Key moments in the case so far: Our Friday wrap

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Don't be deceived by a quiet day in the courtroom.

Things are about to ramp up in this epic triple murder trial.

I'm the ABC's court reporter Christian Silver.

I'm investigative reporter Rachel Brown.

And I'm Stephen Stockwell.

It is Friday the 30th of May and we've just finished the fifth week of Erin Patterson's murder 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's happening.

I love them.

We have now been in Morewell covering this trial for over a month.

We started out here in autumn.

We have now wound our way into winter as the trial has progressed.

And as the changing of the seasons comes, as does a changing of the hosts, and I am very excited to welcome Rachel Brown, one of the ABC's investigative reporters, to joining us on the pod.

Rach, everyone will know your voice so well by now, but it's wonderful to have you joining us for a full episode before you step into into Christian's shoes and seat from next week.

Thanks, Docie.

Very excited to join this, especially at the very pointy end.

Yeah, you've timed it incredibly well.

But before we get into the episode for today, Christian, can you hit us with the headlines?

Take us through what we saw in court.

The lead detective on the case, Stephen Eppingstall, was back in the witness box for, I think it's his fourth day now.

He was taken by the defence to more of Erin Patterson's phone records.

These included some messages that we hadn't hadn't seen before between her and the extended Patterson family.

These messages showed a different side to Erin and a fondness that appeared to exist between Miss Patterson and her relatives.

Thank you, Christian.

We started today with Justice Christopher Beale, the judge who's presiding over this case, thanking the jury for their patience.

There were some legal discussions this morning as we get into the final witness, the informant, Stephen Effenstahl.

And one of the things, as you mentioned in your daily wrap, that was kind of a feature of today were these extra messages that we saw from Erin.

Not just the messages.

We got into some of the phone activity on the phone, which has been dubbed Phone B.

And we can go into this and explain it a little bit more.

But I think it was kind of continuing on from a theme from yesterday where the defence was producing messages from Erin Patterson's devices, which paint her in a different light to what the prosecution had done.

Because originally some of the messages we saw from Erin Patterson's devices, the ones that were presented by the prosecutions, seemed to paint this like, you know, just not the most collegiate of family relationships between Erin Patterson and her in-laws.

The messages that the prosecution took the jury to

were messages where Erin was talking to her friends and complaining, allegedly, about the Patterson family.

And that's what the prosecution highlighted.

We remember some of the language that was used in those messages.

But the defense was keen to highlight another set of messages, and these are some of the group chat conversations.

So this is a chat that involves Erin Patterson, Simon Patterson, her estranged husband.

He's a member of the group.

You've got Don and Gail Patterson as well.

And we didn't see all of their messages.

A lot of it kind of fairly mundane, things about picking up kids' books.

And

we saw an exchange between Erin and Don talking about Erin's son and how Don has offered to give him some tutoring.

And

Erin's very appreciative of that and says, you know, the boy would love this.

And what the defense was showing was the sort of positive relations that Erin was having with her relatives.

We can go to some of the messages, and these are in the two years before the lunch, or even coming up actually quite close to the lunch.

There's a message about how

Erin's son has got to go in for a surgery and then there's some well-wishes from the grandparents and then some messages about,

yeah, I mentioned the tutoring.

Also, we have messages where Erin Patterson wishes.

Gail Patterson a happy Mother's Day.

And let's read the messages here.

Gail Patterson writes to Erin on the 8th of May 2022.

Happy Mother's Day, Erin.

May God bless you.

Love Don and Gail.

And the court was shown Erin's reply and it said, thanks, Gail.

Happy Mother's Day to the best mum-in-law anyone could ask for.

Kiss, kiss, hug, hug.

And then Gail writes back, very kind of you.

Kiss, hug.

So it's showing the defense trying to remind the jury that there have been moments when Erin and her in-laws have gotten along quite well.

Yeah, that's quite a sweet message.

And like the phones have been a key part of this week.

They continue to be a big part of today.

I mean, we heard earlier in the week about,

you know, the phones that were handed over to police, a phone that

the prosecution alleges wasn't Erin Patterson's primary phone being given to police during a search, other phones that weren't recovered.

But we learned a bit more about some of these phones today.

So the allegation that police are making is that essentially Erin Patterson gave them a dummy phone with a SIM card that had barely been used for proper phone activity.

So the court was taken to some records about this phone, which has been dubbed Phone B.

It's a Samsung phone.

And we saw some of the text messages that this phone received

a few days after the lunch has taken place.

And these are messages that are indicative of a phone that's just being set up.

because you know when you go to set up your new accounts for various things you've got the uh is it the two-factor authentication or whatever that thing where you get an SMS and you've got to enter a code so it appears that this phone has received a bunch of these from places that look like myGov, Centrelink.

There was a place called Hot Dough, and

this was again a slightly odd moment in court.

And Stephen Eppingstall, the informant, the lead detective on the case, was asked by Colin Mandy,

hot dough, is that hot dock?

And hot dock is a,

for people who aren't familiar with it, kind of like an online doctor's, you can make like medical bookings and things like that through hot dock.

But the thing on the call charge record said hot dough and Stephen Eppingstall replied, well, could be hot donut.

And he said apps are named.

some funny things, but I think he did concede it's probably hot dock.

Probably not doing two-factor authentication for hot donuts probably not there were other entries for things like PTV which is a public transport system

PayPal and Apple

apparently some Telstra ones Amazon these kinds of things and and Stephen Eppingstall was asked is this consistent with somebody who's activating a new phone and he says yes it appears to be

but then all of this is kind of leading to factory resets And as we've said earlier in this podcast, that this is the phone that police say was given to them, but it was factory reset a number of times in the week after the lunch.

So this phone is set up sort of by the text messages looking like the 3rd and 4th of August.

Police allege it was factory reset on the 5th of August.

when the police were actually in Erin's house and then factory reset one more time while the phone is allegedly in the custody of police.

So Colin Mandy, the defense barrister, asked Mr.

Eppingstall

if that phone was wiped

after it was set up

around the 3rd and the 4th of August,

you know, I think the point he was trying to get to is how much would you have lost?

And Stephen Eppingstall, while not a phone expert, appeared to concede, well, you would just lose what has been put onto the phone in that period between the last resets.

So, in this case, it would just be a couple of days.

If you want to hear a bit more about some of those resets, what the police found in Aaron Patterson's home, check out our episodes from this week, particularly Wednesdays and Thursdays' episodes.

That'll bring you up to speed.

This week, as well, we heard a lot about the searching of Asian grocers in Melbourne.

We heard from the prosecution that Erin Patterson told them that she had bought mushrooms from an Asian grocer and they were used in the meal.

And when people died after eating that meal, there were fears for

where those mushrooms might have come from.

And so a search of Asian grocers was done.

We heard from Sally Ann Atkinson, who's from the Victorian Health Department in Public Health, trying to track that down.

And we got the results of that investigation.

And Rach, it was really interesting kind of hearing the links that they went to to try and track down

the source of these mushrooms.

Yeah, a pretty frantic search through Melbourne suburbs like Oakley, Mount Waverly to try to track the store that they thought Erin is saying that she bought them from.

And

if you remember at the time, there was fear.

about mushrooms in the community, you know, and sales went down.

And so there was a very concerted effort by the health department to figure out what store she's talking about.

We need to get there to check if it was an isolated incident or not.

Yeah, and there was a point where,

you know, there was a point between Mount Waverly and Glen Waverly.

I've forgotten which one they visited but one of them they didn't one of them they did

and there were questions asked oh should we go to the suburb that we haven't gone to

and Rach Sally Ann Atkinson suggested they should you know go to the suburb that's like the one that I've forgotten

but they never did.

Yeah so they checked Mount Waverly.

There we go thank you.

Which is what they thought was initially said.

And then at the end after another conversation with Erin Patterson she said have you checked Glen Waverley?

And so Sally Ann Atkinson from the health department said she passed that information on.

But I also remember from the inspector who was doing, you know, the foraging of the neighbourhood, shall we say,

it was put to him, did you check Glen Waverley?

And he said, no, that was never suggested to me.

And so I wrapped up my investigation.

So when I heard that, I thought, well, that message has been lost somewhere along the line.

I'm not sure where.

Yeah, yeah.

As someone who grew up in Glen Waverly, nothing grates you more than when someone confuses your your suburb for Mount Waverly.

Just putting that out there.

It's been a huge week in this trial.

You know, we were talking last week, a lot of technical evidence.

This week, yeah, we were talking about the, you know, the SIM cards, the searches, all of this.

Christian, what is the moment from this week that

has sort of stuck with you in your mind?

Stocky, for me, it's Erin Patterson's police interview.

getting to see that footage for the first time.

And as we mentioned, you know, the jury has seen Erin Patterson sitting in the dock for five weeks now.

But given the way the legal system works, they've not heard from her, which is completely normal.

But this was the first time they get to really see and hear Erin for an extended period.

They get to look at things like the body language, the eye contact, just the way she answers questions.

And this is an interview one week after the lunch, and it's at a time when Heather Wilkinson and Gail Patterson have died.

and Don is slipping very close to death and obviously Ian Wilkinson would be very sick as well.

And what we saw in that police interview, among many things, but to me what I think I'll remember is we saw Erin Patterson's lies

and these were admitted lies.

It's lies that the defense concedes that she made.

So you're talking about the lie about the food dehydrator.

So Erin Patterson tells police a week after the lunch that she doesn't own a food dehydrator, but concedes she has a manual for one in her kitchen.

And

then she also says that she's never foraged for mushrooms before and she shakes her head very definitively.

And we know both of those things are lies.

We know the dehydrator was something Erin Patterson owned because we saw the footage of Erin dumping it at the local landfill.

So the defence concedes that and the defence also concedes that she has foraged for mushrooms before.

Colin Mandy said so in his openings to the jury at the very beginning of the trial.

Yeah, Rach, what has been sticking in your mind after the last five days of evidence?

Same for me, Erin's police interview but for different reasons.

It was interesting to hear her talk at length for the first time.

We've only heard little bits and pieces.

But yeah, in a different way for me, it was interesting the section where she was talking about her in-laws, because you've got to remember during this trial, we've heard from her Facebook friends, we've heard that the language, quite confrontational language, frustration from Erin that Don and Gail refused to adjudicate a childcare support payment.

issue.

So we saw all of that.

And as we learned this week, we've only seen very selected messages that we didn't see the responses from the friends that came back that sparked more messages from her explaining it further.

So we've only seen that kind of vein that she was frustrated with them at the end of 2022.

But it was interesting in this police interview, the bit that stuck with me was the first time we heard from her mouth her talking about her relationship.

And she was saying things like, my parents, both my parents are gone, my grandparents are gone, so this was the only family that I've got, the only grandparents that my kids had, you know, and they were important to me.

And she said to the detective, you know, Simon hated that I had that relationship, but I loved them.

And there's nothing that he's ever done to me that will change that.

And that has stuck in my mind for this week as we're going into the pointy end when the jury will have to be thinking about

intent and motive and issues like that.

Even though I should remind listeners, at the very beginning, the prosecution did say that they won't be offering up any motive in this trial.

The moment that I have found myself thinking about quite a lot, actually, we heard about the police searches of Aaron Patterson's home.

And the moment that I come back to is the very start of that police search, where they go to Aaron Patterson's door and they knock on the door, and they say they're from the homicide squad, and they say, we're here because two people have died.

And Erin says, who died?

She's not aware.

that Heather Wilkinson and Gail Patterson have passed away.

No one from the family has told her at that point.

And that to me is just seems like such a hard thing to have to deal with in a moment like that.

That would be the first you're hearing of it, the police are at your house.

they are then searching your house, and you're sitting at a kitchen table while they go through your property in that moment.

So, that's something I've thought about a bit.

Again, hearing about that, you know, it's something that comes up in the police interview as well.

They talked about it briefly in that.

So, yeah, that's the thing that I think has just stuck with me from this moment as well.

And the other thing from that police search that I think I'm going to remember is the two photos that were shown to the court relating to mobile phones.

And this is something that the jury will have to decide exactly what it means.

And one was a picture of what the police allege is a phone that Erin Patterson was using on the 31st of July.

So two days after the lunch.

It's been stripped from some CCTV footage from the Lee and Gather Hospital.

And you can see what appears to be a phone in a phone case.

And then you've got

another

picture.

shown to the jury from

the Saturday, so one week after the lunch, where Erin is handing over a phone to a police officer and

prosecutor Jane Warren said it will be up to the jury to decide whether those two phone cases are the same phone cases and implying, is that the same phone?

That's up to the jury.

I just thought that was a

good visual.

I just

find visual things stick in my mind and that was one of them.

Yeah, same for me as well.

And I think the moment, that moment in particular where there's there's this sort of like, you know, deferral almost to the jury, it has happened in a number of occasions.

And I find that kind of like, oh, this is a matter for the jury.

And they sort of like swing it over

in a way that's very obvious for them to kind of make a decision of, but is still unspoken.

I found that very interesting as we've seen that a few times through this trial.

And as this trial progresses, we are sitting with the final prosecution witness right now.

And I want to take this opportunity while I've still got you, Christian, here, and I've got Rach, you on the pod as well, to kind of wrap through the prosecution's case to this moment because we're not going to get really an opportunity to do this again on the pod before we start moving into closings and the like so

Rach I want to hit some of the kind of key moments of the prosecution case with you and I think one of the ones that came out to us really early were the different coloured plates that this lunch was served on at Aaron Patterson's house in late July 2023.

Yeah and as Christian said with the pink phone case, visual things do stick with people and in Ian Wilkinson's mind he remembers from the lunch four grey plates that he and his wife and Don and Gail ate from.

And he remembers an orangey, tanny, smaller, separate plate that he remembers Erin Patterson eating from.

And much has been made about these plates, as you know.

And we were shown photos during the week of plates in Erin Patterson's drawer, but they had a red surface.

The plates are important in this situation because we're talking about individual servings of Beef Wellington with poisonous mushrooms in that meal.

And so what did we hear?

I mean, I guess

what I'm interested in is how was that challenged?

How was that recollection from Ian Wilkinson challenged?

Yeah, it's all about differentiation, isn't it?

So four grey plates went to four people that got incredibly sick and three of them died.

And

Ian remembers Erin eating from a different plate.

And then Erin didn't get as sick as these four people.

That's the issue here.

But then from a defence point of view, when the defence was questioning Ian Wilkinson, though, they were really trying to test his memory as to whether there was an orange plate.

And Ian also clearly described the other four plates as being grey and uniform.

And the defence was also asking him, are you sure they were uniform?

Could they have been mismatched?

And do you remember from Simon Patterson's evidence very early, about a billion years ago, when he said that, oh, I've got a plate like that.

I've got a plate with a drawing on it that my daughter made at Kinder.

And we did see a plate with a drawing on it in photos at Aaron Patterson's house that that reminded me of Simon's comment, but that was a white plate.

So we've been hearing about lots of plates and lots of different colours.

And we haven't seen plates that match the description from Ian Wilkinson in any of the photos that police brought back from searches of Aaron Patterson's house.

That's correct.

And that was confirmed this week.

And on that whole conversation about, you know, did it or didn't happen is the Asian grocers as well that we were just talking about.

And that, Rachel, seems to be another point of contention between the defence and prosecution.

Yeah, they were scrounging around streets in Clayton, Oakley, and Mount Waverley.

Then at the end of all that investigation, we finally get a, oh, have you looked in Glen Waverley?

That message, it seems, either was passed on and nothing was done or wasn't passed on because no no Asian grocers in Glen Waverley were searched and a street name came up Kingsway in Glen Waverly that Erin Patterson mentioned are Asian grocers that she perhaps would have shopped at.

Why they weren't checked, we're not sure.

But all we know is that the defence has not backed away from that.

It's not backing away from the fact that Erin says she bought dried mushrooms sliced from an Asian grocer.

And let's just be clear where the prosecution stands on the Asian grocer thing.

The prosecution says this is a complete lie.

This Asian grocer thing is nonsense.

It's a complete fabrication.

It's been the prosecution position from the beginning that this is a total furfe.

And the evidence that they have pointed to is what we talked about earlier today.

The investigation into stores in this area where the council worker went to, according to the health department, no proof of death cap mushrooms being sold there.

They also also looked into the supply chains in Woolworths because that was another alleged source of mushrooms in the beef Wellington.

And we heard evidence this week that no death caps being sold by Woolworths either.

So this is a huge point of contention here because the prosecution says this Asian grocery thing is nonsense.

Yeah, and when we're speaking about mushrooms, the other thing we've heard a lot about through the trial so far are visits to the iNaturalist website, which is a website, a citizen science website, where you can look at all sorts of flora and fauna.

And in particular, the item on there that the prosecution has referred us to a number of times is Amanita Filoides, which is Death Gap Mushrooms, and visits to those pages.

And then also, in line with those visits to those pages, the prosecution alleging that a phone belonging to Aaron Patterson then traveled to those locations shortly after visiting them.

And what are the challenges to some of those visits, Rach?

Yeah, so the prosecution alleges that Erin Patterson visited Locke and Outram in April and May 2023, allegedly to source death cat mushrooms.

That's where they're going.

They're saying she looked at these posts, she found they were growing there, and so she went to these sites.

The challenge is obviously proving she was there, so that's why the prosecution has used the evidence of Dr.

Matthew Sorrell,

who has tracked her phone and found days where it hit certain towers that could potentially put her phone in these two locations?

But of course, Dr.

Sorrell has been pressed in cross-examination by Colin Mandy, you see.

Well, how can you be absolutely sure?

Maybe she was somewhere else, but it pinged off this tower.

And so we've heard, haven't we, Christian, we've heard a lot of mobile phone evidence and cell tower evidence and base station evidence.

And what it all boils down to is you can make spreadsheets, tables,

you can analyze as much data as you like, but none of it can

definitively put someone in a certain place at a certain time and tell you what they were doing.

It is not evidence that is as strong as something like CCTV, for instance.

It's interesting listening to all the challenges around evidence like the location evidence.

And then also when you have visits to certain websites on certain devices, the is around who has been using certain devices at what times and who has access to those phones, right, Rach?

Yeah, you talked about the shell game.

Was it yesterday, Stocky?

Yeah.

That to me is a perfect way of describing it because we've learned about different SIM numbers, different handsets and sims that have gone into different handsets on certain days and factory resets of certain phones.

Like my brain was exploiting when we were trying to work out a flowchart.

And it's interesting who you ask.

You know, the prosecution might say, well, in the days after the fatal lunch, Aaron Patterson switching SIM cards into other phones, the prosecution would allege is suspicious.

But we're currently at the moment in the middle of Colin Mandy SC's cross-examination where he will be testing that.

Testing the times, testing the days, testing what else might have been going on with those phones that might suggest a different reason for that behaviour.

It's not just the use of those phones in certain times, though.

It's also things that are missing, according to the police.

Let's not go through the exercise of trying to remember which phones which, but at the end of the day, what's missing, according to the police, is the primary phone dubbed Phone A.

Police say they haven't recovered that.

Police also said they haven't recovered the SIM card, which they believe was Erin's primary SIM card, which ended up in a different phone, according to the police.

And when police went to Erin Patterson's house in November November 2023, some three months after the lunch, they say they didn't recover

what was then her primary phone at that time either, a Nokia.

So you've got two missing phones and a SIM card.

Yeah, but to counter that, we saw photos yesterday of that search in August 2023 and Colin Mandy picking out

you know, something black on a windowsill and he said to Detective Eppenstall, do you think that's a phone?

Did you take that?

And he said, oh,

I don't know.

And no, we didn't take it.

So I think those kind of things will be interrogated to come.

And I mean, the reason that this trial is underway is because of the deaths of three people and a fourth who got incredibly sick.

And we've heard so much about their medical care,

what happened, you know, as doctors were trying to save their lives,

but also about Erin's medical care as well, right, Christian?

The medical evidence felt like it went for a whole week and was a lot of really,

really technical stuff.

But I think what I remember quite clearly is seeing the footage of Erin Patterson arriving at the Lee and Gather Hospital two days after the lunch has taken place.

And by this point, the other four lunch guests are all in hospital, various hospitals at that time.

They're all getting quite sick.

And you see the footage of Erin Patterson turning up at the hospital and then leaving the hospital really quickly, discharging herself against medical advice, and then coming back two hours later.

And we heard all about how she was treated and how she was tested and all the concerns that the doctors had for her and how allegedly Erin was kind of...

not interested in hearing it and reluctant to receive treatment and reluctant for her kids to also get treatment despite fears that they may have ingested a deadly toxin that could kill them.

And eventually, when we step through all of the medical records and all of the testing, we get to this final conclusion where Erin Patterson's discharged within a couple of days, released, free to go home.

And the others just keep getting worse and worse and worse.

And just seeing the difference between one set of people and the other person.

And of course, the defence will say, well, Erin was sick.

She just wasn't as sick.

Both her children testified in video statements that they spoke to their mum on that weekend and Erin said she'd been having diarrhea since the Saturday night.

We've heard evidence that bodies, different bodies metabolise toxins in different ways.

So if you're younger, if you're heavier, you know, if you've had pre-existing health conditions, all of those contribute to how you're going to metabolise certain toxins.

So we've heard a lot about that as well.

Did Erin eat her whole meal?

She says she was chatting for most of it.

She has said she had very distressing news to tell her in-laws, which was the news about cancer.

So all of that could have contributed to her potentially not eating as much, the defense says, or

how it affected her body.

Yeah, and as we find our way to the end of the prosecution case, we have heard from 50 plus witnesses at this point.

It has been a huge number of people who have appeared in court, stood in the witness box to give evidence in this trial.

And these, as well as being people who are providing evidence in a case, are also individuals.

They are people in their own right.

They have their quirks and their own ways of expressing themselves.

And Rach, I'm wondering who of the witnesses we've seen

in the witness box have stood out to you or that

you find yourself thinking back to?

When you say quirks, that just made me think of Christine Mackenzie and her taking photos of mushrooms because they're beautiful, you know, and her love of fungus.

The Facebook mates that all kind of gathered around Erin Patterson were sharing stories about their kids and their families, their lives.

And then this week, Stephen Eppenstall, the informant, calling everyone sir and ma'am.

Very reverent.

Yeah.

Christian, what about yourself?

For me, I think it's Ian Wilkinson.

I think with this trial, there's only two people who were at this lunch who are still alive.

It's Erin Patterson and it's Ian Wilkinson.

And that's why

I'm really honed in on Ian Wilkinson.

Also, the fact that he has been coming to court.

He has been there for about half of this trial, hearing all the evidence and absorbing it.

Some of it, really technical stuff about, you know, his health conditions, but then also other things that must be incredibly emotional hearing about his wife and others who he loved who passed away at that lunch.

So

I think seeing him in the court is a constant reminder that this all comes back to this lunch.

And hearing a doctor say about him, we thought he was going to die.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think that kind of human side of it for me

was really brought back to it by the video interviews we saw with Aaron Patterson's children.

You know, seeing people in the witness box, the way that the conversations happen in the courtroom are really cold and unemotional.

And those two interviews were done in a very different way.

They were done at a police station, in a room that's just done for interviews, set up for interviews with children.

And there was just a different amount of emotion and there was a vulnerability, I think, that we saw from them as well that we haven't seen

in the courtroom as much with the video and the people who were standing physically in the witness box.

And the other person is Tom May, funky Tom.

The man, as he was called, to the witness box,

we had to wait because he had gone for a walk outside, potentially a forage, we don't know.

But just as someone who has just kind of, you know, captured my imagination somewhat, just such a personable person, such a personable man to have in that witness box giving evidence.

And yeah, that's one of the kind of lighter moments, I suppose, of what we've seen so far.

Christian, do you have a moment that has brought a smile to your face?

Well, I think with people like Tom May, it's the infectious enthusiasm they have for what we consider to be a niche topic, but to them that's their whole life so anyway i um i agree with you tom may very memorable person from this trial it is incredibly serious a triple murder trial it's no laughing matter but when you're locked in a room with 50 odd people for six weeks

There are jokes that do come out.

Maybe it's a bit of the gallows humor.

I don't know, but there are lighter moments.

And that is why sometimes OurPod has lighter moments too.

We think think that we reflect what's going on in the courtroom as well.

So, yeah, thinking about a couple, probably Ian Wilkinson sitting in his chair in the witness box and how the gas in the chair kept going and he would slide down and they'd have to fix that.

That was slightly humorous to me.

And Christopher Beale, the judge in this trial, saying, Don't worry, we do it to all the witnesses, getting

a big laugh in the courtroom.

Yep, yep.

I think back to another thing that Justice Bill said

when he sometimes asks questions for the benefit of the jury,

what is software was a question that I quite liked.

Yeah, and I was surprised with the interactivity of the jury, shall we say.

I've never seen it before.

You know, sometimes they

speak back, not rudely, to the judge, but another time we were going through a list of columns and rows of numbers and there was a question about what the last

row meant.

And one juror piped up, oh, I know what it is.

I don't think that's the point, but thanks for playing.

You know, I think it speaks to Justice Christopher Beale going out of his way to make the jury feel really comfortable in a position where they feel like they can ask questions.

Although, a funny moment this week when the jury went out for a break, and when they came back in, they left one of their own in the jury room, locked him out.

Only 13 came back.

That's all right.

He was allowed in in the end, So we got there.

Christian Rach, thanks for a wonderful pod.

Today, we're going to run through a few questions.

Mushroomcase Daily at abc.net.au is where you can get to us.

But before we do, I want to just give a quick shout out to Ollie, who got in touch with our executive producer, Claire Rawlinson, this week, to let her know that he is sitting at home refreshing his podcast app, waiting for our episodes to drop in the evening.

I didn't realize it was out already on the ABC Listen app.

The ABC Listen app, you can catch episodes of Mushroom Case Daily about half an hour before they pop up on your other podcast services.

So jump on to your relevant app store, grab yourself the ABC Listen app and hit follow on Mushroom Case Daily.

So you get us as soon as we are out in the World Wide Web.

Today, just a couple of questions.

been a big episode, so I won't go too long.

But first up, a question here from Steph and Hannah, listening from Mombulk.

Love the pod.

Thank you, Steph.

Thank you, Hanna.

Their question is around some of the things we were talking about today with the mobile phone resets.

It's something that we talked about a lot this week.

Their question is, can the prosecution prove it was Erin that performed the phone factory resets?

Well, they're certainly trying.

We'll hear more about that next week, I assume.

But I guess it will be looking at things like

access to the phone at certain times, whether it was only her that had access.

Those are generally the types of things that pops up in trials, but it will be one of those ones that will be bounced to the jury and they will have to decide,

and they will have to decide that whether she was the only person that could have performed those factory resets.

Thank you, Rach.

Thank you, Steph and Hannah.

And today's entry in more of a statement, this is an email from Evan.

He says, Hey, Mushroom Case Daily, I heard Christian express shock during Thursday's pod at hearing a listener wanted to drive three hours to be in the courtroom.

A couple of weeks ago, I drove from Sydney to Morwell nine and a half hours to sit in on two days of the trial.

Christian, are you eating your words?

Wow, that is incredible dedication, Evan.

And I hope those two days that you sat in were days with compelling evidence.

I hope it was worth the trip.

Yeah, I am actually, because I didn't realize this when I was outside the court this morning at about 8:30, which is quite a bit earlier than I normally go.

I'm one of those people that tends to rock up at the last minute.

I saw a pretty big line outside court, and this was at 8.30, and I was with a colleague, a cameraman from the ABC, and he said, mate, they've been here since before 7.

Wow.

And this is because there is just not that many seats for the public in the courtroom, and people are very, very keen.

So

if the line's this big now,

I'm scared to think what the lines will be like when it comes to the prosecution and defense closing their case possibly next week.

You're getting into town just before it starts to get really busy, Christian.

Very well timed.

Thank you for all the questions that you're sending to us, mushroomcase daily at abc.net.au.

Please get in touch if there's something you're wondering about with the pod.

There's a question you would like answered.

As well as all the wonderful questions, we've got people listening all over the world.

We're getting emails from all sorts of wonderful places.

I'm going to do a quick around the grounds if you're around to help me with this one, Rach.

I'm going to start off with Sandy listening from the Philippines, snorkeling in 29-degree water, escaping the Victorian winter.

We've got Julia near Innitsbruck in Austria.

Michael is also listening from the Austrian Alps.

He has been discussing the case in his German class, taught by Lisa.

Shout out to Lisa's German class.

And they've been learning lots of new vocab through this trial.

We've got Christine from Napier, New Zealand, and Deb in New Zealand as well.

Luna in Canada.

Sharon in Manhattan, New York.

Beck and Connor, who are on holiday in Sweden.

Beck has actually been listening to the pods since we started, Christian.

But Connor overheard, I think, last Thursday's episodes.

They've now binged the whole series as they've been driving around Europe.

We've got another listener, me in Lithuania, Sandy in Ireland, who's also driving around with mates.

Michaela, interesting spelling of Michaela, in South Carolina.

And a special shout out to all of our listeners in regional Australia as well.

There have been so, so many of you following this case.

As people living in a regional Australian town, I feel a connection to everyone who gets in touch from one of the many cities and towns that is outside of a centre.

Christian, as we farewell you, we have had so many messages of well-wishes sent in overnight.

And as requested, some baby names.

Here we go.

Just want to run through some of these.

First one, Tom, if it's a boy, May, if it's a girl, from Leone, Julian, if it's a boy, and Leone, if it's a girl,

Marty has suggested Amanita.

Michelle has a baby called Bowie, and she thinks it's so good.

She's offered that one up as well.

Caroline has suggested Fox.

Matt has suggested Filoides.

Maybe Philly is a better way to go with that one.

Someone also suggested Stocky, which I was quite flattered by.

But I understand if there's a reluctance there.

I will take it on board, and it will be a matter for the silver jury.

Congrats, Christian.

It's been so great hearing you on the pod and crystallising really dense information for our transfixed listeners, but I have to say I'm excited to take it on myself.

This next phase is going to be the most intense.

Oh yeah, this final part of the case is really interesting.

We've been going through the evidence.

I feel like sometimes it's a bit of a slog as we go through it.

So if you've stuck through this part, then it is somewhat satisfying in that final week when you hear the case is all put together by the defence and the prosecution.

And then there's just like the nervous anticipation as you wait for that verdict to come in and the verdict itself, that's just off the charts.

So I will also be very, very keen to hear how it all pans out.

As you're waiting for your own little bundle.

Yes.

All the best for the next chapter, Christian.

Oh, thanks so much.

I'd also like to say thank you so much to my lovely wife and family.

And most of all, the listeners who've got in touch.

I mean, I don't think we expected this to quite get the following that it has, but we are so appreciative.

And it's not just the people who write in, it's also the people who come up to us in court to say hello.

We really, really appreciate it.

Yeah, Christian, it has been an absolute joy to make this podcast with you over the last

little while.

It was your idea at the very start, so it's been great to be able to put this together to bring it to life and work with you on this.

So, thank you so much for being a part of it and being it here.

For everyone listening, we've really been blown away by the interest everyone has shown in this podcast and the working of the justice system through the trial.

You know, if you're emailing, if you're getting in touch, we do hear from you, even if we don't reply directly.

And something that we have been thinking about a bit is what we do with this feed and this podcast after the Patterson trial is finished.

And so, mushroomcasedaily at abc.net.au.

What would you like us to do?

We've got some ideas in the work.

We want to hear from you.

So please get in touch.

In the meantime, we'll be back in your feed on Monday and every day of this trial.

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

It's presented by me, investigative reporter Rachel Brown, ABC Court reporter Kristen Silver and producer Stephen Stockwell.

Our executive producer is Claire Rawlinson and a big thank you to our colleagues in the Victorian newsroom and Audio Studios manager Eric George and also our true crime colleagues Tim Roxborough and Yasmin Parry for helping make this show a reality.

Thanks to our senior lawyer, our legal queen Jasmine Sims for her wonderful advice every single day.

This episode was produced on the land of the Gunai Kanai people.

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Unravel will have your headphones glued to your ears.

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