Main arguments from prosecution and defence in Erin Patterson trial
The Crown says Erin Patterson tried to hide her poison plot with “lies upon lies” but the defence argues no motive has been uncovered because there was no murder.
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The Crown claims Erin Patterson deliberately poisoned her lunch guests but her defence team says her actions in the days after the meal point to “panic”, not a murder plot, as the Supreme Court jury heard the final cases for and against the accused.
Ms Patterson is standing trial in Morwell, accused of murdering her estranged husband’s parents Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, along with Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson, 66.
The prosecution alleges she served them individual beef wellingtons she had deliberately laced with death caps at her Leongatha home on July 29, 2023.
Heather’s husband, pastor Ian Wilkinson, 71, was the only guest to survive.
PROSECUTION
Erin Patterson told “lies upon lies” when her murder plot started to unravel and crafted a “carefully constructed narrative” she would later tell detectives, witnesses and even the jurors in her own trial, a lead prosecutor claims.
Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC finished her closing address in Ms Patterson’s triple-murder trial on Tuesday after asking the jurors to consider what they “would do” if they had accidentally poisoned their family with a home-cooked meal.
Dr Rogers broke down the Crown case on Monday into “four calculated deceptions”, alleging Ms Patterson fabricated a cancer claim, “disguised” lethal doses of poison as beef wellingtons, attempted to make it seem like she also suffered death cap mushroom poisoning and embarked on a “sustained cover-up” to conceal the truth.
NO ‘ALTERNATIVE’ EXPLANATION
Dr Rogers declared that there was “no reasonable alternative explanation” for what happened other than the accused deliberately sourcing death caps and including them in the meal “with an intention to kill”.
“Erin Patterson told so many lies it’s hard to keep track of them,” she said.
“She has told lies upon lies because she knew the truth would implicate her.”
But Dr Rogers revealed there was a fifth deception alleged by the prosecution.
“The deception she has tried to play on you, the jury, with her untruthful evidence,” she told the jurors.
Dr Rogers said when Ms Patterson realised her lies had been “uncovered”, she manufactured a “carefully constructed narrative”.
“Almost,” she added.
“There are some inconsistencies that she just cannot account for.”
She said, when it came to the inconsistencies, the accused simply ignores them, says she cannot remember or accuses people of being wrong, including her own children.
Dr Rogers said the evidence shows Ms Patterson prepared the meal and was the only person to consume the meal, but not fall seriously ill.
She said it also shows she was familiar with the citizen science website iNaturalist, her phone was in the very two locations in Gippsland where death caps had been sighted and she was dehydrating mushrooms consistent with death caps.
And, finally, she said it shows she concealed her actions, including by dumping her dehydrator, and told “many, many lies” about the true source of the mushrooms.
“When you consider all of the evidence in combination, we suggest you will be satisfied that the accused deliberately sourced death caps, deliberately served death caps to Don, Gail, Ian and Heather and that she did so intending to kill each of them,” she said.
She encouraged the jury to not feel like the standard of ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ was a “high hurdle” or “insurmountable”.
“We often tell juries that it helps to think of a case like this as a jigsaw puzzle,” she said.
“The pieces of evidence are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. One piece on its own or by itself might tell you not very much at all about what the picture is, but as you start putting more and more pieces together and looking at it as a whole, the picture starts to become clear.”
LIES UPON LIES
Dr Rogers reminded the jury of the lies admitted by the accused, such as never owning a dehydrator and never foraging for mushrooms before.
But Dr Rogers said these lies were not “knee-jerk reactions” to a stressful situation, but were “calculated and planned deceptions” designed to cover her tracks.
Dr Rogers then took the jury to the alleged lies she has not admitted, such as the reason for the lunch invitation and her innocently foraging for mushrooms for years.
“The accused lied when she told you that she invited the lunch guests and Simon Patterson to lunch on July 29 because she’d had a good time with Don and Gail on June 24 and … wanted to have a stronger relationship with Ian and Heather, who she really liked,” she said.
Dr Rogers said the defence would argue the jury cannot discount the possibility Ms Patterson had “innocently foraged for wild mushrooms” and “accidentally collected death cap mushrooms in that process, dehydrated them, placed them into a Tupperware container with other dehydrated mushrooms and, therefore, unknowingly included them in the beef wellingtons”.
But she said the only evidence of Ms Patterson foraging came from her, describing it was a “late change” to her story to fit the evidence found by police.
However, Dr Rogers said the “starkest lie” was telling the jury she was planning to have gastric bypass surgery.
She said this claim was “quickly investigated” and a statement from the practice manager of the ENRICH Clinic was shown to the jury that revealed it did not offer, and had never offered, gastric bypass surgery.
“We say the accused has told numerous lies in this case, to witnesses in this case, and to you, the jury,” she added.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
Dr Rogers also asked the jurors to personally think about what they would do if this was a “horrible accident”.
“If you were told that the meal you had cooked and served to your family was thought to have possibly contained death cap mushrooms, what would you do?” she asked.
“Would you go into self-preservation mode just worrying about protecting yourself from blame? Would you race away from the hospital and do who knows what for an hour and a half? Would you be reluctant to receive treatment? Would you take two and a half hours to eventually agree to get your kids to hospital? Would you lie about the source of the ingredients?
“No. That’s not what you’d do.
“You would do everything you could to help the people you love.”
Dr Rogers said the relationship between Ms Patterson and her in-laws was “not always a harmonious one” and the evidence shows the divide was “deeper than they ever knew”.
She said she expressed her true feelings to her Facebook friends in “bitter, angry messages” she wrote about her in-laws, where she called them a “lost cause”.
“It shows, we say, that the accused was leading a duplicitous life when it came to the Pattersons,” she said.
“She presented one side, while expressing contrary beliefs to others.”
But Dr Rogers said the jury should not be distracted by any arguments by the defence that Ms Patterson had no motive to harm her estranged husband’s relatives.
“It’s only natural that you’re going to wonder about these things, however don’t let this distract you from the question you have to answer,” she said.
“The question you must determine is: has the prosecution proved, beyond reasonable doubt, that the accused did this deliberately?
“You don’t have to know why a person does something in order to know they did it.”
DEFENCE
Erin Patterson “never planned to kill” her estranged husband’s relatives and instead had a “motive to keep these people in her world”, her defence barrister says.
Top silk Colin Mandy SC delivered his closing address on Tuesday after his counterpart on the other side of the bar table finished addressing the jury.
Mr Mandy told the jurors there are “two simple issues” they have to determine:
“Is there a reasonable possibility that death cap mushrooms were put into this meal accidentally?”
“Is it a reasonable possibility that Erin Patterson did not intend to kill or cause serious injury to her guests?”
He said if either were “reasonable possibilities”, there would be “reasonable doubt” and the jury must acquit his client of all charges.
‘TERRIBLE’ TRAGEDY
Echoing his opening address from seven weeks ago, Mr Mandy described what happened in the wake of the lunch as a “terrible” tragedy.
“It was clear, I am sure you will agree, to everyone in this courtroom that Ian Wilkinson is a kind and good person,” he said to the jurors.
“And there is every reason to believe that Don and Gail and Heather were, as well.
“They were kind and good to Erin Patterson and all of the family.”
He transported them back to the days of the trial when members of the Patterson and Wilkinson families were giving evidence.
“There was sadness in this courtroom,” he said. “They’re still grieving their losses.”
Mr Mandy added that it was “natural” for the jurors to be moved by that.
He said since the four guests were “good, innocent people”, the jurors may have a desire to “punish” or “seek retribution” to whoever caused their deaths.
“We know that the actions of Erin Patterson caused the deaths of these three people and the serious illness of another,” he said.
“We might bring that desire for retribution or revenge or anger or punishment into our consideration of the issues, but a jury has to fiercely guard against that kind of reasoning.”
ALL ‘PANIC’, NO PLAN
In early 2023, Mr Mandy said Ms Patterson had a “big beautiful house”, had sole custody of her children, was “very comfortable financially” and was looking forward to returning to study.
While her body image issues lingered, he said she was in a “good place” and it was “most unlikely” she was planning to murder people.
Mr Mandy said an “intelligent person carefully planning a murder” would know if you poison four people at a lunch at your house, the meal would be “under suspicion” and the focus would be on the cook “very, very quickly”.
He added that it was no “secret” the guests were coming to her house on July 29, 2023, and she decided to prepare a “lavish, complicated meal”, not “simply bolognese”.
Mr Mandy said if she had been planning this murder from April 2023, she would not have bought a dehydrator in her own name, taken photos of it, taken photos of mushrooms in it, shared the photos in a Facebook chat and waited so long before dumping it.
“But Erin Patterson did the opposite of all those things because she didn’t plan it,” he continued.
“She never planned to kill anyone.”
Mr Mandy added that if she had planned to kill the guests, she would not have sent “images of the murder weapon and murder method” to her Facebook friends.
But he admitted she panicked, when the spotlight was on her.
He said she dumped the dehydrator not to dispose of evidence, but because she panicked following a conversation with her estranged husband about her use of the dehydrator.
Mr Mandy previously admitted his client lied to police, but he disputed the prosecution’s claim that she lied to witnesses about the leftovers or the source of the mushrooms.
“She was giving the same account over and over again to lots of different people and there’s very little meaningful variation in the information she gave,” he said.
He also disputed the prosecution’s claim that she had been “forced” to tell police where the leftovers were, adding that she directed them to the bin “without hesitation”.
“The inference you can draw is that she genuinely believed there were no death caps inside the leftovers,” he said.
‘ANTI-MOTIVE’
Mr Mandy also told the jury there was “positive evidence” of a lack of motive or, in other words, an “anti-motive”, pointing to Don tutoring his grandson and the pair completing science experiments together.
“Erin Patterson had a motive to keep these people in her world,” he said.
“Why would she take wonderful, active, loving grandparents away from her own children?”
Mr Mandy said the prosecution did not need to prove she had a motive, but doing so was “very important to the proof of intention”.
“With an absence of a reason, an intention to kill is very unlikely,” he said.
He reminded the jury of the “extremely inflammatory” messages Simon said Ms Patterson had sent.
But Mr Mandy said she was, at most, “upset and hurt” and the messages were evidence evidence of a “normal” relationship between a separated couple.
“There’s no anger or aggression,” he said.
“There’s no hatred or anything remotely approaching that. Not even between Simon and Erin and certainly not between Erin and Simon’s parents.”
He also criticised the prosecution for its “flawed” analysis of the evidence, accusing them of cherry picking.
Mr Mandy will continue his closing address on Wednesday.
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