Kill them all, or reconnect? Our Friday Wrap

Someone handed me a secret recording.

We've got to get rid of all those loose ends, okay?

For years now, I've been investigating this guy.

What, you stab him in the neck with a knife?

He's known as Mr.

Big.

His tentacles spread to the very heart of the justice system.

I don't just need it under the carpet, I need it to be fixed.

I'm Alicia Bridges.

I find out who he really is in Mr.

Big, a new true crime podcast from Unravel.

Search for Unravel now on the ABC Listen app.

ABC Listen.

Podcasts, radio, news, music and more.

Ask yourself, what's more likely?

I'm ABC Investigative Reporter Rachel Brown.

And I'm Stephen Stockwell.

It is Friday, the 20th of June.

We have just finished the eighth 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.

Rage, this week we have had two versions of a story told to the jury in Erin Patterson's triple murder trial.

We have had the prosecution laying out what they say has happened, what the evidence should point the jury to, an image of a woman who should be found guilty, in their words, of murder.

And then we've had the defense's version, which paints a very different picture of what they believe has happened, what the evidence points to, what the evidence doesn't point to, I suppose.

Maybe a stronger way of doing that.

All of the closing arguments, the kind of moments that pull together the threads of the evidence over the course course of the eight weeks of this trial.

We've spoken about this so much, this kind of like, you know, that we didn't know where they were going to be going with a lot of these stories until this moment.

Yeah, both of them dropping lots of seeds along the way.

Colin Mandy, SC, doing it in a way that he cross-examines certain witnesses.

The prosecutor, Dr.

Nanette Rogers, SC, laying groundwork with certain witnesses that she would return to later with others.

Yeah,

there's been so much that has happened over the last five days of this trial, such big moments.

And there's a lot that we're going to get to to in this episode.

I want to wrap up kind of the main threads of this week.

The court hasn't sat today, it's been a day off, Justice Bill yesterday, letting the jury know that they'll have Friday and Monday off as he works in his judge's charge.

So, we have decided to make our way into our studio anyway, just to give you this wrap because there's a few things again that I want to wrap up, you know, hitting a few points around the kind of like the dueling motives or the motive and the anti-motive, you know, some of the timelines that have been spelt out by the prosecution and also counted by the defense.

Also, importantly, how Erin Patterson was as she was kind of sitting in the room hearing this evidence or hearing these arguments presented about her.

There's, yeah, so much I want to get through, Rach.

But I think to start it, you know, one of the threads I didn't expect to hear this week, or I didn't expect to kind of come up was this idea of empathy and what the jury should do with that.

Yeah, this is a really important one, Stocky.

You and I have spoken a bit about this over the course of this series.

That the courtroom is really no place for feeling.

And unfortunately, we're humans, we're not robots, it's inevitable, but especially in a courtroom, the jury will be told this during the charge, but we've already started to hear a bit of this from the prosecutor and the defence barrister, is, you know, you need to put aside sympathy or bias.

You know, Dr.

Nanette Rogers...

SC told the jury, don't let your emotional response to these allegations cloud your judgment.

Don't feel sorry for the accused, but also don't have any bias against her.

You know, you mightn't want to believe that anyone is capable of acts like this, that they're too horrible and cold and beyond comprehension.

But Nanette Rogers, SC, said, push all that aside, that this is not the place for that.

Yeah, it was interesting, you know, as you're talking through there about what Nanette Rogers was saying, you know, she did this whole thing about a jigsaw.

We spoke about that earlier this week and also on our Thursday episode yesterday

about how there's this kind of like bigger picture they need to look at.

You know, take out the individual pieces and just look at the big picture of what the evidence points you towards.

Yeah, don't let your emotion kind of lean you one way or the other.

That's true.

And she said, you know, if you get stuck on a particular piece, just,

you know,

leave it essentially and step back and look at the bigger picture.

I mentioned the other day,

it gave me the idea of an impressionist painting, you know, up close, it's a real mess.

Apologies, Manet and Monet and all of them, but you need to step back to get an appreciation of what the pitch actually is.

Colin Mandy SC

told the jury along the same lines to do that also.

It was interesting, you know, Nanette Rogers kind of going on this whole line about, you know, you know, don't, you know, don't let the sympathy or buyers interview influence you in this.

You know, this is towards the end of her, you know, her closing address, I think, on, yeah, again, Tuesday, Tuesday morning.

And then like shortly after this, Colin Mandy SC, the defense barrister, gets up, kind of goes again straight into this whole like empathy vibe, where they should be, you know, where they should be thinking, what they should be thinking with, I think is kind of what they want the jury doing.

Colin Andy earlier in the week also made the point that, you know, you need to put aside sympathy and prejudice.

And he spoke what I think was touched on at the beginning, but hasn't really been returned to since because of the fact, as I just said, a courtroom is no place for feelings.

But he called it out earlier this week and he said three people died and one very nearly died.

And that's Ian Wilkinson, who's been there most days of this trial, Stocky.

And Colin Mandy said, it's a terrible tragedy for those people and their families and everyone who knew them.

You know, there's no escaping that.

Ian Wilkinson is a good and a kind person.

And there's every reason to believe that Don and Gail and Heather were as well.

And they were good to Erin Patterson and her family.

He called it out.

He said, there's been a lot of sadness in this courtroom.

And God, we've watched it.

There has been.

And he said, they're still grieving their losses.

And it's a natural response to be moved by that he told the jury and it's natural to feel like whoever caused their deaths must be held to account but he said this is no place for retribution nor revenge and you know you need to kind of put aside what's in your hearts because that has no bearing on the facts and i think that will form

as it does with most judges charges that I've heard in the past, that will form a cornerstone of what Justice Beal will tell the jury next week when he gives gives this charge that they need to use their heads and not their hearts.

Yeah.

Speaking of heads, I'm drawn to something that I was thinking about a lot this week around memory, a line that Dr.

Rogers brought up in her closing talking about

the memory and the recollections of the accused Aaron Patterson.

This was, I think, in relation to talking about like the Asian grocers, talking about how at times Aaron Patterson had this incredible sort of forensic memory, you know, pointing to a moment where she said a certain date was a Monday and it was corrected by Aaron Patterson saying, no, that day was a Friday,

kind of highlighting that moment, some of the other moments where Aaron Patterson was very particular about the recollections of others and what she had told people, and then saying, well, there's other times as well, though, where, you know, you'd notice that Erin Patterson has not been very specific, you know, not being able to recall certain details, particularly around the Asian grocers that she says she sourced mushrooms from in the lead-up to the lunch.

Yeah, and not remembering the shop that she bought them from, even though she could remember the packaging and things like that.

Dr.

Rogers was very clear in trying to call her out on some of those instances.

In regards to the specificity, we've spoken about a lot.

It was interesting that Erin Patterson's last words in the witness box was, you know, maybe I was being pedantic.

I do do that.

Yeah,

something that, you know, Colin Mandia C referred to in the final moments of his closings yesterday talking about, you know, how Erin Patterson had subjected herself to cross-examination.

She didn't need to

take the witness box, stand in the witness box.

She chose to,

and she answered those questions and was,

he said, very detailed in her responses, which is, I guess, another lens of which you can look at someone being pedantic.

And said stood up to very rapid fire questioning from a very good barrister, which was out of respect to Dr.

Rogers.

They've all worked very hard on this case.

And it's not something stocky that we see see in every trial.

The onus is on the prosecution, not the defence.

There's no adverse response to be gleaned if the accused doesn't take the witness stand, but Erin Patterson did.

And Colin Mandy told the jury, he says, that she got through that unscathed despite eight days in the witness box.

Dr.

Rogers might have different feelings on that, obviously, but that's what Colin Mandy told the jury.

Yeah.

One of the other themes, you know, we talked about empathy a bit.

The other theme was the idea of intent around the alleged crimes that we're talking about here.

The prosecution has not presented a motive for why Aaron Patterson would have, they say, murdered the people that came to her lunch and attempted to murder Ian Wilkinson, who was the lunch guest who survived that.

A lot of conversation around, yeah, the fact that there is no motive.

And, you know, despite that, spending a lot of the prosecution outlining a lot about the relationships of Aaron Patterson, particularly with the the lunch guests and her estranged husband, Simon Patterson, kind of pointing to some of the tension that was present there at times.

And the prosecution knows that motive is not one of the elements of murder.

It doesn't need to prove motive.

But we have heard stories that the prosecution has put forward about animosity.

within the family.

You know, we've heard about Erin Patterson feeling isolated and, you know, a bit of an outsider when she was left off the party list for Gail's 70th birthday.

We've heard about the fight that she was having with her estranged husband Simon Patterson over child support payments, the dispute when he listed himself as single on a tax return which started that whole saga and the frustration that Erin was feeling when Simon's parents Don and Gail Patterson refused to intervene.

you know, and that's what took us to the evidence from the Facebook friends, the eye roll emojis.

I want to take you to, we've spoken a bit about them, but two of the main messages,

the anger that the prosecution says Erin Patterson felt towards her mother and father-in-law.

She says in one of the messages, and this was on the 6th of December 2022, Simon's dad contacted me this morning.

He said, we can't adjudicate if we don't know both sides and Simon won't give his.

And then he said he'd pray for Erin and that elicited her response.

language warning here,

this family, I swear to fucking God, you know, and another one on that same day, nobody listens to me, at least I know they're a lost cause.

I'm sick of this shit.

I want nothing to do with them.

And we spend so much time, Rachel, on those Facebook messages.

You know, that was a big part of what the prosecution was talking about, you know, to show what they say is this.

frustration that Erin Patterson had with the extended Patterson family, with the, you know, with certainly Don and Gail Patterson that have come to the the lunch.

You know, it's Don who she's talking about in those messages.

We also heard evidence about her frustrations with her estranged husband, Simon Patterson, again, again, particularly about those kind of like the child support payments, also, you know, his, you know,

sort of disputes, I guess, around who should be paying for medical care as well for her children at certain point, or their children, I should say,

at certain points.

And so, you know, the prosecution was making, you know, kind of painting a picture of a duplicitous Erin Patterson, Patterson, you know, a woman who, you know, kind of presented herself to the Patterson family as someone who was caring and loved them and wanted to be a part of it.

And then who, you know, the other side of her, you know, her other face potentially,

you know, to these Facebook groups, to her Facebook friends, as this woman who was frustrated and didn't like them and had a frustration with, yeah, the kind of whole situation.

That's right.

But the defence, on the other hand, has said, oh,

prosecution, you've said you don't need a motive, but then you've spent so long on all these messages and so long on stories about this family imploding to try to, you know, scratch around and try to present some form of a motive so that the jury can factor that into their intent deliberations.

The defence's line was very different.

The defence put up this idea of an anti-motive.

And so, you know, asked the jury, does an absence of motive make it more likely that this was an accident?

You know, what's more likely that she wanted to kill everybody or she wanted to reconnect with everyone for the sake of the children.

And the elements within that anti-motive, as Colin Manny SC put it, and I'll quickly run you through some of them.

She put Simon Patterson on the property title for Mount Waverly and Lee and Gather long after they were separated.

She was treating their assets as joint assets.

She gave his siblings loans.

Even Simon Patterson, the defence says, said under examination in this trial, money was not a strong motivating factor for her.

We heard about the relationship closeness between Erin Patterson and Don Patterson, how Don Patterson tutored her son.

We saw a video of them doing a science experiment together.

You know.

There's all of these things that the defence was presenting to basically go, look, this woman has a motive, if anything, to keep these people alive.

Yeah, she, exactly.

Columandy SC said that there's no doubt there was a great relationship that Don and Gail had with Erin and Simon's children.

There's no doubt Erin was devoted to her children.

So why would she take active, loving grandparents away from the children?

When the prosecution was presenting its case

early in the week, I guess not case, it's been presenting its case for eight weeks now, when it was kind of

running through its closings, Dr.

Rogers SC,

one of the moments that has stuck with me was the way that Dr.

Rogers spelt out the timelines following the lunch.

We've heard so much about the medical states of all of the people who attended the lunch, who got sick, when, how sick they got.

I've seen records from people.

We've heard, you know, there were dozens and dozens of medical professionals that came before the court and gave evidence.

And as we were talking about at the start of this episode, this is the moment where everything kind of gets tied up into

a much more coherent structure.

As they're working through evidence, they're not explaining why they're doing things in certain ways.

They're just presenting this stuff to the court.

And then in the closing, it's all spelt out.

And Dr.

Deanette Rogers, you know, kind of put in context the timelines of when people were getting sick.

You know, as Erin Patterson, you know, Aaron Patterson saying that she was getting sick in the afternoon following the lunch, while the other guests weren't getting sick until, you know, overnight until the following day.

You know, the following day when Erin Patterson is, you know, driving her son to a flying lesson, the other guests are being taken to hospital.

On the Monday, when Erin Patterson is taking herself to hospital, the lunch guests are being prepared to be transferred to much different hospitals, much better resource hospitals, because

their conditions were deteriorating so quickly, really putting in context the difference in their experience.

That's right.

And when Nanette Rogers, SC, was saying these examples to the jury,

I was reminded of, remember that show 24 and the split screen and things that are happening at exactly the same time?

This bit of the evidence acted as this very visceral juxtaposition for me about where people's illnesses were at.

Yeah, I could almost imagine, you know, Erin Patterson, you know, a little screen, right, of Erin Patterson driving, you know, from the hospital to prepare her house after being told that she needed to be admitted and she wasn't ready to another screen of, you know, the Wilkinsons in their hospital bed, barely able to lift their heads.

That's right.

So when she's signing the discharge form at Lee and Gather Hospital early, we're talking about 8 a.m.

Having driven herself, having driven her two children to the bus stop before that, this is at a time that Ian Wilkinson is particularly unwell.

He's not moving around that much.

Heather is shuffling back and forward to the bathroom.

And this is the Monday following the lunch.

That's right.

This is Monday, the 31st of July.

That afternoon, Don Patterson, he's critically ill in multiple organ failure.

He has a tube down his lymph pipe.

And this is at the time that Erin Patterson is being transported by ambulance to Monash Hospital.

And one of the paramedics described her as calm and chatty.

We moved to the next day.

All four lunch guests are conveyed to the Austin Hospital ICU on life support, all in varying stages but all advanced stages of multiple organ failure.

And this is the day that Erin Patterson is discharged with no clinical or biochemical evidence of amanita poisoning and no liver damage.

Yeah,

as well as the prosecution's kind of you know timeline as well.

We had Colin Mandi SC, the defence barristers, like his timeline, his explanation for why things were happening at different times.

And he pointed us to Aaron Patterson's history of binging and purging, which we heard about during her evidence,

and that she had binge eaten following the lunch.

There was an orange cake that had been left over by the guests.

And then following that, you know, sometime closer to kind of 3 p.m., 2.45 p.m.

than dinner time, she purges that, so emptying the contents of her stomach.

Colin Mandy alluding to the fact, not directly in any evidence, because we didn't see any evidence that that would reduce the toxicity of this, but saying that, you know, you could assume that that would reduce the toxicity of it, planting a seed in the jury's mind as to why Aaron Patterson may not have been as sick as the other lunch guests.

And then also talking about, you know, in the timelines, Aaron Patterson getting sick before the other guests.

Colin Mandy saying, well, look, she was preparing this mushroom duck sell.

And after she had added the other mushrooms to this, you could assume that she would have tasted that.

She would have tried that.

And, you know, therefore, potentially ingesting some of the poison, getting sick earlier than the lunch guests.

That's right.

He said that's the reason she added the dried mushrooms in the first place to balance out the flavours, to make it more flavoursome and less bland.

So, he says you'd assume that she would have tasted it after she added the dry mushrooms.

But we should say that we haven't heard any evidence from Aaron Patterson directly that she did taste the duck's dirt.

We heard that she tasted it before, but she didn't say that she had tasted it after that point.

That's right.

And the other thing that we didn't hear was from experts on how soon that would have to happen to affect the absorption rate.

But Colin Mandy, SC, said to the jury, you know, obviously if you've thrown up after a lunch, that will affect to some extent the absorption.

But as I said, we didn't hear from any experts on that.

We did hear from Dimitri Derostomoulos from the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine that sometimes people can have the same meal and have differing severity in the symptoms, that one person might have grade one, which was gastrointestinal issues, and other people might have very significant worse grade

effects on your liver and your kidneys and things like that.

Yeah, and that's something that Colin Mandy, we spoke about this in our episode on Thursday, Colin Mandy making the point that, you know, some of these questions weren't asked to some of the witnesses who gave evidence.

You know, interesting that, you know, this evidence was presented by Aaron Patterson after these people had given evidence earlier in the trial.

This wasn't anything that the prosecution had been aware of at that point.

Something that the prosecution made another kind of big point of covering was the way that Aaron Patterson acted following the lunch, kind of painting a picture of someone who was trying to cover her tracks basically.

You know, saying that, you know, when she got to the hospital on the Monday following the lunch, you know, death camp mushrooms were mentioned to her quite early on.

And the prosecution says this is the moment that she realized that her ploy had been uncovered, that her plan had been been uncovered.

And at that point, she started trying to make plans to cover her tracks, basically.

So, you know, they're saying that this involves the dumping of the dehydrator, which she did on the Wednesday, I think, following the lunch after she was released from hospital.

It involves some of the lies that she told people around, you know, the source or not following, not foraging for mushrooms at that time, not saying that potentially there were death cat mushrooms in that meal, once she says that she realized when she was in hospital that, you know, that could have happened.

And then also the way she has um presented her phones you know there's we've heard about a couple of phones in here particularly phone a um which is the what the prosecution says is the phone that aaron patterson was using in the the year kind of or the eight months leading up to the lunch um a phone that was never recovered a phone that when the police came to her house to kind of get from her she gave them a separate phone a phone that's called phone b a dummy phone the prosecution calls it so i won't go into the intricate detail of all the phones and all the sims but we've heard a lot about them.

We've seen very detailed spreadsheet of them.

But essentially, you're right.

Phone A, they're saying the Samsung Galaxy was the one she'd been using for most of that year, that it was active from February, and that phone has never been recovered.

It wasn't found when police did a search warrant on the 5th of August, which is a Saturday after the lunch.

The prosecution says that she instead gave them phone B,

which was a dummy phone, it says, and that it only had three calls listed on that phone, and they were the three calls that she made when she was given time to call a lawyer during the execution of that search warrant.

So that's phone B with a completely different SIM card in that.

If you want to know where the SIM card from phone A went, the prosecution says that

that Samsung Galaxy phone was disconnected from the network.

at exactly the same time that the search warrant was being executed and that at some stage between that disconnection of the network and the next morning, that SIM card goes into phone C, which is a Nokia, and that Nokia phone has never been found either.

So phone A wasn't found, the SIM card wasn't found, and phone C, the Nokia wasn't found.

We heard this week when Dr.

Annette Rogers SC was talking through phone A.

Phone A, Dr.

Annette Rogers says, the prosecution says phone A could be what Erin Patterson has used to look up the sightings of death cat mushrooms and our naturalist around the area that she lives, potentially before, and they say allegedly before going to those sites where they were spotted.

As well as that, we heard in Dr.

Anette Rogers' closing that a second search warrant executed on Aaron Patterson's house in November was basically solely to try and recover phone A.

Yes, and the defence provided a photo of, a still photo of a video search that was done when the first warrant was executed on the 5th of August.

And there's a black rectangular object on a windowsill that the defence has said to the jury, well, they just missed it.

That's phone A.

That's a phone case.

You know, you can, a black phone case.

So, we heard more about that this week.

The defence has made the point that why would you go to all the effort of setting up phone B as a dummy phone if you're Aaron Patterson?

If you don't know that a search warrant is going to be executed on the Saturday, why would you set up phone B during the week?

Why would you do factory resets and start up this new phone?

Phone A, Columandy S C, says, that's the crucial phone.

That's been her usual phone the whole year.

So

if you're trying to escape blame, you know, why not factory reset that one and hand that one to police?

Or why not get rid of it completely?

So that was a big point of yesterday's docie.

Columandi SC said to the jury, if the lunch was this cold calculated murder that the Crown says Erin committed, that she'd allegedly planned since the 28th of April and had incriminating searches on her phone, this phone would have either been long gone by the time police knocked on her door on that Saturday or it would have been factory reset.

Yeah.

Rach, as we've had these, you know, the closing statements from the defence and the prosecution laid out this week, and I would encourage you, if you're listening to this and you're keen for some more detail on how, you know, what was presented, what was talked about, go and check out some of our episodes from this week because we go through each one in a lot of detail.

Dr.

Nett Rogers on Monday and Tuesday, spelling out a huge huge amount of detail about what they say has happened.

Colin Mandy on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday this week

presenting the defence's case as to what's happened and I'd recommend you go back and have a listen to them and kind of review the stories and think about the evidence you've heard and what you think has happened in the cases as the jury will be doing from next week.

But Rachel what I'm interested in, you've been in the courtroom a number of times this week.

As all this is being presented, as Aaron Patterson is being told by two different sides what she's done over the course of the

leading up to the lunch during the lunch following this lunch that resulted in the deaths of three people

how has she been yeah very different demeanor Stocky as you'd expect so when she's hearing the closing of her lawyer Colin Mandy S.C.

at times she became quite upset when certain stories about her children were told or you know the eventual fate of her in-laws moments like that but when dr nanette rogers was giving her closing it was a very different different demeanor.

Erin was taking her glasses on and off as certain bits of evidence were raised and making notes at various points.

Yeah.

I was in the courtroom yesterday.

Yeah, Thursday.

And, you know, we've described the layout of this courtroom a couple of times.

You've got the judge sitting at the front of the room, you know, kind of bar table where the lawyers sit right in the middle.

And then behind them are the seats that the public sit in.

And then on the side of the wall, on the side of the room, there's a little bench just inside the door.

And I was sitting on the bench, and I was quite close to Ian Wilkinson.

So Ian Wilkinson, as I mentioned, is the surviving lunch guest.

And, you know, when I'm sitting in the media room and we can see

the screen on the wall, it sort of points at the bar table.

And Ian Wilkinson's often behind that as well.

So I had quite a clear view of him most of this week.

And he's been at the court almost every day.

I noticed yesterday that he had someone sitting next to him, had their arm around his.

And yeah, sitting close to him yesterday as well when I went into the courtroom,

you know, just sort of kind of like stealing himself through the final moments of this trial.

It's been a long time.

He's been coming in, you know, I think ever since he gave evidence in that first or second week.

Yeah, and I mean, he really has lived and breathed not just the tragedy of the lunch, has he, Stocky, but the aftermath and the trial and the search for answers for all of them.

Yeah.

Rach.

We've got coming up next week the judge's directions.

This is something that we've heard both the prosecution and defence refer to as they've been giving their closing statements.

As they're giving their closing statements, they're referring to all this evidence that the jury has been presented with over the last eight weeks or so.

And basically saying at moments, well, look, you know, this is this bit of evidence.

The judge will tell you what weight to put on that when he gives his charge.

And that's where we're getting to Tuesday next week, right?

He will.

He'll steer them on various issues of law, on the principles of those laws, what weight to give certain evidence.

He'll talk through and summarize the main evidence and the arguments, and then they'll be off on deliberations.

Thank you, Rach.

We are still getting so many emails from you.

We really love to hear from people that are listening to and enjoying Mushroom Case Daily.

You can email us mushroomcased daily at abc.net.au.

And we've had a few questions, Rachel, I want to run through now.

I want to start with one from Josh.

Josh says, hi, Rachel and Stocky.

First, many thanks for your work producing such a a gripping and engaging podcast and an honorable mention to Christian for his work on the pod previously.

It's been the perfect mood setter for my pre-dawn dog walks on these chilly Adelaide mornings.

His question is, what are your plans for this podcast once the jury retire to deliberate their verdict?

With no court proceedings to report on, will we be left in suspense until the verdict has been reached and you can unpack the next steps in the process?

Rachel, I jump onto this one because we have a few episodes we're going to be looking at through that period.

You know, basically talking you through how the jury will be, what they'll be doing through that process, also giving you insight into the way that we've been making the pod through here, working on a few things as well around this.

So there'll still be episodes in your feed.

We do not know how long the jury will be out.

Actually leads us very nicely into our next question, Rach.

This is from Joe.

Joe says, hello, Rachel and Stocky.

Greetings from the Shetland Islands.

Really enjoying listening to your excellent coverage of this fantastic case.

My friends and I discuss it daily.

And their question is, is there a time limit on how long the jury can deliberate before the judge will intervene so i've been to the shetland islands it's beautiful freezing but beautiful had lovely whiskey there uh i can't tell you i'm sorry and i know that i sound like broken record but because the jury hasn't heard this i can't tell you this so they will be given certain instructions by the judge and if they have questions they can come back as they're deliberating with those questions he can steer them in a certain way no doubt he might give them an idea about timelines and things like that but i can't say right now i'm sorry there was a point i thought he said, you take as long as you need.

And I,

look, I'll be honest.

I did, yeah.

I didn't love that.

But, you know,

they will take the time that they need to make the decision.

And we will be here in Morwell waiting for that so we can bring you the news of a verdict.

He is a very patient man, Justice Speal.

Justice Spiel is a very patient man.

And yeah, we'll have you the news and an episode when the verdict is delivered.

hanging out in your feed.

Final question for not just the Rach, but for the week is from Kath.

Greetings from an Aussie listener living in the centre of Ireland.

I'm very much enjoying your podcast as you unpack each day of this trial.

As you're aware, this case has attracted a lot of international interest.

Many of my Irish friends are as intrigued as to why Australia is so fascinated by this case.

Any thoughts?

A lot of thoughts on that, Kath.

I've had this question so many times from so many people.

I can't go anywhere.

I can't talk to people at the cafe.

I can't go to family gatherings anymore.

This is all anyone wants to talk about.

And I think it's because it's come from something

so

normal and mundane.

You know, what should have been a wholesome family lunch, people catching up for lunch on a Saturday afternoon.

I think it's that.

I think it's the elements, the ingredients, shall we say, of this case, the mushrooms and the nature of that.

It's also, I guess, so benign.

That's what I mean, a mundane lunch, you know, that's led to this.

And then people always are fascinated about human behavior so when they're looking at Erin Patterson and wondering about intent and did she and didn't she we see this with most of the stories that we cover stocky people want to know what drives people what makes them tick what makes them act in a certain way and I think that feeds into a lot of

interest shall we say in this case

Thank you Rach.

Thank you Kath.

I want to do a quick wrap around the grounds.

We've got already heard from Kath in Ireland.

We've got Joe on the Shetland Islands.

I'm going to go through with some in the UK.

Rach, we've got Catherine in London, Vera in Newcastle, Liv from Birmingham, Georgina in Chester, Harry in Coventry.

Across the ditch, we've got Joe in Wellington, Vanessa in Wellington, and Emma from Nelson.

We've also got Kiwi Jessica on a holiday in Shiga, Japan.

Jason is listening from Sapporo.

Zoe from Einsiedeln in Switzerland.

Jackie from Lake Maggiore in Italy.

I googled Lake Maggiore in Italy

when Jackie got in touch.

And my God,

beautiful part of the world.

Stunning.

We wish we were there.

Have a spritz for us, please, Jackie.

I'm having a pretty good time, but you know, maybe when we finish up the trial.

Laura and our Aussie friend Alex are listening from Portland and Maine in the US.

Anna from Kansas City, Andrea from Arizona in the USA.

And Anna on holiday in Sri Lanka.

Thank you so much for all of your emails and just all of your lovely lovely messages.

You can get in touch mushroomcase daily at abc.net.au.

Justice Beale has very kindly given us Monday off next week.

Well, I shouldn't say us.

He's given the jury Monday off and the lawyers Monday off.

So it's important we're fresh too.

Thank you, Justice Beale.

Oh, look, I don't think we're front of mind.

But we will be back in your feed on Tuesday with an episode on the judge's directions, which I'm very excited about.

I've never experienced before.

It's going to be an entirely new experience for me.

So looking forward to absorbing all of that and then appearing in your podcast feed shortly after to relay what has been absorbed by my brain over the course of the day.

I would highly recommend jumping onto the ABC Listen app

to listen to Mushroom Case Daily as you weave your way into not a

legitimate long weekend, but a long weekend away from Mushroom Case Daily.

I would encourage you firstly to go and have a listen back to some of the episodes we've produced over the last week.

It'll give you a really clear idea of the prosecution and the defense's closing arguments.

Also, we've got these weekly wraps that we've done for every week of the trial.

So, if you don't feel like jumping in and listening to 40-odd episodes of Mushroom Case Daily, you can just listen to eight, and that will bring you up to speed on the broad themes we've heard over this time.

And then, once you've finished that, I would recommend you jump into Trace.

It's another wonderful podcast produced by Mushroom Case Daily's very own Rachel Brown.

So, some weekend listening for you there.

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.

A huge thanks to our True Crime colleagues, our commissioning executive producer Tim Roxborough, and supervising producer Yasmin Parry.

Also, shout out to senior lawyer, our legal queen, Jasmine Sims, for her legal advice every single day, and to the Victorian newsroom and audio studios manager, Eric George.

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

Hi, Jules and Jez here.

And every week on Not Stupid, we unpack the news of the week.

From the stuff that matters to the stories you're obsessed with.

My friend Lucy has got a moose obsession and she's really got me right onto it.

So you can see on Reddit, there's always like...

How does someone develop a moose obsession?

How does one develop anything in life?

You can find Not Stupid on the ABC Listen Up.