Here’s a recap of what the jury heard today
1. Patterson’s mobile phone was likely to be “relatively stationary” in the Outtrim area between 11.24am and 11.49am on 22 May 2023, according to telecommunications expert Dr Matthew Sorell. The jury previously heard a post about a reported death cap mushroom sighting in Outtrim was uploaded to the iNaturalist website on 21 May 2023.
2. Patterson’s mobile phone data also showed a “potential” visit to the Loch area on 28 April 2023, according to Sorell.
3. Retired pharmacist Christine McKenzie posted her observation of suspected death cap mushrooms in Loch to the “citizen science” website iNaturalist on 18 April 2023. The post contained photographs of the mushrooms and the location, the court heard.
4. McKenzie says she removed and disposed of the fungi she suspected were death cap mushrooms on that day because she was aware they were toxic.
The trial will resume from 10.30am on Tuesday.
Updated
Sorell is asked about Patterson’s phone records for 22 May 2023.
He says records show Patterson’s mobile phone connected to a Loch south phone tower consistently on this day between 9.18am and 10.01am.
Sorell says this means it cannot be moving very far.
Warren turns to question Sorell about phone records related to the location of Loch.
Sorell agrees he analysed Patterson’s call charge records to determine if they were consistent with Patterson’s phone passing through or visiting Loch. He also analysed the EBM records, the court hears.
Warren asks Sorell about the records on 28 April 2023. Earlier today, the jury heard evidence that retired pharmacist Christine McKenzie posted a reported death cap mushroom sighting in Loch on the iNaturalist website on 18 April 2023.
Sorell says the records are “consistent with the phone having “moved into the vicinity of the Loch postcode by 9.09am”.
“The next time we see that phone is at 10am,” he says.
Sorell says there is the “potential” for a visit to Loch “between 9.14am and some time short of 10am”.
But he says there is an absence of records in this time period. He says this means it does not definitively point to the phone being in and remaining in the Loch area during this time.
Warren asks about 22 May where Sorell has mentioned the phone was possibly in the location of northern Outtrim.
She shows Sorell a screenshot of a “Whereis” map of the Outtrim area. Warren asks Sorell about the location of Neilson Street.
Sorell says it falls within the coverage of an antenna at the Outtrim base station.
He says it is “possible” there was a visit to Neilson Street during that time.
The jury previously heard that Neilson Street was the tagged location of a reported death cap mushroom sighting on the iNaturalist website on 21 May.
Mobile data shows Patterson’s device could have been in area where death caps reportedly sighted
Sorell says using EBM [event-based monitoring] analysis helps to overcome the limitations of only looking at call charge records. He says:
These records now become somewhat more detailed and specific.
Sorell’s revised opinion, taking in the EBM analysis, suggests Patterson’s device could be in the Outtrim location between 11.24am to 11.49am on 22 May 2023, the court hears.
He says the data, which shows a “sequence of sole connections”, indicates the phone is “more likely to be relatively stationary” during this time period.
On day 10 of the trial, fungi expert Dr Thomas May told the jury that he submitted a post about some death cap mushrooms he had spotted to the iNaturalist website on 21 May 2023, which included the location of Outtrim.
The jury is shown Patterson’s Telstra call charge records for 22 May 2023.
Warren asks about the connections which start at Leongatha at 10.30am.
At 11.18am and 11.19am, there is a connection to Outtrim, followed by connections to Koonwarra and Kardella, the court hears. There is also a connection to Outtrim at 11.21am.
Sorell says there was a 13-minute period of connection to Outtrim. He says this does not suggest it was a visit to the Outtrim area.
At the top of the document is Sorell’s opinion which states “unlikely a visit”.
He says this conclusion was based purely on the call charge records.
Prosecutor Jane Warren says police asked Sorell to help identify connections that Erin Patterson’s phone made to the locations of Outtrim and Loch. He was also asked to identify movements of the device on 31 July 2023 - two days after the lunch - between 8am and 10am.
Sorell agrees he was asked for help with these points.
Sorrell says he was asked to identify “periods when the phone could have been in the Outtrim area which at that stage was a very broad definition”.
He says he was asked to determine if the phone was “passing through” the area or spending time in the region.
He notes the evidence has “quite significant limitations”. He says:
The best that can be said is that a phone is in a general area.
The prosecution previously told the jury that reported observations of death cap mushrooms in Outtrim and Loch had been posted on the iNaturalist website in early 2023.
The court hears that in this case Sorell received Telstra call charge records for a number ending in “783”.
He says the records were for a four year period to August 2023.
He confirms he was contacted by Victoria Police in January 2024 who were seeking analysis of the mobile phone records.
He says the IMEI [International Mobile Equipment Identity, used to identify phone handsets] number changed a number of times during this four-year period.
Trial resumes
The jurors have returned to the courtroom.
Telecommunications expert Dr Matthew Sorell is continuing to give evidence.
The court has adjourned for a lunch break
The trial is expected to resume at 2.15pm.
Updated
Sorell is walking the jury through the map of the towers in the Korumburra area.
He says circles shown on the diagram do not indicate the area of the coverage.
Sorell says the red circle shows the mobile phone handset in question did connect to the antenna at some time.
But he says if the mobile phone connected to one antenna in isolation it is not possible to determine which direction the handset is in.
Sorell says he provided a number of reports for the case. He says his focus for this case has been on Telstra towers.
He says mobile phones connect to the base station that has the best connection, which can change. He says:
The base station with the best service at the front of your house may be a different base station at the back of your house.
He says a base station typically involves three antennas which each point in directions “about 120 degrees apart”.
He says:
The antenna is now available to amplify that radio signal in a particular direction which means it’s able to improve its performance and provide that coverage, by design, to where that radio signal is needed.
The jury is shown a diagram of base stations around Korumburra.
Digital forensic science expert begins giving evidence
Sorell is the principal at Digital Forensics Sciences Australia, a company that provides consulting work on digital evidence.
He has worked on telecommunications in Australia and internationally, the court hears.
Sorell is currently a senior lecturer in telecommunications and digital forensic science at the University of Adelaide.
Sorell is commonly asked to give evidence about mobile phone network data in criminal matters, the court hears.
He says in this case his work focused on the location of mobile phones in relation to mobile network towers.
Updated
The prosecution has called their next witness, Dr Matthew Sorell.
Stafford turns to question McKenzie on the iNaturalist website
McKenzie agrees she is not a mycologist but has developed an interest in death cap mushrooms.
Stafford takes McKenzie through posts she had made on iNaturalist.
One is labelled “stubble rosegill” mushroom and shows the location of observation is Port Melbourne. The post includes three photos.
The second post is labelled “buttery collybia” mushroom and the location says Sherbrooke.
McKenzie’s evidence has concluded.
Updated
Patterson’s defence lawyer, Sophie Stafford, is cross-examining McKenzie.
She agrees she removed and disposed of every death cap mushroom she could find when she spotted the mushrooms.
Stafford asks McKenzie about her evidence there was a risk that the death cap mushrooms could grow back.
McKenzie agrees this would depend on conditions such as temperature and rainfall.
She says she did not go back to visit the location to see if the mushrooms had grown back.
Updated
Under questioning by Warren, McKenzie says it is possible to zoom into the dropped pin on the post to see the location of the site.
The jurors are shown a zoomed-in screenshot, showing the dropped pin to the left of the oval in Loch.
Updated
The same evening, McKenzie posted them on iNaturalist, the court hears.
She says she had “location settings” turned on, meaning the uploaded photos included the location of where the photographs were taken.
The court is shown a screenshot of McKenzie’s iNaturalist post, including photos of the mushrooms.
It shows the posts of these mushrooms were observed on 18 April 2023 at 11.31am and posted at 1.39pm.
Under the post, McKenzie suggested it was a death cap mushroom.
Another user has also “suggested” it is a death cap mushroom.
The post also includes “observation” notes by McKenzie where she wrote: “About 2 metres from large oak trees on Loch recreation reserve” and “under tree canopy”.
Witness posted location of death caps to citizen science website months before fatal lunch
The prosecutor, Jane Warren, turns to questioning about the website iNaturalist.
McKenzie says she has a profile on the website she describes as a “citizen science” website. She says her profile name is “ChrisMck” and has contributed about 70 posts to the website, mainly about fungi.
She says she has made two posts about sightings of death cap mushrooms. The first was in May 2022 in the gardens of the state parliament house under oak trees.
The second was in Loch in April 2023. Under questioning by Lenthall, McKenzie says she was in Loch on 18 April to visit her daughter:
We’d been for a walk ... my husband and I took our grandson and dog for a walk and we were on the oval sportsground at Loch, surrounded by oak trees. I observed some Amanita phalloides [death cap mushrooms] around the roots, or underneath the oak trees on the western side ... of the oval.
She said initially she spotted the death caps under a single oak tree and then noticed more under the surrounding oak trees.
McKenzie said she took photos of the mushrooms and then removed all of the death caps and placed them in a plastic bag.
Because of my training at the poisons centre, I’m very aware about the toxicity of the Amanita phalloides.
She says death caps are also toxic to dogs and she knew the area was a popular dog walking spot. She tells the court: “I was very keen to remove all the samples I could find of them.”
McKenzie says it was a “risk” that more could “pop up”.
Updated
McKenzie says in her role she answered calls from members of the public and professionals regarding ingestion of a range of poisonous substances including fungi.
She tells the court what her role involved when someone calls the help line:
We need to ascertain the circumstances, for instance it might be a toddler who has a nibble of a little brown mushroom and nothing more.
She says if someone has symptoms, it becomes more urgent to identify the fungi.
McKenzie says she was “fascinated by the world of fungi” and did extra reading on the topic.
She says in her work, it was important to be able to quickly identify the most poisonous fungi.
McKenzie is a retired pharmacist, the court hears.
For the past 17 years of her career she worked as a senior poisons information specialist at the Victorian Poisons Information Centre.
McKenzie worked at the centre from 2006, the court hears.
Prosecution calls poisons information specialist as witness
The jurors have entered the court room in Morwell.
The prosecution calls their next witness, Christine McKenzie.
Updated
While we wait for today’s proceedings to kick off, here’s a reminder of what the jury heard on Friday:
A scientific expert, Dr David Lovelock, told the trial tests detected death cap mushrooms in two out of seven test tubes containing samples from a dehydrator dumped by Patterson in the days after the mushroom lunch.
Lovelock, who worked as a virologist at Agriculture Victoria in August 2023, said the positive test tube results had a 99% similarity to the DNA of death cap mushrooms.
He said only DNA from button mushrooms were found in ziplock bags containing the beef wellington leftovers.
The court previously heard that two days after the lunch a police officer had fished leftovers of the beef wellington meal from a bin at Patterson’s property in Leongatha, with her permission.
Patterson’s trial is entering its fourth week.
We’re waiting for the jurors to enter the courtroom in Morwell.
Here’s a report from our justice and courts reporter, Nino Bucci, on what the jury heard last week.
Welcome
Welcome to day 14 of Erin Patterson’s triple murder trial.
We’re expecting today’s evidence to begin after 10.30am once the jurors enter the courtroom.
Patterson, 50, faces three charges of murder and one charge of attempted murder relating to a beef wellington lunch she served at her house in Leongatha, in regional Victoria, on 29 July 2023.
She is accused of murdering her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, and her estranged husband’s aunt, Heather Wilkinson. The attempted murder charge relates to Heather’s husband, Ian.
She has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The prosecution alleges Patterson deliberately poisoned her lunch guests with “murderous intent”, but her lawyers say the poisoning was a tragic accident.
