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Revealed: Death Cap Murders - Season 1 Episode 2 -
The Trial
The Trial
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00:00I could tell you lots of stories about
00:17Curranborough.
00:20Poisonous mushrooms have killed three
00:22people and a man is in hospital
00:24fighting for life. As a result of
00:25suspected mushroom poisoning. The death
00:28gut mushroom poisoning is the
00:30Chernobyl of poisons. Erin Patterson
00:32from Liangatha decides to invite
00:34over for lunch her in-laws and she
00:36invites her estranged husband Simon.
00:38He decides to pull out. Pete Wellington
00:40is served. So devastated about what's
00:42happened. I love them.
00:44And three died. Do you know anything about
00:46a deal or driving your ass from the night?
00:48Why would she want to kill them?
00:50Could this all be a terrible accident?
00:52Erin Patterson has been arrested in a
00:54dramatic early morning raid on her
00:56gather home. She's been charged with
00:58multiple counts of murder and
01:00attempted murder but most
01:02significantly four counts of
01:04attempted murder for trying to kill
01:06her husband Simon Patterson over a
01:08number of years.
01:10So it's May 2022. We know Erin and Simon go on a
01:32camping trip together. They are separated. They've been separated for many years but they were friends, they were texting, they were calling.
01:38They were going on holidays together quite frequently with and without the children.
01:46Simon recalls on one camping trip that he was eating a chicken curry. He remembered that Erin Patterson was cooking the meal something he wasn't really keeping too close of an eye on.
01:58They went to bed in the tent that night and it was hours later he said he remembered waking up and becoming violently ill and then he ended up in hospital for 20 odd days and 16 of those were in a coma.
02:12He had three different bowel resection surgeries. There was results that just didn't make sense. The hospital was running around trying to figure out why he was in such excruciating pain.
02:22This man was dying. His family had been told to come in and say goodbye to him that this may be the final time that they ever get to see him.
02:32Simon believed that this camping trip formed part of a whole string of sinister attempts to take his life.
02:40But it was never ever put before the jury.
02:44In this time, there is no place.
02:54All the time, here we are.
03:00By the way.
04:40There will be a bit of interest around the region about what is the evidence, what is there that's potentially damning or what is it that's possibly missing.
04:51There must be more to the story than what we have heard.
04:58Once there's an outcome of the case, that'll be when a lot of people will be able to process their grief and to decide to move on.
05:06There's a lot of people in our community that will need closure.
05:09There's a lot of people in the system.
05:11There's a lot of people in the system.
05:13There's just a lot of people in the system.
05:17So I've got the court sketch from Erin Patterson's first appearance in Morwell immediately after
05:44she was charged. So this was November 3rd, 2023. And it's signed by the sketch artist. And this was a gift that I got from my partner, because we're both working the news. And, you know, this is the kind of kind of stuff that we gift each other, which makes me think like, like feel like a bit like a crazy lady. And then you've got the photo of Erin's first interview, the only interview she's ever given to the media or comments she's ever given.
06:14outside of her house. I took that one. I got nominated for a quote for this one. That's why it's printed. And then I've got this one as well, which is a scientific drawing of the Death Cab mushroom. That too was a birthday gift from a friend. So there you go. I've got like a little collection of mementos from the mushroom, mushroom case.
06:36Interestingly, in this case, the trial was held at Morwell.
06:51From the 50s, 60s, right to the end of the 80s, Morwell was a boom town.
06:55Morwell might only be 50 kilometers from Langatha, but in terms of culture, it's nothing like.
07:06There's definitely a good community here. I mean, sometimes we get a bit of a bad rap.
07:11Morwell's a cold town. It's a place that is in the process of reinventing itself.
07:15There's a lot of youth crime in the area, and there's just no resources for anyone. I will be honest, a lot of the time it's like a ghost town. So just seeing so many people around is a nice change.
07:29The defense chose to do it in Morwell in the belief that the local people were less likely to convict.
07:35Yeah, I think folk are really interested in the case. They've all got an opinion on what's going on.
07:41It's actually bigger than I expected. More reporters, I think, than I expected.
07:48Day one of the highly anticipated mushroom murder trial gets underway here in Morwell.
07:54Day one of the highly anticipated...
07:56Erin Patterson has pleaded not guilty to all charges...
08:00...and has always maintained her innocence.
08:02I'll go again.
08:03It's something we've been waiting for for nearly two years.
08:07It's finally starting.
08:08It felt like we were driving up and unpacking the circus tent...
08:14...and erecting it around the front of the courthouse.
08:20We've got these really smart, big, noted legal minds...
08:26...that have come in to this small little country town of Morwell...
08:30...that are trying to convince your average Joes of why they should pick one side.
08:36There was a line every day to get in. There was an atmosphere outside of anticipation.
08:41It's this incredibly important murder trial that's made international news everywhere.
08:46And you're in this, like, tiny suburban-looking court.
08:49Oh, yeah. Thanks, ma'am.
08:50Port four in the Morwell Law Courts. You walk in the door. The jury box is basically directly in front of you.
08:57Then we've got two big banks of public seating.
09:01On the right-hand side of the bar table, we have the Crown Prosecution Team being led by Dr. Nanette Rogers...
09:06...who is one of the sharpest legal minds in the field.
09:10She's supported by Jane Warren and two other members of the Prosecution Team as well, including Sarah Lenthal.
09:17On the left-hand side, leading the defence team is highly respected criminal barrister Colin Mandy SC.
09:24Seated to his left was his junior barrister, Sophie Stafford.
09:29Across the table, supporting them, the two solicitors are Bill Duke, who's a very senior legal figure within Melbourne, and Ophelia Holloway.
09:38But perhaps the most incredible thing about the whole thing is that Erin is right behind you.
09:44That never happens. You're never that close to an accused.
09:47So close, I could almost feel her breath on the back of my neck.
09:50Every time you want to look at her, you've got to turn around and look at this woman.
09:54We're about to start the trial. Mouthguards are in, and then a bombshell.
10:04Serious charges have been dropped against accused Mushroom Lunch Killer Erin Patterson.
10:09Charges of attempting to murder her estranged husband will not proceed.
10:13I don't know how everybody in the room didn't gasp in that moment.
10:17It may have been that it was a difficult thing for the Prosecution to kind of justify it.
10:22You know, there was less evidence than compared to the lunch charges, so let's drop it.
10:28Allegations without any forensic backup would, in the judge's view, pollute the stream of justice.
10:35It was very hard to stay composed in that moment because you could imagine Simon Patterson
10:40hearing about the fact that his testimony will now sound very, very, very different.
10:57Simon Patterson arrived at court ready to face his estranged wife for the first time
11:02since she was accused of poisoning his entire family.
11:07So on the 1st of May, on the third day of the trial, we get the first major prosecution witness,
11:13Simon Patterson, Erin's estranged husband.
11:15A lot of what Simon talks about when he's in the witness box is his relationship with Erin,
11:22how they met, how they came to be a couple, how their relationship slowly fell apart.
11:28For most of Simon and Erin's relationship, up until their separation,
11:32it sounded like Donna and Gail had a pretty good relationship with Erin.
11:37Donna and Erin had pretty similar interests.
11:39They were both really curious, busy minds,
11:41and so they would bond over, you know, things like science, world affairs,
11:45and they would talk about a lot of those topics of conversation all the time.
11:48So they had a pretty special bond.
11:52Erin inherited a large amount of money from her family.
11:57She loaned money to her extended family.
12:01She was more than generous to Simon.
12:03The way Simon stepped through how Erin had loaned, you know, all his siblings' money,
12:08I found it really perhaps revealing of the fact that Erin didn't have much else,
12:13or many other people in her life.
12:15You know, that's how important the Patterson family were to her.
12:20Simon's main role in this trial is to talk about this turning point in his relationship with Erin,
12:25that from the prosecution's perspective is where things started to go south,
12:30and that's the moment that gives Erin a semblance of a motive to have murdered Simon's family.
12:36There's this situation where Erin feels like she hasn't been invited to Gail's 70th birthday party,
12:42so she's having a conversation with Simon around that.
12:50She feels particularly upset about the fact that she's been left off the guest list.
12:56She, I believe, feels that she's been abandoned by this family that she's embraced.
13:02I want to ask you about 2022.
13:19There was a change in the relationship, was there?
13:22Yes.
13:24She said that she'd discovered that my tax return for the previous financial year
13:28had for the first time noted that we were separated.
13:30It was my understanding it was going to have implications on family tax benefit.
13:36She was upset about it.
13:38You know, he lists himself as separated in his tax return,
13:41which means that now she needs to apply for child support payments.
13:44It's only like $40 or so a month that Simon needs to pay Erin for child support.
13:49Erin's getting annoyed, basically saying, like,
13:51this is the bare minimum, this is not all you need to pay,
13:54this is just the baseline.
13:56She's sending messages to both Don, Gail and Simon,
14:00basically saying, I need Don and Gail to decide
14:03on what it is that was to happen financially.
14:07What couldn't be said during the trial is that typically
14:09these sort of assessments are made based on, you know, taxable income,
14:14and in the kind of year leading up to that,
14:16Simon had been, you know, incredibly unwell
14:18because he says Erin poisoned him.
14:21And I'm cross-examined on my finances,
14:24and I'm made out to be a villain
14:25when I want to scream out to the jury,
14:29this crazy woman tried to kill me three times,
14:32but I can't do that.
14:33And then I can't do it.
14:58The pre-trial hearings are designed to test the strength of the evidence
15:13that will eventually go to trial.
15:15It's very tip and iceberg, really,
15:17when you think about big criminal trials like this.
15:19You've got the trials at the tip,
15:21and there is this huge iceberg of evidence the jury's not going to hear below it.
15:27It's almost like an off-Broadway rehearsal.
15:30You start with a full deck of 52 cards,
15:33and you might go into the trial with 26 cards.
15:38And it was here in pre-trial that we learnt for the first time
15:42that it's Simon Patterson's version of events,
15:44that he had eaten meals that his estranged wife had been cooking for him.
15:50He would become incredibly unwell after eating food
15:53that she'd prepared for him and for nobody else,
15:57that it was when they were away together,
16:00and that there was no other explanation for that particular, you know, severe illness.
16:05He hadn't really confided in anybody.
16:07He'd told really only his doctor, Christopher Ford.
16:11The doctor's advice was to start keeping a diary,
16:15to start trying to put together the pieces himself.
16:18What are the kind of consistent things here?
16:19What was I doing in the lead-up to all these instances of being sick?
16:23And he then kind of pins it on, on Erin.
16:26He had us on the edge of our seats as he was talking about the different meals that he ate,
16:30and then the horrendous symptoms that he says he suffered afterwards.
16:34The first was in November 2021.
16:37He recalled that Erin Patterson had given him some penne bolognese to take home,
16:41which he ate the next day.
16:42In May 2022, while camping with Erin,
16:46he ate a chicken curry prepared by her and ended up in hospital.
16:50This was a really quite significant event in Simon Patterson's life.
16:55Simon wrote in a Facebook post that his condition was so serious,
16:58his family were asked to come and say goodbye to him twice.
17:03In July 2022, he became unwell again after eating a beef stew cooked by Erin.
17:08And finally, in September 2022, while on another camping trip with his estranged wife,
17:15he once again became ill after eating a chicken and vegetable wrap Erin had pre-prepared.
17:20He was asked what he remembered.
17:21Did they share the same dish?
17:23No.
17:23He would say Erin Patterson would eat something different than me,
17:26or she would prepare it and I wasn't watching.
17:29When he was recounting this in pre-trial,
17:32he was really, really distressed about what she may have done to him.
17:36Simon nearly died from something, you know, and he wasn't struck by lightning.
17:43The defence then were arguing, this is a suspicion, this is a fear,
17:46but where's the medical evidence?
17:48Where is the evidence that shows the cause of this particular illness?
17:53And then at the 11th hour,
17:54we know the charges against Simon Patterson were thrown out.
17:57That was a massive moment because what falls away with those charges
18:03is also a lot of the evidence.
18:05Document after document, internet after internet search,
18:08book after book, potentially about poisonings that had been accessed,
18:12the Crown says by Erin Patterson, was disappearing.
18:15Exactly what is in or out often and happened in this case
18:19wasn't decided on until what felt like hours before the trial was about to begin.
18:26In Erin Patterson's case, what happened in pre-trial
18:28was very, very different to the case that proceeded to a jury.
18:31The day before the lunch, Simon sent a text to Erin saying
18:49that he wasn't going to be coming because he felt uncomfortable attending the lunch.
18:53And what we get in response is a pretty telling text from Erin.
18:57And she's bloody annoyed that Simon won't turn up and says,
19:07you know, I've slaved over this all week.
19:10So the jury's sitting in there, listening to Simon,
19:13laying all this stuff out,
19:16but then they're not hearing half the story
19:18that we've been able to hear in the pre-trial.
19:20There's almost this information vacuum
19:22because they all knew those charges existed,
19:24but he's not talking about it.
19:26No one's asking him about it
19:28and they're just not going to hear about it.
19:30There was so much tension in the room today.
19:57I mean, you could cut it with a knife.
20:00One thing that really surprised me today,
20:02we heard how many family members are expected to come and attend the hearing.
20:06I've never before really seen an area of a court sectioned off just for family.
20:10Yeah.
20:11But I think it'll be really interesting to see them coming in,
20:14to see engaging with it,
20:15because I was actually quite surprised as well,
20:17because I thought they'll tune in remotely being given a link.
20:21Why would you come?
20:22And keep themselves.
20:22They might not have been in the same room as Erin since before she was charged, right?
20:27So there might be an element of wanting to see her and look at her.
20:30You're in public space, essentially,
20:32and that must be incredibly hard to hear some of the things they're going to have to hear
20:36and know that everyone can see them in there.
20:40It's probably the thing that stays with me more than anything else when covering court stories.
20:46Seeing the family of the deceased look at an accused killer,
20:52it's incredibly powerful.
20:54You can watch this person's entire body, their face, their posture.
21:00You can almost watch their blood pressure rise
21:03as they turn and look at the person who is accused of, you know, killing a loved one.
21:07I think it says a lot about how a person is grieving,
21:13how a person is processing the worst thing that could possibly happen to them.
21:18It's going to be a long six weeks.
21:26Thanks.
21:29There was the two faces of Erin Patterson that were really portrayed to the jury.
21:33One of this God-loving woman who took her children to church
21:38and invited her loved ones over for meals.
21:40But online, the prosecution really painted a different version of Erin Patterson.
21:46Has anyone seen the news in Victoria about four people killed by eating mushrooms?
21:52It's a homicide case.
21:54I think it's Erin Patterson from our group.
21:57Oh my God, all we talked about was murder.
22:01Oh my God.
22:03The group name was Keep Kelly Lane Behind Bars.
22:05Kelly Lane was a woman who was convicted of killing her baby,
22:09a baby that was never found.
22:11There was a big debate going on whether Kelly had faced a travesty of justice
22:17or whether she was actually guilty.
22:20Erin was on the guilty side and so was I.
22:23And that's how I met her.
22:25I remember meeting Erin because she was really, really smart.
22:28She really got into detail about the case.
22:32She was really good at finding information.
22:35I guess that's what we really bonded over in the beginning.
22:39Erin and I connected a bit over what I was going through in my life with my breakup
22:45and also, you know, just what was happening with my ex-husband.
22:50And she kind of related to some of that with Simon.
22:53Well, see, those people, they were her intimate acquaintances.
22:58They were, the group was her whole world.
23:00Erin was extremely invested.
23:02I don't feel like the friendship was fake.
23:05I feel like, I feel like she did.
23:07She did actually become friends with us.
23:11And I feel she called us family.
23:14And I feel like when the group started to fall apart and we started to pull away,
23:22that's when she started to become aggressive.
23:26Erin had fake profiles that she was using to attack us.
23:30And then she would come in under her real profile and stick up for us and have goes at the fake profile.
23:37And it was almost like it was a way to kind of build a stronger relationship with people and align with people.
23:42At the end, when I had a conflict with Erin, she was very confrontational.
23:49She came across as a sledgehammer.
23:53And so it made me wonder, is she an introvert or was she just fitting in?
24:02I think my close relationship with Erin ended around March 2020.
24:09There were three women who were part of that group that gave evidence to the jury.
24:13And they all gave varying accounts of what their interactions were like with her.
24:17During the time that you knew Erin Patterson, did she ever discuss or post information about her relationship with her husband, Simon?
24:25Yes, she did.
24:26She had some concerns about him paying his share and that he was very controlling.
24:30She used the word coercive at times.
24:34They were the people that she trusted.
24:37They were the people that she spoke to outside of the Pattersons and the Wilkinsons that were her support network in the real world.
24:47Her online profile, it showed an ugly side to her and also venting about her own in-laws.
25:00The messages were being displayed on these giant television screens on different sides of the courtroom.
25:17Erin Patterson's darkest secrets were really, in that moment, being absorbed by everybody.
25:24You know, for the first time we see that she is really annoyed and basically they're dead to me.
25:37I think understandably a person's communication style between their Baptist church in-laws and their online true crime friends is going to be a little bit different.
25:48The way she was speaking with her online friends was vulgar.
25:53It was rude.
25:54It was angry.
25:55It was disrespectful.
25:56But it's another layer in the deck of a person who can get very angry and hold a grudge.
26:06A world-renowned fungi expert called to give evidence in his own backyard.
26:28Tom May, um, he is, I'm going to say, Australia's premier mycologist.
26:35Can you tell the jury, please, about iNaturalist?
26:40So, iNaturalist is a publicly accessible website.
26:44It's where members of the public can make observations about nature.
26:49Do you have a profile on that site?
26:52I do have a profile on iNaturalist.
26:55And the profile name is Funky Tom.
26:57So, I think the first time that iNaturalist came to mind was when Tom May was giving evidence and he was being quizzed about iNaturalist.
27:14iNaturalist is a site where anybody can post photographs of living things.
27:21You've got the date, a GPS location, and you've got an image that can then be sorted out with AI.
27:31The downside to it is the quality of the data is extremely variable.
27:36Posts that have been made by Tom May, you can 100% trust, but lots of other posts.
27:43On May 21st, 2023, Dr. Tom May identifies Deathcap mushrooms in the Orchum area and takes a picture and posts about it on the iNaturalist website.
27:53There's a separate post that was made by Christine McKenzie in the Lark area on the 18th of April that also identifies Deathcap mushrooms.
28:01A post that had identified mushrooms in the Orchum area and so it was through that that I was like, maybe that is the next obvious step is to have a look at where that location is and what that looks like.
28:19Police have found evidence in Erin Patterson's devices that she had previously accessed the iNaturalist website and done searches for Deathcap mushrooms.
28:36So basically you've got the listing that's within her local area and it wouldn't have taken long for her to drive out here.
28:42And this is the exact spot where Tom May found Deathcap mushrooms in May 2023.
28:50And these mushrooms could potentially be, you know, the murder weapon in the case.
28:57And now the prosecution needs to find out whether Erin's phone was in those same areas at the same time as those posts were made in 2023.
29:05And in order to do that, they call the premier expert in cell phone tower data, Dr. Matthew Sorrell.
29:14Now, normally I'm given a week's worth of records or a month's worth of records or a day or an hour.
29:20In this case, I had four and a half years of Erin's phone call records.
29:26In the end, I was asked to examine three things.
29:30On the 28th of April 2023, whether Erin's phone visited Locke.
29:35On the 22nd of May, whether Erin's phone visited both Locke and Outrim.
29:41The data that I see, it's like the matrix.
29:44It's numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers.
29:46And you dive in.
29:48And when you see something in that pattern, it's really satisfying.
29:52I'm going to show you a tool shortly which blows Minority Report out of the water.
29:58What this map shows us is if Erin did visit the mushroom field on the 22nd of May,
30:06then Erin's data session basically tells me that these are the possible routes that she could have taken.
30:14We can take that reach map, starting in Lee and Gatha, ending up at the Outrim mushroom field.
30:19Our first connection here from Lee and Gatha immediately tells us that if she's on this journey, she's not going this way.
30:29Scroll that forward.
30:31In time, next connection tells us once again, still here, this lines up.
30:42Same map.
30:43This is the Outrim base station now connecting at 11.18 for the first time.
30:48That gives me a window of 11.24 to 11.50 where the only connection I've got is the Outrim base station.
30:56Little yellow marker here is where the mushroom field was.
31:00And we've only got connections to Outrim now.
31:03When she goes home, this gets pretty interesting.
31:08So she leaves this area at about 11.40.
31:12We've got this weird connection to Foster North.
31:15Foster North makes no sense, except that Foster North has a direct, clear line of sight
31:20to an area just north of the mushroom field where the Outrim base station doesn't.
31:28So that's, that's crazy.
31:31Now, Erin's phone does visit the lock area on the 28th of April.
31:36And I've got a single indication that she is connected to the right base station,
31:44to the right antenna that covers the lock township.
31:48And I've got about an hour period where I don't have any connection records.
31:52And then her phone's moving away from lock.
31:55Scenarios.
31:57Phone was left in the car while she was picking death cat mushrooms.
31:59Sure.
32:00Or, went to a cafe, sat down, had a coffee with somebody.
32:04Phone sitting on the table, not a news.
32:07Sure.
32:08Could she have visited this mushroom field on the 22nd of May?
32:12Yes.
32:13Does the evidence support that scenario?
32:16Yes.
32:17Does it give us timing?
32:18Yes.
32:20Did she go there?
32:22Can't say that.
32:24My purpose is not to convict the accused.
32:27My purpose is to ensure that the evidence is properly understood in its proper context.
32:38She could have potentially accessed the iNaturalist website and then travelled to that area
32:43and picked up those mushrooms, took them home, dehydrated them and put them in the Beef Wellingtons.
32:49There are only two people, two witnesses, that can actually tell you what happened at that lunch on the 29th of July, 2023.
33:02And they are Ian Wilkinson, the only person, the only guests that survived the lunch, and Erin Patterson, the person who cooked the meal.
33:10Sorry.
33:11Ian has a bit of a commanding presence about him.
33:13He's the Baptist pastor at the Carambara Baptist Church.
33:18He always wears a little Jesus fish pin to his lapel.
33:22I was once told by a local that if the town had a flag, Ian Wilkinson's face would be on it.
33:28As he was brought into the courtroom in front of the jury, he actually looked directly at Erin Patterson in the dock.
33:35There's something really powerful about seeing this man that's been in the brink of death walk back into a courtroom and face Erin Patterson to tell his truth.
33:47I want to ask you about your relationship with Erin Patterson.
33:51How would you describe your relationship with her?
33:54I would say our relationship was friendly, amicable.
33:58It didn't have much depth.
33:59I think we were more like acquaintances.
34:02We didn't see a great deal of each other.
34:05Can I ask you, how did it come about that you attended that lunch?
34:10Erin extended an invitation through Heather at church.
34:14Erin walks up to Gail and Heather, who are standing around just after the service has concluded.
34:20And she approaches them and says like, hey, I would like to invite you over to have lunch at my place on the 29th of July.
34:26Please bring Don and bring Ian, I'm going to invite Simon also.
34:31She tells Simon that the reason for the lunch was that she had received some serious medical news.
34:38How did you feel about the invitation?
34:41We were very happy to be invited, yes.
34:44It seemed like maybe our relationship with Erin was going to improve.
34:49Ian's testimony in court basically unlocks for us three key elements that we didn't know back in August.
34:56The first of those is that the beef wellington was actually individual pasties and not the log.
35:02The second of those was the fact that the beef wellington was served on different coloured plates.
35:06What type of plate from the descriptions that you have given did you eat from?
35:13I ate from a grey plate.
35:15Heather?
35:16A grey plate.
35:17Gail?
35:18A grey plate.
35:19Don?
35:20A grey plate.
35:21And Erin?
35:22A rusty coloured plate.
35:25Orangy tan plate, whatever it was.
35:30Prior to eating the meal was anything done or said?
35:34We said Grace.
35:39After the lunch had been eaten was there any further conversation?
35:42Yes.
35:43What was that about?
35:46After the lunch, Erin announced that she had cancer.
35:51A third element that Ian also revealed is that Erin told them that she had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer and that she didn't know how to tell the children.
35:59The prosecution also backs that version of events with a series of screenshots that police were able to recover from her devices.
36:07What they showed were basically screenshots of searches that had been done on Google about cancer, specifically ovarian cancer.
36:15And what the prosecution say that this means is basically that she was using those searches to make her story seem more realistic.
36:22And when they heard that she had cancer, they prayed for her.
36:28They prayed for her and they're about to die.
36:39The lunch concludes around 2.30.
36:41Eventually they all go to bed, everything seems fine.
36:44And it is around midnight, both Ian and Heather start feeling sick.
36:47They report having to do trips back and forth to the toilet all throughout the night.
36:53Simultaneously, as Ian and Heather are also falling sick, Don and Gail are experiencing similar symptoms to the point that by the time the Sunday morning comes, they feel compelled to call an ambulance and get to the hospital.
37:04All right.
37:05There we go.
37:06One more.
37:07Before they even arrive to Leangatha Hospital, Dr. Chris Webster gets a phone call from Simon's doctor, Dr. Chris Fort, that will change his approach to everything.
37:25So the phone call was from Dr. Chris Fort, who was informing me that his patients' parents had eaten a meal at his ex-partner's house and they were unwell.
37:44And Dr. Ford indicated to me that there was a suspicion of deliberate poisoning.
37:55I thought it was bizarre.
37:56Well, I wasn't allowed to say any of this stuff at the trial.
37:59The things that I'm talking about at the moment were ruled inadmissible.
38:03By the time I made my way to urgent care, Ian and Heather had already been positioned within the plaster room, as in plaster cast.
38:21We use it as an isolation room.
38:24They looked unwell, but not distressed.
38:27They were both quite conscious and alert.
38:32They're responding to the treatment in terms of the rehydration.
38:36The moment everything changed was the phone call from Dr. Beth Morgan, which was the following morning.
38:45And she told me that she'd been looking after Don and Gail.
38:49By Monday morning, Don and Gail have been taken to Dandenong Hospital, where they've been placed under the care of Dr. Beth Morgan.
38:56The lunch was consumed at lunchtime and they didn't have any symptoms until 12 hours later.
39:02This would be more indicative of a serious toxin syndrome, as opposed to a food poisoning.
39:08The toxicologist suggested that if it was related to mushrooms, it was possibly caused by the ingestion of the Amanita phalloides mushroom.
39:17Yeah, I woke up pretty quickly after I heard that.
39:21The doorbell or the call button had been pressed and I sort of said,
39:28Oh, look, sorry, we've got unwell patients.
39:31That's why we've kept you waiting. Sorry about that.
39:34Why are you here?
39:36She said, either I think I've got gastro or I've got gastro.
39:40And I was like, what's your name?
39:44What's your name?
39:45And she said, Erin Patterson.
39:47I was like, oh, fuck.
39:49Did you bring her through the urgent care center?
39:59I did.
40:00I said there's a concern of Deathcat mushroom poisoning.
40:04Where did you get the mushrooms?
40:07What did she say?
40:09It was a single word response.
40:12Woolworths.
40:15I was like, yeah, no, there's no point talking to her anymore because she's a liar.
40:22If she looked genuinely concerned that four people were dying, I probably would have talked to her more or, you know, sort out more information.
40:37But it was quite interesting to me.
40:49I think I'm going to be careful of the words like this.
40:52Erin didn't go over to Ian.
40:55She didn't go over to Heather.
40:57And she didn't ask them how they were.
41:01She didn't interact with them.
41:03She didn't say, oh, sorry for the Deathcat mushrooms in the Beef Wellington.
41:10There was no interaction at all between them, which I thought, you're not even going to ask them how they are
41:18when you're in the same room two meters away from each other.
41:21It was fucking that close.
41:23They were as far away as you and I are from each other.
41:27Did you become aware that Erin Patterson was no longer in the urgent care center?
41:33Yes, I did.
41:35I completely was oblivious to the discharge against medical advice.
41:41How did you become aware of that?
41:44I asked where she was.
41:46I kind of censored myself in court a little bit because I said to Kylie, where the fuck is she?
41:54And Kylie said, well, she discharged herself against medical advice.
41:59I'm like, Kylie, I just told her that she'd been exposed to Deathcap mushrooms.
42:04It's kind of there in the name, death.
42:07It's not like there's good outcomes with this.
42:10I said, and then Kylie's like, oh, she said she had some things to do.
42:14I'm like, well, fucking great.
42:16Now I'm going to have to call the cops to get her back.
42:20I took advantage of the fact that I knew my phone call was being recorded to get out some foundation information
42:28that may not have been an opportunity to do so later.
42:35This is Dr. Chris Webster calling from Lee and Gaffer Hospital.
42:39And I have a concern regarding a patient that presented here earlier, but has left the building
42:47and is potentially exposed to a fatal toxin from mushroom poisoning.
42:54And I've tried several times to get hold of her on her mobile phone.
42:59Mushroom poisoning, you said?
43:01Yeah, so there were five people that ate a meal on Saturday
43:05and two of them are in intensive care at Dandenong Hospital.
43:10Two have just been transferred from Lee and Gaffer Hospital to Dandenong Hospital.
43:15And Erin presented this morning with symptoms of poisoning.
43:19And what happened when she presented? She's got up and left.
43:22While I was attending, the other patients, the nurse informed me that she had discharged herself
43:27against medical advice. She was only here for five minutes.
43:37I must have seen her walk in when she came back an hour and a half later.
43:42I was like, okay, well, let's, alright, she's back.
43:46And I said, look, there could be some leftover Beth Wellington at the property.
43:52Erin's here in the hospital. She's come back.
43:55Let me go and ask her if she doesn't mind and where you might be able to find them.
44:00And she said she gave permission for the police to break in if they had to.
44:05And they did find some leftovers.
44:07At that stage, I was thinking, what the fuck's going on?
44:11Like, you full on bald faced lied to me about where you got the mushrooms.
44:15But on the other hand, you're happy for the cops to go in and obtain those leftovers.
44:21So I was aware that she had children and I wanted to double check that the children had not consumed the meal.
44:33She indicated that they had consumed the meal and I said, yeah, well, call the school.
44:39She was concerned for them. She didn't want them to be frightened.
44:42And, you know, I said, well, look, they can be alive and scared or they could be dead.
44:56When Heather was being taken away in the ambulance, I knew that I wasn't going to see her again.
45:07You know, there's a lot of aspects of this case that, you know, like anything that goes shit in life,
45:14you'd love to have another chance to, you know, do it again.
45:22All four lunch guests, they're ultimately transferred to the Austin Hospital,
45:26where their conditions continue to worsen.
45:29Although it wasn't able to be put before the jury because Simon's charges were ultimately withdrawn,
45:35the scene that sticks with me the most is a gathering in a really small chapel at the Austin Hospital in Heidelberg.
45:44Just as the health of their loved ones is deteriorating,
45:48Simon sends a message to his siblings and his cousins,
45:51basically tells them that he's got some serious news that he needs to share.
45:55It was in that chapel that Simon really revealed for the first time that he believed that his wife was capable of murder.
46:02Ruth Dubois is one of Ian Wilkinson's daughters and introduced us to this conversation during pretrial.
46:10He wanted to tell us that he had stopped eating food that Erin had prepared because he suspected that she might have been messing with it.
46:23Nobody was made aware of this in the lead up to the lunch.
46:26When the lunch occurred, really nobody knew of his level of suspicion.
46:31He was really sorry that he hadn't told our family or our parents before this,
46:37but he thought that he was the only person that she was targeting and that they'd be safe.
46:46You can imagine how difficult this must have been for Simon,
46:50someone that not only had survived an ordeal like this himself,
46:53but to know that he had that information and that he hadn't disclosed that with everyone beforehand.
46:59There must have been like a pretty big weight on his shoulders at that point in time to say,
47:04I'm sorry I have to tell you this at this time, I probably should have done this sooner.
47:09It's such a horrible thing to hear and it must have come with its own fair share of guilt.
47:15I don't think Erin could have possibly considered that she would be a suspect so quickly.
47:37I think Erin thought that she would have a fair degree of time
47:44to cover her tracks.
47:46Incriminated conduct is basically the conduct that an accused person would engage in
47:50or a suspect would engage in after the commission of an alleged crime.
47:54It's particularly important in this case because there's a number of things
47:57that Erin Patterson does after the lunch that might indicate that she's guilty.
48:02Sally-Ann Atkinson is a senior public health advisor within the Department of Health.
48:12She's trying to figure out two things.
48:14Where did the mushrooms come from?
48:16And could there be concerns about public health?
48:18Initially, Sally-Ann says she tries to get in touch with Erin, but she's not very forthcoming.
48:24Sally-Ann is struggling to get a hold of Erin and we know from the text messages that she's trying to get information about the Asian grocery store.
48:32I've been very, very helpful with the health department through the week because I wanted to help that side of things as much as possible because I do want to know what happened.
48:44Sally-Ann A council worker is going around all these shops trying to find this mystery grocer, but Erin isn't giving them much to go on.
48:51And so what the prosecution claim is that Erin Patterson basically sent the department on a wild goose chase in an attempt to try to deflect, you know, the focus on the investigation, which wasted a lot of time and resources, obviously.
49:04What we do have is a set of behaviour that's not just about cover up.
49:10It's showing a total lack of concern for the other people.
49:14It's a shifting process going from the mushrooms came from Woolworths to, oh, I added some Asian dehydrated mushrooms to, I got rid of the dehydrated because I panicked.
49:27A young detective in the office who was just doing a little bit of a search of Erin Patterson's bank records found a transaction for something that was dumped at the tip.
49:38CCTV shows Erin has dumped her food dehydrator on August 2, four days after the fatal lunch.
49:48That's a key example of incriminating conduct because why else would you dump an appliance unless there was proof in that,
49:55that you might have dehydrated deathly mushrooms using it?
50:01Thanks for your patience today, Erin, for completing our search.
50:06The only outstanding item is that mobile phone that you've got there.
50:12So I'll seize that now from you.
50:14The last key act that the prosecution claims goes to the heart of incriminating conduct by Erin Patterson in the aftermath of the lunch
50:21is the fact that she took multiple steps to actually eliminate her online presence.
50:27On the 5th of August is when they search Erin Patterson's property.
50:32Now, she's not under arrest at this point.
50:34During the search itself, Eppingstool was supposed to be staying with Erin Patterson for most of that time.
50:39But somehow police discovered later on she'd actually switched SIM cards in her phone from her, what they call phone A, her main phone, into a separate phone.
50:49And then what the prosecution claimed is that she used some of that time and access that she had to that phone
50:55to actually wipe it out to a factory reset.
50:57Do you want us to have a look at it before we take it?
50:59Of course.
51:00And at the end of that search, she was able to hand over what they described as a dummy phone.
51:05The second most crucial reset that happened after that comes the following day
51:10as this phone that she's just handed to the police is sitting in a locker inside the police headquarters
51:16on Spencer Street in Melbourne.
51:18And it's not put in a Faraday bag, which is a bag that kind of stops Wi-Fi effectively,
51:22stops any signal coming through to that phone, and it's not turned in airplane mode.
51:26Erin Patterson remotely logs on and wipes the whole thing clean.
51:30Phone A, Erin's first phone, was never found.
51:36Almost certainly it was binned.
51:38There's no way it was an accident.
51:40Certainly only Erin knows what was on it.
51:44And Erin ain't talking.
51:46Looking like the trial is going to blow out well past the predicted six weeks.
52:00It still looks like we are a couple of weeks away from finishing at the very least.
52:09I can't even imagine what the family is feeling right now.
52:13They all look tired. The lawyers look tired. The jury looks tired.
52:17We are all just spent.
52:26I just heard the trials blown out by another two weeks.
52:34Can I be here till the end of June?
52:39Because there's so much evidence.
52:43The Crown opens its case and, of course, it looks really good.
52:47But then we have the defence.
52:48All they need to do is create holes.
52:52Throughout the trial, there's a number of times that the defence managed to make a dent into the prosecution's case by either highlighting inconsistencies or presenting alternative version of events.
53:01If you're running defence in a triple murder trial, any time you can make the prosecution case look weak or a little bit shaky or, you know, include a little bit of that reasonable doubt, you're going to take it.
53:13Obviously, we've got concerns in relation to the mushrooms and where they've come from.
53:18Is that something you've done in the past, foraging for the mushrooms during fire?
53:22Never.
53:23There was an inkling that there was something brewing on the defence side of things when Colin Mundy tried to introduce evidence that had been tossed out earlier.
53:39And that included pictures of mushrooms that had been uncovered in some devices found at Arian Patterson's house that were wild mushrooms that she could have possibly foraged.
53:49In this case, we have a situation where the accused has been asked questions in the record of interview as to whether or not she forages mushrooms.
53:58She has denied that.
54:00We have admitted in our own thing that that is a lie, that she has foraged mushrooms.
54:05And now you're going to prove that's a lie?
54:08Yes.
54:09What on earth? What the fuck is going on? This is crazy.
54:13You're wanting to reintroduce this evidence at the 11th hour after you fought so hard to have the evidence thrown out?
54:21In the pretrial, they didn't want that stuff included. You know, they thought that that was damaging to their case.
54:28There's an anger within Nanette that I hadn't seen throughout the entire trial.
54:33She actually looked pretty pissed off, like she was getting ready to go to war.
54:38Colin Mandy is holding his card so close to his chest. He's being accused by the trial judge of trying to run two different defences and Beal had had enough.
54:47Is it your case that she put foraged mushrooms into the Beef Wellington?
54:52It seems very likely that that's the case, Your Honour. Yes.
54:57The prosecution had been wanting to prove that the entire time. They wanted the jury to think also that she was a forager, that she knew what she was doing.
55:05She knew how to find death cat mushrooms. She deliberately sourced them and she deliberately put them in the Beef Wellington.
55:10It was just that she wanted to say it was an accident and the prosecution wanted to say it was deliberate.
55:15So the prosecution's case was like, you want it back in? All right, let's not only admit those pictures.
55:20Let's admit all these other evidence that was thrown out initially before the trial started.
55:25This includes things like searches that Erin had done for poisons, pages she had visited for poisonous plants.
55:32Erin wasn't just Googling things about mushrooms. She was only Googling information about poisonous mushrooms.
55:41The prosecution and the defence disappear into a room and by the time they reemerge, they've reached an agreement.
55:46All we heard was that some photos would come in and some wouldn't. Her story was she bought these mushrooms from one, an Asian grocer and two, a local Woolworths store.
55:57Hearing for the first time in court that her story had changed, it was, for us, how are they going to back that up?
56:04What witness are they going to call to talk about these photos to support their theory that Erin Patterson was a mushroom forager?
56:16Your Honour, the defence will call Erin Patterson.
56:34After that.
56:35When?
56:36Currently.
56:37First.
56:39I do.
56:48A Soybean.
56:53I do.
56:58A Soybean.
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