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04:29So it's crucial for Aaron to prove that that just was an accident.
04:35What you want from your client is for them to explain any mistakes that they've made in the past and to give their explanation so the jury have a rival alternate theory, aka the rat.
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16:38traumatic they didn't think i had healed quite well enough from the surgery and they wanted me
16:43to stay and i wanted to go with my child did that involve you discharging yourself against medical
16:50advice yep it did what erin is trying to say is like look i didn't discharge myself because i'm
16:57guilty i discharged myself because i deeply mistrust doctors we had heard already from
17:02simon patterson by this point that he knew his wife didn't like going to hospital
17:09he explained that she discharged herself early a number of different times
17:19erin said that at the hospital her ex-husband simon said did you use the dehydrator
17:25to poison my parents and what was your response i said of course not
17:32did that comment by simon cause you to reflect on what might have been in the meal
17:38it caused me to do a lot of thinking about a lot of things here
17:43simon denied ever saying that but erin says that triggered me off and it is at that moment that
17:49erin describes in the witness box that the light bulb went on and she went or could i have possibly
17:55picked up death cup mushrooms dehydrated them and put them in the same container that i had the asian
18:00grocery store mushrooms in and then used that to make the beef wellington accidentally the fact
18:06that you behave like a headless chook doing and saying silly things i would describe as indicators
18:13of innocence if you're preparing and planning all of this you'd have a plan b she's telling the jury
18:21so they can perhaps understand a little better the evidence they've already heard about her
18:26fleeing hospital within five minutes the problem for the prosecution was there's a fundamental flaw
18:33in their case the prosecution relied on her behavior afterwards which was panic the indicators of
18:42innocence are panic because that's the entire opposite of being conniving scheming and cunning
18:48aaron basically says that everything that follows is just one big panic then i just dumped into
18:57dehydrated because i knew that i would become suspect number one this fact that aaron was switching
19:03between phones and sim cards and remotely erasing all the information in her phone including when her
19:09phone was in the custody of the police she had an answer for everything i just thought that her story
19:20had enough to sow a seed of doubt to me that part of reasonable doubt has shifted she didn't come
19:27across as a triple murderer you know she came across as someone i thought who could have potentially
19:32just stuffed up a pantry after listening silently for four days it was time for the crown prosecutor
19:46to launch her tirade of questions
19:52erin patterson was really calm and collected on the stand while her defense team were asking her questions
19:58everything changed when annette rogers stood at the lectern and started asking questions of erin
20:04patterson on monday the 28th of april 2023 the mobile service records for you indicate a possible visit
20:13to the lock township i don't mean to be argumentative but i think the 28th of april was a friday
20:21i think the change in the minute from erin is one of the things that i will
20:25remember forever because i i think it showed erin's true nature her thinking she's better than
20:32everybody else that she's smarter than everybody else she was challenging nanette rogers on what
20:38day of the week it was that that she was being asked about she was incredibly defensive almost a
20:44little bit sarcastic was almost trying to belittle her in the sense that i know more about this case than
20:49you do nanette rogers had a very long you know binder this thick full of questions she wanted to
20:58get through to the point that she'd actually kind of say yes or no correct or incorrect at the end of
21:04each single question i suggested that the opp get some t-shirts made with agree on the front and disagree
21:11on the back the way that you control a witness is by what's called short leading questions
21:18which call for a yes or no answer as opposed to an explanation which keeps the witness confined in
21:24their answers rogers was really challenging erin patterson's versions of events in relation
21:30to her memory of key pieces of evidence she pretty much disagreed with every single witness that came
21:36before her at that point in time did he ask you that where did you get the mushrooms no he said to me
21:45where did you get the ingredients from for the beef wellingtons and my answer to that was woolworths
21:53so clearly that's quite different to what he said but i can only deal with what my memory is
21:59but that didn't happen i said to her there's a strong concern that death cat mushrooms were in the mill
22:09where did you get the mushrooms because the crown hasn't got a smoking gun it's layer upon
22:16layer upon layer so it's about producing a series of lies is your evidence that you laid down for a bit when
22:24you got home for a while on monday the 31st of july she discharged herself about five minutes after
22:32arriving at the hospital she drives home and then she has a nap for about 40 minutes or so but her
22:39phone says that she connected to the outram base station at around 9am how does that happen i can't see
22:46how outram would provide coverage to the western part of the liangatha township when the liangatha
22:55base station doesn't this doesn't fit her version of events at all one of the things that makes
23:02absolutely no sense to me as we look at erin's story is the fact that she fed the meal leftovers to
23:07her children i did knowing that all of her guests were seriously ill and she claims she was also ill so
23:17five out of five and yet she still fed them the idea of scraping mushrooms off is an absurdity she has
23:26five packets of eye fillets each one's got two she's got four perfectly fine steaks sitting in the fridge
23:33that she could give to her children okay now this part of the evidence isn't super pleasant so i
23:42apologize but bear with me this trial there was more discussions about poo than in christopher robin
23:50so she ended up driving her son to a flying lesson she said half an hour into the trip i felt like i
23:56needed to go to the toilet so we pulled over on a stretch of road where there was quite a bit of bush
24:02i had diarrhea so i cleaned myself up with tissues and put it in the dog bag and put it in my handbag
24:10she told the jury that she just had to done a poo on the side of the road she had diarrhea
24:15and then she's walked into the service station because she wanted to put the tissues in in a
24:18rubbish bin i don't know whether the jury considered the fact that she wore white pants when she was
24:24suffering in her words violent diarrhea she disagreed her own son's memory of what happened the day that they
24:32went for a drive to his flying lesson and at this point i could see her sitting in the witness box
24:38biting her lip fiddling with her glasses i suggest he did not recall you stopping in the bushes on the
24:44side of the road because it did not happen agree or disagree disagree disagree
24:51the longer the witnesses in the witness box the greater the opportunity for them to
25:01make mistakes because they just get tired erin is in the box for eight days talking about mushrooms
25:08there's this very sort of like tense multiple days of evidence as you know nanette is asking all these
25:14questions and and erin is seemingly getting frustrated you could feel that the strings were
25:20starting to come a little bit loose there was one point when annette rogers was firing questions
25:26at erin and there was no no no disagree and all of a sudden she paused and goes are you making this
25:32up as you go along miss patterson no if you have called a defense witness you are fingers crossed that
25:41they hold the line that there isn't something comes out of the woodwork that destroys their credibility
25:48but you weren't confronting any medical issues were you correct uh yeah no no i think i was yeah
25:55and what were they i was going to have surgery soon what surgery the gastric bypass surgery with who
26:05was the enrich clinic in melbourne that's the first time we're hearing about enrich clinic
26:09everything changed that wasn't in evidence that is something that the prosecution hadn't heard
26:16before that comes out for the first time bang stephen eppingstall gets up and leaves the room
26:21the prosecution team is speaking to each other on the computers you can see them typing in their laptops
26:27and it turns out rich clinic don't offer weight loss surgery they've never offered weight loss surgery
26:32not only was it a lie that erin had told to the jury in front of the jury but it was a lie that had been
26:37told to explain another lie the prosecution did their research and they came into court prepared
26:44prepared to make her throw herself under the bus and that's exactly what happened i've seen cases turn
26:50on a an answer turn on an answer the witness had said something so completely stupid
26:58and out of sync with everything that it was the moment i think erin had done a reasonable job up until
27:06that point of batting away any questions about her story but in this instance she'd been caught out
27:28people had really got invested in this case and we know members of the public had come to nearly
27:33every single day of the trial some had taken work off some had changed their work hours just to be
27:38there the first few weeks actually has been easy to get a seat but this week it has been literally the
27:44hunger games um with the number of general public getting in and you know almost elbows out to get a
27:51spot so yeah we're just getting here early and earlier like this morning we're here at 6 30 to make sure we're getting a seat
27:56come this far i'm not not getting a seat
28:02i've really enjoyed watching you know the prosecution and the defense like do what they
28:06do and i've always grown up like i don't know how people can defend murders but now seeing the
28:11defense do their thing you're like i actually appreciate what you're doing because everyone
28:16seems to have an opinion on how the police work or the legal system work but they've never actually
28:20physically gone out and seen it firsthand so it's been good
28:24i actually like the human psychology of it so i don't believe that if erin is guilty that she
28:29just woke up one day and went i'm going to take out my whole in-laws there's some psychology there's
28:34more to the story and that's the part that intrigues me
28:38in 30 odd years of being around serious criminal offenses that go through the court system i think
28:49it's almost unheard of not to present in terms of defense with a psychiatric a forensic psychiatric
28:57or a forensic psychological assessment my name's karen owen i'm a forensic and clinical psychologist my
29:04work has been originally with the department of justice so working within prisons and community
29:11corrections developing treatment programs for high risk offenders it's certainly possible that she
29:19would have had some kind of assessment and it may well for whatever reason might not have suited the
29:26story line that the defense wanted to portray we know that she's at least of high average if not higher
29:35intelligence we know that she's organized we know that she's a good researcher and yet when you
29:42look at her in terms of the persona that she presents which is this kind of flat affect sort of dowdy middle
29:52aged woman it's not consistent with who historically throughout all the other information that we've got
29:58who we know she is if i were conducting an evaluation of her based on the information that i've got now
30:06without question there's an underlying borderline personality disorder or something similar some
30:12kind of um sort of behavioral effective issue and that is really consistent with the fact that she's
30:19talked about um in the transcript around having a long-term eating disorder issues all the eating disorders
30:27are really highly correlated with some of those sort of call them cluster b personality characteristics
30:33i think we're fairly safe in saying that she's someone who has a high degree of need in terms of
30:42inclusion and being part of a a group or a social circle or a family unit i mean one of the key
30:48features in terms of borderline personality is the in inherently unstable relationships so you're either
30:55all in or you're all out you know i hate you or i or i love you but there's nothing in between
31:03some borderline people can harbor and ruminate and plan for a long time
31:17the prosecution did a very good job in their closing i think of kind of really clearly nailing
31:35every single lie they said that erin patterson's story was was built on it really brought the case
31:42home for the prosecution at the heart of this case are four calculated deceptions made by the accused
31:51the first deception was the fabricated cancer claim she used as a pretense for the lunch invitation
31:58the second deception was the lethal doses of poison the accused secreted in the home cooked beef
32:04wellingtons the third deception was her attempts to make it seem that she also suffered death cap mushroom
32:11poisoning and fourthly the fourth deception the sustained cover-up she embarked upon to conceal
32:18the truth here's a woman who remembered every finite detail of everything but when it came to
32:25a lot of the key issues she didn't agree or she couldn't remember or all of a sudden her memory was
32:31fading you might have noticed that when the accused was giving evidence that she appeared to have a
32:36remarkable memory even now in june 2025 she could recall that the 28th of april 2023 was a friday and
32:46not a monday as i had suggested to her in cross-examination yet in august 2023 she could not recall the
32:54shop or even the suburb where she purchased the mushrooms from an asian grocer in the same april of 2023
33:02it's simply beggars belief the prosecutor said this woman is smart as a tack this woman remembers
33:08everything but she conveniently forgets stuff when that sort of material damages her case she basically
33:15hung her with her own rope but one of the most powerful moments after outlying those four deceptions
33:20was the fact that nanette just told the jury and there's a fifth secret deception but there is a fifth
33:27deception the deception she has tried to play on you the jury with her untruthful evidence when she
33:35knew her lies had been uncovered she came up with a carefully constructed narrative to fit with the
33:41evidence almost if you think of it on a human level all of a sudden those members of the jury had a
33:48personal reason to distrust erin patterson it might be suggested to you that some of the accused behavior
33:57after the lunch was the result of panic innocent panic about the prospect of being blamed
34:04we suggest that you can reject those suggestions why because panic does not explain the extensive and
34:12prolonged efforts that the accused went to in order to cover up what she had done nanette rogers was
34:19saying that if erin's version of events went the way she said they did how completely and utterly unlikely
34:26it was that that would occur i felt like it was this sliding doors scene it was the first time the
34:34prosecution really put that comparison in front of the jury nanette rogers says on saturday afternoon
34:41while don gail ian and heather are going about their normal life erin claims that she's starting to
34:46experience gastro-like symptoms
34:48on sunday morning the wilkinsons and the pattersons arrive in the hospital after being up all night
34:56vomiting
34:59by sunday afternoon don's condition has deteriorated
35:03at that moment erin is taking her son to flying lessons in tyre a two-hour return trip
35:11by sunday evening don is admitted to icu with organ and kidney damage
35:15meanwhile erin is serving her children the leftovers of the lunch with the pastry and the
35:19mushrooms scraped off
35:22on monday morning as ian and heather's condition declines rapidly and doctors consider taking them
35:27to dandenong hospital erin arrives to liangatha hospital but discharges herself after five minutes
35:34about an hour later on monday morning as ian and heather are being transported to dandenong hospital
35:39erin returns home packs her daughter's ballet bag and has a nap
35:43on tuesday august 1st as don and gail are on life support erin patterson is discharged from monash
35:49medical center and returns home with no evidence of amanita mushroom poisoning
35:55and finally on august 2nd simon patterson summons his siblings and his cousins
36:00at the chapel at the austin hospital and reveals that erin might have poisoned their parents on
36:04purpose at that same time erin patterson factory resets her phone and takes the
36:09dehydrator to the local tip
36:16nanette finished and she finished on a high and she went like and that is it and it's almost like
36:22she was just she should have taken a bow and i'm out of here so they were hanging on every word of
36:28nanette like i really felt like that was like a bombshell moment where she goes i've taken you through
36:33the four deceptions i told you i was going to take you through but i have a fifth and even i was sitting
36:38there and i was like what's the fifth what's the fifth what have we missed and got excited in that
36:43moment that there was something new something different the overflow room went like whoa
36:50i think even the jury were like oh hang on this is a kerpa where are we going and i think the moment
36:56that like there was a juxtaposition basically she was running through how the health of the lunch guests
37:00was deteriorating after the meal and the symptoms the symptoms that they were experiencing on like
37:05they won after the lunch they too are after the lunch and she was comparing that to what erin
37:09patterson was doing the way that she simplified it and painted those two comparisons was the most
37:15chilling moment for me in the entire trial and i think it was really smart for her to be her version
37:21of events hinges exclusively on her own account and she's lied to you and that's the bit saying like
37:28that's that disclaimer at the beginning of lolita by inabokov it's like everything you're about to hear
37:33is through the lens of a liar erin patterson's defense barrister has told the jury she might be a
37:40liar but she's not a killer he also labeled the prosecution's allegation that the mother of two
37:45would murder her only support network as ridiculous a lack of motive is a powerful thing
37:53for the defense i mean most human conduct has motive if you're hungry you eat if a car cuts you
37:59off getting for the car park you get annoyed there's a reason right but to actually methodically
38:06set about poisoning somebody there's a pretty strong reason and the absence of that is very
38:13compelling in my view after nine grueling weeks of evidence closing arguments and final instructions
38:21from the judge the moment is finally here with the jury in the mushroom murder trial sent away
38:27to begin its deliberations his honor reminded the jury that the onus is on the prosecution to prove
38:34those charges beyond reasonable doubt and he said that erin patterson has nothing to prove
38:42i was very much worried that there was plenty of reasonable doubt to actually sway a jury
38:47to find erin not guilty at that point in time they have actually been sequested which means
38:53they have been put up in local accommodation here locked away from the outside world with the
38:58judge warning them they are only to discuss the case with their fellow jurors i still thought when
39:03the jury went out that not guilty or hung was more likely than guilty there was enough about her story
39:10that for me planted the seed of doubt
39:16as a very junior barrister when i was doing my first murder trial on the way to court i stopped at the bathroom
39:23and i saw an older very experienced criminal barrister vomiting in the sink
39:29and i said are you all right he said no i'm okay i've just got a jury going out
39:32it's a horrible time particularly where the consequences are dire
39:41there's still no movement from the jury in the mushroom murder trial as they enter their second
39:46day of deliberations on the third day and the fourth day of fifth day these days drag on and on i
39:53think anyone with a heart would really feel for these jurors nobody knows it could be it could be two
39:59week deliberation once we got to day five of deliberations we all started getting really
40:04nervous that's at the point where you think anything can happen and we're going to have a split
40:08verdict or we're going to have a hung jury and you spend your time closer and closer to the courthouse
40:29so
40:39marta and i were at lunch and all of a sudden i got a phone call that just said
40:44verdict and my heart was racing my stomach dropped just the volume of people that were gathering and
40:51just bolting towards this courthouse a few moments ago we just received an email from the supreme
40:57court media team confirming that the jury have reached their verdicts
41:10you walk single file silently into this courtroom and sit and wait
41:16justice christopher beale says jurors do you have a verdict and the foreperson says yes
41:27i just remember looking at their faces and seeing that they were really feeling
41:31the gravity of this moment they just looked like they just gotten through hell on earth
41:38and then all of a sudden we learn guilty guilty guilty guilty
41:46and there was no reaction from erin patterson she didn't bow her head
41:50there was no sign of tears no sign of emotion she just sat there staring right ahead
41:58outside the courtroom is mayhem breaking news coming from morwell the verdict is in and the
42:06jury has found erin patterson guilty on all charges look at the amount of media attention right here
42:12we are surrounded this is a result that many people across the world uh would have predicted
42:18erin patterson she was guilty on all charges hello how are you feeling i'm saddened um
42:28did you think that erin was painful or something like this she's a triple murder
42:34ali she said she didn't see you soon were you hoping to see her was she positive that she would
42:38walk free what do you think she would want to say to the family i could just get to my car guys i'm
42:43doing really good now thank you come on guys nothing thank you thank you is there anything you'd
42:49like to take up are you expecting to appeal mr mangy have you been in contact with your family there
43:00i think it's very important that we remember that we've had three people
43:04three people have died and we've had a person that nearly died and was seriously injured
43:09national and local media i'm out of breath because we have been following the people as
43:13they leave the courtroom should we head yeah i've been doing this marathon thing and it's finally
43:19come to a conclusion somewhat and now i'm being asked to drive an hour away and try to get a hold
43:27of and try to talk to the people that have been hurt by it the most the patterson and wilkinson families
43:33i want to go in the off chance they want to talk but i'm fully prepared for them not to and i'm not
43:40going to press her
43:47bro it's surreal absolutely surreal
43:53but when ali rose walked out feasibly distraught because you know the person she's been supporting
44:06for this long uh has just been found guilty of three counts of murder and one of attempted murder
44:12you know she's completely swarmed by this media pack and they've all got their mics she can hardly walk
44:19through them like whether you're on one side or the other like it was the same for jess who's been
44:24supporting the family like it's been a brutal two years but it did certainly make me think a lot about
44:34how we cover crime and about the way the media can feed on a story and then also become part of
44:41a story and what impact that can have on on the victims of crime that included me that included you
44:47that included every podcast every social media account we should have kind of been able to step
44:52back as part of it saying what am i doing here what am i doing as part of this that is contributing to
45:00to further harm to these families hey jess how's it going good hey going yeah good how are you feeling
45:09after it all must be yeah look it's um it's a very strange feeling um i uh lots lots to do at the
45:18moment as you'd imagine yes yeah yeah i was gonna say i felt like i could vomit earlier today um
45:25i just wanted to touch base and just make sure i just want to know where the lines are i don't want
45:29to cross any red lines i don't want to upset anyone i just want to understand a little bit what the go is
45:35is there going to be any statements or anything like that at this stage or no no statements at
45:41this point in time from the patterson family um and i don't see that changing
45:50there were so many clear examples of the line being crossed and the justification for it was you
45:57know the public interest you know the public interest but i think in reality the justification for it was
46:04the public appetite
46:27people will just move forward and that would be the end you know life goes on and you try and put it
46:49behind you but you can't put it behind you i mean to keep communities you know very resilient in another
46:57phase you just say shit happens and that's what happens sitting okay we'll work our way through it
47:05we don't have a choice there's no choice you get on with life
47:11probably the thing that this tragedy has highlighted is what a solid community we have here
47:20what is the first time here in victoria a television crew being allowed in court for sentencing this
47:27will be broadcast live erin patterson after a long trial during which you gave evidence that the
47:36poisoning of your four lunch guests on the 29th of july was an accident the jury found you guilty of
47:43three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder in other words the jury necessarily
47:49found that you deliberately served poison meals to gail and don patterson and heather and ian wilkinson
47:57and that you did so intending to kill them only ian wilkinson survived
48:02good morning i'll not be taking any questions or making any further comments apart from this statement
48:20my purpose here today is to give some well-earned thanks firstly to victoria police in particular the
48:33homicide squad and the team led by detective steven eppingstall i'd like to extend gratitude to to the
48:43team from the office of the pub office of public prosecutions led by senior counsel nanette rogers
48:52the victim impact statements reveal the immense and ongoing anguish suffered by your many victims
49:00direct and indirect four generations of the extended patterson and wilkinson families
49:05have been traumatized by your crimes ian wilkinson's sister dorothy dicker questions quote how anyone could
49:14sit there and watch those four kind and caring people eat that meal
49:21your failure to exhibit any remorse pours salt into all the victim's wounds
49:26i will conclude my account of key aspects of the victim impact statements with what don and gail's
49:34son matthew had to say about your betrayal of trust quote erin was embraced as part of the patterson family
49:42she was welcome and treated with genuine love and respect in a way she did not appear to experience
49:48from her own family her actions represent a profound and devastating betrayal
49:55of the trust and love extended to her please stand
50:06for the attempted murder of ian wilkinson i sentence you to 25 years imprisonment
50:12for the murder of heather wilkinson i sentence you to life imprisonment
50:17for the murder of gail patterson i sentence you to life imprisonment
50:20for the murder of don patterson i sentence you to life imprisonment all sentences are to be served
50:28concurrently the total effective sentence is life imprisonment and i fix a non-parole period of 33 years
50:39would you please remove miss paterson
50:54we're thankful that when things go wrong there are good people and services and systems available to
51:03help us recover i'd like to encourage all those involved to keep turning up and serving others
51:12our lives and the life of our community depends on the kindness of others i'd like to encourage everybody
51:20to be kind to be kind to each other
51:28i thank the people of the liangatha and currumburra communities in particular
51:34your thoughtfulness and care has been a great encouragement to us that's all i wish to say for now
51:44please respect our privacy as we continue to grieve and heal thank you for listening i hope you all have a
51:52great day thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you
52:06so
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