Australian woman, 50, has pleaded not guilty to three charges of murder and one charge of attempted murder after a mushroom lunch at her house in regional Victoria in 2023. Follow live updates
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While we wait for today’s proceedings to get under way, here is a recap of what the jury heard on Tuesday:
• A Victorian Department of Health official said the investigation into the fateful lunch concluded it was “highly unlikely” that commercial mushroom supply chains were contaminated with death cap mushroom toxins.
• A homicide detective said Erin Patterson “expressed surprise” when she learned that some of her guests had died while police conducted a search of her property on 5 August 2023.
• The prosecution called their final witness in the trial, Det Leading Sen Const Stephen Eppingstall, who led the police investigation into the lethal lunch. During his testimony, the prosecution played jurors a video of Patterson’s police interview recorded on 5 August 2023.
• In the video, Patterson told police she did not own a dehydrator but owned manuals for lots of things. The court was previously shown photographs of a manual for a Sunbeam dehydrator that police located in a kitchen drawer during the search of Patterson’s Leonagtha house on 5 August 2023.
• Eppingstall said police tried to track Patterson’s vehicle during an 11-minute window on the evening following the lunch when she dropped her son at Subway in Leongatha and picked him up. He said police were unable to find any footage to determine where she had gone during this time.
Welcome to day 21 of Erin Patterson’s triple murder trial.
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