Erin Patterson murder trial day 34 as it happened: Defence barrister Colin Mandy tells jury accused mushroom cook wanted to be close to in-laws; may have reacted differently to consuming to poison

Here’s a recap of the key moments from court today:

• Erin Patterson’s defence lawyer, Colin Mandy, SC, resumed his closing by cautioning the jury against the seductive trap of hindsight reasoning. The pattern of someone’s behaviour and personality did not determine guilt, he said.
• The Patterson family was anchored by deep affection, and Erin Patterson was the kind of daughter-in-law who wanted to be close to her relatives.
• Erin’s relationship with Simon was largely positive: “If there were the occasional disagreement ... they were resolved really smoothly and respectfully and that’s a significant thing for people who are separated.”
• Mandy said Patterson’s interest in wild mushrooms blossomed during COVID-19 lockdowns. The kids may not have noticed or remembered her picking mushrooms at the time, and as the years rolled on, she might have foraged by herself.
• Mandy said there was no evidence that Patterson saw iNaturalist posts about the locations of death cap mushrooms.
• The Pattersons were “eternally polite to each other” in their communications, so any messages with a different tone would “jump out”, Mandy said. Any tension between Patterson and her relations over text was not “very much at all”.
• Patterson struggled with her weight, image and binge-eating. Her lies were a result of her insecurities, not malice.
• The timing of Patterson’s conversation about cancer made it a redundant lie, as it was told after the fatal meal had been eaten, her defence lawyer said.
• Mandy said there was no evidence Patterson had seen an online post about death cap mushrooms in Loch, nor that she had travelled there.
• Regarding the death cap mushrooms: “Prosecution says she had them deliberately. Defence says she had them accidentally,” Mandy said.
• Mandy said the evidence about the different plates at the lunch was “very colourful”, but that “it makes no sense logically that you would use that method to deliver an unpoisoned parcel”.
• The progression of Patterson’s illness was different to that of the other guests, said Mandy, but “not everyone suffers the same” from poisoning.

Court has adjourned for today and will resume on Thursday.

Here are some photographs taken today outside the court in Morwell by our award-winning photographer Jason South.

Erin Patterson’s defence barrister Colin Mandy, SC, says that if the prosecution’s case was that by April 28, 2023, Patterson had all the death cap mushrooms that she needed – if indeed she had planned to use them intentionally – why would she have felt the need to get more on May 22, 2023? In fact, Mandy says by the time June 24, 2023, came around, and Patterson hosted an earlier lunch with her former parents-in-law Don and Gail Patterson, she already had enough death cap mushrooms to poison them.

“Prosecution says she had them deliberately. Defence says she had them accidentally,” Mandy said.

Mandy said the meal Patterson cooked for her guests on June 24, before the fatal lunch on July 29, did not have mushrooms and the couple did not need to be encouraged to attend, as they were happy to go.

Mandy said that the prosecution’s theory that Patterson wanted her estranged husband Simon to attend the fatal lunch on July 29, 2023 to kill him was absurd, since that would have resulted in her children losing their father, grandparents and great-aunt and uncle. He said that it was surely more likely that Patterson’s account that she had moved to Leongatha, away from her support system, and wanted to “build bridges” was true.

“Simon was her link to that community and she was feeling like she was being isolated,” Mandy said.
He said the children were not present at the lunch but they weren’t banned from being there.
“Every time we get to one of those ‘what’s more likely?’ questions ... it always seems as though the answer of what’s more likely is in Erin’s favour and not the convoluted theories of the Crown,” he said.

He added that the defence case was that sometime in April or May, having openly bought a dehydrator to preserve mushrooms, Patterson had foraged on another couple of occasions, dried those mushrooms and put them in a Tupperware container in her pantry that contained other mushrooms.

After dissecting the details of the lunch conversation and timing, defence lawyer Colin Mandy, SC, has turned to the topic of the mushrooms Erin Patterson had purchased from the Asian store. Mandy said the packaging Patterson had described was consistent with what a Monash City Council worker had found during an investigation after the lunch.

The defence barrister then turned to evidence about the dehydrator and said there was no need to buy one for a one-off meal, since one could dehydrate things in the oven at a low temperature, and the purchase spoke instead to a longer-term hobby.

“Why would you need to hide mushrooms in a mushroom paste?” Mandy said. “Why would you need that?”

Mandy said it was one of “many logical implausibilities” in the prosecution’s case.

The court has now paused for lunch, and will return at 2.15pm.

The timing of Erin Patterson’s conversation about cancer made it a redundant lie, as it was told after the fatal lunch of beef Wellington had been eaten, her defence lawyer, Colin Mandy, SC, has told the jury in Morwell’s courtroom four.

“If this was a ruse, there was no need to have the conversation, because the deed on the Crown case – the consumption of the food – had already happened. There was absolutely no need for Erin to say anything about cancer at all,” Mandy said.

The only rational conclusion, he continued, is that the lie about cancer had absolutely nothing to do with any intention to kill, if there was one.

“What’s the point of telling them at the end, once they’d eaten the food?” Mandy said.

“‘She thought that they would take it to their graves’ is such an illogical and irrational theory,” he said, referring to the argument of prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC.