Greg Lynn, a calm and collected pilot trained to make quick decisions under pressure, knew how to act in an emergency.
He would help the Jetstar crew clean the cabins of the planes he flew.
“Most pilots just take off and let the cabin crew do that, but I always grab some gloves, check them and help them clean,” Lynn said during his murder trial.
On the witness stand he confidently answered all the questions about his gruesome but systematic disposal of the bodies of two people using those Jetstar gloves.
“The scene was horrendous,” Lynn explained.
Greg Lynn used his Jetstar gloves to dispose of the bodies.
Lynn was found guilty of the murder of Carol Clay and not guilty of Russell Hill. They were in a secret relationship.
He admitted dumping the bodies of Russell Hill and Carol Clay on a logging road in March 2020 and returning months later to burn them.
But first he had to clean the place: a camp in the middle of nature.
A blood-soaked tent and camping furniture with splatters scattered across Mr. Hill’s truck, inside the seats and along the passenger door.
“Scratch all that,” Lynn told the jury.
“And there was a big pool of blood on the ground between the LandCruiser and the store, where Carol Clay was.”
Alone in the Victorian highlands, he burned the couple’s campsite and moved their bodies to his trailer, taking cash, two mobile phones and a drone.
Lynn left the bodies along the Union Spur Track, placing sticks on top to keep the animals away, but not to disguise them.
‘I didn’t hide the bodies. I placed them there. “I was hoping they would find them,” he said.
Lynn drove home to Melbourne but returned to the wreckage twice.
Once, at midnight, at the end of Victoria’s first COVID-19 lockdown, he found the bodies decomposed but still in the same position next to the tarmac.
On his second return trip, half a year later, he burned them.
He also sold his trailer, repainted his Nissan Patrol from gray-blue to brown and removed the awning.
Greg Lynn burned down the couple’s camp. (BOOKLET/ SUPREME COURT OF VICTORIA)
The Wonnanangatta Valley in the alpine region of Victoria, where Russell Hill and Carol Clay were allegedly murdered
Lynn feared he would lose his license to fly airplanes if it were discovered that he had been involved in what he claimed were two accidental deaths.
That’s why he had to get rid of the evidence.
While the prosecution and defense agreed on this part of their story, what happened to cause the violent deaths of Mr. Hill and Mrs. Clay is where the two sides differ.
Lynn said he exchanged pleasantries with Mr. Hill at Bucks Camp and then noticed a drone flying over him while he was deer hunting.
Hill told him that he had footage of Lynn shooting near the camp and that he was going to turn it over to the police.
Lynn decided to play loud music on her car stereo to annoy Mr. Hill, and then she heard a crackling sound. She saw Mr Hill walking away from Lynn’s car with a Barathrum shotgun.
He went to Mr. Hill’s camp and fired a few warning shots before pointing the gun at Lynn.
Lynn grabbed the barrel and the pair struggled over the shotgun when it went off, passing through the side mirror of the LandCruiser and killing Mrs Clay.
Mr Hill turned on Lynn with a knife, attacked him and “the knife stabbed into his chest”.
“From there I panicked and thought, ‘That’s my shotgun, there’s a dead person and he’s dead now too.’ I’m going to be found guilty of this,” he told police.
Evidence was found among the remains showing that Mrs. Clay died from a gunshot wound to the head, however, there was no evidence as to how Mr. Hill died.
Twelve jurors did not believe much of his story and returned with a split verdict Tuesday.
He was found guilty of the murder of Mrs Clay and not guilty of the murder of Mr Hill.
It was a trial rife with scandal, intrigue and sometimes absurdity, many of which were not told to the jury but can now be revealed.
Two elderly men disappear together, one of them married, and it is revealed that they were childhood sweethearts who have been involved in a secret affair that has been going on for decades.
Before the trial began, prosecutors said they were talking to Australia’s defense forces about borrowing a Chinook helicopter – one of only two in the country – to transport jurors to the remote site of the campers’ deaths.
Defense lawyer Dermot Dann joked: “I guess Mr. Lynn is not required to fly the plane.”
The plan did not go ahead.
Lynn’s wife, Melanie, who attended every day of the weeks-long trial, blew kisses and made heart shapes at her husband from the public gallery upstairs.
Defense lawyer Dermot Dann (pictured) ridiculed some of the evidence
Melanie Lynn, with her son Geordie, attended every day of the trial. (PHOTOS by Joel Carrett/AAP)
She and Lynn’s son Geordie were moved to sit in front of the jury in recent days, their heads resting on her shoulder and their hands clasped.
Wearing a suit and reading glasses, Lynn diligently scribbled notes in a journal every day of the trial.
The media were prohibited from taking photographs of him with the custody officers.
Expanded versions of Lynn, without guards, were allowed after a rare oral ruling was made because his lawyers argued it would be “very prejudicial” even though the jury saw him sitting next to officers in court every day. .
Prosecutors were almost unable to play Lynn’s police interview for the jury.
He was investigated for four days and maintained his right to remain silent for two and a half days before telling his story.
The officers tried to convince Lynn that confessing would be good for his mental health, and even offered to go camping with him as if to suggest he would be free once he told his story, pretrial hearings reported.
Police admitted to pressuring Lynn to tell them where the bodies were so they could give the families closure, and offered him a helicopter to take him to the remote bush.
Officers claimed they had pressured him to confess and made a hasty arrest out of concern for Lynn’s mental health, although once in custody they did not offer him psychological support.
Judge Michael Croucher made a pre-trial decision to bar prosecutors from using the interview against Lynn, due to “oppressive” police conduct, but the jury was shown parts of that video.
Prosecutor Daniel Porceddu closed the case by calling Lynn’s story “a series of very unfortunate events” and, like the book series of the same name, “also a complete fiction.”
He tried to introduce a number of theories which he claimed proved Lynn’s version of events was false, including that there was a rope tied to Mr Hill’s car which “ruins the whole account”, as the men They would have gotten tangled during the fight.
Judge Croucher lashed out at the prosecutor once the jury retired, saying he was “shuddered” and “astonished” by Mr Porceddu’s closing speech, calling one of the theories he presented “frog***” .
In his closing, Dann called the prosecutor “Inspector Clouseau,” the inept detective from The Pink Panther, and called police blood spatter expert Mark Gellatly a “gelati”…given the way he melted into the witness stand like ice cream in the sun. ‘.
The judge harshly criticized the closing speech of prosecutor Daniel Porceddu (in the photo). (PHOTOS by Joel Carrett/AAP)
The defense accused Mr. Gellatly of lying under oath and colluding with the prosecution by introducing a “half-baked” vacuum theory during the third week of the trial: that blood could be absorbed by the barrel of the gun if a person received a close up shot. -range.
But he admitted he didn’t know much about the theory because he wasn’t an expert in ballistics.
Police Chief Paul Griffiths, the prosecution’s ballistics expert, was not asked about the theory.
He raised the shotgun Lynn used in court and at one point pointed it in the direction of the media, prompting Judge Croucher to tell him “you’re scaring the reporters.”
Senator Const Griffiths admitted he had no idea at what angle the gun would have been pointed when it was fired at Mrs Clay due to a lack of information from investigating police.
“I wish I knew,” he said.
Furious that his client had not been given a chance to respond to the prosecution’s theories, Dann said he had violated rules of legal fairness and asked the judge to rectify it.
Judge Croucher agreed and, before dismissing the jurors, told them they could reject the prosecution’s closing arguments and accept Lynn’s evidence.
