Russell Hill and Carol Clay made a pact to divorce their respective partners to be together, but he backed out at the last minute, one of his friends told the jury.
Ms Clay, 73, and Mr Hill, 74, were camping together when they disappeared from Victoria’s Wonnangatta Valley in March 2020.
Greg Lynn is accused of killing the couple at Bucks Camp and then dumping their remains in a thicket on the Union Spur Track near Dargo.
Lynn, 57, was back before the Victorian Supreme Court on Friday as three old friends of Russell Hill were called to give evidence in the trial expected to last four to six weeks.
The former Jetstar pilot faces trial in the Supreme Court of Victoria after pleading not guilty to the murders of Hill and Clay.
Robin Ashlin, a friend of Hill’s for more than 25 years, told jurors Friday They talked the night she disappeared and he was “happier than a pig in shit.”
Prosecutors allege Carol Clay and Russell Hill were murdered while camping together in Victoria’s Wonnanangatta Valley.
Greg Lynn faces trial after pleading not guilty to the couple’s murder in Bucks Camp in March 2020.
Mr. Ashlin He first met Ms Clay at a camp in Timbarra in 2019 when Ashlin had gone with his wife to visit another friend, James Francis, and Hill was there too.
He never mentioned the meeting to Mr Hill’s wife, but she later told him that Mrs Clay had “been on the scene” for more than 20 years.
The couple had been childhood sweethearts and Mr Ashlin understood that there was an agreement between Mr Hill and Mrs Clay to divorce their respective partners so they could be together.
“Apparently they were childhood sweethearts, Carol went off and got married and Russell got married to Robyn,” Ashlin told the jury.
“Carol divorced her husband, but Russell backed out.”
He said he was surprised to learn about the matter because it seemed out of character for Mr. Hill.
“What about one on the side? One is enough trouble,” Mr Ashlin said.
Francis, who was friends with Hill for a decade, said she met Clay several times when Hill took her on joint camping trips.
It was my understanding that Mr. Hill did not want others to know about the matter.
Both Francis and Ashlin spoke to Hill on March 20, the day the couple was allegedly killed, via amateur radio.
Hill was “like a pig in shit” and couldn’t have been happier camping in the Wonnangatta Valley, Ashlin said.
Francis also told the jury that Hill seemed like his usual self in their last interaction.
Ms Clay, 73, and Mr Hill, 74, were childhood sweethearts and had been close for more than 20 years, a close friend of Mr Hill told the court on Friday.
The jury was told his campsite was found burnt after he disappeared.
The couple’s disappearance sparked an extensive search and rescue operation, and their remains were discovered 20 months later.
Prosecutors allege that Lynn killed the couple “without legal justification,” likely after a dispute with Hill, while his defense argued that the couple’s deaths were a tragic accident.
“This is a case of two accidental and tragic deaths… in circumstances that were neither the work of Mr. Lynn nor his choice,” defense attorney Dermot Dann KC told the jury.
“You will hear it from his own mouth: in the face of that disaster, he made a series of terrible decisions.”
On Friday, the 15-person jury heard from George Kozlowski, Rob Ashlin and James Francis, three members of the same amateur radio group as Hill, who communicated almost nightly.
In colorful evidence, Ashlin said she had a long conversation with Hill on the night of March 20 after Hill asked her for advice on how to leave the Valley in a direction he did not normally take.
“He wanted to go the other way towards Dargo and probably stop at Ollies Jump Up (another campsite)… He knew I knew the way,” he said.
The jury was told Mr Hill had spent much of his working life logging in the Wonnangatta Valley and “knew every nook and cranny”.
Lynn outside the Supreme Court of Victoria at the start of his Melbourne murder trial
George Kozlowski and Rob Ashlin were called to testify Friday.
Ashlin said Hill didn’t log on to their group’s regular chat at 6 p.m. the next afternoon and that she received a call from Hill’s wife, Robyn, that weekend.
He told the jury that she asked him to contact him because she had not heard from her husband and the couple kept in touch over the next few days.
“Normally you don’t worry about it on the weekend or something… but because it was out of the bush,” he said.
“On Monday I said, ‘I think it’s time for you to go to the police; something’s not right.'”
The disappearance of Ms Clay and Mr Hill sparked an extensive search and rescue operation, and their remains were discovered 20 months later.
Ashlin, a friend of Hill’s for more than 25 years, told the court that Hill and Clay made a pact to divorce their respective partners to be together, but Hill backed out.
Mr. Ashlin He told the jury that he had seen Mrs. Clay only once when he was visiting another friend at a camping site.
“Although they told me Carol was a friend, Blind Freddy could see how they looked at each other: there was a relationship or there was a little more going on,” he said.
Another radio club member, James Francis, said he was first introduced to Mrs. Clay while camping with the couple for about two weeks.
“I’m bringing a woman with me and she’s not my wife, okay?” he told the jury Mr Hill had asked.
‘What they told me in our many campfire chats is that they met when they were teenagers, had a romantic relationship and grew apart.
“I understand that Carol was a friend of the family practically her entire life.”
Francis said he had last spoken to Hill on the radio at around 8am on March 20 and that he seemed “perfectly normal”.
“I assumed Carol Clay was with him, but no, I didn’t ask,” he said.
Mr. Francis, a semi-retired electrical engineer, was asked whether a pilot, Mr. Lynn’s occupation, would have had enough experience with communications devices to use a high-frequency radio.
“They would use a similar type of radio and probably know how to use it,” he said.
In his opening remarks, Crown prosecutor Daniel Porceddu said they would rely on Lynn’s alleged conduct after the offense as an “implied admission,” including the fact that he did not call for help on Hill’s radio or report The deaths.
The trial, before Judge Michael Croucher, will resume on Monday.
