Speaker 1: This episode maintained content of a graphic nature, including descriptions
Speaker 1: of physical and sexual violence against adults, children, and animals.
Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Shannon. Hi I'm Tanya, and we are Crimes
Speaker 2: and Consequences, a hardcore true crime podcast. Hey Shannon, Hey Tanya,
Speaker 2: how are you.
Speaker 1: I'm doing all right.
Speaker 2: How are you? I'm doing very very well. Thank you, considering, considering,
Speaker 2: it could be so much worse as we I mean,
Speaker 2: my goodness. You know, I remember one time, here's here's
Speaker 2: a bit of information, maybe a little two truths and
Speaker 2: a lie, you know. But I'll just tell you what
Speaker 2: the you know, what I think of what I say,
Speaker 2: stuff like, oh, could be worse. Anybody ever been in
Speaker 2: a psych ward? I have, So when I say it,
Speaker 2: I always I just think of any kind of time
Speaker 2: I was, you know, a moment when I was in there,
Speaker 2: and I'll be like.
Speaker 3: You were on the inside when I was on the
Speaker 3: looking out.
Speaker 1: I mean, it could be worse.
Speaker 2: You're right, but yeah, I cannot complain. Everybody's good here,
Speaker 2: and everybody's looking for the weekend. Brooke is so excited.
Speaker 2: She works all week and then she has her weekends off.
Speaker 1: Nice.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm when as a new mom, she's like, Oh,
Speaker 2: I am taking the biggest nap.
Speaker 3: Snaps really are the fucking best.
Speaker 2: Heyre, Now how about you, what's you up to? Well?
Speaker 2: Catch up?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Today was my almost second to last day at my
Speaker 3: job because the holiday is coming and I took time
Speaker 3: off and I just have one more work day where
Speaker 3: I have to be in the office or actually have
Speaker 3: to do anything.
Speaker 2: So it's a little bittersweet.
Speaker 3: My friends that I work with, the people that I
Speaker 3: worked with, had to say kind of goodbye to them today,
Speaker 3: even though like we've promised to make plans to, you know,
Speaker 3: get together because I don't live far away from where
Speaker 3: the workplace.
Speaker 1: Is and we'll get together, and but it was kind
Speaker 1: of sad.
Speaker 3: It was a little bittersweet because I am excited to
Speaker 3: start my new job and new adventure.
Speaker 2: But I really grew to like these women, and you know,
Speaker 2: they were just.
Speaker 3: Really funny and fun and everything, and they made the
Speaker 3: job pleasurable.
Speaker 2: So nice, what a compliment. Yeah, it's hard.
Speaker 1: To move on, I know, and I hate change.
Speaker 3: Probably why I've lived in the same house for almost
Speaker 3: thirty years. It's been married to the same man for
Speaker 3: thirty years hand jobs where I, like, you know, decades
Speaker 3: at the same job.
Speaker 1: Changes hard for me.
Speaker 2: But it's good and you're just so darn likable. I
Speaker 2: know that everybody you will be missing. Oh please, then
Speaker 2: thank you. I'll love you right back. But it's true.
Speaker 2: You are so extremely sweet and like girl, and I
Speaker 2: say that with so much love and a compliment. I
Speaker 2: love it. I love you back. But I do have
Speaker 2: a story, all right, story. I'm excited me too. This
Speaker 2: is a very very good one, and it's very recent
Speaker 2: as well. It's recent as of this year, so woo
Speaker 2: to dive in. But before I dive in, I'm going
Speaker 2: to invite everybody who's listening to go ahead and hit
Speaker 2: subscribe and follow, and you'll never miss us. So now, Tanya,
Speaker 2: there's a certain kind of horror that doesn't kick the
Speaker 2: door in. It knocks. It arrives wearing something ordinary, an invitation,
Speaker 2: a familiar driveway, a midday meal you'd never think twice
Speaker 2: about it, the kind of lunch that's supposed to mean peace,
Speaker 2: a reset, a family truce, and then days later doctors
Speaker 2: are using words like liver failure, transplant not survivable. On Saturday,
Speaker 2: July twenty ninth, twenty twenty three, in Leanngatha, Victoria, Australia,
Speaker 2: a woman named Aaron Patterson served lunch at her home
Speaker 2: individual beef Wellington's rich anxiety, very decadent and almost celebratory.
Speaker 2: This is the death cap mushroom murders story, and this
Speaker 2: is what happened inside that house in le Agatha, before
Speaker 2: the first ambulance, before the first lie, and before anyone
Speaker 2: could understand what a beef Wellington and can hide. All right,
Speaker 2: let me give you a little background. So to understand
Speaker 2: how a lunch in a small Victorian town turned into
Speaker 2: an international headline, we have to back up way before
Speaker 2: the beef Wellington, before the hospital admissions, before the word
Speaker 2: death cap became shorthand for a kind of domestic terror,
Speaker 2: Because cases like this don't usually ignite out of nowhere.
Speaker 2: They smolder. And in Leangtha, the story doesn't start with
Speaker 2: a mushroom, starts with a woman and the slow, messy
Speaker 2: physics of the family splitting in half. Aaron Patterson The
Speaker 2: normal life on paper Aaron Trudy Patterson born September thirtieth,
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy four. Ergo, nope, nope, libra libra. We got
Speaker 2: a libra on our hands. She grew up in Melbourne
Speaker 2: in southeast in glen Waverley. Her early life reads like
Speaker 2: the kind of biography that's supposed to signal stability. University
Speaker 2: career training a technical job. She studied at the University
Speaker 2: of Melbourne, began in science, later shifting to accounting, and
Speaker 2: eventually trained as an air traffic controller, graduating in two
Speaker 2: thousand and one. She worked for Air Services Australia and Melbourne,
Speaker 2: but not for long. By the early two thousands, she'd
Speaker 2: moved into an animal management work connected to the RSPCA
Speaker 2: based out of the City of Manash Council Environment and
Speaker 2: it was in that orbit Manash Council work that she
Speaker 2: met Simon Patterson, the man she would marry marriage money
Speaker 2: in the shape of obligation. They married in two thousand
Speaker 2: and seven, and as the marriage took root, another factor
Speaker 2: entered the story. Money. Reporting aired during the trial described
Speaker 2: an inheritance of about two million Australian that Aaron received
Speaker 2: from her grandmother paid over time. You know, yearly? Did
Speaker 2: she get a yearly amount?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 2: To a family. Money can be oxygen or gasoline. It
Speaker 2: can build safety, it can create expectation, and it can
Speaker 2: turn ordinary decisions into long term grudges. Aaron and Simon's
Speaker 2: life moved around Western Australia for a time, then back
Speaker 2: to Victoria, closer to Simon's parents, Don and Gail. They
Speaker 2: had two children and they raised them in the messy
Speaker 2: reality most families recognize routines, compromises, fatigue, and the unglamorous
Speaker 2: grind of staying together. Except by multiple accounts aired in
Speaker 2: court coverage, the relationship began to strain after their first
Speaker 2: child was born, then stretched further with separations and attempts
Speaker 2: to regroup. Eventually the split became a long term reality.
Speaker 2: The in laws closeness, then distance. Now here's where the
Speaker 2: story gets deceptively human, because this wasn't a family that
Speaker 2: lived in permanent open warfare. The public records describes stretches
Speaker 2: of functional normalcy, shared custody, moments of friendliness, even the
Speaker 2: attempt to keep things civil. But over time, especially in
Speaker 2: the two years leading into July twenty twenty three, relationships
Speaker 2: fred court reporting describes growing estrangement between Aaron and Simon's family, misgatherings,
Speaker 2: shortened appearances, the kind of social distance that becomes its
Speaker 2: own language. There were also claims aired in later reporting
Speaker 2: that conflict sharpened around finances and status, particularly around government
Speaker 2: and tax settings, fueling resentment and suspicion on both sides.
Speaker 2: Apparently one year Simon had claimed himself as single, which
Speaker 2: made Aaron unable to collect benefits for the children. Oh okay,
Speaker 2: somehow tax laws in Australia. So that put quite a
Speaker 2: bit of contention, you know, as it can for sure,
Speaker 2: And in cases like this, resentment doesn't always show up
Speaker 2: as screaming matches. Sometimes it shows up as silence, as
Speaker 2: late invitations, as group chats you're not in and will
Speaker 2: sees that never become yes's. Ian and Heather Wilkinson, family
Speaker 2: and faith. Two of the people who would later sit
Speaker 2: at Aaron's table had their own deep time to community life.
Speaker 2: Ian Wilkinson, the only lunch guest to survive was a
Speaker 2: Baptist pastor and his wife, Heather was Gail Patterson's sister.
Speaker 2: So this wasn't just family. Aaron attended the church when
Speaker 2: they were together. This is family braided with church community,
Speaker 2: long acquaintance, shared circles and familiar faces, and that matters
Speaker 2: because when something horrific happens in that kind of web
Speaker 2: everyone feels it, not as an abstract tragedy, as a
Speaker 2: rupture in the town's daily life. The invitation and what
Speaker 2: it signaled. By the time Aaron Patterson extended the invitation
Speaker 2: for lunch on July twenty ninth, twenty twenty three, the
Speaker 2: family dynamic was already brittle. An invitation like that can
Speaker 2: mean a lot of things. It can be an olive branch,
Speaker 2: a reset button, a performance of goodwill, or, as prosecutors
Speaker 2: later argued, if you accept their theory, it can be
Speaker 2: the stage setting for something planned. And this is where
Speaker 2: we need to be clear. At the trial, the Crown
Speaker 2: emphasized alleged deception, claims that Aaron used false pretenses to
Speaker 2: get the guests into her home, and she concealed key
Speaker 2: details about preparation, her health, narrative, and what she did after.
Speaker 2: The defense conceded some lies, especially around a dehydrator, but
Speaker 2: framed the core event as a terrible accident followed by panic.
Speaker 2: That tug of war premeditation versus catastrophe, becomes the spine
Speaker 2: of everything that follows, because once you accept the lunch invitation,
Speaker 2: you're not just walking into a house. You're walking into
Speaker 2: the context, history, resentment, obligation, wounded pride, money, messages left
Speaker 2: on sent and a family trying to pretend the ground
Speaker 2: isn't moving under their feet. And on July twenty ninth,
Speaker 2: the ground moved. She had invited them under the pretense
Speaker 2: she had cancer and she was baking. Yes, she wanted
Speaker 2: her close loved ones to know the medal. This is diabolical,
Speaker 2: isn't it.
Speaker 3: Ugh?
Speaker 2: The invitation was unremarkable, at least on its face. A
Speaker 2: family lunch, a Saturday afternoon, nothing ceremonial, nothing lavishly announced.
Speaker 2: Just July twenty ninth, twenty twenty three in le Agatha,
Speaker 2: a quiet town where people tend to know each other's cars,
Speaker 2: routines and business. And that's important because crimes like this
Speaker 2: don't need spectacle, they need familiarity. Who was invited and
Speaker 2: who wasn't. Aaron Patterson invited Don and Gail Patterson, her
Speaker 2: estranged husband's peers pants, her ex in laws. She also
Speaker 2: invited Heather Wilkinson, Gail's sister, and Heather's husband, Ian Wilkinson,
Speaker 2: the Baptist pastor. Her estranged husband, Simon was also invited.
Speaker 2: He didn't come. That absence would matter later because In
Speaker 2: a case where intent is everything, who eats and who
Speaker 2: doesn't becomes evidence. Aaron later said her two children were
Speaker 2: not present, having gone out to the cinema. Again ordinary
Speaker 2: on the surface, but prosecutors would later argue that this
Speaker 2: detail wasn't incidental. The meal controlled individual, deliberate. Aaron didn't
Speaker 2: serve something casual, not takeaway, not a shared pot. She
Speaker 2: prepared individual beef Wellington's, a dish that requires planning, precision,
Speaker 2: and timing. Each portion was its own unit. Beef, mushroom, duxels, pastry, assembled, wrapped, baked.
Speaker 2: It wasn't help yourself. It was plated, and that matters
Speaker 2: because individual portions mean control, control over what goes where,
Speaker 2: control over quantities, control over who gets what. At the trial,
Speaker 2: the Crown would later suggest that Aaron did not eat
Speaker 2: the same meal as her guests. Survivor Ian Wilkinson testify
Speaker 2: that Aaron used a different colored plate from the guests,
Speaker 2: a detailed the defense later dismissed as insignificant, but in
Speaker 2: poisoning cases, nothing is insignificant. Laboratory testing would later confirm
Speaker 2: the presence of Aminita filoida's death cap mushroom toxins in
Speaker 2: the beef Wellington leftovers. Death caps are not subtle. They
Speaker 2: are responsible for the majority of mushroom related deaths worldwide.
Speaker 2: They're toxins. Amatoxins attacked the liver with the delay that
Speaker 2: makes early symptoms deceptively mild nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, then hours
Speaker 2: later organ failure, which makes timing crucial after the meal,
Speaker 2: the delay that kills after lunch. Nothing dramatic happened immediately.
Speaker 2: No one collapsed at the table, no frantic calls, no
Speaker 2: early warning signs that screamed poison. But the next day, however,
Speaker 2: all four guests were critically ill. Doctors initially suspected gastro enteritis,
Speaker 2: a reasonable assumption given the symptoms, but as test results
Speaker 2: came in that theory collapsed. The diagnosis shifted to severe
Speaker 2: liver failure, consistent with death carep poisoning. Three of the
Speaker 2: four guests would die within six days. One Ian Wilkinson,
Speaker 2: would survive after more than seven weeks in the hospital. Wow,
Speaker 2: I mean this is this is a nasty toxin. Yeah,
Speaker 2: six days.
Speaker 3: It takes six days to die from it.
Speaker 2: Six days and you don't think that it's you know,
Speaker 2: I thinking you're experiencing acute liver failure.
Speaker 4: Right, so seven weeks to survive it. Holy shit, it's
Speaker 4: crazy Aaron Patterson's own illness or performance now. Aaron Patterson
Speaker 4: also presented Tillian gotha hospital, reporting stomach pain and diarrhea,
Speaker 4: but she refused admission multiple times. Doctors were concerned enough.
Speaker 2: That they contacted police, an unusual step unless something feels off,
Speaker 2: and when concerns were raised about the children who reportedly
Speaker 2: ate leftovers with the mushrooms removed, health staff testified that
Speaker 2: Aaron was reluctant to have them tested, and that reluctance
Speaker 2: would later be dissected in court, not as proof by itself,
Speaker 2: but as part of a pattern early red flags only
Speaker 2: visible later. At the time, none of this looked like murder.
Speaker 2: It looked like a tragic food poisoning, a horrible coincidence,
Speaker 2: a family catastrophe. But in hindsight, every poisoning case has
Speaker 2: a moment like this. The red flags rearranged themselves. Who cooked,
Speaker 2: who ate, who didn't, who got sick, how sick, who
Speaker 2: stayed in the hospital, who walked out? Who controlled the narrative?
Speaker 2: In the first forty eight hours and by August fourth
Speaker 2: and fifth, when Gail Heather and Don Patterson were Victoria
Speaker 2: police were no longer treating this as an accident the investigation.
Speaker 2: Once three people were dead and a fourth was clinging
Speaker 2: to life, this stopped being a medical mystery. It became
Speaker 2: a homicide investigation. And Victoria police weren't looking for chaos,
Speaker 2: they were looking for process because poison leaves patterns from
Speaker 2: tragic lunch to active homicide inquiry. By August fifth, twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three, with Don Patterson's death, even after a liver transplant, investigators, yes,
Speaker 2: that's how invasive and horrible. Investigators formally shifted posture. And
Speaker 2: this wasn't food poisoning anymore. It was a fatal exposure
Speaker 2: to a highly specific toxin and death cap Mushrooms don't
Speaker 2: wander into meals by accidents. They must be found and
Speaker 2: hand and prepared and critically introduced Aaron Patterson's statement to police.
Speaker 2: On August fourteenth, Aaron Patterson provided police with a detailed statement.
Speaker 2: She told investigators she had purchased dried mushrooms from an
Speaker 2: Asian grocery store in Mount Waverley, nearly one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty kilometers from her home, several months earlier and at
Speaker 2: the time that explanation gave police something to test, and
Speaker 2: so they did, and that story didn't hold. The dehydrator
Speaker 2: a quiet pivot point. Investigators soon zeroed in on a
Speaker 2: seemingly mundane appliance, a food dehydrator. At first, Aaron Patterson
Speaker 2: told police she didn't own one. That claim quickly unraveled.
Speaker 2: Police recovered a dehydrator from a skip bin at the
Speaker 2: Kunwara transfer station, discarded after the lunch CCTV footage shows
Speaker 2: Aaron Patterson dumping it there, and inside that dehydrator, forensic
Speaker 2: testing found Aaron Patterson's fingerprints and traces of Amanita Filloyd's toxins.
Speaker 2: The same toxins were later detected in the urine samples
Speaker 2: of the poisoned guests. At that point, investigators weren't dealing
Speaker 2: with circumstantial coincidence. They were dealing with physical linkage foraging
Speaker 2: searches and geographic overlap. Police also examined Patterson's movements in
Speaker 2: the months leading up to the launch. The Crown would
Speaker 2: later present evidence of trips to Locke and Outram, areas
Speaker 2: known to host death cat mushroom habitats. Digital forensic analysis
Speaker 2: showed online activity related to death cat mushrooms, including access
Speaker 2: to the platform I Naturalists, a site commonly used to
Speaker 2: identify fungi. Patterson denied intentional research, describing it as idle curiosity.
Speaker 2: Prosecutors weren't persuaded digital evidence in what was done after
Speaker 2: the lunch. Investigators didn't just focus on what happened before
Speaker 2: July twenty ninth. They focused on what happened after police
Speaker 2: alleged that Patterson factory reset her mobile phone multiple times
Speaker 2: in August of twenty twenty three. The Crown argued this
Speaker 2: was an attempt to conceal evidence a digital cleanup following
Speaker 2: the poisoning. The defense countered that resets were innocent or unrelated,
Speaker 2: but again, investigators weren't evaluating any one act in isolation.
Speaker 2: They were building a sequence. The children and the doctor's concern.
Speaker 2: Medical staff testified that they were alarmed by Patterson's resistance
Speaker 2: stance of having her children tested, despite concerns that they
Speaker 2: may have eaten leftovers. Doctors were so concerned about Patterson's
Speaker 2: own refusal of admission that police were contacted directly to investigators.
Speaker 2: This wasn't proof of guilt, but it was behavioral data
Speaker 2: and behavior especially under pressure can reveal intent. The story
Speaker 2: keeps changing as the investigation progressed. Patterson's explanations shifted. First,
Speaker 2: she never owned a dehydrator, Then she had, but panicked
Speaker 2: and disposed of it. First, the mushrooms weren't store bought,
Speaker 2: then foraged, but mixed up. First, her illness mirrored her guests,
Speaker 2: Then medical experts questioned whether she consumed the same food
Speaker 2: at all. Each inconsistency tightened the focus because lies don't
Speaker 2: always prove guilt, but patterns of lies can suggest knowledge.
Speaker 2: Arrest and the long road to trial. On November two,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, Aaron Patterson was arrested and charged with
Speaker 2: three counts of murder and five counts of attempted murder,
Speaker 2: including charges related to her estranged husband. Some charges would
Speaker 2: be later dropped, others would harden. By the time this
Speaker 2: case reached trial, police weren't asking whether death caps caused
Speaker 2: the deaths that was settled. They were asking something far
Speaker 2: more dangerous. Did Aaron Patterson knowingly prepare those mushrooms, deliberately
Speaker 2: serve them, and then try to erase the evidence when
Speaker 2: people began to die the trial. By the time Aaron
Speaker 2: Patterson's trial began. The story was already global, but inside
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court of Victoria, sitting in more Well, the
Speaker 2: task wasn't to satisfy the world's curiosity. It was narrower, colder.
Speaker 2: Did the evidence prove beyond reasonable doubt that this was murder?
Speaker 2: Setting the stage. The trial commenced on April twenty ninth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five, presided over by Justice Christopher Beale at
Speaker 2: Patterson's request. It was held in regional more Well, not Melbourne,
Speaker 2: an unusual but strategic choice, one that placed the proceedings
Speaker 2: closer to the community most directly affected. A jury was
Speaker 2: and pianoed reserved, jurors were sealed, and for weeks the
Speaker 2: court would sift through a case that hinged not on
Speaker 2: violence but on intention. Because no one disputed the cause
Speaker 2: of death, the fight was over why it happened. The
Speaker 2: Crown's case control preparation, deception. From the outset, the prosecution
Speaker 2: made its position clear. This was not an accident, it
Speaker 2: was not carelessness, and it was not a tragic misunderstanding.
Speaker 2: Crown Prosecutor Nanette Rogers told the jury this case was
Speaker 2: about deliberate preparation followed by a sustained cover up. The
Speaker 2: Crown focused early and often on the food dehydrator. Jurors
Speaker 2: were shown photographs, social media posts and receipts posts where
Speaker 2: Patterson appeared to proudly display dehydrated mushrooms, evidence that directly
Speaker 2: contradicted her initial claim to police that she never owned
Speaker 2: such a device. And then came the footage, the CCT
Speaker 2: footage of Patterson discarding the dehydrator at the Kunwara transfer
Speaker 2: station after lunch, after people had begun falling gravely ill.
Speaker 2: To the Crown, this wasn't panic, it was consciousness of guilt.
Speaker 2: Prosecutors also laid out a timeline of foraging trips drives
Speaker 2: to areas known for death cap mushrooms. They presented digital
Speaker 2: forensic evidence showing online activity related to mushroom identification. They
Speaker 2: argued Patterson repeatedly lied about owning the dehydrator, about foraging,
Speaker 2: about the source of the mushrooms, about her own illness,
Speaker 2: and about a cancer diagnosis she never had. The Crown
Speaker 2: suggested the cancer story wasn't just a lie, it was
Speaker 2: a pretext used to secure the lunch invitation and ensure
Speaker 2: the children weren't present, and critically, Prosecutors argued that Patterson
Speaker 2: did not eat the same meal as her guests. If
Speaker 2: she had, they asked, where was the liver failure? Witnesses
Speaker 2: for the prosecution. The Crown called a long list of witnesses,
Speaker 2: among them Simon Patterson, the estranged husband, Ian Wilkinson, the
Speaker 2: sole survivor, Medical professionals who treated the victims, child protection
Speaker 2: and welfare workers, digital forensic experts, mycologists, and toxicologists. Experts
Speaker 2: testified about how Amanita Filoda's works, how its toxins survive cooking,
Speaker 2: how dehydration concentrates lethality, how symptoms can be delayed just
Speaker 2: long enough to mask the danger. Jurors heard that the
Speaker 2: victims' illnesses were described by doctors as quote unquote, not
Speaker 2: survivable once the damage progressed. Ian Wilkinson testified about the
Speaker 2: lunch itself, the plates, the serving order, the aftermath. He
Speaker 2: spoke quietly, deliberately, a man who lived but lost his wife.
Speaker 2: The defense accident, shame, panic. The defense did not dispute
Speaker 2: the science. They did not dispute that death cat mushrooms
Speaker 2: caused the deaths. Instead, Colin Mandy, counsel for Patterson, asked
Speaker 2: the jury to consider something else, entirely human error. He
Speaker 2: acknowledged patterson life to police, to doctors, to family, but
Speaker 2: he argued people lie for reasons that have nothing to
Speaker 2: do with murder. They lie for shame, for fear or panic.
Speaker 2: Mandy conceded that Patterson fabricated the cancer diagnosis, but framed
Speaker 2: it as embarrassment over a planned gastric bypass surgery, not
Speaker 2: a murderous ruse. I'm gonna tell you I cancer, but
Speaker 2: I'm guarding the secret of my gastric bypass surgery. Come on,
Speaker 2: are you hearing your words? He told the jury. Aaron
Speaker 2: Patterson loved her children, loved her in laws, and had
Speaker 2: no reason to kill them. The defense position was simple,
Speaker 2: if devastating. This was a terrible accident, a labeling mistake
Speaker 2: involving forged mushrooms, and everything that follows was a frightened
Speaker 2: woman trying to outrun blame. The defense called one witness,
Speaker 2: Aaron Patterson. She testified for days. She admitted foraging for mushrooms,
Speaker 2: admitted lying about the dehydrator, admitted lying about the medical
Speaker 2: appointments and diagnoses, but she denied intent. She denied cultivating
Speaker 2: death caps, denied measuring doses, denied deliberately serving poison She
Speaker 2: said she vomited after lunch, that she suffered diarrhea, that
Speaker 2: she panicked when people became ill, and lied because she
Speaker 2: was afraid. Under cross examination, the Crown pressed hard about searches,
Speaker 2: about deleted data, about inconsistencies that piled up like sediment,
Speaker 2: and when asked why her story kept changing, there was
Speaker 2: no clean answer what the jury was left with. By
Speaker 2: the time closing arguments approached, the jury wasn't deciding whether
Speaker 2: mushrooms killed three people. They were deciding whether Aaron Patterson
Speaker 2: knew exactly what she was doing. The Crown told them
Speaker 2: this was a methodical poisoning, planned, executed concealed. The defense
Speaker 2: told them this was tragedy layered with fear, and that
Speaker 2: suspicion was not proof. And between those two narratives sat
Speaker 2: twelve jurors tasked with deciding which version fit the evidence,
Speaker 2: in which required too many coincidences to believe the verdict.
Speaker 2: By the time the jury was sent out, there was
Speaker 2: nothing left to say. No more witnesses, no more theories,
Speaker 2: no more carefully chosen words, only evidence, and twelve people
Speaker 2: tasked with deciding what it meant. Deliberation, The long quiet
Speaker 2: after the noise After reserve jurors were excused, the remaining
Speaker 2: twelve were sequestered for deliberations. They had heard weeks of
Speaker 2: testimony from doctors who described irreversible liver failure, from scientists
Speaker 2: who explained how death capped toxins work, from police who
Speaker 2: traced movements and devices and disposal, from a survivor who
Speaker 2: lived and lost his wife, and from Aaron Patterson herself.
Speaker 2: They were instructed again and again to separate suspicion from proof,
Speaker 2: and emotion from intent. This was not about whether the
Speaker 2: deaths were tragic. That was undeniable. This was about whether
Speaker 2: the Crown had proven beyond reasonable doubt that Aaron Patterson
Speaker 2: knowingly poisoned her guests. July seventh, twenty twenty five. On
Speaker 2: July seventh, twenty twenty five, the jury returned to the courtroom.
Speaker 2: No gasps, no dramatics, just the reading of verdicts that
Speaker 2: would permanently reshape several families in one small town. Aaron
Speaker 2: Patterson was found guilty of three counts of murder, one
Speaker 2: count of attempted murder relating to survivor Ian Wilkinson. The
Speaker 2: verdict rejected the defense's central claim that this was a
Speaker 2: tragic accident. It accepted the prosecution's argument that this was deliberate.
Speaker 2: After the verdict control consequences containment. The decision didn't close
Speaker 2: the case. It triggered the next phase. On July thirtieth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five, the Supreme Court of Victoria bard Patterson
Speaker 2: from selling her Leanngatha home, preserving assets for potential compensation
Speaker 2: or restitution claims. Behind the scenes, legal teams regrouped, families
Speaker 2: prepared victim impact statements. Media attention surged again. But inside
Speaker 2: the system, the question shifted not did she do it?
Speaker 2: But how should she pay for it? A verdict that
Speaker 2: doesn't a verdict that didn't bring peace. Verdicts are supposed
Speaker 2: to end things, but in cases like this, where the
Speaker 2: crime was intimate, slow, and lethal by design, they rarely do.
Speaker 2: Because the jury didn't just say Aaron Patterson was guilty.
Speaker 2: They said the deaths of Don Patterson, Gail Patterson, and
Speaker 2: Heather Wilkinson were not the result of chance, carelessness, or confusion.
Speaker 2: They were the result of choice, and the weight of
Speaker 2: that conclusion would echo loudest of all at sentencing, sentencing
Speaker 2: and impact. A verdict tells you what the jury believed
Speaker 2: sentencing tells you what it costs. On August twenty fifth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five, the courtroom reconvened, not for argument and
Speaker 2: not for evidence, but for the people left behind to speak.
Speaker 2: This was no longer about Aaron Patterson's intent. This was
Speaker 2: about the impact of what the jury said she did.
Speaker 2: Victim impact statements, the damage that doesn't heal. Family members
Speaker 2: of Don Patterson gave l Patterson and Heather Wilkinson stood
Speaker 2: before the court and described what life looked like now.
Speaker 2: They spoke about ordinary absences, empty cheers at family tables,
Speaker 2: grandchildren growing up without grandparents, holidays that had become reminders
Speaker 2: instead of celebrations. One statement described the deaths not as
Speaker 2: a moment, but as a slow erasure, relationships undone day
Speaker 2: by day as griefs settled into routine. Another described the
Speaker 2: horror of realizing that trust itself, family trust, had been weaponized.
Speaker 2: The most devastating testimony came from the only survivor, Ian Wilkinson,
Speaker 2: who lived but lost his wife. He told the court
Speaker 2: that survival had not felt like victory, that he felt,
Speaker 2: in his words, half alive without Heather. His was the
Speaker 2: voice of someone forced to keep going while carrying the
Speaker 2: knowledge that the meal he ate killed the person beside him.
Speaker 2: The prosecution's position at sentencing. Prosecutors asked the court to
Speaker 2: impose the harshest possible penalty. They described the crimes as calculated, deceptive,
Speaker 2: and uniquely destructive because of their setting inside a home
Speaker 2: among family under the guise of reconciliation. They emphasized the
Speaker 2: planning involved, the sustained deception afterward and this absence of
Speaker 2: remorse acknowledged by the jury's verdict. This, they argued, was
Speaker 2: not a momentary lapse, it was a murder committed slowly
Speaker 2: and then hidden. The defense mitigation without denial. The defense
Speaker 2: did not re argue innocence that door had closed. Instead,
Speaker 2: they asked the court to consider Patterson's lack of prior
Speaker 2: violent offending, her role as a mother, and the argument
Speaker 2: still maintained that she did not wake up intending to
Speaker 2: destroy her family. But sentencing is not about alternative realities.
Speaker 2: It is about accountability. Justice Christopher Beale speaks. On September eighth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five, Justice Christopher Beale delivered his sentence. His
Speaker 2: remarks were measured and unsparing. He described the crimes as
Speaker 2: a gross breach of trust, emphasizing that the victims had
Speaker 2: no reason to suspect danger inside Aaron Patterson's home. He
Speaker 2: noted the deliberate nature of the acts, the careful preparation,
Speaker 2: and the lies that followed. He spoke directly to the
Speaker 2: reality that poisoning is not quick, and that the victims
Speaker 2: endured days of suffering fear and medical trauma before dying.
Speaker 2: Justice Beale rejes the notion that this was impulsive or accidental.
Speaker 2: He said in substance that the court could not overlook
Speaker 2: the calculated steps required to source, prepare, and deliver a
Speaker 2: lethal toxin, nor the efforts made to distance herself from
Speaker 2: its effects. The sentence, Aaron Patterson was sentenced to life
Speaker 2: imprisonment on each of the three murder counts, plus twenty
Speaker 2: five years for the attempted murder of Ian Wilkinson to
Speaker 2: be served. Concurrently, she was given a non parole period
Speaker 2: of thirty three years. She will not be eligible for
Speaker 2: parole until twenty fifty six. It was the first sentencing
Speaker 2: hearing in Victoria to be broadcast live, a reflection of
Speaker 2: the case's gravity and its grip on public attention. After
Speaker 2: the gavel after sentencing Aaron Patterson and was returned to
Speaker 2: custody at Dame Phillis Frost's Center. Outside the courtroom, families
Speaker 2: face to reality no sentence can undo. Inside the justice system,
Speaker 2: the case moved almost immediately into its next phase. Because
Speaker 2: even life sentences don't always end a story. The impact
Speaker 2: beyond the courtroom. This case didn't just devastate one family.
Speaker 2: It unsettled something broader. It forced the public to confront
Speaker 2: how violence can exist without raised voices, without visible rage,
Speaker 2: how it can arrive disguised as hospitality. And it left
Speaker 2: behind a question that lingers far beyond Leangatha. What does
Speaker 2: justice look like when the crime was dinner and the
Speaker 2: weapon was trust? The aftermath and broader implications. For most
Speaker 2: criminal cases, sentence is the end of the road. For
Speaker 2: this one, it's only a bend because the moment the
Speaker 2: gavel fell, the story widened out of the courtroom into appeals, courts, newsrooms,
Speaker 2: living rooms, and a global true crime ecosystem that couldn't
Speaker 2: look away the appeals when final isn't final. Within weeks
Speaker 2: of sentencing, Aaron Patterson's legal teams signaled their next move.
Speaker 2: A notice of appeal was announced, challenging the guilty verdicts.
Speaker 2: Grounds were not immediately detailed, but the implication was clear.
Speaker 2: The defense intended to relitigate questions of intent, evidence handling,
Speaker 2: and jury interpretation. At the same time, the Victorian Director
Speaker 2: of Public Prosecutions took the rare step of announcing an
Speaker 2: appeal of the sentence itself, calling it manifestly inadequate. So,
Speaker 2: in an unusual twist, both sides appealed, one arguing the
Speaker 2: punishment was too harsh, the other that it wasn't harsh enough.
Speaker 1: That's crazy, Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 2: In November twenty twenty five, a couple weeks back, the
Speaker 2: Court of Appeal granted Patterson leave to appeal her convictions.
Speaker 2: The legal machinery once again began to turn a town
Speaker 2: under a microscope. Back in more Well and Leanngatha, the
Speaker 2: trial left scars that don't make headlines. Hotels were packed
Speaker 2: for months with reporters, producers, and camera crews. Locals described
Speaker 2: the sensation of living inside a news cycle, recognizing faces
Speaker 2: not from the grocery store but from cable television. Victoria's
Speaker 2: Supreme Court imposed strict media protocols to protect fairness, but
Speaker 2: the pressure never fully lifted. Because this this wasn't just
Speaker 2: a crime story. It was a spectacle of proximity, a
Speaker 2: reminder that extreme violence doesn't require anonymity, poverty, or chaos.
Speaker 2: It can happen in a house that looks exactly like yours.
Speaker 2: Media obsession, from coverage to consumption. International outlets descended almost immediately.
Speaker 2: BBC News, The New York Times, CNN, The Guardian, Al
Speaker 2: Jazeera and others ran extensive coverage, often framing the cases
Speaker 2: both baffling and uniquely modern. Commentators likened it to an
Speaker 2: Agatha Christie plot, domestic, methodical, deceptively polite, while critics questioned
Speaker 2: what it meant that real people's deaths were being processed
Speaker 2: as narrative entertainment. True crime podcasts dissected trial transcripts, YouTube
Speaker 2: channels analyze body language, TikTok creators summarized weeks of testimony
Speaker 2: in ninety seconds. The case became content, and not quietly
Speaker 2: the industrialization of the story. Within months, production announcements followed.
Speaker 2: Australian streaming platform stand aired a multi part documentary series
Speaker 2: examining the murders and trial. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation confirmed
Speaker 2: development of a scripted true crime drama toxic with high
Speaker 2: profile creative talent attached. Major publishers announced forthcoming books, including
Speaker 2: one by Helen Garner, signaling the case's transition from news
Speaker 2: to literature. The message was unmistakable. This story wasn't fading.
Speaker 2: It was being archived, adapted, and monetized. Why this case
Speaker 2: won't let go. Some crimes linger because of their brutality,
Speaker 2: others because of their mystery. This one lingers because of
Speaker 2: its normalcy. No forced entry, no visible rage, no chaotic
Speaker 2: crime scene, just a lunch invitation and a meal prepared
Speaker 2: by someone the victims trusted. The weapon wasn't exotic, it
Speaker 2: was botanical. The delivery system wasn't violent, it was hospitality.
Speaker 2: And the aftermath forced courts, doctors, journalists, and audiences to
Speaker 2: confront an uncomfortable truth. The most devastating crimes don't always
Speaker 2: announce themselves as crimes. Sometimes they arrive plated the legacy,
Speaker 2: as appeals whine through the courts and adaptations reach new audiences.
Speaker 2: The victims' names risk becoming footnotes to a larger narrative,
Speaker 2: but strip away the headlines and what remains is simple
Speaker 2: and brutal. Three people died after accepting an invitation. From family.
Speaker 2: One survived forever altered, and a small town learned how
Speaker 2: quickly trust can become evidence. This wasn't just a murder case.
Speaker 2: It was a lesson about proximity control and how violence
Speaker 2: can hide inside the most ordinary gestures. And long after
Speaker 2: the appeals are decided, that lesson will still be sitting
Speaker 2: at the table. Wow, it is some cray. How absolutely
Speaker 2: betrayal Judas Kiss, Why is it? I know I'm absorbing
Speaker 2: all of the I mean, food is such a wonderful
Speaker 2: gesture of it, like an olive branch. Let's keep going, you.
Speaker 3: Know, right, Like I just think this is insane, Like
Speaker 3: what a crazy way to kill people, even like injecting
Speaker 3: them or slipping it in their drink or something like that.
Speaker 3: Like she was fucking elaborate beef Wellington's and shit.
Speaker 2: Oh, dehydrating it. It makes it even more concentrate. That
Speaker 2: amatoxin becomes more concentrated, more lethal, as if it needs
Speaker 2: any help. Right. Also, they didn't have to prove why
Speaker 2: she did it, motive? What was her motive? It wasn't like,
Speaker 2: oh there was you know how it is with the
Speaker 2: life insurance policies and whatnot, they didn't have to prove motive.
Speaker 2: They just had to prove if she knew what she
Speaker 2: was doing and absolutely come out with some bullshit cancer story.
Speaker 2: I didn't want to tell you about my my bariatric surgery.
Speaker 3: I know it's ridiculous, Come on now, embarrassing. If she
Speaker 3: thought it out this meticulously, you think she would, she
Speaker 3: would have thought out like afterward, like one, am I
Speaker 3: going to tell the police? Like?
Speaker 2: What am I going to tell people? Well?
Speaker 3: How am I going to do this? Right?
Speaker 2: That is the story of the Mushroom, the death, Muthshroom
Speaker 2: cap murders.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you Shannon so much.
Speaker 2: Pure story.
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Speaker 3: I love see you bye, see you bye.