Sim card allegedly swapped while police searched Erin’s home

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Shuffling phones and SIM cards.

The prosecution alleges Erin Patterson switched her SIM cards in her phones while police were in the middle of a search of her house.

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

And I'm Stephen Stockwell.

It is Wednesday the 28th of May and we've just finished the 20th 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, it has been a kind of cold, cloudy day in Morwell.

That is, outside of the court, of course.

Can you talk us through what happened inside the courtroom today?

Warm and toasty inside and also a day of more interesting evidence.

The lead police officer Stephen Eppinstall returned to the witness box and a lot of today was spent looking at the phones that were allegedly linked to Erin Patterson and claims of a missing phone and a missing SIM card.

We were taken through Erin Patterson's bank records and internet searches and her shopping receipts in the week leading up to the lunch.

We also returned to the topic of Erin's health and we remember that this was allegedly one of the key things that was brought up when the lunch guests went to her house on the 29th of July, 2023.

Thank you, Christian.

As we go into this episode, I want to spend a bit of time talking about mobile phones.

In court today, we basically had like a mobile phone shell game with different phones and different SIM cards under like little cups being spun around.

Theoretically, of course, that's not that sort of circus in the courtroom, but yeah, being moved around.

And it was a bit of a challenge trying to keep up with where things were going.

But this was a really interesting exploration of the devices that Aaron Patterson had used.

And to illustrate the point, there were a lot of detailed phone records being put up on screens and not explicit explanation about certain things.

That's my reading of it anyway.

We saw, you know, rows of rows and rows and rows of call charge records, dates,

phone numbers, IMEI numbers, all these kinds of things being brought up and shown to the jury over the course of a couple of hours.

Yeah, and it was interesting kind of listening through all of this.

You know, we were hearing these kind of like historical records from like 2022, 2023.

And this is through the morning.

And I'm trying to place, I'm trying to figure out what's important.

What do I need to take notes on?

And as we get further through the day, as we get closer to the lunch and we get past the lunch, the relevance of this becomes clear because we hear about what has allegedly happened in Erin Patterson's house as the police have been searching her home.

Yeah, so this is one week after the lunch took place.

And what police say is that the SIM card that Erin Patterson was using in her primary phone has been changed over to a different phone, a Nokia.

And according to police, there are records that

in the days that followed this same SIM card was used in the Nokia.

Now

what police also allege

is that a different SIM card was taken out of a Samsung tablet that Miss Patterson had been using prior to the lunch.

Police allege that SIM card from the tablet was put into

another phone, the phone that we have nicknamed Phone B.

Right, yep.

Phone B is the phone that is given over to the police.

This is the phone that police allege was repeatedly factory reset.

So according to the police, what you have is an allegation that Erin Patterson has handed over a phone that has been wiped three times after the lunch and that has been given to the police and that phone contains a SIM card that has barely been used for the purpose of being a phone sim card.

It's been used as a tablet SIM card.

So it's got data and maybe a couple of SMS records but it's not a SIM card according to the police that has been used extensively.

for phone calls over a long period.

According to the police, it doesn't reflect what a regular SIM card that's put in a phone shows, where you've got a mixture of phone calls and data and messages.

It doesn't look like that, according to the records.

Right, yeah.

I hope that makes sense.

It does, yeah.

So we've got

a couple of SIM card swaps and then the phone that is given to police, the one that we talked about yesterday with Aaron Patterson sitting at the table and sliding that across,

that has a SIM card in it that has come out of a tablet.

And it's also not a phone that has been used very regularly.

It's also a phone that's been wiped a handful of times just before being handed over.

That's the allegation.

Yeah, right.

Really interesting to kind of hear all of that detail through there.

And

through this, Erin Patterson hands over a phone.

There's another phone that she continues using through this period.

We imagine after that.

This is the Nokia phone.

Right.

Yeah.

Okay.

And it's really interesting as well, as we were talking through this whole situation.

You know, that's what I'm saying.

You know, you're talking about these different call records or these different tables and things like that.

All of that was shown earlier in the day.

And it's like trying to figure out how that fits together.

You hear this towards the end.

You're like, oh, now I understand why I've been shown all of these tables, all of these old records.

It is to.

You've got to piece it together.

Yeah.

And I think...

What we hope in any criminal case from both sides, from the prosecution and the defense, is that when they come to their closing arguments, whatever it may be, that they sum it up for us, that they make it concise and that they make it clear.

That's what we hope from lawyers from both sides of the bar table, because we just just want to understand the facts as clear as possible.

Absolutely.

And it was interesting as we'd gone through all of this phone detail, all this phone evidence, there were these photos that were shown towards the end.

And this is introduced by Jane Warren, the prosecutor.

There is one photo that is taken from CCTV, I think, in the Lee and Gather Hospital.

And there's another photo which is a still

from Aaron Patterson handing the phone over to police.

And the prosecutor kind of stopped short of really kind of describing much about what was there.

It was sort of like left up to the jury.

let me try and step you through it and again i think it's important to focus on the dates here

so the first photo that was shown to the jury was what appeared to be a screenshot from some security camera inside the lee and gather hospital and this is on the 31st of july 2023 this is two days after the lunch what you can see in that photo is Erin Patterson in what appears to be a hospital ward room.

She's standing next to a bed, I think it is, and there's a small table at the foot of the bed and you can see there what appears to be a phone case.

Now to me this looked kind of brownie

but I believe it may have been said that it was a pink mobile phone case.

Then when we come to the second photo that was shown this is the photo of Erin Patterson literally handing over a phone to a police officer in her house.

This is on the 5th of August.

So you're looking at, you know, five, six days later.

Yeah.

And you can see the phone case there.

Now, there was a question asked in the courtroom, is that phone case the same colour as the phone case that we saw in the CCTV from the hospital?

And what Jane Warren, the prosecutor, said was, it's a matter for the jury what colour that case is.

Really leaving that open to you know to kind of us trying to work out if it is well, not for us to work out, I guess, for the jury to work out, if that's the kind of primary phone of Aaron Patterson.

When we're talking about these phone swaps, we're talking about a, you know, a phone that is like the primary phone that Erin Patterson has kind of been using, that what police say is a primary phone that Aaron Patterson has been using that, you know, they haven't recovered at the time of this search.

Do they ever get their hands on this phone?

So police say they went to Erin Patterson's house in November 2023.

So you're looking now, you know, some three months after the lunch.

And this is around the time when she's charged by police as well.

And Stephen Eppinstall, the lead detective, says they were looking for that primary phone, but they say it has never been located by police.

Right.

Okay, so never located a primary phone, and there is a kind of like, let's say, allegedly a secondary phone that has been handed over to police, you know, when they've asked for it.

Correct.

And just to complicate matters even further, there was a third phone which was found in the house, which was recovered by police as well.

And this is the phone we've spoken about before.

This is a phone that had messages from late 2022 relating to Simon Patterson and his family and all of that.

We spoke about that in our episodes towards the end of last week.

Is that

right?

As well as the phone conversations.

Terrible ad for Samsung, all of this.

The editorial policies of the ABC will be having a, you know, there'll be a light going off in an office somewhere as we talk through this.

But no, look, it's all in context.

It's all in the message of a court proceeding.

So

I think we'll be fine.

Speaking of brand names, I'd like to talk a bit about iNaturalist now, the website.

We did see some searches of iNaturalists today.

Stephen Eppenstall,

the lead investigator in this case from the Victoria Police, was talking through this.

He was asked a question at one point I found a little bit entertaining.

He was asked by Jane Warren, Are you familiar with the iNaturalist website?

And he sort of smiled and says, I'm pretty familiar with it now, man.

And so we saw some pages of this.

They were of Death Cat Mushrooms.

These are of links that were allegedly taken from devices in the Patterson home.

A computer.

A computer, sorry, a computer in the Patterson home.

And this took us to a map of Death Cat Mushroom sightings.

So Stephen Eppingstall said what he did was he took some URLs which were found from this report that the police had generated from this computer and he literally copied the URL and pasted it into his browser of choice which is Microsoft Edge.

He pasted it into there and he said what popped up straight away was a world map showing locations of death cap mushroom sightings.

Now this was zoomed out a lot like literally all the continents.

He said he then pasted in a second URL from the same report drawn from the computer and then he got a more zoomed in map focusing on the Melbourne area and you can can see a broad sort of zoomed-out area of Melbourne.

And then there was another URL which he's posted in there.

And that is a specific

death cap mushroom sighting.

And this was around May 2022.

So you're looking some 14 months before the lunch.

Right.

And Justice Beer was pretty careful to remind the jury at this point that, you know, these were pages that Stephen Hepenstall had visited later than when they were visited on the actual device recovered from the Patterson home.

And so the site may, the page may have changed in some way around that, and to keep that in mind when they're looking at them.

And also, when we were looking at the search results or what Stephen Eppenstall was going at, we then went from these ones to looking at the Corranborough Middle Pub, or the Middle Hotel, I think, one of the hotels in Corranborough,

and a dinner order.

When was that visited?

So according to the records, the search for iNaturalist happens like within a five-minute span of this search for the the pub.

There's literally a search engine

search for the pub and then it appears that the computer user then clicks into the Coronbara Middle Pub website or some sort of ordering portal.

The user of the computer has then purchased some dinner and I can run you through the dinner order if you like.

It was some garlic bread.

two chicken palmers, a kids burger and a kids fish meal and coke, no sugar, 1.25 litres.

All of this came to $82

and it was paid for on a Visa credit card and we saw the receipt of this dinner purchase come up and on the receipt you could see there was a reference not only to Erin Patterson's address at the time, but also the word Erin was used in a transaction ID field as well.

Yeah, right.

It was interesting to me today as we were going through all the evidence that had been gathered by Victoria Police through the course of this investigation, just how much information they had gathered.

Like, there's all this phone data, there's all these other searches, there's details relating to the cancer register and things like that.

And we also got into Erin's shopping list, shopping list, and shopping history, even going to the Woolly's Rewards section

and hearing basically what she bought in the week ahead of the lunch, which was a couple of packets of phyllo pastry, some eye fillet, and a lot of mushrooms, like almost two kilos of mushrooms.

A lot of mushrooms.

And Mr.

Eppingstall

has been the vehicle for a lot of topics of evidence.

I didn't expect to see the homicide detective give the jury a rundown of how the Woolworths rewards point system works.

But there you go.

You've got to be very worldly to be a police officer.

You've got to know about a lot of things.

But I digress.

We go to the week preceding the lunch because obviously police are interested to know what Aaron Patterson has been buying in the lead-up to this lunch.

And we got to see the receipt.

And it actually wasn't one receipt, it was three receipts.

Several trips to Woolworths made in Lee and Gather, near Aaron Patterson's house.

And there were some transactions which were highlighted, which the prosecution alleges are relevant to the beef Wellington meal.

I mean, there was all sorts of shopping items on there, which are pretty unremarkable.

But

there was a total total over these three visits of 1.75 kilograms of mushrooms being bought there was about

roughly about 1.9 kilos of beef as well and we're not talking the cheap stuff this is i fill it good stuff there and also a lot of pastry um in excess of three kilos as well oh wow okay yeah that is a lot of pastry actually um christian we ended the day with uh stephen eppenstall being cross-examined by Erin Patterson's defence, Colin Mandy.

He started that conversation by getting Eppenstall to confirm that Evan Patterson had cooperated with police, pointing to the police interview we saw yesterday and we spoke about in

yesterday's episode.

He also talked through her medical history and some of the searches that appeared on phones about a cancer diagnosis or cancer diagnoses and things to look out for.

Was there anything that stood out to you in that cross-examination?

So just for for context, I think it's worth reminding the listeners about the lunch and what Ian Wilkinson, the sole survivor, guessed from the lunch said.

And he said that Erin Patterson told the guests that she had been diagnosed with cancer.

So Stephen Eppingstall was taken to a whole bunch of medical records and emails that doctors had sent as well, going back some years.

And as well, he was also taken to some text messages between Erin Patterson and Gail Patterson,

her mother-in-law.

And according to these text messages, Erin Patterson tells Gail that she's got various medical appointments that she needs to get to.

However, Mr.

Eppingstall says that when he went to these hospitals and these medical centers to check up,

There was no record of

Erin ever attending.

So according to him, it would appear that that is untrue.

He also said there was no diagnosis of cancer ever given to Erin Patterson.

This is again backing up other witnesses in this case.

He was under cross-examination though taken to

some other text messages that Erin Patterson had sent her husband.

This is going back to 2021 and we see some doctor's notes, I think they are,

where a doctor says that Erin Patterson is worried that she's got ovary cancer and that Erin Patterson is raising concerns that she's sick.

On this report, there's also a list of Erin Patterson's ancestors and it says that these people had cancer.

That's what's on the doctor's report.

anyway.

And then there's some messages between Erin and Simon.

And this is sort of,

I think it was late 2021, 2021, early 2022.

So this is well before this lunch, where Erin Patterson is complaining about not feeling well.

She's got concerns about her heart condition.

She's got concerns about the medical providers and the quality of the service that they can provide.

And she actually makes this comment to Simon.

saying that she doesn't want to deal with waiting times and public hospitals full of COVID patients.

This is a point where COVID is still very present in everyone's mind, something that you're still thinking about.

Kind of helpful to place it in the kind of the timeline of all of this as well.

Even though we've done our best to try to wipe it out of our minds.

You're reminded at the, yeah, just when you think you're the safest.

Thank you for taking us through all of that, Christian.

It's been incredibly helpful to help understand the day.

I want to jump into some questions now.

We are getting so many wonderful questions sent to mushroomcase daily at abc.net.au.

Some wonderful thoughts from you, some wonderful questions and really curious ideas coming from you listening to Mushroom Case Daily.

And I want to jump into one from Emma from Curl Curl in Sydney to start with.

Christian.

Emma says, hi guys, brilliant coverage of this case.

Thanks.

Thank you for listening, Emma.

Emma's question is, does the prosecution need to prove motive at all or just evidence that the crime occurred?

Maybe I've missed something, but I haven't really heard why Erin Patterson would do this.

And that is my biggest question in this case.

Thanks, Emma.

It is a really great question.

It is a topic that was addressed at the very start of this case when the judge was taking the jury through some instructions about what they'll need to consider in this trial.

And he took them to the four elements of the charge of murder.

And spoiler alert, motive is not one of them.

So in answer to your question, the prosecution does not have to prove motive, but there are a bunch of things that they do have to prove.

So let's go through them.

There are four elements to the charge of murder that the prosecution will need to prove beyond reasonable doubt for Erin Patterson to be found guilty.

The first element is did Erin Patterson cause the deaths of the lunch guests?

If the jury is satisfied of that they can move on to the second element.

The second element is did she do it deliberately?

If they're satisfied of that then they can look at did she do it with an intention to kill them or to cause them really serious injury?

And there's an emphasis on the

really there.

If they're satisfied of that, we can get to the final point, and that's, did she commit the killing without a lawful justification or excuse?

And lawful justification or excuse could be something like self-defense.

Evidently, that is not something that's relevant.

In this case, the judge has said that intent is definitely one of the key things that the jury will have to look at.

And the defence, through their barrister, Colin Mandy

pointed out to the jury in his openings that Ms.

Patterson did not deliberately poison the lunch guests with death cap mushroom.

So two topics there that the jury will definitely have to weigh up.

Thank you Christian.

Thank you for your great question Emma.

Christian do we know what we've got coming up tomorrow at this stage?

Well, the prosecution case is not over yet.

The jury was told that Stephen Eppingstall, the lead detective, is the last witness.

So it's coming close to the end, but Mr.

Mandy's not done with him yet.

The cross-examination only really started this afternoon, so I'm sure he will go to work, as you like to say.

That's how I like to describe what Colin Mandy does.

He was going to work today.

He'll be going to work tomorrow.

Just like we will, when we bring you another episode of Mushroom Case Day, they'll drop into your feed tomorrow night.

We've got some exciting news to announce in that episode as well.

So make sure you grab the ABC Listen app so you can get that slightly before it drops on all the other podcast platforms.

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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 huge thanks to our true crime colleagues who continue to help us out.

Our commissioning executive producer Tim Roxborough, supervising producer Yasmin Parry and investigative reporter Rachel Brown.

This episode was produced on the land of the Kunai-Kurnai people.

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