Latest / The Front / Defence v prosecution in the Erin Patterson mushroom trial
Transcript
- 0:03Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
- 0:06Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, June eighteen, twenty twenty five. The sprawling Middle
- 0:13Speaker 1: East crisis hits a new gear today after Donald Trump
- 0:17Speaker 1: left the G seven meeting early and missed his meeting
- 0:20Speaker 1: with Anthony Albanezi to focus on the Iran Israel war.
- 0:24Speaker 1: This story's moving fast and you can read the latest
- 0:27Speaker 1: from our correspondents on the ground, Jonnie Bashan and Leam Mendez,
- 0:31Speaker 1: plus all the world's best reporting and analysis right now
- 0:35Speaker 1: at The Australian dot Com dot you. The Crown doesn't
- 0:41Speaker 1: have a motive for Aaron Patterson's alleged murder of her
- 0:44Speaker 1: family members, but the prosecutors say they have proved Aaron
- 0:49Speaker 1: Patterson deliberately poisoned them. The defense says that lack of
- 0:52Speaker 1: an alleged motive means she's not guilty. Today the closing
- 0:57Speaker 1: arguments in the Mushroom trial, brought to you by Voice Actors.
- 1:07Speaker 1: If Aaron Patterson deliberately poisoned her elderly relatives, what's the motive?
- 1:12Speaker 1: And if it was all a terrible accident, how does
- 1:15Speaker 1: she explain her lies? That's the nub of this week's
- 1:19Speaker 1: action in the mushroom trial in the Victorian Supreme Court,
- 1:22Speaker 1: sitting in the Latrobe Valley, where this fifty year old
- 1:25Speaker 1: mother of two is pleading not guilty to three counts
- 1:28Speaker 1: of murder and one of attempted murder. Aaron Patterson doesn't
- 1:33Speaker 1: have to prove anything. The onus is all on the
- 1:36Speaker 1: Crown to convince the jury that not only did her
- 1:39Speaker 1: actions result in three deaths, Don and Gale Patterson and
- 1:42Speaker 1: Heather Wilkinson, and one very serious illness Ian Wilkinson, but
- 1:47Speaker 1: that this wasn't just reckless or foolish, it was deliberate.
- 1:52Speaker 1: That's the essential component of murder. In a moment, will
- 1:57Speaker 1: take you to the defense closing argument by Colin Man.
- 2:01Speaker 1: But first, here's how the Crown has set out its
- 2:04Speaker 1: closing to the jury in the past two days. Doctor
- 2:08Speaker 1: Nannette Roger's sc is the Crown prosecutor. We've used a
- 2:11Speaker 1: voice actor to bring you her words and all the
- 2:14Speaker 1: words spoken in court.
- 2:17Speaker 2: At the heart of this case are four calculated deceptions
- 2:20Speaker 2: made by the accused. The first deception was the fabricated
- 2:24Speaker 2: cancer claim she used as a pretense for the lunch invitation.
- 2:29Speaker 2: The second deception was the lethal doses of poison the
- 2:31Speaker 2: accused secreted in the home cooked beef Wellington's. The third
- 2:36Speaker 2: deception was her attempts to make it seem that she
- 2:38Speaker 2: also suffered death cap mushroom poisoning. And fourthly, the fourth
- 2:42Speaker 2: deception the sustained cover up she embarked upon to conceal
- 2:46Speaker 2: the truth.
- 2:48Speaker 1: The Crown hasn't come up with a motive for Patterson's
- 2:50Speaker 1: alleged crimes, and it doesn't have to. The Crown only
- 2:54Speaker 1: has to convince the jury beyond reasonable doubt that her
- 2:58Speaker 1: actions were premeditated and intentional. If you've been following the trial,
- 3:06Speaker 1: you'll remember the message exchanges Erin Patterson had with her
- 3:10Speaker 1: mother in law Gail and her husband Simon in the
- 3:13Speaker 1: days before the lunch.
- 3:16Speaker 3: Hi, Gail, I had a needle biopsy taken of the
- 3:19Speaker 3: lump and I'm returning for an MIRI next week and
- 3:22Speaker 3: we'll know more after the results of those two things.
- 3:27Speaker 1: Hi, Erin, how did you get on yesterday with your
- 3:30Speaker 1: medical tests?
- 3:31Speaker 4: Love, Don and Gail.
- 3:34Speaker 3: There's a bit to digest with everything that's come out
- 3:37Speaker 3: of it all. I might talk more about it with
- 3:39Speaker 3: you both when I see you in person. Love Erin
- 3:44Speaker 3: the Crown says Patterson was telling bald faced lies.
- 3:48Speaker 2: She didn't think her lunch guests would live to reveal it.
- 3:51Speaker 2: Her lie would die with them.
- 3:54Speaker 1: But Ian Wilkinson, Erin's uncle by marriage and a pastor
- 3:57Speaker 1: at the local Baptist church, live to tell his tale.
- 4:02Speaker 2: Ian Wilkinson told you after the lunch, Aaron announced she
- 4:05Speaker 2: had cancer. She said she was very concerned because she
- 4:08Speaker 2: believed it was very serious, life threatening. She was anxious
- 4:11Speaker 2: about telling the kids. She was asking our advice about it.
- 4:15Speaker 2: Should I tell the kids or not tell the kids
- 4:17Speaker 2: about this threat to my life. She spoke about a
- 4:20Speaker 2: diagnostic test that showed a spot on the scan that
- 4:23Speaker 2: was a tumor. He led a prayer asking for God's
- 4:25Speaker 2: blessing and that she'd have the wisdom in how she
- 4:28Speaker 2: told the kids.
- 4:29Speaker 1: Rogers said Simon's father, Don, before he died, would reveal
- 4:33Speaker 1: to his son.
- 4:35Speaker 2: What the accused had told them. That she'd had some
- 4:37Speaker 2: tests on her elbow which had led to the discovery
- 4:40Speaker 2: of ovarian cancer. A positive cancer diagnosis is what Don
- 4:44Speaker 2: told Simon.
- 4:46Speaker 1: Aaron Patterson said in her time in the witness box,
- 4:48Speaker 1: she never gave them a definite diagnosis, only that cancer
- 4:52Speaker 1: was a possibility. She said she really did have plans
- 4:56Speaker 1: for surgery, but it was a gastric bypass that she
- 4:59Speaker 1: was too embarrassed to discuss.
- 5:02Speaker 2: This was an elaborate lie.
- 5:08Speaker 1: Nanett Rogers told the jury Aaron Patterson knowingly concealed enough
- 5:13Speaker 1: deathcap mushrooms in the individual beef Wellington's to kill each
- 5:17Speaker 1: of her lunch guests.
- 5:19Speaker 2: She made sure she would not suffer the same fate
- 5:21Speaker 2: as her lunch guests by making herself an individual beef
- 5:23Speaker 2: Wellington that did not contain any death cap mushrooms. The
- 5:28Speaker 2: sinister deception was to use a nourishing meal as the
- 5:30Speaker 2: vehicle to deliver the deadly poison.
- 5:33Speaker 1: Patterson told a Child Protective Services officer she'd never made
- 5:37Speaker 1: beef wellington before, but used a recipe from Nagi Mayhashi's
- 5:41Speaker 1: recipe Tin Eats cookbook because she wanted to do something fancy.
- 5:45Speaker 1: Rogers said that recipe called for a single beef Wellington
- 5:49Speaker 1: meat encased in layers of mushroom paste and pastry to
- 5:53Speaker 1: be sliced up, not individual Wellington's, as Patterson made.
- 5:58Speaker 2: Why deviate so significantly from an unfamiliar recipe for a
- 6:01Speaker 2: special lunch. The prosecution says this was a deliberate choice.
- 6:05Speaker 2: It enabled the accused to control what ingredients went into
- 6:08Speaker 2: each individual parcel, and it was the only way to
- 6:11Speaker 2: be sure that she herself would not accidentally consume any
- 6:14Speaker 2: death cap mushroom.
- 6:16Speaker 1: Rogers suggested Aaron Patterson may have made two batches of
- 6:20Speaker 1: mushroom paste, one poisoned, one knot. In her evidence, Patterson
- 6:24Speaker 1: said she'd added dried mushrooms from a tubbleware box to
- 6:28Speaker 1: improve the flavor.
- 6:30Speaker 2: The recipe book called for seven hundred grams of sliced
- 6:33Speaker 2: mushrooms to serve six or eight people, so she had
- 6:36Speaker 2: one point seventy five kilos of mushrooms for a dish
- 6:38Speaker 2: that called for less than half. Why then would she
- 6:41Speaker 2: resort to dried or forage mushrooms she had more than enough.
- 6:45Speaker 1: Pattison said she thought these were dried mushrooms she'd boord
- 6:48Speaker 1: from an Asian grosser, but later realized they must have
- 6:51Speaker 1: also contained dried death cap mushrooms she'd accidentally foraged. Patterson's
- 6:57Speaker 1: evidence was that she had saved the mushrooms because there
- 6:59Speaker 1: were two strong for a meal she'd made previously. She
- 7:03Speaker 1: said they'd smelt pungent, and the jury heard from expert
- 7:06Speaker 1: witness Tom May that dried deathcap mushrooms had a very strong,
- 7:11Speaker 1: unpleasant smell.
- 7:13Speaker 2: Why then, would you add mushrooms that smell funny and
- 7:15Speaker 2: you're worried might be too overpowering to a special lunch
- 7:18Speaker 2: you were preparing for guests. The evidence in this trial
- 7:22Speaker 2: shows that the accused knew how to dehydrate and blitz
- 7:25Speaker 2: mushrooms into a powder to hide inside food.
- 7:28Speaker 1: That's a reference to a message sent to the friends
- 7:30Speaker 1: she made in a true crime Facebook group in which
- 7:33Speaker 1: she said she'd been hiding dehydrated mushrooms in her children's
- 7:37Speaker 1: food in order to increase their intake of veggies. Rogers
- 7:41Speaker 1: then turned to a website called eye Naturalist, where users
- 7:45Speaker 1: can post their observations about fungi growing in the wild,
- 7:49Speaker 1: including their specific geographic location.
- 7:53Speaker 2: There is no direct evidence as to where the accused
- 7:55Speaker 2: sourced deathcap mushrooms. However, what the evidence does demonstrate is
- 8:00Speaker 2: that she was aware of a website that could be
- 8:02Speaker 2: used to locate deathcap mushrooms, and that she had the
- 8:05Speaker 2: opportunity to source those mushrooms at a time proximate or
- 8:09Speaker 2: near to the lunch.
- 8:11Speaker 1: Rogers said analysis of the devices seized from Aaron Patterson's
- 8:14Speaker 1: home showed she used the map feature on I Naturalist
- 8:18Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two to view the location of deathcap
- 8:21Speaker 1: mushrooms in Victoria. Rogers said she didn't seek out information
- 8:25Speaker 1: about other types of mushrooms.
- 8:27Speaker 2: The only other people living with the accused in the
- 8:30Speaker 2: house at the time was her son and her daughter.
- 8:33Speaker 2: You will therefore have no trouble, I suggest, being satisfied
- 8:36Speaker 2: that it was the accused using the computer to look
- 8:39Speaker 2: up death cap mushrooms on I Naturalist.
- 8:42Speaker 1: In April twenty twenty three, a post on Our Naturalist
- 8:45Speaker 1: recorded a sighting of death cap mushrooms in the Locke area,
- 8:48Speaker 1: about twenty eight k's from Patterson's town of land Gatha.
- 8:52Speaker 1: Rogers took the jury to sell tower information that tracked
- 8:55Speaker 1: Patterson's phone on that day and photos found on her device.
- 9:01Speaker 2: From all this evidence, you can safely infer that the
- 9:04Speaker 2: accused firstly was out at the lock reserve on the
- 9:07Speaker 2: twenty eighth of April twenty three. Secondly that she found
- 9:11Speaker 2: and collected death cat mushrooms from that reserve. Thirdly that
- 9:15Speaker 2: then she went to leem Gatha and bought the dehydrator
- 9:18Speaker 2: within two hours of returning from Locke for the very
- 9:21Speaker 2: purpose of dehydrating and preserving those death cap mushrooms. And fourthly,
- 9:26Speaker 2: these photos on the Samsung tablet show the very death
- 9:29Speaker 2: cap mushroom she collected at the lock Reserve.
- 9:34Speaker 1: Rogers said Patterson was not seriously unwell after the lunch,
- 9:38Speaker 1: and she knew that was a problem. She ran the
- 9:41Speaker 1: jury through evidence that even though Patterson said she was
- 9:44Speaker 1: suffering diarrhea on the Sunday after the lunch, she didn't
- 9:48Speaker 1: present at hospital until Monday morning after taking her kids
- 9:51Speaker 1: to the school bus, and then Roger says she didn't
- 9:55Speaker 1: tell the doctors and nurses what she now says, which
- 9:58Speaker 1: is that she'd taken emodium medication on her first visit
- 10:03Speaker 1: to hospital. On the Monday morning, Patterson left, promising to return,
- 10:07Speaker 1: even as a doctor called her three times, then called
- 10:11Speaker 1: Triple O to express his concern.
- 10:14Speaker 2: There is only one logical or reasonable explanation for why
- 10:18Speaker 2: the accused left hospital, and after being told she might
- 10:21Speaker 2: have consumed a lethal toxin from death cap mushrooms, she
- 10:24Speaker 2: realized that what she had done was going to be uncovered.
- 10:27Speaker 2: She fled back to her house to try and work
- 10:29Speaker 2: out how she was going to manage the situation and
- 10:32Speaker 2: how she might explain why she wasn't sick like the
- 10:34Speaker 2: lunch guests. She knew very well that she had not
- 10:37Speaker 2: eaten death cap mushrooms.
- 10:40Speaker 1: Rogers said leaving the hospital against medical advice was incriminating conduct.
- 10:45Speaker 1: When she did return to the hospital, Rogers says Patterson
- 10:48Speaker 1: was resistant to medications the nurses wanted to give her.
- 10:53Speaker 2: Her reluctance to receive medical treatment is inexplicable unless she
- 10:57Speaker 2: knew she had not eaten what her lunch guests had done.
- 11:00Speaker 2: This resistance to receiving medical treatment is another example of
- 11:04Speaker 2: what we say is incriminating conduct.
- 11:09Speaker 1: On August three, when her lunch guests were critically ill
- 11:12Speaker 1: in hospital, Aaron Patterson drove to the kunwaraor transfer station,
- 11:17Speaker 1: the local tip and dumped her dehydrator.
- 11:21Speaker 2: She wanted to hide the evidence. This is another example
- 11:24Speaker 2: of incriminating conduct. The defense may argue that this was
- 11:27Speaker 2: part of a wild panic. The accused did this because
- 11:30Speaker 2: she was worried she would be falsely accused of deliberately
- 11:32Speaker 2: poisoning her lunch guests. You should completely reject that position.
- 11:37Speaker 1: In the witness box, Patterson said that in the hospital,
- 11:39Speaker 1: Simon Patterson had asked her if she'd use the dehydrator
- 11:43Speaker 1: to poison his parents, and that statement upset and worried her.
- 11:48Speaker 2: Her story about Simon accusing her in the hospital of
- 11:51Speaker 2: using the dehydrator and this sending her into a panic
- 11:54Speaker 2: is nonsense. Simon Patterson categorically denied to you ever saying
- 11:58Speaker 2: such a thing to the accused. She knew it would
- 12:01Speaker 2: incriminate her. She knew that she had dehydrated deathcap mushrooms
- 12:05Speaker 2: in that appliance, and that she had deliberately done so,
- 12:08Speaker 2: and she knew that keeping it was going to be
- 12:10Speaker 2: far too risky.
- 12:12Speaker 1: Police were onto this almost immediately because they were analyzing
- 12:15Speaker 1: her bank records, but when they interviewed Patterson on August five,
- 12:20Speaker 1: she said she didn't own a dehydrator. Rogers said during
- 12:23Speaker 1: the police search of her home on August five, Patterson
- 12:26Speaker 1: deliberately concealed her primary phone, phone A, and handed them
- 12:31Speaker 1: another device, Phone B.
- 12:33Speaker 2: We say is a dummy phone set up deliberately by
- 12:36Speaker 2: the accused to trick the police and to conceal the
- 12:38Speaker 2: existence and most importantly, the contents of her usual mobile phone.
- 12:43Speaker 2: When police took phone b away after the search warrant
- 12:46Speaker 2: and tried to analyze it, they found nothing. Why, Because
- 12:49Speaker 2: this phone was factory resent multiple times after the lunch,
- 12:52Speaker 2: its contents were wiped.
- 12:55Speaker 1: Rogers said, despite Patterson's claim to be a keen recreational
- 12:59Speaker 1: mushroom forager, she was the only one who remembered any
- 13:02Speaker 1: behavior like this, not her husband, her kids, or any
- 13:06Speaker 1: of her online friends.
- 13:08Speaker 2: The suggestion now that these mushrooms may have been accidentally foraged,
- 13:12Speaker 2: we suggest, is a very late change to the accused story.
- 13:15Speaker 2: You might think that at some point it dawned on
- 13:18Speaker 2: her that the Asian grocery story didn't add up, particularly
- 13:21Speaker 2: when faced with the evidence about the remnants of the
- 13:24Speaker 2: death cat mushrooms having been found in her dehydrator, she
- 13:27Speaker 2: had to come up with something new.
- 13:29Speaker 1: Roger said. The breakdown of Erin and Simon Patterson's marriage
- 13:32Speaker 1: and the fact Patterson had dragged Donngale Patterson into a
- 13:36Speaker 1: disagreement about money was significant.
- 13:39Speaker 2: The evidence shows you might think that the divide between
- 13:41Speaker 2: the accused and her in laws was deeper than they
- 13:44Speaker 2: ever knew. We say that the accused was leading a
- 13:47Speaker 2: duplicitous life. When it came to the Pattersons, she presented
- 13:51Speaker 2: one side while expressing contrary beliefs to others. When Don
- 13:55Speaker 2: and Gale sent the accused messages about her ongoing financial
- 13:58Speaker 2: issues with Simon and meant and praying, she replied with
- 14:02Speaker 2: an eye roll emoji. She was mocking them and their
- 14:04Speaker 2: religious beliefs despite attending church with them. If she did
- 14:08Speaker 2: love them as she claimed, one would expect her to
- 14:11Speaker 2: inquire after their welfare immediately in those circumstances. But what
- 14:15Speaker 2: did she do? When Simon told her that Don and
- 14:17Speaker 2: Gale were in hospital, she immediately went on to talk
- 14:20Speaker 2: about her own symptoms, never asked a question about Don
- 14:22Speaker 2: and Gale.
- 14:24Speaker 1: Rogers ended with an appeal to the jury's life experience.
- 14:29Speaker 2: Think about what you would do in this situation. If
- 14:31Speaker 2: this was really just a horrible accident. If you were
- 14:34Speaker 2: told that the meal you'd cooked and served to your
- 14:36Speaker 2: family was thought to have possibly contained death cat mushrooms,
- 14:39Speaker 2: what would you do. Would you go into self preservation mode,
- 14:42Speaker 2: just worrying about protecting yourself from blame. Would you race
- 14:46Speaker 2: away from the hospital and do who knows what for
- 14:48Speaker 2: an hour and a half. Would you be reluctant to
- 14:50Speaker 2: receive treatment, Would you take two and a half hours
- 14:53Speaker 2: to eventually agree to get your kids to hospital? Would
- 14:56Speaker 2: you lie about the source of the ingredients to medical
- 14:58Speaker 2: practitioners and the Health Department of officials for days, even
- 15:01Speaker 2: though the truth might help those you claim to love. No,
- 15:04Speaker 2: that's not what you would do. You would do everything
- 15:07Speaker 2: you could to help the people you love. You would
- 15:10Speaker 2: tell the treating medical practitioners every scheric of information that
- 15:14Speaker 2: might help to identify the cause of the illness, so
- 15:16Speaker 2: that they could get the right treatment to your loved ones,
- 15:19Speaker 2: regardless of any risk of blame that might fall on you.
- 15:23Speaker 2: If your children had come within cooy of the same meal,
- 15:26Speaker 2: you would move mountains to get them to hospital as
- 15:28Speaker 2: quickly as possible. And if you yourself had truly consumed
- 15:32Speaker 2: the same meal, you would gladly receive all of the
- 15:34Speaker 2: medical treatment you could get your hands on. Aaron Patterson
- 15:38Speaker 2: acted the way she did because she knew what she
- 15:40Speaker 2: had done.
- 15:44Speaker 1: Coming up. Aaron Patterson's lawyer has he say.
- 16:05Speaker 4: Use your heads, not your hearts.
- 16:10Speaker 1: On Tuesday, Erin Patterson's barrister, Colin Mandarc got his chance
- 16:14Speaker 1: to set out in detail exactly why he says Patterson
- 16:18Speaker 1: didn't mean to poison for elderly relatives and why she
- 16:21Speaker 1: should be acquitted.
- 16:23Speaker 4: You have to consider the issues rationally and logically, without emotion,
- 16:27Speaker 4: without prejudice towards anyone, without sympathy towards anyone, and you
- 16:33Speaker 4: have to assess the evidence dispassionately with your common sense.
- 16:37Speaker 1: The barrister acknowledged the deaths of Don Gale and Heather
- 16:40Speaker 1: Wilkinson and the suffering of Ian Wilkinson was a terrible tragedy.
- 16:45Speaker 1: He said he understood that the family members who'd attended
- 16:47Speaker 1: court over the course of the trial were still mourning
- 16:50Speaker 1: their loss.
- 16:52Speaker 4: These were good, innocent people, and whoever caused their deaths
- 16:56Speaker 4: must be held to account. That instinctive design to punish
- 17:00Speaker 4: the person responsible, to seek retribution, to think that they
- 17:04Speaker 4: must pay for what they've done, but a jury has
- 17:07Speaker 4: to fiercely guard against that kind of reason.
- 17:11Speaker 1: Mandy reiterated the burden of proof rested with the crown,
- 17:14Speaker 1: not the defense. Basically, Aaron Patterson doesn't have to prove anything.
- 17:19Speaker 4: Members of the jury, your consideration of the evidence in
- 17:22Speaker 4: this trial comes down to two simple issues. First, is
- 17:26Speaker 4: there a reasonable possibility that death cap mushrooms were put
- 17:30Speaker 4: into this meal by accident. Second, is it a reasonable
- 17:35Speaker 4: possibility Aaron Patterson did not intend to kill or cause
- 17:40Speaker 4: serious injury to her guests. And in the end, after
- 17:44Speaker 4: you've considered all of the evidence, if either of those
- 17:47Speaker 4: is a reasonable possibility on all of the evidence, then
- 17:51Speaker 4: you'd find her not guilty.
- 17:55Speaker 1: Mandy said. Patterson's accounts of when she became unwell and
- 17:59Speaker 1: where she purchased them ushrooms were mostly consistent.
- 18:03Speaker 4: She was giving the same account over and over again,
- 18:06Speaker 4: but to lots of different people in many different contexts,
- 18:11Speaker 4: and in the end, when you analyze the evidence carefully,
- 18:14Speaker 4: there's very little meaningful variation in the accounts that she gave.
- 18:18Speaker 1: He also pointed to the fallibility of memory.
- 18:22Speaker 4: People have imperfect and honestly mistaken memories. You may recall
- 18:26Speaker 4: playing games like the telephone game, where messages are whispered
- 18:30Speaker 4: from one person to another all the way along, and
- 18:33Speaker 4: then you compare the message that was relayed at the
- 18:35Speaker 4: beginning to the one that came out at the end.
- 18:37Speaker 4: It's completely completely different.
- 18:41Speaker 1: Colin Mandy acknowledged that the Crown doesn't have to prove
- 18:44Speaker 1: a motive, but he said without one, they can't get
- 18:47Speaker 1: to murder.
- 18:48Speaker 4: Without a motive, You're left guessing about the most important
- 18:51Speaker 4: element of the offense in this trial, and that's intention.
- 18:55Speaker 1: He said. Pattison didn't have any reason to harm or
- 18:58Speaker 1: murder her in laws.
- 19:00Speaker 4: They loved her. She loved them. That's relevant. Don and
- 19:04Speaker 4: Gale had never been anything but kind and understanding to
- 19:07Speaker 4: Aaron Patterson. There was absolutely no reason at all for
- 19:11Speaker 4: her to hurt them in any way at all. Not
- 19:14Speaker 4: only is there no motive, there are very good reasons
- 19:17Speaker 4: not to harm these people. And if you do embark
- 19:20Speaker 4: on this plan to harm them in this way, inevitably,
- 19:23Speaker 4: whatever happens, you will lose the only people in the
- 19:25Speaker 4: world who were any support to you and your children.
- 19:28Speaker 4: You will lose your children, and you'll lose everything that's
- 19:31Speaker 4: important to you.
- 19:33Speaker 1: Mandy said she didn't dump the dehydrated because she was guilty,
- 19:36Speaker 1: rather because she was rattled.
- 19:39Speaker 4: If you're planning a murder, what's the one thing you
- 19:42Speaker 4: really should plan to dispose of. That's the murder weapon.
- 19:45Speaker 4: She would have disposed of it months before and never
- 19:47Speaker 4: told anyone she had one. She drives to the tip
- 19:51Speaker 4: in her own car, pays for the disposal of the
- 19:54Speaker 4: dehydrator with her own bank card, doesn't attempt to disguise
- 19:58Speaker 4: those actions in anyone. It can only have been panic,
- 20:03Speaker 4: not because she was guilty, but because that's what people
- 20:06Speaker 4: might think. It was a deep shock to her how
- 20:09Speaker 4: these four people became so seriously unwell. It was a
- 20:13Speaker 4: deep shock because she never intended for it to happen.
- 20:16Speaker 4: And if that's a reasonable possibility, then she must be
- 20:19Speaker 4: found not guilty, Mandy said.
- 20:22Speaker 1: When police asked if she had any leftovers from the meal,
- 20:25Speaker 1: she gave them her gate access code and said they
- 20:27Speaker 1: were probably in her bin.
- 20:29Speaker 4: A guilty person, you would think would have already thrown
- 20:31Speaker 4: them out. You might think get rid of them, put
- 20:33Speaker 4: them in a neighbor's bin or a public bin, bury
- 20:36Speaker 4: them in the backyard, or do something else. There'd been
- 20:39Speaker 4: two days to do all of that, instead of directing
- 20:41Speaker 4: the police where to find the evidence that there were
- 20:43Speaker 4: death cat mushrooms in the meal. So the prosecution theories,
- 20:47Speaker 4: we say, make no sense. The alternative is far more
- 20:51Speaker 4: sensible and logical. She didn't know they were poisoned. She
- 20:56Speaker 4: fed the children of the meat with the mushrooms scraped
- 20:58Speaker 4: off she threw the leftovers in the bin. She told
- 21:03Speaker 4: the police where to find them because she didn't know
- 21:05Speaker 4: they had poison in them. It's straightforward, it's not convoluted,
- 21:09Speaker 4: it's non elaborate, it's not tortured. An innocent person would
- 21:14Speaker 4: say go grab them, help yourselves. That's what she did say.
- 21:26Speaker 1: Colin Mandy sc will resume his closing submissions on Wednesday.
- 21:30Speaker 1: For all the latest from the Victorian Supreme Court in Morewell,
- 21:33Speaker 1: and for all the nation's best news, sport, politics and business,
- 21:37Speaker 1: visit the Australian dot com dot au