Erin Patterson's police interview revealed

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In a dull, grey-walled room, Erin Patterson sits on the right-hand side of a wooden table.

Opposite her are two homicide detectives.

I'm the ABC's court reporter, Christian Silver, and I'm Stephen Stockwell.

It is Tuesday, the 27th of May, and we've just finished the 19th day 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.

It's a tragedy what happened.

I love them.

Christian,

you know, we heard a lot today.

We heard from Erin Patterson, we heard a lot from the police.

Can you give us a rundown of what happened?

The big piece of evidence today was Erin Patterson's police interview, which was played to the court.

This was one week after the fatal lunch.

It was there where police questioned her about various topics, including mushroom foraging, a food dehydrator, and what happened during the Beef Wellington lunch.

The court was also shown video of the police searching Erin Patterson's house and some of the things they found, including the cookbook Erin said she used.

Health expert Sally Ann Atkinson finished her evidence about the investigation into Asian grocery stores around Melbourne, and there were a few spicy exchanges with Erin's lawyer.

Thank you, Christian.

I want to spend kind of a lot of today's episode on August the 5th.

This is a week after the lunch, the lunch where Erin cooked a Beef Wellington and served that to four lunch guests, her parents-in-law and two members of her extended family.

So the reason I want to talk about this day is because this is the day that police arrived at Erin Patterson's house to execute a search warrant.

Erin Patterson is there with her children.

It's about 11.30 in the morning on a Saturday morning, almost exactly a week since that lunch.

The police say they're there to execute a search warrant.

It's the homicide squad and they say they're there because two people have died.

Erin immediately asks, who died?

The police inform her that it's Heather Wilkinson and Gail Patterson, who had died the day before.

And this is how Erin Patterson finds out that her lunch guests have died.

Two of the lunch guests have died.

It is the police knocking on her door that morning.

Detective Luke Farrell was called to the stand to talk about the search of Erin Patterson's house and he was taken through basically what the police did on that day and some of the things that they were looking for.

So he told the court that they basically looked through the rooms, they looked through the kitchen, there were a bunch of things that they found and the court heard about those things.

Yeah, they did.

We were shown photos of what they were looking for.

They kind of detailed the few things they were looking for.

They were looking for sort of food scraps, food packaging, a few other things as well.

And we saw a lot of pictures shown to the court.

So we saw one of the dining table in Aaron Patterson's house.

And this was described as, you know, it's a big table.

There's six chairs around it.

The officer explained that the kitchen was to the left in that photo, and there's a lounge to the right.

There was another photo of some kitchen drawers.

And we had a few photos of these drawers, sort of like slowly getting closer to them.

So sort of a wider shot, get closer.

One of the drawers has been opened.

And there's some manuals in the bottom of it.

And we realize these are manuals for kitchen appliances.

There's one for a food dehydrator that is taken out.

That's photographed slightly more closely.

Then we have one of the pantry, the large sort of butler's pantry, the officer describes this as.

And in that picture, there's some shelves in there and there's some scales with a little glass bowl resting on it in that photo.

And then we have some photos of a plate.

Now these weren't photos, pure photos.

There was a video taken during the search

and these were stills from the video.

And so the stills we see from that video are of a drawer that's been opened with four plates sitting at the back and then a coloured plate sitting at the front.

Originally it looked like sort of three grey plates sitting, sorry, four grey plates sitting at the back of the drawer.

We later realised that two of those plates have like a red top on them.

And then we also get

a still of the dishwasher, which has been opened.

And then there's a number of plates in there.

And the officer talked through the different plates, describing them.

It's like, you know,

one's this large grey plate.

There's this other one that's a white white plate there's a plate at one end with with colours on it all this sort of thing it's sort of a mismatch of plates there's no real consistent in plates in that one and the plates are important because This has been a topic of discussion in this case.

Lunch survivor Ian Wilkinson talked about when they were served lunch, they were served individual beef Wellingtons.

The guests were served on what Ian said were these large grey plates.

And then Erin had her lunch on a slightly different, smaller, sort of reddish coloured plate.

Orangey was the colour.

Did we see an orange coloured coloured plate in any of the pictures or the footage that you saw?

There was

one sort of ready coloured plate.

The one that stuck with me isn't a ready one.

It was actually one that seemed to have been like drawn on by a child or something like that, like a whiter plate at the end.

But I don't recall seeing something that you know, matched exactly the description that we'd heard through the court.

And later on in the day, and we'll get to more of his evidence, another officer, actually the lead police officer on this case, Stephen Eppenstall,

said that there is no footage which shows four uniform grey plates.

The court, as he said, was only shown some snippets, but he said if you were to watch the entire footage, you would not see four uniform grey plates, which is the description that Ian Wilkinson gave about the plates that the lunch guests ate from.

Yeah, and we also heard during the cross-examination of the policeman who was leading that search as well, he was asked if he'd measured the plates about the size of some of the plates, and he sort of conceded that, no, they hadn't measured the exact size of the plates and couldn't confidently say how big some of the plates in some of the drawers were as well.

Now, going through the photos too, there was also a photo of a recipe book.

This is Nagi's book, Recipe Tin Eats, The Dinner.

And this was just sitting on a bench in the kitchen between the stove and the microwave.

And we heard the police officer who was running the search explain that there was a bit of tissue paper that was a bookmark in that page,

in that book, I should say.

Now that wasn't on the page for Beef Wellington.

Erin Patterson was there.

She cooperated with police.

She pointed out, and I look, there's, you know, there's a recipe for Beef Wellington.

That's on page 250 something.

And then when police went to the book, opened up to, I think, 252,

opened up, and there is a recipe for Beef Wellington.

And that page was described as having some like oil spots.

And Christian, we have that same book.

in the Mushroom Case Daily Studio.

We do.

I'll just pull it off the shelf.

This is

Recipe Tin Eats Dinner by Nagi Mahashi.

And this is the book that police found at Aaron Patterson's house.

Not this precise book,

a version of it.

We'd assume the version that they have is still held in evidence somewhere.

Correct.

We'll turn to page 252.

And these are the pages that the jury did see.

So we're not showing anything that the jury hasn't seen.

I'll just flick to it now.

It is a, it's quite a large book.

You know, it's, you know, nice bright colours on on the front.

There's an orange spine down the back of it.

It's

a traditional cookbook size.

Yeah, pretty big book.

And yeah, so page 252, the heading is Beef Wellington.

The subheading says, Gordon Ramsey, Eat Your Heart Out.

It serves six to eight people according to this book.

The first page has got a summary of all the ingredients that you need, and then there's a really big picture on the other side, a beef Wellington example, which has has been presumably cooked by Nagi to perfection.

Then the following pages step the reader through some of the instructions.

We've got basically one full page full of text, another page which has got some photos of the process.

So you've got some of the classic beef Wellington ingredients in here like prosciutto, mushrooms, there's a bit of an instruction there and it finishes with a picture of the beef Wellington ready to bake is the caption and then there's some notes on another page.

And then the final page is the cooked final product, a large single log of beef Wellington.

Those were the pictures that were shown to the jury.

Yeah, and we have heard in the openings and from Ian Wilkinson that the lunch guests were served individual beef Wellingtons.

It wasn't a large log cut into slices.

These were individual ones and we have had a lot of questions about that.

We're getting all your questions about that.

And there is a difference.

The image that was shown to the jury showed one large log not individual beef wellington's yeah yeah yeah um the search hearing the police describing the search and talking through that today um was something i'd never kind of considered too much how that would have worked it's something that went for quite a long time they arrived at aaron patterns house uh at about i think it was 11 30 in the morning um 11 40 and they were there until kind of 3 30 in the afternoon this is a search that took it took a number of hours yeah it was a pretty methodical process i mean they go from room to room opening up the cupboards looking through the drawers, and they find a number of electronic devices in the house.

Yeah, we saw photos of a couple of cupboards in one of the rooms, and we saw, you know, a couple of phones and some electronic items on the sort of top shelf of one of them, a computer in another one.

As well as these photos, we also saw a video of Erin Patterson sitting at a kitchen table.

Now, this is right towards the end of the search.

This is sort of like 3, 3.30 in the afternoon.

She's wearing this grey cardigan or grey jumper.

She's sitting straight across the table from the police officer.

This is again the end of the search.

She has one arm kind of lying on the top of the table.

The other's sort of holding her head.

She's resting her hand on the bottom of her chin.

And she's asked for her phone to hand that over.

And she, you know, hands the phone over to the police officer.

He says, look, is there a code that I need to unlock this?

And she says, yeah, look, there is.

And she gives him two codes.

She gives a four-digit code and then a six-digit code.

And then when he goes to open that phone, it opens without a code.

We believe this is the so-called phone B, which we've talked about in previous episodes of this podcast that was seized from Erin Patterson's house.

Police allege that this phone was factory reset on the 5th of August, the day of the search, at 1.20pm.

Now, this is the time.

when the police are actually there.

When we look at that specific time of 1.20pm,

there have been questions raised about is that 1 20 p.m.

Australian Eastern Standard Time could that be 1 20 p.m.

in a UTC time which is another universal time zone so if the time is 1 20 p.m.

Australian it's obviously while the cops are in the house

if it was to be 10 hours later

that would put it at 11 20 p.m.

and the leading senior constable on the case, the leading detective Stephen Eppenstall said, if the the factory reset did actually occur at 11.20 p.m., at that point, the phone was actually

in his office in a secure safe.

And we did hear today as well from the police that Erin Patterson was alone in a room for a period of time during the search.

He did say that she was left alone in a room for 20 to 30 minutes and he believed that she was using her phone at that time.

Now, the phone allegedly was factory reset one more time, according to the police, on the 6th of August.

So this is after it has been taken by police.

It is sitting in Mr.

Eppenstall's safe, if we're to believe his evidence, and police say that it was factory reset remotely.

Yep.

Yep.

Following the search at her house, Erin has gone to the police station and she has sat down for an interview.

That interview was played to the court.

court and this is the first time that

we really hear Erin Patterson speak, have a conversation with anyone through the course of this whole trial.

Yeah, the first time in, you know, into the fifth week where we see extended passages of Erin Patterson talking and to kind of paint a picture of what it looks like, it's a sort of white, grey, pretty dull looking room.

It could just be that the camera is a bit not the best technology that they use at Victoria Police to film these police interviews.

There's a large wooden table and Erin Patterson is on the right hand side.

Her face is really, really big in this footage because of the way the camera lens is.

So it's a bit warped, a bit

out of perspective.

But Erin's face looms large on the right hand side of the screen.

And then on the left hand side, you can see one of the detectives.

There's actually two in the room, but

you can't see the second one, but you can see questions are asked of Erin, and then you can see Erin's Erin's response and her reactions to various questions.

Yeah, and it was quite a cordial conversation.

You know, it wasn't sort of like particularly accusatory, it was a reasonably positive chat.

You know, they're actually kind of, you know, at some points thanking her for how cooperative she's been throughout the process.

One of the first things that Stephen Eppinstall says to Erin is: We want to discuss the deaths of Heather Wilkinson and Gail Patterson with you.

And he explains to Erin that by this point Don Patterson has undergone a transplant

and Erin raises her eyebrows

suggests that perhaps that was the first time she was hearing that news.

Stephen Eppenstall confirms that Heather and Gale passed away and you can see Erin looks down towards the table when she hears that news.

And he says to her, We're trying to understand what has made them so ill.

And Erin says sort of, hmm, like to show that she's understanding the question and she's understanding where this is kind of going.

And where does it start to go after this initial kind of like, this is what happens, this is why you're here?

Because, I mean, the next thing that I kind of recall from this is, is Erin explaining, look, this is all very new to her.

She's never been in a situation like this before.

And again, it's been, you know, tried to be quite helpful.

Correct.

She says.

those almost exact words, I've never been in a situation like this.

I've been very helpful to the health department.

And this is a reference to to

some of the department workers who are looking for the sources of the mushrooms.

And there were various text messages, which we talked about yesterday.

And even after she says that, the police officer says, Yes, you were very helpful at the house.

You also pointed out the recipe Tin Eats book on page 252.

That's where you can find the recipe.

But Stephen Eppenstall then says, Obviously, we've got concerns about the mushrooms.

And then he asks her if she's ever foraged for mushrooms before.

And in the video, Erin Patterson definitively says never and shakes her head.

She's also asked in that interview if she's owned a food dehydrator.

And I think she says, oh, no, or maybe a very long time ago.

Is that right?

Yeah, she denies owning a dehydrator, but admits, I've got manuals for them, though.

And then she talks about how she's got a thermo mix and is really excited about making everything from scratch.

She also denies having dehydrated food before.

Now, if we go back to the very first day of the trial when Erin's own barrister, Colin Mandy, stood in front of the jury, he openly admitted that those two things were lies that Erin told.

Mr.

Mandy said Erin Patterson had foraged, but didn't deliberately seek out death cat mushrooms.

He didn't specifically outline dates and times.

He also said that she obviously did own a dehydrator because she dumped it at the tip.

Yeah, during the interview as well,

Erin was asked quite specifically why she had had the lunch guests over on that day.

What was the purpose for inviting

your mother and father-in-law over and some other family acquaintances?

And she talked quite fondly about them.

This is what I jotted down from my notes.

It was at...

times a little bit hard to hear Erin's answers, you know, unfortunately not broadcast quality microphones in there.

But from what I jotted down, Erin said, I wanted to maintain a relationship with them.

I love them a lot.

They've always been good to me.

Both my parents

are both gone.

And then she says, in reference to the Pattersons, they're the only family that I've got.

and the only grandparents that my children have.

And I want them to stay in my kids' life.

And that's really important to me.

And then she says, I loved them.

They're good, decent people who have never done anything wrong by me ever.

And also mentioned, I think, that she thought Simon Patterson, her estranged husband, was, you know, kind of wasn't that happy with the relationship she had with his parents.

I think that line about they're good, decent people who've never done anything wrong by me, what jumped out to me from that is that is at odds to some of the alleged Facebook messages which Erin Patterson sent to her friends some, you know, seven months earlier, where she'd made some rather disparaging comments about Simon Patterson and was also critical of his parents for not intervening in a dispute that Erin and Simon were having over finances and child support payments.

Yeah, police also questioned Erin about her appearance at the hospital, you know, how long she was there for, and also why she needed to leave after arriving so quickly.

It sounded like she didn't really feel as though she needed to be at hospital and, you know, wasn't in any state to be admitted.

So Erin told the police that, yeah, on this day, two days after the lunch, when she did go to the hospital, she had this conversation with Dr.

Chris Webster, who's one of the medical experts we've heard from in the trial, one of the early doctors who treated some of the lunch guests.

And Erin's retelling this story to the police about Dr.

Webster.

And Erin tells the police that Webster said something along the lines of, We've got concerns that you've eaten death cat mushrooms.

And Erin said her reaction to that was, what?

Basically a show of surprise.

Yeah, it was interesting the way that she described kind of, you know, interacting with Dr.

Webster on her arrival to hospital.

Basically, you know, he was there.

She said, oh, I'm not a priority.

I've just got a gastro thing.

And he says, what's your name?

And she says, Aaron Patterson.

And he says, we've been expecting you.

And then goes on to

talk about the mushrooms.

There was also a conversation in the police interview about the leftovers.

These are the leftovers that police found in the bin outside Erin Patterson's house.

And this has been a topic that has come up a few times in this trial.

And the police directly ask her about it.

I think what she says, and I was sort of straining to listen, was that the leftovers were from the Saturday lunch where all the guests came.

and that her kids ate

some of the beef wellington preparation as well.

She said there was stuff that was left over.

It went straight in the bin.

And she said to the police, feel free to look through it.

So what it sounded like is that she was telling the police that there's leftovers from two separate occasions.

Right.

Okay.

Good to clarify.

That has been something that's kind of seemed to have moved around a bit through the course of this trial.

Christian,

as well, when we were listening to

Stephen Eppenstahl, the lead detective on this case, there was a moment at the start of this.

You know, this was a heavy day of a lot of serious conversation, but Stephen Eppenstall, a very formal man, kept referring to Jane Warren as he was being questioned as ma'am as questions would finish.

The prosecutor Jane Warren.

The prosecutor Jane Warren, he would be asked a question, he would say, answer and say, yes, yes, ma'am.

And Justice Christopher Beale sort of interjected at one point and said, look, you don't need to, you don't need to say ma'am.

And then out of clearly out of habit, he goes, yes, of course, sorry, sir.

I mean, your honour.

And there was a large laugh through the courtroom as that happened.

The other thing was he chose to stand up while giving his evidence.

We've not seen too many witnesses in this trial do it.

Most of them preferred to take a seat in the witness box, but Mr.

Eppenstall was up on his feet.

He's still got more questions to answer from the prosecution, I believe.

And I'm sure the defence will have plenty of questions.

So I hope his legs are nice and strong.

I'm sure they are.

Also, Christian, this morning we heard a little bit more from Sally Ann Atkinson.

Now, Sally Ann is from the health department.

She was the woman tasked with looking for death cat mushrooms in Asian grocers around Melbourne.

And we heard about the report that she compiled, which basically found that there didn't appear to be any public health risk from death cat mushrooms being sold publicly.

And it was something that didn't need

any further investigation.

Ms.

Atkinson was basically the head of what I've termed the gastro squad within the Victorian Health Department.

And after this lengthy investigation into various Asian grocers around Melbourne South East, which has been undertaken after a correspondence with Erin Patterson and phone calls as well, Miss Atkinson talks about the final report that she put together.

And she said that there was no evidence that any of these shops were selling poisonous mushrooms.

There was no evidence that Woolworths

had sold poisonous mushrooms either because Erin Patterson had told her that the source of the mushrooms in the Beef Wellington was a combination of fresh mushrooms from Woolies as well as these dried chopped up mushrooms that she had purchased from an Asian grocer some months earlier.

So Sally Ann Atkinson also said that there were no other reports that had come in from others about similar poisonings after purchases from Asian grocers.

So the ultimate conclusion of her report was that there was an extremely low risk to public safety and

there were no products that were recalled either.

Yeah, yeah.

It was interesting during Sally Ann's cross-examination today, so because she was cross-examined by Colin Mandy, the defence barrister,

and he pushed her quite hard on some of her recollections for things and the way she was talking about certain things.

And she really held her ground under questioning from Colin mandy yeah it was a bit of a tense exchange at times possibly the most tense exchange between a witness and a lawyer we've seen in this trial so far two people that are not keen to to back down

um until of course someone intervened and told them to just calm down a bit

the first intervention i think we've seen like that too just okay guys just chill it's all right um so yeah it was i was surprised to see an exchange like that it's not it's not something we've seen i don't think in in this trial so far and at the end they both apologise to each other for talking over each other.

And it was all well and good at the end.

Very, very polite.

Christian, we do have

a bunch of questions we are being sent.

Mushroomcase Daily at abc.net.au is our email.

If there's something you're not sure about, you want us to try and clarify, you can get in touch with us.

I want to start with a question today from Scott in Newcastle.

He says, hi there, team.

Thanks for the thorough coverage.

His question is in regards to Erin's trip to the dump in the days after the lunch.

Did the the CCTV show her disposing of anything else or did she just make the journey to the tip with one item?

My recollection of that footage shows Erin Patterson going to the boot of her red car, or I think it's an SUV, and then she pulls out a large item.

takes it into a green shed at the tip and then is seen leaving.

It doesn't appear that she's carrying bags of things or like a trolley full of items, for instance.

And the police said that when they asked one of the tip workers to take a look inside,

they found the dehydrator in an e-waste bin.

Yep.

Another question here from Fiona in Adelaide.

She says, hi, Christian and Stocky.

Love the podcast.

Thank you, Fiona.

Some days I even listen to an episode twice to make sure I have all the correct info or the info.

correct in my mind.

Thank you, Fiona.

Today might be one of those ones you want to go back and check out again.

Fiona has a two-part question.

One is when the case is finished in court, will you do an episode or two afterwards to wrap it up?

And two, will the legal restrictions and what you can discuss still apply?

Christian, I might take the first part of that question.

We are planning episodes following the trial.

We're going to do a few episodes of things we couldn't talk about during the trial and then also a summary series of the trial as well.

Christian, what about the legal restrictions?

Will we have a bit more freedom after the trial?

Hi, Fiona.

We certainly hope to be able to talk more openly about the case.

Obviously, with all of our reporting during the trial, we're focusing on things that have been put before the jury.

We may be able to expand on that once the trial is over.

Yeah great.

Thank you Christian.

Thank you Fiona.

Christian who have we got up tomorrow?

Stephen Eppenstahl continues his evidence and he's talking through that investigation into Erin Patterson in the aftermath of the lunch.

Are we getting close to the end of this?

We are in terms of the prosecution case.

The jury's been told that Mr.

Eppenstahl is the last prosecution witness.

Obviously he's got to be cross-examined, but once he's done, then it'll be up to the defence.

Thank you, Christian.

Please make sure you grab yourself the ABC Listen app so you can keep up to date with all of the details around Aaron Patterson's trial.

We're publishing episodes every evening, so if you jump on the ABC Listen app and hit follow, you'll be able to get the absolute latest on Mushroom Case Daily.

Mushroom Case Daily is produced by ABC Audio Studios and ABC News.

It's presented by me, court reporter Christian Silver, and producer Stephen Stockwell.

Our executive producer is Claire Rawlinson, and many thanks to the Victorian Newsroom and Audio Studios manager, Eric George.

Also, shout out to our true crime colleagues Tim Roxborough, Rachel Brown, and Yasmin Parry for helping make this show a reality.

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