Erin Patterson trial as it happened: Alleged mushroom cook’s phone records too expensive for police

• Erin Patterson’s defence lawyer Colin Mandy, SC, continued his cross-examination of Detective Leading Senior Constable Stephen Eppingstall. The detective was asked about the search warrant police executed at Patterson’s home in Leongatha on August 5, 2023.
• Eppingstall was shown a series of messages sent by Erin between December 5 and 9, 2022, where she discussed her ongoing issues with Simon and his family. Eppingstall was shown a message from online friend Jenny Hay in response to a message from Erin about a text she had received from Don where Hay describes Simon’s family as “morons”. “What morons. Anyway, you weren’t asking them to adjudicate, you just wanted them to hear your story,” the message read.
• Mandy shows Eppingstall another message Erin sent the group where she said Simon was likely loving how upset she was about the situation.
• The jury was shown a series of Signal messages between Don Patterson and Erin between January 1 and 15, 2022, where they discussed some of her ongoing health issues.
• Eppingstall also told the court why police did not obtain more of Erin Patterson’s phone records, saying seeking the data would be too costly.

The lead detective in the mushroom lunch case has explained why police did not obtain more of accused killer cook Erin Patterson’s phone records, saying seeking the data would be too costly.

On Thursday, defence barrister Colin Mandy, SC, quizzed Detective Leading Senior Constable Stephen Eppingstall about why mobile phone data log records weren’t gathered for the entire investigation period – about a year – and instead focused on 27 dates closer to the lunch that left three people dead.

He said police were charged as much as $1700 for two hours of data, so seeking a year’s worth of mobile phone location tracking would have left the homicide squad with a six-figure bill.

“It’s very cost-prohibitive,” he said.

“My boss isn’t real keen on spending that much money,” he said.

Before breaking for the afternoon, Colin Mandy, SC, switched his line of questioning to a series of Facebook messages sent from his client Erin Patterson to online friends in early December three years ago.

Mandy showed Stephen Eppingstall (the lead detective in the mushroom lunch case) a series of messages sent by Erin between December 5 and 9, 2022, in which she discussed her ongoing issues with Simon and his family.

The defence barrister has told the court the messages are contained in 186 pages of records, a selection of which has previously been shown to the jury by the prosecution.

He has taken Eppingstall to a message from online friend Jenny Hay in response to a message from Erin about a text she had received from Don in which Hay describes Simon’s family as “morons”.

“What morons. Anyway, you weren’t asking them to adjudicate, you just wanted them to hear your story,” the message read.

Erin Patterson’s lawyer continues questioning the lead homicide detective on the mushroom case.

Colin Mandy, SC, has now taken Stephen Eppingstall to a screenshot of the iNaturalist website that he took as part of his investigations for the case in December 2024.

Eppingstall agrees the website would have looked differently in 2022 to what it did when he took a screenshot in 2024, and could not answer whether developers would have changed the layout and format.

Mandy: Other than the fact that’s a page with the same URL, you don’t have any evidence as to what the landing page of that URL was in May 2022 or if it was this landing page in 2022, whether any of the details contained on it were the same.
Eppingstall: No.
Mandy: And you would expect the number of observations would have been different?
Eppingstall: Yes.
Mandy: And the placement of the little squares would have been different.
Eppingstall: Yes, sir.