MYSTERY surrounds how media outlets got their hands on explosive new CCTV video footage, from the Koonwarra Transfer Station, which appears to show mushroom murderer, Erin Patterson, dumping rubbish at the tip little more than 30 minutes after her doomed lunch guests left her home.
The South Gippsland Shire Council did not release the video, nor they say, do they have any control over CCTV cameras at their own waste facility.
“The footage in question belongs to Council’s site contractor Dasma,” she shire said in response to a query from the Sentinel-Times.
“Dasma has advised that they provided the footage as part of the investigation only.”
The Sentinel-Times has also contacted the shire’s waste contractor, Dasma, for a response.
The time stamp on the video, which appears to show Mrs Patterson disposing of some flattened cardboard boxes, other rubbish and an un-flattened box, is July 29, 2023, at 15:30.
This means Mrs Patterson started the 15-minute trip from her home in Gibson Street, Leongatha to the Koonwarra Transfer Station, less half-an-hour after lunch guests departed at around 2.45pm, on the evidence of the only surviving lunch guest, Ian Wilkinson.
The video, which was seen on metro TV stations and online news services in the past week, was not included in prosecution evidence during the trial which may account for the fact that Erin Patterson never referred to this first tip visit in her trial evidence.
News services have, however, clearly described what they make of the missing footage: “Moment mushroom murderer is caught dumping guests’ plates – just 30 minutes after deadly meal”.
The release of the video to the media, by an unknown source, and by the media to the public may be seen as contravening an order of the court, made on July 7 that: “Publication of any of the content of any evidentiary rulings made in these proceedings, whether pre-trial or during the trial, is prohibited.”
The interim order applies Australia wide until the court hands down a determination on the issue, expected next month.
The order applies to any publication within Australia, but in something of a loophole, the online publication which first released the video, the ‘Daily Mail’, is based in the UK.
But the absence of the video footage, which some news services have alleged at least opens up the possibility that this was how Erin disposed of the grey plates, allowed the defence to go after the seemingly, unimpeachable evidence of a local minister of religion, Korumburra Baptist Pastor Ian Wilkinson.
During Mr Wilkinson’s evidence in chief, on Tuesday, May 6 of the trial, defence counsel Colin Mandy SC challenged Pastor Wilkinson six times, directly on the issue of the size and colour of the plates.
And numerous other times on his recollections about the serving of the food, from an oven tray or otherwise, who carried the plates to the dinner table, and where the guests sat.
Mandy: I take it the guests were free to sit wherever they wanted?
Wilkinson: Yes.
Mandy: And then Erin came around from the other side of the island bench with the remaining plate?
Wilkinson: Yes.
It had been Mr Wilkinson’s evidence that while Gail and Heather assisted by taking the four, larger, grey plates to the table, Erin carried her own smaller, coloured plate to her place at the table.
CHALLENGE 1
- Mandy: You paid no particular attention at the time as to the colour of the plates, did you?
- Wilkinson: I noticed that when the food was being plated up, that there were different plates.
CHALLENGE 2
- Mandy: Can I suggest to you that there was no uniform set of plates that were being used by Erin on that day; that is, there wasn't a set of four plates that were all the same?
- Wilkinson: There were four plates that were the same.
CHALLENGE 3
- Mandy: What I'm suggesting to you is that that is not the case. There were not four plates that were all the same, but your memory is that there were?
- Wilkinson: My memory is that there were 7 four plates that were the same.
CHALLENGE 4
- Mandy: And let me suggest as well that there weren't any grey or stone-coloured plates in Erin's kitchen on that day?
- Wilkinson: I remember a grey plate - grey plates; four grey plates.
CHALLENGE 5
- Mandy: And likewise, let me suggest this: there was no smaller plate. All of the plates were the same size?
- Wilkinson: No. The plate was smaller, the different-coloured plate.
CHALLENGE 6
- Mandy: Is it possible that there were two or three plates that were the same and two other different plates?
- Wilkinson: No.
Mr Mandy addressed the issue of the plates extensively in his closing remarks, saying that while everyone would agree Ian Wilkinson was “a kind and good person”, he was “honestly mistaken” about the colour, size and distribution of the plates.
“Now, our argument to you about the plates issue is this: it's a very - and I am not intending to use a pun - but it is a very colourful piece of evidence, it is very graphic piece of evidence. But when you look at all the evidence on the issue of plates and what plates Erin had, it has to be the case that Ian Wilkinson is wrong about what he said. It makes no sense logically that you would use that method to deliver up an unpoisoned parcel, but otherwise, on all of the evidence, he's wrong; honestly mistaken. So, even if you the thought the question of plates was important, I just need to take you through the evidence about it and what Dr Rogers has said about it, so that you understand the reason why we say the conclusion is not open to you that there were four grey plates and one other plate.”
Erin Patterson made a second visit to the Koonwarra Transfer Station, on the morning after her arrival back in Leongatha, on Wednesday, August 2 when she dumped the food dehydrator, still with the residue of death cap mushrooms, which was well documented during the trial. The deadly dehydrator was seized by police during a search of the tip two days later.
However, after executing a search warrant at Erin Patterson’s home on Saturday, August 6, police found no sign of the four, grey dinner plates clearly identified by Ian Wilkinson.
What happened to those plates?
We might now know the answer.
People have been quick to respond to the CCTV footage at the tip from Saturday, July 29, 2023 and why it wasn’t shown to the jury:
- Any ideas why this wasn’t shown to the jury? I can’t imagine why it wouldn't have been included?
- Yes! I remember prior to the trial a previous 60 Minutes or Channel 7 show had confirmed there was footage of Erin visiting the tip before presenting at the hospital or being interviewed by police. The whole trial this footage wasn’t raised, so I assumed maybe the show got it wrong? Because why wasn’t this tip adventure included as incriminating evidence? Surely that must have been her dumping the plates?
- Glad to see this is coming out now, the more we hear, the more satisfied I am that the jury did a thorough job and came to the right conclusion.
- Yeah wtf! Imagine if they questioned her movements in the hours after the lunch and she didn’t mention the tip, then they showed that video in court! BOOM.
Erin Patterson didn’t mention anything in her evidence in chief, during the trial, of any visit to the Koonwarra tip at 3.30pm on Saturday, July 29, 2023
On Ian Wilkinson’s evidence, the only lunch guest to survive the lunch, it would have been around 2.45pm that they left the lunch, hoping to make it back to Korumburra in time for a 3pm church meeting.
It’s at least a 12-minute drive from Gibson Street, Leongatha to the Koonwarra Transfer Station, so it must have been somewhere around 3.15pm that Erin Patterson got in her car and drove to Koonwarra.
In her evidence to the jury, Erin Patterson said her son and a friend “went into the study and played on the computers for the rest of the afternoon and I kept cleaning up the kitchen and putting everything away”.
She said she also ate two-thirds of Heather’s orange cake, felt over-full and spewed it back up again into the toilet.
Later in her evidence, Mrs Patterson had no trouble recalling that what she did on her return to Leongatha from Monash Clayton, on Wednesday, August 2, after taking the kids to school in the morning, included a trip to the tip to dump the food dehydrator.
- “Um, and I had a piece of cake and then another piece of cake and then another.”
- How many pieces of cake did you have?
- “All of it.”
- How much had been left?
- “Probably a good two-thirds of it was left.”
- And what happened after you ate the cake?
- “I felt sick. I felt over-full, so I went to the toilets and brought it back up again.”
- How did you feel the rest of the afternoon?
- “Well, after I'd done that, I felt better, but I had - I had some sort of loose stools, I suppose you would call it, later in the afternoon, early evening. That was about as bad as it got then.”
- What time did that start, do you remember?
- “Maybe five, 5.30ish. I can't be exact but, yeah, around then.”
- And did you go anywhere after 5.30?
- Ah, yeah. [Friend] needed to be driven home. He lived in Korumburra and I - I think his mum told him he needed to be home by seven. So, [son] and I drove him home to Korumburra.
