IT’S effectively the last day of the so-called mushroom murder trial in the Victorian town of Morwell that has so captured the attention of people worldwide.

After a marathon eight weeks of hearings, all of the evidence is in and this week the leading players in the trial, Crown Prosecutor Dr Nanette Rogers SC and defence counsel for Erin Patterson, the 50-year-old Leongatha mother of two accused of killing her in-laws, Colin Mandy SC, have been delivering their closing addresses.

Erin Patterson has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Obviously enough, after seven weeks of evidence, they’ve had a lot of ground to cover.

Dr Rogers spent all of Monday, and much of Tuesday, laying out the case for the prosecution while also trying to anticipate some of the arguments that the defence might make when their turn came around.

Mr Mandy continued into a third day on Thursday morning, June 19, and concluded his remarks just after lunch.

Dr Rogers gets no right of reply.

During her address to the jury, Dr Rogers made a lot of the lies Erin Patterson told or allegedly told, and what she termed “incriminating conduct”, before and after the now infamous meal of beef Wellington, which the accused agrees must have contained wild mushrooms she collected, and on the scientific evidence presented in the case, death cap mushrooms.

The allegedly incriminating conduct Dr Rogers was talking about included what Mrs Patterson did after preparing the meal for her lunch guests that day, on July 29, 2023; including her mother and father-in-law, Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson, and her husband Ian, the Pastor of the Korumburra Baptist Church.

Don, Gail and Heather all died in the days following the meal, with a clinical diagnosis of amanita mushroom poisoning, while Ian very nearly died with the same diagnosis.

It’s important to remember that these people weren’t only loved family members, they were valued members of the Korumburra community, a town of similar size to Leongatha, 15 kilometres away, where Erin Patterson moved in the last half of 2022, following her separation from husband Simon in late 2015.

Simon and Erin Patterson have two children together, after marrying in June 2007, a teenage son interested in computers and science like his late grandfather, and a daughter, as we have heard, with a keen interest in ballet.

Among those things that Erin Patterson did, according to the prosecution, in an attempt to allegedly to cover-up her crime included:

“Firstly, lying about feeding her children leftover beef Wellington with mushroom scraped off the day after the lunch,” said Dr Rogers in her closing.

“Secondly, lying about all the mushrooms in the beef Wellington coming from Woolworths and an Asian grocer.

“Thirdly, disposing of the food dehydrator she had used to dehydrate the death cap mushrooms and,

“Fourthly, deliberately concealing her usual mobile phone from police.”

Dr Rogers expanded on all four points during her submission.

She said lying about feeding leftovers to the children was one of the first lies that the accused allegedly told to cover up what she had done.

“The suggestion that the children ate leftovers of the beef Wellington for dinner on the Sunday night comes from only one source and that's the accused, herself. Both children gave evidence that it was the accused who told them they were eating leftovers from the day before.”

Dr Rogers said that despite being told by Director of Nursing and Midwifery at Gippsland Southern Health Service Leongatha, Kylie Ashton, at 8.05am on Monday, July 31, before discharging herself against medical advice at 8.10am, that her children may have been exposed to the same toxins as herself and “would need thorough assessment as well”, it wasn’t until 11.13am, more than three hours later that Mrs Patterson called her husband Simon to arrange for the children to be picked up from school.

Mrs Patterson continued to resist the need to have the children brought to hospital even after being told in no uncertain terms by Leongatha doctor Chris Webster, when she returned to hospital at 9.48am, that “they can be scared and alive or dead”.

Dr Rogers said the danger to her children was underscored to Erin Patterson by other health professionals at Leongatha including 25-year nurse, Cindy Munro.

“She didn't want to cause any hassle, she didn't want to take them out of school. She said she didn't want the children involved in this, 'I don't want to stress them out, I don't want to worry them'. That was the evidence of Cindy Munro,” said Dr Rogers.

“One would expect a potentially life-threatening danger to her children would have galvanised the accused's interaction on their behalf, but, of course, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for why the accused, a doting mother as you have heard, was reluctant to have her children medically assessed. She knew that they had not eaten death cap mushrooms at all. Her reluctance to have her children medically assessed is another piece of conduct by the accused which, we say, is incriminating conduct.”

Dr Rogers said the children were assessed in hospital as being completely symptom-free, despite allegedly eating leftovers from the meal, the reason being, she submitted to the jury, because they hadn’t actually eaten leftovers at all.

The prosecutor said Mrs Patterson had lied about feeding the leftovers to multiple people including nurse Kylie Ashton, Dr Chris Webster, nurse Mairim Cespon, nurse Cindy Munro, paramedic Eleyne Spencer, Professor Rhonda Stuart, SallyAnn Atkinson of the health department, her online friend Jenny Hay and the police investigators, including the informant Detective Eppingstall.

“The only reason the accused would tell such a lie was because she knew she had included death cap mushrooms in the beef Wellingtons, eaten by the lunch guests, and thought that if she said she had also fed it to her children, it would deflect any suspicion that she deliberately did so. People would more readily believe that this was all a shocking accident if she'd given the same food to her beloved children,” said Dr Rogers.

Dr Rogers went on to say that there was only one reasonable explanation that she disposed of the food dehydrator in the days after the meal was because it would incriminate her.

She said it was also the reason why Erin allegedly concealed her primary mobile phone from homicide police when they searched her home on Saturday, August 5, 2023.

Dr Rogers went on to warn the jury that the defence might try to use the absence of digital records, specifically about the accused accessing iNaturalist posts in Outtrim and Loch, as criticism of the prosecution case, but that they should be wary of such arguments because police weren’t able to interrogate the mobile phone Erin held in her hand every day.

The case for the defence

When his turn came, Colin Mandy SC did indeed make the point that the prosecution could produce evidence of only one interaction between Erin Patterson and the iNaturalist website, on May 28, 2022, a full 14 months before the beef Wellington lunch in July 2023.

“So, obviously enough, months before the lunch, a very long time before the lunch, it's not suggested to you that that activity had anything to do with preparing or planning the lunch,” said Mr Mandy.

It was also a year before Dr Tom May recorded a finding of death cap mushrooms at Neilson Street, Outtrim on May 21, 2023 and Christine McKenzie recorded death cap mushrooms at the Loch Recreation Reserve on April 18, 2023 on the iNaturalist website, the only times death cap mushrooms have ever been reliably documented in the South Gippsland area.

Mr Mandy was into his closing submission, just prior to lunchtime on Tuesday, June 17, continuing into Wednesday, and Thursday, and among other things, he referred to some photos of foraged mushrooms, taken by Erin Patterson on a Samsung Galaxy A70, in early 2020, found on an SD memory card seized by police during their second search of the Patterson family home on November 2, 2023.

Mr Mandy said those photos were consistent with Mrs Patterson starting to take an interest in foraging for mushrooms, during COVID, a developing practice within the community at the time, according to Dr May in his evidence.

“So, these photos demonstrate categorically without any question that Erin Patterson was interested in wild mushrooms in April and May of 2020. She photographed them. She picked them. She took them home,” said Mr Mandy.

However, while Erin Patterson gave evidence that she foraged for mushrooms at the botanical gardens in Korumburra, while walking along the rail trail with her children and at her homes in Shelcott Road in Korumburra and at Leongatha, she categorically denied ever mushrooming at either Loch or Outtrim, at any time.

And according to Mr Mandy, there was no evidence, after reassuring herself as someone with an increasing interest in foraging for mushrooms, that there had never been a sighting of death cap mushrooms in South Gippsland by May 2022, when she looked them up on the iNaturalist website, that she ever went back to the website again.

“On the Crown case, you might think remarkably, extraordinarily, Erin Patterson observed and acted on the only two sightings of death cap mushrooms ever in South Gippsland, as is their case, like she was sitting there waiting for them,” said Mr Mandy on Wednesday.

“Never seen them before in South Gippsland. iNaturalist says they don't grow here. Refresh. No, still not there. Refresh. Still not there. Refresh, still not there. How likely is that?” he said, questioning the proposition that Mrs Patterson would be sitting on her computer for more than 12 months waiting for those death cap mushroom posts to pop up.

“And there's not one scrap of evidence that she actually saw those posts. Not from Mr Fox-Henry. Not from the records. Not from anyone else. There's no evidence she ever returned to the iNaturalist website after the single visit in May of 2022,” he said.

Mr Mandy also addressed the communications tower and mobile phone data analysed by digital forensic scientist, Dr Matthew Sorell, saying that it was by no means clear that his client was close to Neilson Street Outtrim on the morning of Monday, May 22, 2023, when her mobile phone was allegedly stationary for 25 minutes, connected to the Outtrim tower.

It was the evidence of Dr Sorell under cross-examination, said Mr Mandy, that her phone could have been somewhere in “the 60-kilometre-long vegetable patch” covered by the tower that he talked about earlier.

He also raised the mobile phone tower at Loch, which recorded possible visits by Mrs Patterson’s phone on the mornings of April 28 and May 22, 2023, saying the evidence of Dr Sorell came with many conditions.

“Returning to the suggested opportunity of a visit to Loch, Dr Sorell said it was only possible, not confident about it, but this is an important date to the prosecution because it was the day that she bought the dehydrator, that from the 28th of April this whole plan, if there was a plan, was in hand,” said Mr Mandy.

Wrapping up his points about the mushrooms, Mr Mandy claimed the prosecution case existed in a world of speculation”.

“Is that really the argument? Speculation upon speculation upon speculation. Are they death cap mushrooms?” he said of a picture of mushrooms on a dehydrator tray, saying that while Dr May said they were with “to a high degree of confidence” it would be difficult for anyone else, including his client, to identify them.

“You can't reason confidently about that. Did she go to Loch? You can't reason confidently about that. Were there even any death cap mushrooms to be found in Loch on that day? You can't be confident about that. You couldn't possibly find that those propositions are safe conclusions to reach from all of the evidence,” he said.

Mr Mandy went on to probe all aspects of the prosecution case including:

• The cancer ruse, claiming it had no bearing on the guests’ attendance at the lunch because they were unaware of the reason for their invitation until the issue was discussed after the meal.
• An article referred to by the head of forensic sciences and chief toxicologist at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine Dr Dimitri Gerostamoulos, ‘The deadly amanitas’, which he said supported the proposition that people ingesting the same meal including death cap mushrooms might have entirely different responses
• He said there was no reason at all why his client would want to hurt any of her in-laws in any way, going about supporting that claim from the evidence in the case.
• He said the difficulties between Erin Patterson and her husband Simon about a child support application, schooling and the children’s medical bills were a discrete spat in December 2022 that stood out because “these people are eternally polite to each other. It's the only evidence of any kind of tension, so it jumps out”.
• He also addressed the claim that Erin Patterson didn’t ask or express concern about the health condition of her lunch guests.
• He claimed the prosecution brought no scientific evidence to support their proposition that the leftover meat could not have been eaten by the children because it would have contained toxins from the mushrooms.
• He said the accused was not questioned about whether she washed her hands in the Caldermeade toilets after an alleged bout of diarrhoea at Nyora on the way to the flying lesson at Tyabb.
• He said it only dawned on his client that foraged mushrooms, potentially death cap mushrooms, had somehow found their way into the meal during a conversation with her husband in the Monash hospital on Tuesday, August 1, 2023, when sadly it would have made no difference to the health outcomes of Simon’s family members. Mr Mandy claimed that’s when the regrettable cover-up began which had no bearing on what took place at the meal.

He then continued with a chronological approach to the evidence in an attempt to support his initial submission that the jury’s consideration of the evidence in this trial came down to two simple issues.

“First, is there a reasonable possibility that death cap mushrooms were put into this meal accidentally, and second, is it a reasonable possibility that Erin Patterson did not intend to kill or cause serious injury to her guests.

“After you have considered all of the evidence, if either of those is a reasonable possibility on all of the evidence, then you find her not guilty and that's the law because if either of those things are reasonable possibilities on all of the evidence, then you would have a reasonable doubt,” said Mr Mandy.

Justice Beale also revealed on Thursday, June 19, that he would not be delivering his charge to the jury until Tuesday, June 24 and that it was likely to take two days. The jury is not expected to retire to consider its verdict before Wednesday, June 25, as the trial continues in to its ninth week.