By Joseph Dunstan for ABC
A handout sketch received from the Supreme Court of Victoria shows Erin Patterson, an Australian woman accused of murdering three people with a toxic mushroom-laced beef Wellington. Photo: AFP / PAUL TYQUIN
A SIM card in one of accused triple murderer Erin Patterson's mobile phones was being swapped over while homicide detectives were searching her home a week after she hosted a deadly mushroom lunch, a jury has been told.
Patterson, 50, has pleaded not guilty to murdering her relatives Heather Wilkinson, Don Patterson and Gail Patterson by serving them a beef Wellington lunch containing death cap mushrooms in 2023.
She has also pleaded not guilty to the attempted murder of Ian Wilkinson.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court trial sitting in the regional Victorian town of Morwell heard prosecutors had compiled a significant amount of information allegedly outlining Patterson's use of several devices in the years and months surrounding the lunch.
Detective Leading Senior Constable Stephen Eppingstall explained a log of data to the jury, which he said represented the movements of a SIM card used by Patterson, which was installed in a phone dubbed "Phone A" prior to the lunch.
One entry highlighted by the prosecution was time stamped at 1:45pm on 5 August - the same time police were part-way through a search of Patterson's home in Leongatha, about 135 kilometres south-east of Melbourne, where they seized a dehydrator manual and several electronic devices.
Leading Senior Constable Eppingstall told the court "we see the actual SIM card change from Phone A into a different phone - a Nokia mobile phone".
The court also heard evidence about other SIM card movements between a tablet device and a phone, and was shown some details of the factory resets carried out on "Phone B", which was handed to police by Patterson during the 5 August search.
The court heard Patterson had written to Facebook friends back in December 2022, telling them she had learnt about doing a "hard reboot" after her phone screen had broken and she had struggled to access the device.
"I've been googling everything trying to get into my phone and emails and just couldn't but then something suggested I could do a hard reboot of my phone and restart it in safe mode and it might fix the frozen screen issue and it worked … for now," the court heard Patterson told her friends.
"But the screen is broken and might freeze again at any second so now that i am in i am copying down everything i need from it lol."
The court was also shown a still from CCTV footage at Leongatha Hospital taken on 31 July, when Patterson was assessed for food poisoning in the wake of the lunch.
It showed Patterson near a phone at a hospital bed, which Leading Senior Constable Eppingstall told the court Patterson was using at the time.
A separate still from a video taken on 5 August showed Patterson leaning over her dining room table in Leongatha to hand over a phone to a police officer, which appeared to have a reddish-coloured case.
Prosecutor Jane Warren said it would be a matter for the jury to compare the two images.
Grocery bills become evidence
The jury was also shown Patterson's Woolworths customer rewards account records, which showed she had purchased packets of frozen puff and filo pastry, 1 kilogram of chopped fresh mushrooms and shallot onions at the Leongatha Woolworths several days before the lunch.
On the day before the meal with her in-laws, she returned to pick up more pastry, beef eye fillets and sliced mushrooms, along with gravy packets and 1.5 kilograms of mashed potato and 340 grams of beans.
The jury was also shown bank records detailing purchases at a doughnut business in the town of Koo Wee Rup, about 73 kilometres south-east of Melbourne, and at the nearby BP Caldermeade the day after the lunch.
The court has previously heard Patterson drove a roughly 180-kilometre round trip to take her son to a planned flying lesson at Tyabb, on Melbourne's Mornington Peninsula, which was later cancelled.
Her son later told police his mother had been telling him she was experiencing frequent diarrhoea on that day and stopped the drive for a coffee but did not use the toilet, going instead when they returned home to Leongatha.
A receipt shown to the court on Wednesday listed the BP Caldermeade purchases as some gum, a chicken wrap and a ham, cheese and tomato toasted sandwich.
The trial continues.
- ABC
