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The Mushroom Murders Part 3 · Parsing the Truth: One Byte at a Time

0:01
Join former FBI Senior Forensic Examiners Becky Passmore and
0:05
Stacey Eldridge as they dig into the world of digital forensics
0:08
one bite at a time. Now leading their own consulting
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firms and educating the next generation of cyber sleuths,
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these badass babes of digital forensics bring sharp insight,
0:18
real world case experience, and a dose of humor to the bits and
0:21
bites that filled today's investigations.
0:23
From deep dives into business e-mail compromise and ransomware
0:26
attacks, Becky's specialty to cracking the complexities of
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iPhone forensics, Stacy's obsession, this podcast delivers
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insider knowledge for professionals, students, and
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true crime techies alike. If you've ever wondered what
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really happens when the digital trail is all that's left, TuneIn
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and start parsing the truth. Welcome back to Parsing the
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Truth One Bite at a Time, where we dig into digital artifacts to
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uncover how digital investigations actually work.
1:00
I'm your host Stacey Eldridge and joining me as always is my
1:04
Co host Becky Passmore. And today we are headed back to
1:08
Australia for Part 3 of The Mushroom Murders.
1:12
Becky, where did we leave off last week at the end of the
1:15
episode? Yeah, so last week's episode,
1:18
the prosecution focused on Aaron Patterson's phones, specifically
1:23
detailing the multiple phone and SIM card swaps and discovering
1:30
the discovery of a missing primary phone and the multiple
1:34
factory reset resets that included a remote wipe performed
1:39
while the device was in police custody.
1:41
Yep. And we should mention too, that
1:43
at the very end of that episode, Erin Patterson had been called
1:47
to the stand by the defense and she had already been on there
1:50
for several days. And so now this week's episode,
1:54
we're going to pick back up with the prosecution again and their
1:58
cross examination of Erin Patterson while she is on the
2:03
stand. And at the end of the episode,
2:06
we're going to share some interesting tidbits about the
2:09
case that weren't public until about four months ago.
2:13
Right. Yes, exciting.
2:15
So on Day 8 of Erin's time on the witness stand, she is.
2:19
Across days. I know I'm just cutting you off,
2:22
but Can you imagine 8 days on the witness stand?
2:24
It's a long time. I mean, one day was the longest
2:28
I was on the stand and that was a long time, Yeah.
2:31
I never thought it was going to end, but yeah.
2:33
Aaron spent eight days on the witness stand and she was cross
2:36
examined by prosecution and Aaron Patterson rejected claims
2:42
that she had removed a SIM card during a police search.
2:44
Questioning then turned to what has been referred to in the
2:49
trial as she rejected the suggestion that she had hidden
2:52
the phone from police, which is why it was never discovered.
2:55
Doctor Rogers then took Miss Patterson through extensive
3:00
phone records from a SIM card that had been in Phone A up
3:05
until August 23, a week after the lunch.
3:09
So then the the record showed that the phone had been in
3:13
regular use until sometime between 12 O 1:00 PM and 1:45 PM
3:19
when the SIM card in phone A lost connection with the
3:23
network. At that time, police were
3:25
conducting a search of Miss Patterson's Leongantha home.
3:30
And now there's some disagreement whether this time
3:33
stamp was in local time or UTC Time.
3:36
Time, time, time. That's always going to mess you
3:38
up. Always.
3:39
Every time, every time mess you up.
3:42
Every time, and they argued about it in court.
3:46
So there's a chance that if the timestamp is in UTC, then it
3:52
would have been 10 hours later at that time when the police
3:57
were no longer there. So Doctor Rogers then suggested
4:01
to Miss Patterson that she had removed the SIM card from phone
4:05
a while she was given the privacy to speak with her lawyer
4:10
while the police were there at her home.
4:13
Miss Patterson disagreed, saying that the conversation with her
4:16
lawyer took place at 2:00 PM. I'm not sure if on the search
4:21
logs would you like in the FBI would we have logged like we
4:25
gave the subject time alone? Because generally in the house,
4:31
they can either be in the house or the business or out of it and
4:35
somebody is generally always sitting there with them.
4:39
But you know, this is a different country.
4:40
Maybe they have different rules, but what will you?
4:43
What would we have done in the? FBI so I mean I agree with you
4:47
I'm in the sense that I I was on many searches where the the
4:52
individual who's home we were searching was present so they're
4:58
not made to leave and they're allowed to be there but they're
5:02
controlled right You know there's and.
5:06
That's and that's a safety thing, you know.
5:08
Absolutely. There's an absolutely the safety
5:10
thing in very couple of instant instances where you know,
5:15
someone wandering around the house opening drawers and doing
5:18
things, it can keep, it can be very insecure.
5:21
So yeah, it's, it's more of a safety thing.
5:23
So I don't. I don't, no.
5:25
Again, you're talking about a different country and how they
5:27
handle things differently. You know, it might have just
5:29
might have been a way that they let things happen.
5:32
Just weird. Yeah.
5:33
I don't know, but anyway, she also rejected that the factory
5:37
resets were done to hide incriminating evidence.
5:40
Questioning then turned to phone B.
5:44
This is the phone that she actually handed over to the
5:47
police during the search on August 5th.
5:50
And this search was at her home a week after the lunch.
5:54
And then Dr. Rogers suggested that she did it because she knew
5:59
that there was no data on the phone and that's why she turned
6:02
it over. And Miss Patterson responded,
6:05
no, I did it because they asked for my phone and I gave it to
6:08
them. And Doctor Rogers then referred
6:11
Miss Patterson to the records of the three factory resets made on
6:15
Phone B, and she had previously given reasons to the court for
6:20
each of those three different factory resets.
6:23
Yeah, Doctor. Rogers suggested to Miss
6:27
Patterson that she had that she had carried out the factory
6:31
resets for another reason, he said.
6:34
I suggest that you did 3 factory resets of this phone, which is
6:39
phone B to conceal the true contents of phone B.
6:44
So you could then pass off phone B as your usual.
6:48
Mobile. Phone without police realizing.
6:50
Miss Patterson agreed that she had carried out the three
6:53
resets, but she disagreed that she did so for the reasons
6:57
Doctor Rogers asserted. Dr. Rogers went on to claim that
7:01
it was all about hiding the contents of your usual mobile
7:07
phone, Phone a which is asserted Missus Patterson had
7:10
deliberately concealed because she knew the data on that device
7:15
would incriminate her, and Missus Patterson rejected this
7:20
assertion. And you can't just hand a
7:22
digital forensic examiner phone that you've reset multiple times
7:29
and just started using and expect to pass it off as your
7:34
usual phone. Because especially in this case,
7:38
and as in most cases, right, we're going backwards in time.
7:42
We have to look at what happened on the phone before we got it
7:46
because that's where the evidence is going to be.
7:48
So we're always looking backwards in time.
7:50
And you always kind of do that, that overview, you want to get a
7:53
nice overview of, of like what the situation with the devices.
7:57
And we're looking to see, you know, when was it first set up
8:00
all these factory, you know, is there factory resets, how much
8:04
data is on it and stuff like that.
8:06
The factory resets were obviously detected because we've
8:09
discussed that multiple times. You know, you can see when those
8:12
dates happen, you can see when the phone was set up, all of
8:15
those things. So there's, there's no hiding
8:18
that. And it's, you know, story has
8:21
got to be about the why behind that.
8:24
And, you know, is the jury going to believe at the end of the day
8:29
that this was her primary phone? Because we remember we talked
8:33
about it either in episode one or two about the mushroom
8:36
murders. Here's the picture of her
8:38
sliding the phone across the table versus the picture of her
8:41
in the hospital with her phone. Do you think that's the same
8:45
phone? So that was something for the
8:47
jury to decide if she, you know, maliciously and intentionally
8:51
was doing these factory resets and then intentionally gave them
8:55
the wrong phone. Yeah, for sure agreed.
8:59
Miss Patterson finally gets off of the stand.
9:01
The trial is coming to a conclusion about 9 short weeks
9:06
later. They're finally doing the
9:08
closing arguments. Dr. Rogers told the jury that
9:12
Miss Patterson had lied about her phone number when asked for
9:15
it during an interview and had given them a dummy phone instead
9:18
of her actual phone. He stated that all this conduct
9:22
was designed to frustrate police investigations and ensure the
9:27
officers would never see the contents of Miss Patterson's
9:31
real mobile phone. Doctor Rogers argued that the
9:35
only reasonable explanation for such deceptive behavior was that
9:40
Miss Patterson knew the information on Phone A.
9:44
Her usual mobile phone would implicate her in the deliberate
9:48
poisoning of her lunch guests. He then concluded by saying that
9:53
this was just another example of incriminating conduct.
9:56
So one of the things that we talked about, too in this case
10:00
was about, you know, the SIM card swapping.
10:03
And if she swapped the SIM card out from one that she was just
10:07
using in the tablet, how did she know what her phone number was
10:12
to give to the police? You know, did she take some time
10:16
to look it up? Because a lot of times when you
10:18
have your SIM card in the phone, it's going to put your phone
10:20
number up there in the top of your contact or you could go
10:23
through settings and get it. So should did she plan this in
10:27
advance of them coming? Did they, did she know they were
10:29
coming for the search work? She had it all planned out in
10:32
advance and quickly memorized that phone number when, you
10:36
know, when she gave it to them and and when did she give them
10:39
her phone number, right? Was it when she turned over the
10:41
phone after they had been a while or did they sit down and
10:45
she gave him a phone number right at the beginning?
10:47
I don't know. These are some of the things
10:48
that the jurors are all going to have to work out.
10:51
And I feel like throughout all of this SIM card swapping,
10:55
because again, we don't have the transcripts, just some of the
10:58
details that were shared in the in the news from the media
11:02
personnel that were there is just sort of unclear.
11:05
And I do want times on our clarification on the times, you
11:10
know, was it UTC time? Was it local?
11:13
Someone knows now whether or not they testified about it clearly
11:18
enough during the trial for the jurors to use that information
11:22
to help decide, you know, how much malicious stuff was going
11:26
on with the SIM card swapping or not.
11:27
I don't know, you know, and I know that Doctor Sorrell, the
11:32
gentleman who testified about the cell phone records,
11:35
initially, he was called back to the stand and he did some more
11:39
talking about the SIM card swapping.
11:42
But, you know, his comeback to the stand, there wasn't a lot of
11:44
information about what insights he brought to the case at that
11:48
point. So it'll be interesting to see
11:50
what else we can find out about that in a later episode.
11:53
The. Prosecution told jurors to be
11:55
cautious of any possible defense argument regarding the digital
11:59
evidence. The prosecutor explained that
12:01
the defense might suggest there should have been more computer
12:05
evidence presented in the prosecution's case.
12:09
Doctor Rogers stated that investigators were unable to
12:13
examine Miss Patterson's main device, the phone she used
12:16
daily, because of the accident she allegedly took to prevent
12:21
that. Basically, you know, she took
12:23
the actions and prevented that. She urged the jurors to be weary
12:29
of any argument from the defense on this point, emphasizing that
12:34
she was raising it now since the prosecution would not have a
12:38
chance to reply after the defenses closing address.
12:43
We just have one go at the cherry or whatever the phrase
12:47
is, Doctor Rogers added. Yeah, yeah.
12:51
So it sounds like the way it must go in Australia in this
12:55
trial is like it does in the federal cases here where the
12:58
prosecution gives her closing argument and then this defense
13:01
gives their closing argument at the federal level.
13:04
But then in the state level, in some states, the prosecution
13:08
goes to the defense goes, and then the prosecution gets a
13:10
rebuttal. And I, I don't know if I think
13:13
that's fair, right. But I mean, where do you cut it
13:16
off? But again, it goes back to if
13:18
you don't know when, you have to learn, it's the burden of the
13:20
prosecution to prove the case right.
13:23
And so I guess that's why that rebuttal it gives, it gives them
13:27
one more opportunity. Yep, Yep.
13:31
Maybe that's where it's coming from.
13:33
Two more things along the same line of some of these lawyerly
13:36
moves that happened during the trial.
13:38
I have been in trials as an expert witness talking about
13:41
digital evidence and during the closing argument, the
13:44
prosecution says stuff to the jury like disregard everything
13:49
that the defense said about the digital evidence.
13:51
They're like just disregarded because of blah, blah, blah.
13:55
And then they give some other, I'm just going to say non
13:59
factual reasoning of why to do that.
14:02
And then the other thing I wanted to talk about, even
14:04
Doctor Rogers maybe didn't have that statement correct at the
14:07
very end. But so this phrase that we have
14:09
just one go at the cherry, I'd never heard it before.
14:14
I was like, is this an Australian thing?
14:16
What does it mean? So I googled it and apparently
14:20
this is the British and Australian saying and it just
14:24
means that you have one chance to get it right.
14:28
OK then. So instantly what came to mind
14:31
for me was Eminem's song Lose Yourself.
14:35
Now, I also did not know that the name of this song was Lose
14:40
Yourself. It's that one where he's
14:42
starting out and he and he's just going on, you know,
14:44
something about just one chance. And but anyway, the one go at
14:48
the cherry made me think of Eminem.
14:51
That's probably kind of of weird, but that is where my mind
14:54
went. I'm curious what everybody else
14:56
maybe you thought of when they they heard the saying, we have
14:59
just one go at the. Cherry, but so funny.
15:03
As I've meandered through the end of this closing argument
15:08
section, why don't you go ahead and continue with the rest of
15:11
it? So Doctor Rogers also dismissed
15:14
Aaron Patterson's explanation that she changed and factory
15:18
reset her phone because it was damaged around the time of
15:24
lunch. Miss Patterson had testified
15:26
that her son dropped the phone in mud during a school camp,
15:30
prompting her to reset it on August the 3rd, shortly after
15:34
the lunch. How convenient, Doctor Rogers
15:37
said Riley. She argued that Miss Patterson
15:40
continued using her her usual mobile phone despite claiming it
15:44
was no longer functioningly functioning properly.
15:48
Doctor Rogers also anticipated that the defense might argue
15:52
that Misses Patterson simply liked to change her phones
15:56
often. Interesting.
15:58
And that she countered that this was this situation was entirely
16:05
different. This is very different to taking
16:08
steps to hide A phone from homicide detectives during an
16:11
investigation, she said. Interesting.
16:14
We're getting closer to wrapping up in terms of the trial.
16:19
Now we're going to talk about some of the defense's closing
16:22
argument statements. The defense warned the jury to
16:26
be wary of potentially misleading impressions because
16:30
obviously the prosecution is just going to present the
16:33
information that helps their case because they're there to
16:36
help their client win. And I mean, the defense does the
16:39
same thing, too. They're going to present the
16:40
information that helps their client out.
16:43
But So the defense lawyer, Mr. Mandy, took the jury to review
16:48
some cashed images that were extracted from her phone earlier
16:53
in the trial. The jury was shown these images
16:56
as they related to different types of cancer, which the
17:00
execution argued that Miss Patterson had used these
17:04
screenshots and these images related to cancer to research
17:08
her false cancer claim. However, the defense was sure to
17:13
note that due to not date them, they have no idea when they were
17:18
taken. No dates related to them.
17:20
These screenshots, these pictures related to cancer could
17:24
have been from previous occasions when she believes she
17:28
had cancer. Now.
17:30
Mr. Mandy also accused the prosecution of misstating the
17:34
evidence provided by the telecommunications expert,
17:37
Doctor Matthew Sorrell. He explained that the
17:40
prosecution claimed that Missus Patterson's phone at one point
17:44
had been stationary in the northern end of Outrim near a
17:49
death cap mushroom sighting. And they attributed this
17:52
statement to Doctor Sorrell. And here Mandy is going through
17:56
and clarifying that he Doctor Sorrell did not say like to 100%
18:02
certainty, I guess that the phone was stationary.
18:07
He emphasized that Doctor Sorrell indicated that it was
18:11
possible that the phone could be in that area.
18:16
So and I think, Becky, that's that's familiar for you.
18:19
And we talked like that when we write that reports and talk
18:23
about certain things on the stand kind of why why do we do
18:26
that? Why isn't it always a?
18:27
100% you cannot state that the phone was in that location based
18:33
only on a GPS or a coordination, a coordinates or anything like
18:38
that, because that is subjective to the area, the surrounding,
18:44
the, the towers, the phone, the type, all of there's a lot of
18:49
things that go into play in making that determination.
18:52
And there's no definitive way to say unless you have a picture of
18:56
that exact location with that phone in that exact location at
19:00
that exact time. It's like saying you can't put
19:04
someone behind a keyboard. You know, you can't say it's the
19:06
person on the keyboard, can't say it's that person.
19:09
I mean it's that phone in that location either, right?
19:11
We. Use all the information that we
19:13
have available to use those facts to draw a.
19:18
A conclusion, just like we draw conclusions of it had to be that
19:23
person behind the keyboard, that phone had to be in that location
19:26
based on the facts and the results of the artifacts found
19:31
on the phone. So yeah.
19:33
On the cross examination, whenever they asked, is there a
19:36
chance that it wasn't there, you always have to say yes.
19:39
Is there a chance? Yes, Yes, always a chance.
19:44
The defense further argued that the prosecution had been
19:47
selective with the mobile phone data provided to the expert.
19:52
The trial had shown that event based monitoring data from
19:56
mobile phone networks indicated Miss Patterson's phone connected
20:00
to towers near where death cap mushrooms grew.
20:05
Mr. Mandy told the jury that the alleged phone pings to a mobile
20:10
tower in Outram could not be considered a regular occurrence.
20:14
Due to the small sample size of data given to the expert, the
20:19
limitation of his analysis was fact that only he had EBM data
20:25
for a handful of days, 23 days out of 500, he explained.
20:30
And then finally, the defense dismissed the claim that Aaron
20:33
Patterson intended to kill Simon as.
20:37
And it's interesting that that came into the trial because at
20:42
the end, because we'll get into this other stuff later, she
20:45
wasn't on trial for murdering Simon or attempting to kill
20:50
Simon, her estranged husband, because he did not go to the
20:53
lunch that day. But how does it all end if you
20:57
haven't skipped ahead on your own?
20:59
Aaron was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison, and
21:03
she's going to be eligible for parole after 33 years.
21:06
She apparently missed the original appeal deadline, but
21:12
then there's some other sort of different appeal that she filed
21:16
for just last month in November of 2025.
21:19
And in that appeal, she's appealing her conviction based
21:22
on 7 different 7 different grounds, including the
21:27
irregularity around sequestering the jury in the same hotel as
21:33
the police and the media, and that her cross examination
21:37
during the trial was unfair and oppressive.
21:42
I don't know what's going to happen with that.
21:44
I just checked again today. No news on that appeal either
21:47
way. Interesting, according to the
21:49
documents filed to the Victorian Court of Appeal and released to
21:54
the media, Patterson also seeks to appeal on the grounds that
21:57
the cell tower evidence along with the evidence of death cat
22:02
mushroom sightings near her home should not have been allowed.
22:05
She also argued evidence from the so-called Facebook friends
22:09
who met Patterson through a true crime group should not should
22:13
also not have been heard during that trial it.
22:16
Seems like there is some digital evidence that's going to be
22:21
important in the pill if it's granted.
22:23
And you know, that mainly seems to be related to Doctor
22:27
Sorrell's testimony about the cell phone location records.
22:32
So so inside sources say this appeal really isn't going to
22:37
amount to much. Only time will tell.
22:39
So you never know what can happen in a case.
22:41
Stacey didn't. You mention there was some
22:44
evidence that was suppressed from the pretrial hearing that
22:49
only became available recently. Yeah.
22:53
And I thought it would be interesting to talk about some
22:55
of the stuff that the jury never heard.
22:59
Now, a lot of this is not digital evidence that we're
23:04
talking about and we'll kind of get into, but I just thought
23:08
this was sort of interesting that it seems deeply related to
23:12
the case, but all this evidence was suppressed.
23:14
So what was suppressed, this was charges against Aaron Patterson
23:19
that were related to her estranged husband Simon.
23:23
And these charges were dropped right before the trial.
23:27
So I think it was for attempted murder.
23:30
And so that meant all of his testimony during the pretrial
23:33
hearings about the alleged poisoning attempts against him
23:37
had to be excluded. Now, this is a big deal because
23:42
for years that Aaron had been trying to kill him even before
23:47
that fatal lunch. And he actually testified, you
23:51
know, in detail in these pretrial hearings about what he
23:54
called her years long campaign against him.
23:57
Wow. And Simon escaped being at the
23:59
lunch himself, luckily because he declined.
24:02
And perhaps we know why. During the trial, Simon
24:05
expressed his frustration about not being able to discuss these
24:10
prior instance, saying. I'm sitting here half thinking
24:14
about the things I'm not allowed to talk about and I don't
24:18
actually understand why. You can imagine how difficult
24:22
that this is going to have been for him.
24:24
Yeah. And it goes back to, you know,
24:27
we don't make the rules. We got to follow the rules.
24:30
The judge makes the decision, the evidence in words out, and
24:33
that's how it goes. But that doesn't mean we can't
24:35
talk about it now after the fact.
24:37
This is information the jury did not get to hear or consider
24:40
during the trial. Let's talk about some of those
24:42
specific things that he testified about earlier.
24:45
He stated that the first incident was back in November
24:48
2021 when he ate some Bolognese penne that Aaron had prepared
24:54
for him. He got so sick he had to spend
24:57
the night in the hospital. But at the time he, you know, he
25:00
didn't give it too much thought. He just thought, you know, it's
25:02
one of those things and. And then in May 2022, things got
25:08
really serious. Simon ate chicken korma Curry
25:12
that Aaron prepared during a camping trip in Victoria's High
25:18
Country region and within days he was in coma in a Melbourne
25:22
hospital and had to have a large part of his bowel surgically
25:28
removed. His family was actually asked to
25:31
come say goodbye twice because doctors didn't expect him to
25:36
survive. Now I'm not a Curry fan.
25:39
I don't eat Curry, but I mean, who's eating Curry on a camping
25:43
trip? I don't know.
25:45
That's that's not my jam. And I would just suspect out of
25:48
human nature, just regular Curry would be I'm not I'm.
25:51
Sorry, chicken korma Curry is not a camping trip, a meal.
25:56
I'm sorry it isn't for me. Anyway they.
25:58
Must do things differently Down Under.
26:00
Hot dogs. Yeah, hot dogs.
26:04
Hot dogs and. S'mores, how unfancy are we?
26:07
We're just having hot dog and s'mores and down there they're
26:10
preparing a fancy meal of some sort of special chicky Chicky
26:14
Tacoma. That's to that's to hide the
26:17
poison. You can't hide the poison in hot
26:19
dogs, Yeah. There you go.
26:22
So getting back on track, the third poisoning incident
26:26
happened in September 22 in an isolated stretch of the
26:29
Victorian coastline. So this time after eating a
26:33
vegetable wrap come in, symptoms escalated from your typical food
26:38
poisoning indicators to slurred speech, loss of muscle control
26:43
and fitting. And by the time he got to the
26:46
hospital, he testified that all he could do was move his neck,
26:50
tongue and lips. This is 3 near death experiences
26:55
in less than a year. And, you know, all comes to
26:58
being after he eats something, right?
27:01
Miss Patterson prepares for him, right?
27:04
So after that third incident, the doctor suggested to Simon
27:08
keep a food diary to try to figure out what was making him
27:12
so sick. Doctor Ford later testified that
27:15
he couldn't understand why these things kept on happening to him
27:21
in such a way that he had essentially 3 near death
27:26
experiences. So in February 2023, five months
27:30
before the fatal lunch, Simon came back to Doctor Ford with a
27:34
theory. He told the doctor he believed
27:36
his estranged wife was responsible.
27:40
And Simon specifically mentioned a batch of cookies that were
27:44
supposedly baked by his daughter, but he feared they
27:48
were actually tainted by Aaron, maybe with some antifreeze.
27:52
And what really made him suspicious was that Aaron kept
27:56
calling him repeatedly to check on whether he'd eaten any of
27:59
these cookies. So I guess she's just called.
28:01
Do you eat the cookies yet? Do you eat the cookies yet?
28:04
Are those cookies good? Did you like those cookies?
28:06
Eat the cookie yet? Wow.
28:09
Yeah, I. Mean, I don't know how it went
28:10
down, but so obviously she called it more than once or
28:12
twice to find out if he ate the cookies.
28:14
So the investigators never definitively figured out what
28:18
poison was allegedly used, though they suspected it was rat
28:21
poisoning in at least one incident.
28:24
And they had also found a file on Aaron's computer with
28:27
information about the toxin in rat poison.
28:32
And obviously that wasn't discussed in the greater trial
28:35
because again, this is poisoning to the past.
28:38
So all of this stuff was suppressed and.
28:40
So after making that discovery, Simon took action.
28:43
He changed his medical power of attorney to remove Aaron and
28:47
quietly told a handful of family members about his suspicions.
28:52
And here's another strange detail that was excluded from
28:55
the trial. Back in 2020, posted to a
28:59
Poisons Help forum on Facebook claiming that her cat had eaten
29:04
some mushrooms, a tree and vomited, and she occluded
29:08
pictures of the mushrooms with the post.
29:11
The thing is, prosecutors said Aaron had never owned a cat.
29:16
They argued that this post was evidence of long standing
29:19
interest in the poisonous properties of the mushrooms, but
29:24
again, they didn't hear never heard about it.
29:26
Nope. Suppressed evidence, that's
29:28
right. So all of this context, the
29:31
alleged prior poisoning attempts and suspicions, the warnings to
29:36
family members, the suspicious Facebook post, none of it made
29:41
to the jury. They had to decide this case
29:43
based solely on the events surrounding that one lunch in
29:47
July of 2023 and the digital evidence that followed, along
29:53
with what they provided. But that's how trials work.
29:56
Sometimes evidence you think is relevant and important is
29:59
suppressed, and that means you don't get to talk about it in
30:02
the trial. And it was actually some of this
30:04
information regarding these previous poisoning attempts that
30:08
really caught my eye in this case and got me interested
30:12
because I had seen comments on social media that made it sound
30:15
like there had been references from Aaron Patterson regarding
30:20
all these poisoning attempts that were found on her phone and
30:24
her devices. And even stuff like comments
30:27
like better not mess it up this time.
30:29
And and so we're like to get. The cherry, right?
30:32
Like I can't wait to see what the digital evidence is in this
30:37
case. Right.
30:39
But you know, through all of the evidence and the testimony that
30:43
the jury heard and you know the the snippets that we could find,
30:47
nothing like that was revealed. So again, we got to stick to the
30:51
facts of the case. If if there was any of that
30:54
stuff, apparently not enough of it was mentioned during the
30:56
pretrial hearings and certainly none of it was mentioned in the
31:00
trial for that deadly lunch and the three murder charges and
31:06
that I guess the one attempted murder charge that she was
31:08
facing. Yeah, that's exactly right.
31:11
I would I would suspect if there had been evidence like that on
31:15
Patterson's digital devices, more compelling than a Facebook
31:19
post about the poison in the cat, the charges related to the
31:24
attempted murder of her estranged husband wouldn't have
31:27
been dropped. Yeah, I agree.
31:29
So we are at the end of this week's episode.
31:33
We're wrapping up our kind of overview of the trial and the
31:36
digital evidence, but we want to make sure that you join us next
31:39
week when we chat with Doctor Sorrell about the cell phone
31:43
location data and all of that SIM card swapping.
31:47
I think it's going to be fascinating.
31:49
Yeah, Yeah. I do too.
31:50
I'm excited about that. Thanks for listening to
31:53
everyone. Until next time, stay safe, stay
31:56
sharp, and as always, keep parsing the truth one bite at a
31:59
time. If you enjoyed this episode,
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32:19
Forensic Examiner to IASYS training next year in Orlando.
32:24
Thanks. OK, so what's going?
32:34
On.