Erin Patterson murder trial day 33 as it happened: Accused mushroom cook lied to authorities and in witness box, prosecutor says in concluding argument; defence argues no intent, panic explains actions

Here’s a recap of the key moments from court today:

• Crown prosecutor Dr Nanette Rogers, SC, concluded her closing address to the jury, and Erin Patterson’s defence barrister Colin Mandy, SC commenced his.
• Rogers urged the jury to consider why the dehydrator was dumped: “If there was nothing incriminating about the dehydrator, why hide it?” she asked.
• Patterson took a series of steps to conceal her usual mobile phone from police, Rogers said. It was never recovered. A second handset, which was reset a few times, was a “dummy phone” to conceal the contents of her usual mobile, Rogers argued.
• Rogers told jurors to disregard the claim the poisoning was a horrible accident, and said Patterson was trying to make her story fit the evidence. “You simply cannot” take Patterson at her word, she said. Based on the evidence, the jury should conclude that Patterson deliberately sought out and picked death cap mushrooms.
• Panic did not explain Patterson’s “extensive and prolonged” efforts to cover up what she’d done and why she persisted with lies, even when the lives of the lunch guests were at stake.
• Rogers said Patterson lied to authorities and in witness box: “Her evidence seemed to change every time she was asked about it.”
• The jury was urged to consider the case as a jigsaw puzzle. One piece of information might not tell much, Rogers said, but put together, “the picture starts to become clear”. She concluded by urging them to find Patterson guilty.
• Mandy started his concluding statement by telling the jury that their consideration comes down to two issues: is there a reasonable possibility that death cap mushrooms were put into the meal accidentally? And is it a reasonable possibility that Patterson didn’t intend to kill or cause serious injury to her lunch guests? “If either of those is a reasonable possibility ... you find her not guilty. Because that’s the law.”
• He said Patterson’s evidence was largely consistent and that she gave the same account “over and over again, but to lots of different people in many different contexts”.
• Mandy acknowledged that the jurors will have sympathy for the deceased, but they must use their heads and not their hearts when assessing the evidence.
• He argued there was an “absence of motive” and that disputes over child support payment were “unpersuasive” in that regard. Patterson, he says, was content and looking forward to the future in 2023.
• Panic, he said, led Patterson to dispose of the dehydrator at the tip.
• Mandy said a guilty person would have tried to conceal the lunch leftovers, not told police where to find them.
• Mandy will continue his closing address on Wednesday.

Erin Patterson had the right to remain silent in her own trial, forcing the prosecution to prove their case without her testimony.

She could have stayed quiet, her barrister Colin Mandy, SC, tells the jury in courtroom four in Morwell.

Erin Patterson (left) and prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC.Credit: The Age

Instead, he says, his client chose to enter the witness box and face “the scrutiny of the whole world”.

“She decided to give evidence,” he told the packed courtroom. “To give her account and subject herself to several days of cross-examination by a very experienced barrister.”

Taking the stand, he told the jury, meant facing public scrutiny about the fine details of her account and every word she had told people years earlier.

In the box, she laid bare her account, he said. “Admitting to you that she lied to the guests at the lunch, admitting to you the lies that she told once she realised that foraged mushrooms might be in that meal.”

Mandy told the jury that his client had spoken to 21 people across 24 hours at the hospital, as well as other people who were not witnesses in the case, and that her version of events remained generally consistent.

A court sketch of Erin Patterson during her trial.Credit: Anita Lester

“There are others as well who spoke to her, asked her questions about the meal, preparation, where she got the mushrooms … Meetings, appointments, phone calls, interviews, questions,” Mandy said.

“In any meaningful way, her account was the same to those people.”

Mandy said it was difficult to imagine a more intense “surgical examination” of someone’s account for such a long period in the witness box when they’ve sworn to tell the truth.

On that point, proceedings have wrapped up for the day.

Mandy is expected to continue his closing address tomorrow.

Why would a guilty woman direct police to the bin containing the leftovers?

This, claims defence barrister Colin Mandy, SC, is an action that seems inconsistent with guilt. Instead, he argues, it points to his client’s belief that the food was harmless.

His client – Erin Patterson – has pleaded not guilty to three charges of murder and one of attempted murder following a fatal beef Wellington lunch she served in 2023.

As part of his closing address, Mandy is examining part of the prosecution’s theory that his client ate her whole portion of beef Wellington – and that the leftovers in the bin amounted to a whole beef Wellington parcel.

Erin Patterson.Credit: Jason South

“There is no evidence at all as to how big those beef Wellingtons were,” Mandy told the jury.

Mandy said the prosecution’s assertion that those were “clearly two halves” was speculation.

“There’s not enough evidence or information to say that,” Mandy said.

“It’s speculation, ‘clearly two halves’. Which you heard for the first time in the closing address.”

Mandy said that assertion was never put to Patterson or Ian Wilkinson, who were present at the lunch.

He described the prosecution’s proposition that she did not volunteer where the leftovers were to the police as a “pedantic point” that amounted to “nonsense”.

Mandy said Patterson had told the police in her record of interview that she volunteered the location or access to the leftovers.

“She must have been confident there was no poison in them in order to do that. She was wrong,” Mandy said.

Mandy said a guilty person, who had carefully planned the lunch and who had been at the premises for some time that morning, would have already thrown out the leftovers.

“Put them in a neighbour’s bin, bury them in the backyard … instead of directing police where to find the evidence that there were death cap mushrooms in the bin,” Mandy said.

He said that at that time on Monday morning, July 31, 2023, the only inference that the jury can draw from Patterson’s behaviour is that she did not believe there were death cap mushrooms in those leftovers.

A few times now, defence barrister Colin Mandy, SC, has centred on the prosecution’s narrative around Erin Patterson’s dehydrator.

The dehydrator’s purchase was openly shared on social media, specifically within a true crime group. This suggested a lack of concealment, Mandy told the jury.

Mandy said the dehydrator was not disposed of after the mushrooms were dehydrated or well before the lunch.

“Instead, its purchase was broadcast on social media.”

He asked jurors to focus on the timing. His client disposed of the dehydrator a day after she had a confrontation about the appliance with her estranged husband in hospital.

The timing of the disposal spoke volumes of her state of mind at the time, Mandy said. He also pointed out that Patterson had driven to the tip in her own car and the transaction was linked to her information.

“It can only have been panic – not because she is guilty, but because that’s what people might think,” Mandy said.

Inside courtroom four in Morwell, Erin Patterson, on trial for murder, looks teary in the dock as her defence barrister explains what she has to lose.

Colin Mandy, SC – now losing his voice – maintains she never intended to kill anyone. He starts to paint a picture of his client as a woman who was content and looking to the future in 2023.

He returns the jury to the dynamic between his client and her estranged husband. Even after they separated, he said, Patterson and Simon continued to treat their assets as joint assets. He added that the closeness between Patterson, grandparents Don and Gail and the children continued.

There was no doubt, he said, that Don and Gail Patterson had a great relationship with their grandchildren, and that Patterson was a devoted mother.

Erin Patterson, her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson (bottom right), and Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson (top right).Credit: Matthew Absalom-Wong

“[In 2023] Erin was in a good place. She had a big, beautiful house. She had just landscaped the garden,” Mandy said. She was looking forward to returning to studying.

“All things considered, she was in a good place,” Mandy said.

“In that context ... it is most unlikely she would have planned to murder people, especially if it’s inevitable it would be discovered.”

Mandy said that it was, according to the Crown, a “carefully planned event, this lunch”.

“They [the prosecution] weren’t ever clear about this, but some of the arguments that they made were that this was some woman that had been thinking about this event, this lunch and planning it for months, at least since she bought the dehydrator and possibly visited Loch on the same day, that’s the theory,” Mandy said.

Mandy said it was inevitable that the focus would have been on the cook very, very quickly.

“Investigation was inevitable given how unwell these people were. And that’s exactly what happened. It was a certainty,” Mandy said.

Mandy said that everyone knew Patterson had invited the guests to her house.

“It wasn’t a secret,” he said. “All invited well in advance. All of them discussed the invitations with others in their family. She decided to feed them all in her own house. She decided to prepare a lavish, complicated meal that took a lot of time and effort. Not just a simple bolognese ... And that prosecution theory in our submission doesn’t make any sense,” Mandy said.

He said Patterson never intended this to happen and if she had been planning this from April, she would have never bought a dehydrator in her own name and details using her card from a local store, take photographs of the dehydrator, take photographs of the mushrooms, share the photos online, and then wait for so long after the meal before getting rid of the dehydrator.

“Erin Patterson did the opposite of all these things ... because she never planned to kill anyone.”

Erin Patterson’s defence barrister, Colin Mandy, SC, is challenging the prosecution’s suggestion that child support disputes fuelled a motive for murder.

He referred to some evidence from Simon Patterson, his client’s estranged husband, from earlier in the trial. The evidence is about a message in which Simon suggested to Erin that they get a mediator to help them navigate issues around the payments.

From left: Ian Wilkinson, Erin Patterson and Simon Patterson.

He reminded the jury that Simon had told the court that Patterson had sent an “extremely aggressive” message to a Signal family group chat around this time, in December 2022.

“Very obviously and unambiguously [Simon] was saying that the extremely aggressive message was about this issue,” Mandy said.

Mandy said he had suggested to Simon at the time that perhaps Patterson was “just hurt”, to which Simon responded that perhaps Mandy should bring up the messages that he was referring to.

The barrister said he showed the messages to Simon the following sitting day and read some of the messages in court, which included a message about visiting the set of the movie The Hobbit.

“They’re not extremely aggressive [messages],” Mandy said. “Then [Simon’s] memory became that it was at some other time.”

Mandy said Simon then told the court the messages were about his son being too tired and not sleeping on the weekend, but Mandy said there was “no record of that at all” in the messages uncovered in the case.

Mandy said emotions could often run high between two people, and there was nothing unusual about it.

“In some cases, it would be unusual if there wasn’t that kind of spats and disagreements,” Mandy said.

But he said that still did not provide “any kind of motive to murder someone’s parents and their uncle and aunt”.

Mandy said there was no anger, aggression, or hatred between Simon and Patterson, and between Patterson and her in-laws.

Shortly after Erin Patterson’s defence barrister, Colin Mandy, SC, took to his feet in courtroom four in Morwell, his closing address was briefly disrupted when a mobile phone began ringing in the front row.

It came minutes after he was earlier asked to stop speaking, when two members of the public walked in looking for seats.

After the disruption, he continues. Motive was very important, and usually fundamental, to proving intention in a case, he said.

“With an absence of a reason, an intention to kill is very unlikely,” Mandy said.

Mandy added that to prove intention, the prosecution needed to provide a motive. He said the prosecution had been scratching around to find some suggestion of animosity in the family dynamics, and referred to evidence presented in the trial about messages between Patterson, her estranged husband and her in-laws regarding child support payments.

“The reason why it was led by the prosecution is because they want to try to show that there was some kind of difficulty in the relationship between Erin and Simon, and that might provide a reason to murder his parents and then his aunt and uncle seven months later,” Mandy said.

Mandy described that argument as “unpersuasive”, adding that animosity occurred during a handful of days in December 2022.

“Obviously, Erin was upset. She really acknowledged that. She was venting to her online mate for a few short days, seven months before the lunch.” Mandy said.

Erin Patterson’s defence barrister Colin Mandy, SC has resumed his closing address following a break for lunch.

This is, he tells the jury, his last chance to speak on the accused mushroom cook’s behalf.

While some of the arguments he plans to tell them might be “simple and obvious”, or perhaps something jurors might have already thought of, they are necessary, too.

Colin Mandy SC.Credit: Jason South

This was the time, said Mandy, for the jurors to be like judges – to use their heads, not their hearts. “It’s the law that the jury, when they are considering facts, they have to put aside their sympathies and prejudices and approach things rationally and intellectually.”

He tells the jury that the three who died after the beef Wellington lunch – Don and Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson – were good people. So is survivor Ian Wilkinson.

It is a desperately sad story, he says. But, he adds, this is a trial about facts.

Don Patterson, Gail Patterson, Heather Wilkinson and Ian Wilkinson.

In this case, three people died, one person very nearly did. This was a terrible tragedy for those people and their families.

There’s two reasons why it’s important to acknowledge that. The first is that as human beings, specially as members of this wider community, you would have felt empathy for those witnesses and for the families and for their loss.

A deep empathy because it’s desperately sad.

Mandy acknowledged that the jurors, as human beings, might have an instinctive reaction to say those responsible for the lunch guests’ deaths should be held to account.

“We know that the actions of Erin Patterson caused the deaths of those three people and their serious illness,” Mandy said. But he added that the jury needed to put aside that natural reaction in their decision-making.

“This case is not about who is responsible in some general way. This case is about a criminal offence with elements that the prosecution has to prove beyond reasonable doubt,” he continued.

Mandy said it could be confronting to put that reaction to one side, but as a judge, what’s in one’s heart has no relevance when considering the facts.

The goodness of the lunch guests is important, he tells the jury, because “why on Earth would anyone want to kill those people?”

Don and Gail Patterson had never been anything but kind to Erin Patterson. They were also her children’s only grandparents, he said.

Why would Erin Patterson want to kill them or cause them serious harm? “Because of a brief period of tension in December of 2022? Which had absolutely nothing to do with Ian and Heather?”

He finished his focus on this point by referring to a statement that prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC, got right in his opinion:

“And as Dr Rogers predicted correctly, I will be making a submission to you that there’s an absence of a motive.”

Motive, he added, was significant when considering intention.

Defence counsel Colin Mandy, SC, told the jury the prosecution had “picked and chosen” evidence and cherry-picked convenient fragments, while discarding inconvenient truths.

“Erin Patterson was answering lots of questions from many, many people when she was under [what] you might think is pressure,” Mandy said in his closing address.

He said the defence’s argument to the jury was that Patterson’s evidence was largely consistent and she was giving the same account “over and over again, but to lots of different people in many different contexts”.

Erin Patterson.Credit: Jason South

The defence barrister said that when people told the same story to others, they often adapted it depending on who was listening.

Defence counsel Colin Mandy, SC.Credit: Jason South

“You might, for instance, tell your child details about an event different from what you might tell your partner. You might emphasise different details of an account when you talk to a doctor than when you talk to a friend. So that’s an important context,” he said.

“People have imperfect and honestly mistaken memories.”

Mandy reminded the jury of the telephone game, where messages are whispered from one person to another, with the resulting message sometimes differing from the original statement. He told the jurors they might have previously had an experience of telling a story to someone at a birthday party, only for someone else to jump in and say “that didn’t happen like that”.

“We know those sorts of things happen in our everyday lives and they can also happen in courtrooms,” Mandy said.

The court has adjourned for lunch. Mandy will continue his address to the jury this afternoon.

Defence counsel Colin Mandy, SC, is on his feet to deliver his closing address to the jury.

He has started by telling the jury that their consideration of the evidence in the trial will come down to two simple issues. The first: is there a reasonable possibility that death cap mushrooms were put into the meal accidentally? And the second: is it a reasonable possibility that Erin Patterson didn’t intend to kill or cause serious injury to her guests at her lunch on July 29, 2023?

Erin Patterson’s defence barrister Colin Mandy, SC.Credit: Jason South

“If either of those is a reasonable possibility ... you find her not guilty. Because that’s the law,” Mandy said.

A flawed approach by the prosecution in the way they analysed the evidence was an overarching issue in the case, Mandy said.

“The prosecution’s just made an argument to you, that’s not evidence. The prosecution has referred selectively to the evidence, choosing the bits they liked to suit their theory in a very deliberate way,” he said.

“We will take you to a number of examples of that – when the prosecution has done that in the cross-examination of Erin Patterson and in the closing argument that you heard.”