A high-profile murder trial over a poisonous mushroom meal has been interrupted by an outburst from a protester inside court.
Erin Patterson, 50, is facing the fifth week of a trial over a toxic beef Wellington that she served up to her estranged husband’s family.
She has denied charges of murdering three people and attempting to murder another, related to a July 2023 incident that led to the deaths of her former in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, and Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66.
Just after a late morning recess today, as the jurors returned to the courtroom, a demonstrator rose in the public gallery to speak to Justice Christopher Beale.
“How can you be a judge?” the man, wearing a yellow T-shirt with “all we are saying is give truth a chance” written on it, said.
He made a number of allegations against the judge before he was quickly escorted out of the court, in Morwell, regional Victoria.
The trial resumed shortly after, with Victoria Police forensics officer Shamen Fox-Henry cross-examined by defence.
In his fourth day on the witness stand, Fox-Henry was questioned about his training in software used to analyse devices seized from Patterson’s home.
Fox-Henry earlier informed the jury that he utilized software named Magnet Axiom to inspect a Cooler Master PC that authorities confiscated from Patterson’s residence during a police raid on August 5, 2023.
Defence barrister Colin Mandy SC asked him if he had received any formal training on Magnet Axiom before using it to extract data from three storage devices found on the computer.
He followed steps given from another member of the Victoria Police cyber crime unit on how to extract the material.
Under re-examination by prosecutor Jane Warren, Fox-Henry confirmed he had used Magnet Axiom before this and his training in digital software was a combination of formal training with certification and “on the job use of tools”.
“A large majority of the governing principles behind the applications we use are the same if not similar,” he said.
Mandy also asked Fox-Henry about “phone B”, a Samsung mobile which had been factory reset four times, including once the day after it was seized from Patterson’s home.
He did not find any data on the phone, apart from the record that it had been factory reset in February and August 2023.
“The information available to the people conducting the extraction on this phone is limited because of the fact of the factory reset?” Mandy asked.
“That is correct,” Fox-Henry said.
