The wife of former Jetstar pilot Greg Lynn had no idea he had been living a secret double life right under her nose until police charged him with two murders.
Melanie Lynn has attended court every day of her husband’s trial, passing through hordes of photographers firing dozens of shots in her direction.
Lynn, 57, has pleaded not guilty in the Supreme Court of Victoria to the murders of Russell Hill, 74, and Carol Clay, 73, in the Wonnanangatta Valley in Victoria’s alpine region on 20 March 2020.
Melanie Lynn arrives at the Supreme Court of Victoria past a waiting cameraman
Greg Lynn managed to fool his entire family by telling them that he had nothing to do with the mystery of the caravan’s secret lover.
In fact, Lynn had managed to convince his entire family that he had nothing to do with the caravan mystery, which a jury found had been the subject of widespread media reporting for more than a year before the pilot’s arrest.
Wrapped in a blanket inside the freezing interview room at Sale police station in Victoria’s Gippsland region, Lynn told detectives his wife had no idea what he had been doing since their fateful encounter. with the elderly campers.
While Lynn has always denied murdering the couple, jurors have repeatedly heard that he freely admitted to cleaning up the alleged crime scene and destroying evidence.
When Lynn was arrested in November 2021 in the rugged wilderness of Victoria, his wife was completely shocked.
Just days earlier, the couple had joked about how similar a vehicle linked to the alleged murders looked to theirs.
An image of Lynn’s dark-colored Nissan Patrol appeared on Channel Nine’s 60 Minutes program, pulling the trailer he admits to having used to dispose of the bodies.
“The car in the pictures looked a lot like mine,” Lynn told jurors Thursday.
‘Uh, um, it was my car. My family still didn’t believe it was my car. Um, they thought it was pretty comical that he looked so familiar.
“But it certainly looked like my car and removing the awning made it look less like it.”
Greg Lynn used a roller and regular household paint to disguise his Nissan Patrol
This week the jury was shown a video of Lynn removing the awning from her 4WD.
It showed Lynn pulling into the driveway of her Caroline Springs home with a tank of gas before returning to remove the distinctive awning that was attached to the vehicle in the image shown on 60 Minutes.
Lynn had already made efforts to change the color of her vehicle and sell the trailer featured on the show.
An image shown to the jury captured Lynn using a regular roller to paint his vehicle in June 2020, just months after police alleged he murdered the campers.
His own wife had taken the supposedly happy photo which was later used as evidence against him.
“Well, she’s seen me paint it many times before,” Lynn told police during the recording of her interview.
Lynn said he used Dulux Metal Shield to carry out the paint job, using a “sandbank” color he had previously purchased with the intention of painting his Jayco Hawk motorhome.
“So, you know, ‘Oh, here he goes again, he’s painting his car,'” Lynn told police.
At the time, Lynn had been stood down from his job as a pilot due to the first of many Covid lockdowns.
Greg Lynn took the top off his car after seeing a 60 Minutes report showing his 4×4.
Greg Lynn had managed to convince his family that he had nothing to do with the alleged murders.
Melanie Lynn was a flight attendant when her husband allegedly killed the campers.
Lynn told police his wife had been worried about Victoria’s first lockdown when he returned from his fateful trip to the desert.
‘When I came back from that, the whole world was falling apart. Yes. That was Sunday,” she told police.
“I spoke to her on Saturday and she said, ‘Greg, the whole country is going to shut down, this is absolute chaos.’
“I said, ‘I realized something was happening, because all the cars were driving in all directions.’
Lynn told police his wife was more concerned about getting basic supplies during the Covid lockdown than what he had been doing in the bush.
“And she said, ‘You can’t buy toilet paper, you can’t buy cleaning supplies because the stores are empty,'” Lynn said.
“When I got there, he took me to the refrigerator and he had a Covid plan there that he had taken from the newspaper, and he spent the whole afternoon telling me what I missed last week, what the world was like: the world was falling apart.
“That’s how I spent that day: she didn’t ask anything about my trip.”
Lynn took the witness stand and told the jury that he had not yet spoken to his family about what happened in the desert.
Carol Clay was shot in the head. What happened to Russell Hill is only known to Greg Lynn, who claims he fell on his own knife during a fight.
An image of Lynn’s vehicle as it appeared on 60 Minutes. The police already knew who it belonged to and were listening to Lynn on secret recording devices.
He stated that he did not tell his wife for fear of making her an accomplice in the crime of destroying evidence.
“I lied to my wife,” Lynn said.
‘It would involve involving her in a problem that had nothing to do with her… I lied to my wife to protect her… If I told her, then she would be involved in this.’
Lynn told the jury that Covid-19 lockdowns had put him in financial difficulty immediately after the alleged murders.
‘At the time I was living with my wife and we still had a mortgage on our house. She had a part-time job as a flight attendant, which is not well paid and would have caused us serious financial hardship, as I still had two children living at home at the time; one in high school,” Lynn said.
At the time of his arrest, Lynn had worked as a pilot for 36 years.
“I once picked asparagus during a period of unemployment,” Lynn said.
‘I’ve been fired several times and done menial jobs. I once worked as a river guide in Tasmania, but I don’t have any formal qualifications for anything.
Lynn maintained that the campers died as a result of a tragic accident, alleging that Hill shot Clay to death before falling on his own knife moments later in a deadly struggle.
“I am innocent of murder,” he told the jury. “I haven’t killed anyone.”
Lynn told the court he was happy to endure whatever punishment was imposed on him for his “despicable” efforts to cover up what happened that night.
“All I can say to the families is that I am very sorry for the suffering I caused them,” Lynn said.
“I should be punished for what I did.”
The jury is expected to retire to consider its verdict at the end of the week.
