be having some kind of treatment in the future.

She says that she did this because of the gastric bypass surgery that she wanted to have.

So she said, look, I would have needed help with that, taking the kids to school, after school appointments.

So

I think it was twofold.

I think she wanted that care to continue, but she says she also knew she'd need help in the future.

Yeah, and when being questioned by Dr.

Nanette Rogers in court today, Aaron Patterson actually named a clinic that she had booked a pre-assessment with.

She was questioned about, have you booked that?

And she said yes, and she named a clinic in Melbourne that she'd booked that through.

Yeah, she did.

She said it was coming up in September, so that would have been September 2023.

She said it was supposed to be earlier, but she'd had a car accident.

So she delayed it a little bit.

As in, not a serious one, but

the car wasn't able to be used at that time.

Yeah.

And one of the things we've heard a lot over the, again, the last couple of days, you're talking about the way that Dr.

Nanette Rogers has questioned Aaron Patterson.

Quite a direct line of questioning.

Yeah, very blunt.

You know, we'd heard heard that Erin Patterson had allegedly told lies to the lunch guests and to Simon to get them to the lunch in the first place.

Erin said that's incorrect.

And then Dr.

Rogers put to her

very bluntly, you never thought you'd have to account for this lie because you thought the lunch guests would die.

And Erin said that's not true.

There were some, yeah.

A few direct moments like that, and I want to come back to them, to some of them later in the pod, when we're talking through some of the things that Erin Patterson kind of took us through and explained through her testimony in her words like what she says the explanations for it we also heard a bit about how sick she got and you know how she said she was in the kind of the evening and the day after the lunch yeah so the lunch guests went home because Ian Wilkinson had a church meeting to get to at his house Erin says she cleaned up but that night she started to feel nauseous started having diarrhea she's told the court about abdominal pain she had through the night and diarrhea every 20 minutes or so.

She said she woke up on the Sunday morning, still wasn't feeling that crash hot.

She took her son to a flying lesson Sunday afternoon,

and she said she had to pull over

in bushland by the side of the road at one point because she had diarrhea.

So she did that in the bush.

She said, I used some tissues, I put it in a dog poo bag, put that in my handbag, got back in the car.

We stopped at a BP.

I put that dog poo bag in the toilets at the BP.

And we had seen, we'd heard in Dr.

Nanette Rogers' opening that Erin Patterson had gone to a toilet on this day when she said she had said she was sick.

She went to the bathroom, and the CCTV vision only shows her being in that bathroom for nine seconds or so.

Yeah, much was made of that nine seconds.

Like, could a person have gone to the toilet in that time?

So this dog poo bag potentially explains that.

Yeah, yeah, her saying that she was getting the bag out of her handbag, which she had with her, and put it in the bin.

Yeah.

She says she kept feeling sick that night.

And then on Monday morning, she takes herself to Lee and Gather Hospital.

And we also heard from Aaron Patterson what had happened in the immediate kind of, what had happened while she'd been cleaning up from that lunch too.

Like we were talking before about, you know, her disordered eating and the weight loss surgery she had planned.

And it's something we heard a bit about, and I think maybe Tuesday.

And then on Wednesday, as she's talking us through what happened after lunch, that kind of comes back as well.

Yeah, you'd remember that the portions of beef Wellington were quite big.

So the lunch guests said, well, especially the women,

said that they, you know, should have shared it because it was quite large.

I'm telling this to help explain why there were so many leftovers of the dessert.

So there was nearly a full fruit platter left and there was three quarters of a cake that Gail Patterson had brought over, an orange cake.

And Erin said when she was cleaning up, she had a slice of cake and then another and then another.

And she said, I ate the whole cake.

And then she told the court I felt quite full and quite sick.

So I threw it up.

Yeah

again if this discussion of eating disorders has brought up anything for you get in touch with the Butterfly Foundation that is butterfly.org.au on the internet and they've got a phone number 1-800 ED Hope.

As well as hearing

what happened in the immediate aftermath of the lunch this week, Rach,

we go a couple of days later, we heard Erin Patterson explain why

she dumped the dehydrator, the food dehydrator she'd got that the police had recovered from a tip, a dump near her house.

Yeah, so this, she says, centers around a conversation that she had with Simon in hospital.

Erin says that Simon, her estranged husband, put to her, is that what you use to poison them?

the dehydrator.

And she said it was at that point she started thinking about forage mushrooms, whether any mushrooms that she'd foraged in the past had accidentally gone into that Tupperware container that also had the dried mushrooms from the Chinese grocer that she says she bought from potentially Glen Waverly in April that year.

Have they been mixed up?

Has that been the cause of the poisoning?

She said she started thinking about that and started to panic.

Child Protective Services had already had conversations with both of them, her and Simon, at that time.

So she says, I start to become really scared that maybe the children would be taken off me because I've made this meal that's made everyone sick.

So she said she panicked.

And the next day, quite early in the morning, I think she takes the kids to school and then dumps the dehydrator at around 11.20 from memory.

She says it was out of panic.

The prosecution, obviously, doesn't buy that.

Dr.

Nanette Rogers says to her, no, no, you were trying to get rid of the evidence because you knew you would be blamed for this.

Rachel, after the conversation with Simon Patterson in hospital is the moment that Erin Patterson says she kind of had that realization there may have been forage mushrooms in the meal that she has cooked.

Despite that, she doesn't tell any of the people that she is talking to from the various health departments, from the various hospital staff over the next few days.

Yep, not a soul.

No one from the health department, no one from the hospital.

Katrina Cripps, the child protection worker, not her also.

And so much was made of that today.

Why didn't you tell anyone?

And she admits she didn't tell anyone, but she says that by that stage, by the Tuesday night, all four guests, Don and Gail,

Ian and Heather, were being treated for death cat poisoning.

That was already happening.

So that was her answer to that.

Yeah.

Thank you, Rach.

It's been a huge week of evidence from Erin Patterson.

She has been in the witness box since Monday afternoon.

If you want to hear a bit more about some of the things she said in detail, I would highly recommend just jumping back into some of the episodes we've made this week if you've missed any of them.

Erin Patterson being questioned by her Defence Barrister, Colin Mandy, on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday of this week.

It has been a few days of that.

And then the cross-examination of Erin Patterson starting Thursday, yesterday, and continuing today.

So jump into those episodes if you've missed that and you want any more detail on it as well.

Rach, outside of what we've already been through, like what have been some of the key moments of this week, things that have kind of stuck with you?

For me, it would be Erin's Erin's testimony, but in particular,

the times that she touches on like belonging, your inclusiveness or isolation, those kind of things.

That is when I notice her get most upset.

You know, we heard that she became upset when she didn't get invited to Gail's birthday party, for example, and whether that was a mix-up or not, eventually she ended up going.

Today we heard a story about why she invited Heather and she said, look, she'd been quite kind to me.

She helped when my daughter was little at Playgroup.

I was quite shy.

I didn't know many people.

And Heather would sit with me and she'd be kind to me.

Another time that she teared up today, Erin, was when she'd already had Gail Patterson over to the house and Gail said, oh, Heather would really love to see this garden.

And she said, that's why I invited Heather to see the garden.

And Ian had been my pastor for a long time.

So inclusiveness and belonging, I think, has really stuck with me this week of big themes.

Dr.

Rogers did press her on that.

She said, well, when was that?

When was your daughter in playgroup?

And she said, oh, well, you know, that was when she was three or four.

By the time the lunch rolls around, her daughter's nine.

You know, so interestingly, Dr.

Rogers made a point about that.

That's what, five years.

But Erin Patterson just replied, Look, it didn't change the fact that Heather was kind to me, and I was very grateful for that.

Yeah.

I think the moment that is

I have been thinking about a bit, and it's a couple of moments, it's a sort of style.

It is, you know, Dr.

Annette Rogers' rogers's cross-examination of aaron patterns and you know i've been trying to work out where she may be going with some of these things we know throughout the course of this trial we're not going to get like a kind of closed circle at this point that is something we need to wait to the closings for um but i have been interested in how dr annette rogers will kind of ask a series of questions like there'll sort of there'll be a bit of space between them and then she'll start with this kind of sort of like really quite quick hit of one topic and there's a couple of examples i've actually highlighted them in the transcripts that i want to go through where you know she's questioning Aaron Patterson on, so the

food dehydrator is the first one.

It's like, you know, it's an agreed fact that your fingerprints are on this dehydrator.

And it's like, yep,

and they matched your fingers.

Yep.

And they were, you agree that your fingerprints.

Yep, absolutely.

And, you know, you took it because you'd been using it to dehydrate mushrooms.

You took it to the tip.

Yep.

And, you know, it's not any old mushrooms.

These were death cat mushrooms.

And then Aaron Patterson says, I don't know I did that.

And it continues.

And you knew they were death cat mushrooms.

You've been dehydrating, correct?

No.

You were very keen to dispose of any evidence which would connect you with the possession of death cat mushrooms.

No.

I didn't know they'd been in it.

That's why you rushed out the day you were released from Monash to get rid of the evidence, correct?

No.

You lied to police about never owning a dehydrator because you knew you'd use the dehydrator to prepare death cat mushrooms to include in the lunch.

No, I didn't know that.

You lied because if you knew you told the police, it would implicate you in the deliberate poisoning of your four lunch guests.

Correct?

No.

No, it's not true.

And then the NetRoggers will move on to a different process.

It's this sort of like, you know, this line of questioning where Aaron Patterson is denying it all the way through and the NetRogers continuing with this questioning.

She did that in that instance yesterday with the food dehydrator.

There was another instance where she did it on going to forage for death cat mushrooms and why she was weighing them as well.

It's that that style and that approach, she'll hit with this really quick burst and then kind of step back and go, okay, now I would like to move on to this other piece of evidence.

It's a dance, isn't it?

And there are various steps that have to be,

you you know, accomplished in this prosecution cross-examination.

And what we saw, yeah, you're right, it's very quick-fire volleys, and where sometimes

the question is just as important as the answer.

Yeah, absolutely.

And that's the kind of moment that stuck with me from this week.

Rachel, we wrap up the week, as we head into what will be a long weekend because the court will not sit on Monday.

I would love to answer some audience questions.

We are getting a load of emails through to mushroomcasedaily at abc.net.au.

If you have a question, question, please reach out, please get in touch.

I'd like to start with one from Claire in London.

Claire says, hi, I'm really enjoying the podcast.

Structure is great.

I feel like I'm being kept really informed about every detail of the case.

Oh, you're very welcome.

Claire's question is basically around trying to work out the timeline.

She wants to know, did Erin tell the guests prior to the dinner about the cancer issue?

Was there the reason she gave them to why she was inviting them?

Was the cancer issue only raised during the lunch itself?

Could you please clarify?

Yeah, hopefully Claire, some of what we've discussed today explains that, but that is exactly what the prosecution is trying to allege here.

That somehow they knew that there was a serious medical issue that needed to be discussed at this lunch, that Erin Patterson was anxious about how to tell the kids or whether or not to tell the kids.

That's the prosecution's argument that the lunch guests were aware of this before they came and that was the reason for them coming.

The other side, however, Erin Patterson says she told Simon that she had, you know, a medical issue to discuss with him,

but she denies that she told the guests that was the purpose of the lunch or even that they knew about that.

She said, you know, that just came up after lunch.

Yeah.

Thank you, Rach.

Thank you, Claire.

Great question.

And yet it has been something that's been talked about a lot over the last couple of days.

And our final question for this week is from Rianne.

Rianne says, hi, congrats on your podcast.

I'm listening from Wudenberg in the Netherlands.

I'm looking forward to each new episode.

After a day of work, I go for a walk and listen to this podcast.

That's very nice, Rianne.

Glad you enjoy it.

Rian does have a question.

They ask, at the end of your podcast, you say this podcast is produced on the land of something, and then there's something I can't really hear and understand.

Can you please explain in the podcast what it means?

Maybe it's something really common and normal in Australia, but for me as a duchy, I have no idea what it means.

Well, Rian,

what I say is that this podcast is produced on the land of the Gunai Kernai people, and the Gunai Kernai people are the traditional owners of the land that we are working on and living on at the moment as we live in Morwell and cover this trial.

trial.

You might hear it when we produce the podcast in our studios in Melbourne.

We say this episode was produced on the land of the Wurundjeri people.

They are the First Nations traditional owners of the land that the studios are on when we work in Melbourne.

So that is the purpose of that.

You will hear it occasionally on different ABC content produced here and there, and you may hear it in other things that are produced out of Australia as well.

So hopefully that answers your question.

Rach, Monday off.

Woohoo!

Thanks, Justice Beale.

Yeah, public holiday.

You I liked you.

Public holiday

here in Victoria.

So no court on Monday.

Rachel will be back in everyone's feed Tuesday.

Yes, back with more cross-examination of Erin Patterson.

Thank you, Rach.

We'll be back in your feed on Tuesday.

To make sure you get the absolute latest on Mushroom Case Daily, as fresh as it can get, grab yourself the ABC Listen app, download that.

find Mushroom Case Daily and hit follow.

And while you're in that app, you can check out a heap of other great podcasts in there as well, like Expanse.

That is a podcast that covers big stories from across Australia, this vast continent where anything can happen.

There are some incredible stories in there, a whole bunch of other great stuff as well.

So please check it out.

And if you're using something else to listen to Mushroom Case Daily, please give us a rate and a review on there.

It makes it much easier for other people to find us.

And I don't know, maybe for the weekend, check us in your group chat.

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

Thank you to senior lawyer Jasmine Sims, our legal queen, for her legal advice every single day, and to the Victorian newsroom and audio studios manager Eric George for making this podcast a reality.

This episode was produced on the land of the Gunaikonai people.

Hello, I'm Manishka Matandadauti, the presenter of Diddy on Trial from BBC Sounds.

Sean Diddy Combs is facing a fight for his freedom as his hugely anticipated trial starts for sex trafficking, racketeering with conspiracy and transportation for prostitution.

He denies all the charges.

I'll be bringing you every twist and turn from the courtroom with the BBC's correspondents and our expert guests.

So make sure you listen and subscribe wherever you get your BBC podcasts.