HANDS up who knows the access code for their mobile phone?
Silly question really! It might as well be tattooed on your forehead.
It’s something you’d never forget and if there’s any risk you might forget the access code for your phone, you’ll go for something simple like ‘1234’ or your postcode or date of birth.
So, how is it that a homicide squad detective didn’t pick up on the fact that Erin Patterson didn’t know what the access code was for the phone she handed over to police, as a clear indication it wasn't her usual phone, when they conducted an unannounced search of her home on Saturday, August 5, 2023, a week after the fateful beef Wellingon lunch?
Or, as it turned out, that the phone didn’t have an access code at all?
That incident will have to go into ‘Homicide 101’ from now on as an example of ‘how not to seize a mobile phone’!
It’s 3.29pm on August 5 and police have just finished a four-hour search of the Patterson home at 84 Gibson Street, Leongatha and Detective Sergeant Luke Farrell has just sat down at the dining room table with Ms Patterson to conclude the search by taking possession of her phone.
By then, two of the victims of the poisonous mushroom meal at that very table, Korumburra sisters Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson, have already died from liver failure, as a result of the toxins in Amanita phalloides mushrooms. And both husbands, Don Patterson and Ian Wilkinson, are gravely ill at Austin Health, Melbourne’s top liver disease hospital.
You can hear the verbal exchange between the police officer and Ms Patterson when she hands over what will later be called “Phone B” or the “dummy phone”, a Samsung Galaxy A23, in a new video released by the Supreme Court this week (see video attached).
Here is part of that exchange:
- Det Sgt Luke Farrell: So, as I sort of pointed out earlier today, there's a provision in the warrant that requires you to assist us to get into these devices. Is there a PIN code on your phone?
- Erin Patterson: [Long pause] Yeah.
- Det Sgt Farrell: Do you know what it is?
- Erin Patterson: Umm. [Another pause] It's either 1315 or 131528. I can't remember which.
- Det Sgt Farrell repeats the number ‘131528’ as he takes notes before turning his attention to the phone, turning it on, and then scrolling the screen, apparently without entering a code.
- Erin Patterson: Umm, arrh, is that opening? Ok, well…
- Det Sgt Farrell: Doesn’t have one, maybe?
- Erin Patterson: Doesn’t have one. So, there you go, your job’s easy.
- Det Sgt Farrell [Laughs] yeah.
Detective Farrell confirmed the fact that the phone didn’t have an access code in his evidence in chief on Day 20 of the mushroom murder trial in Morwell on Tuesday, May 27, 2025.
“I asked her if there was a PIN code required to open the phone, and she provided a four-digit code and a six-digit code that she thought it might be, but on attempting to open the phone, I didn't require to enter any pass code at all.”
The dummy phone, with a SIM card number ending in 835, which had been switched out of a family Samsung tablet and into the decoy phone only two days earlier, on August 3, 2023, the day after Erin Patterson dumped the food dehydrator at the Koonwarra Tip, was not Ms Patterson’s usual phone.
That phone, also a Samsung Galaxy A23, called ‘Phone A’ during the trial, had a SIM card with a number ending in 783, a number in regular use by Ms Patterson, in a range of other phones, at least as far back as January 2019 and likely well before that.
Erin Patterson was still using the 783 number in Phone A up until August 5, and after that in an old Nokia 1.3 phone, after the police search on August 5 and her subsequent interview at the Wonthaggi Police Station from 4.40pm that day, but neither the handset nor the SIM card was ever found.
In her police interview, Ms Patterson told police her phone number was the number ending in 835, one of many lies told by the now convicted murderer.
The phone seized by police on August 5, Phone B, was later revealed to have been “factory reset” by Erin Patterson four times, once on February 12, 2023; then on August 2, 2023 20 minutes before she went to the Koonwarra Tip to dump the dehydrator; and August 5, 2023 while police were in her house; all ‘wiped locally by user’ and also on August 6, 2023 ‘wiped remotely by user’ while the phone was allegedly secured in a police locker in Melbourne.
Defence counsel for Ms Patterson, Colin Mandy SC, took issue with whether the time stamps recorded in the phone for the factory resets were in Eastern Australian Standard Time or Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), for which you’d have to add 10 hours but because the third reset was ‘wiped locally by user’, it would have to have been reset at or about 1.20pm on August 5, 2023, while police were in the process of conducting their search in the presence of Ms Patterson.
Erin Patterson later confirmed, under cross-examination by Crown Prosecutor Dr Nanette Rogers, that she did reset Phone B for a third time while police were in the process of searching her home, but denied she did so while given privacy in the lounge room to make arrangements to communicate with a solicitor.
“Ah, no, because that happened at 2 pm,” said Ms Patterson at the time.
So, it was a neat trick by Ms Patterson to reset the dummy phone, in the presence of homicide police, prior to palming them Phone B while at least retaining the SIM card from Phone A which she later inserted into the old Nokia phone on return from the Wonthaggi Police Station.
After discovering they’d been duped, that Phone B contained virtually no data, police executed another search warrant at Gibson Street on Thursday, November 2, 2023, specifically looking for a second Samsung Galaxy A23 phone, with the handset IMEI ending 1379, and Ms Patterson’s main SIM number ending in 783.
They never recovered either.
Ms Patterson was arrested that day, conveyed to the Wonthaggi Police Station, and charged with three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder. Like Phone A, which she was at great pains to hide, she has not seen the light of day since.
Why the phone went missing
But, there was little doubt in the mind of Dr Rogers, in her closing address to the jury, why Ms Patterson went to so much trouble to hide her main phone and reset the dummy phone she handed to police.
“All of this conduct, the factory resets, the handing over of the blank dummy phone, pretending that Phone B was her phone number, all of this was designed to frustrate the police investigation of this matter. It was all done so that the police would never see the contents of the accused's real mobile phone,” said Dr Rogers.
“We suggest to you that the only reasonable explanation for engaging in all of this deceptive conduct is that she knew that the information on Phone A, her usual mobile phone, would implicate her in the deliberate poisoning of the lunch guests. This is another example of incriminating conduct.
“You might think that the accused had very good reason to conceal Phone A from the police. There is no direct evidence about what was on that phone because the accused was successful in her efforts. Police never obtained Phone A, as I said. However, there is evidence about what potentially incriminating evidence could have been on that phone,” she said.
Dr Rogers said it was the phone Ms Patterson had in her possession when she allegedly went foraging for death cap mushrooms, at the Loch Recreation Reserve on April 28, 2023 between 9.08am and 10.01am, and again on May 22, 2023 when she visited Loch again between 9.19am and 10.05am.
“Phone A was the mobile phone which connected to the Outtrim base station between 11.24am and 11.41am on that same day, May 22, when the prosecution alleges that she may have attended Neilson Street, Outtrim, to look for death caps, one day after Dr Tom May posted his observations of death cap mushrooms in that street.”
Dr Rogers said the jury could infer that Ms Patterson took photos of death cap mushrooms with that phone, referring to ‘Image 13’ in ‘Exhibit 55’ which she alleged showed the pink flap of Phone A near the dehydrator.
“There is something else that you need to keep in mind about the missing Phone A. Police were never able to interrogate the contents of that phone or the SIM. You should bear in mind if Mr Mandy suggests to you that there should have been more computer or more mobile phone evidence in this case. If he is critical because the prosecution have not produced, for example, records of the accused accessing the iNaturalist posts in Outtrim and Loch, the fact is, investigators were not able to check the accused's main device, the one she held in her hand every day.
“So, please be wary of any argument made by the defence about missing content or digital records and when you consider those arguments, remember that the police couldn't interrogate the accused's phone because we say of what she deliberately did.”
There’s little doubt that the absence of Ms Patterson’s main mobile phone, the ‘pink phone’ or ‘Phone A’ with the number ending in 783 made the job of police and the prosecution more difficult, but in the end, the weight of evidence was enough to convince the jury, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the Leongatha mother of two was guilty of one of the most heinous crimes in Victorian history.
After a directions hearing this Friday, August 8 and a plea hearing on a date to be fixed, Justice Beale will proceed to sentencing. Ms Patteson will have 28 days from the date of sentencing to make application for an appeal.
