‘Finish this’: Why missing campers burned

Months after former Jetstar pilot Greg Lynn allegedly murdered an elderly couple, he returned to “finish this” by destroying their remains with fire, a jury has heard.

For the past three weeks, the 57-year-old has been standing trial in Victoria’s Supreme Court after pleading not guilty to the murders of Russell Hill, 74, and Carol Clay, 73, in March 2020.

The jury heard Mr Lynn was arrested on November 22, 2021, and held at Sale Police Station while police needed to make further enquiries.

On Monday, footage from his interview three days later was played in court, as the accused man told police he “made a poor choice” and just wanted to move on and forget about it.

In the recording, Mr Lynn said in the months following he thought “someone would have found them” but when news reports said they remained missing he resolved to make “it go away”.

“I’ve got to finish this,” he said he thought.

“I drove back up there and set fire to them ... There’s nothing there, there’s nothing to find, I’m sorry.”

Wearing a grey jumper and face mask, Mr Lynn was seated across from two detectives with a large yellow map of the region on the table in front of him.

For much of the video, he kept his eyes down and wrote in a notebook as he gave a calm account of what happened.

He told the detectives he arrived in the valley a day before Mr Hill and Mrs Clay did and set up at Bucks Camp because a contractor spraying weeds had told him it was a “fantastic” spot.

“I’d only been here once before, I don’t know it very well,” he said.

In the video, he explained that on March 19 he watched as two cars “came tearing along this track at high speed”.

Mr Lynn said the first car was driven by Mr Hill with Mrs Clay looking “quite alarmed”, with Mr Hill explaining he’d been chased along the track by the “donkeys” in the second vehicle.

In the interview, he said Mr Hill “seemed nice” and had told him they were also planning to camp at Bucks Camp.

“I said; ‘there’s hundreds of other campsites but if you want to camp here, it’s a free country’,” he told the detectives.

“Yes I would have preferred it by myself but it doesn’t bother me.”

The following day Mr Lynn said he left camp to go “stalking” for deer, and as he was returning a few hours later he noticed a “buzzing” sound.

“I didn’t know what it was, I was scratching my head. Well I was wearing a hat so figuratively speaking,” he said in the video.

He told the detectives he looked up to see a drone “woosh” away and he thought “all right what’s all this about”.

Returning to camp he said he saw Mr Hill slipping the drone into a case.

“I was getting my dinner ready and decided to go find out what this drone incident was all about,” he said.

“I walked up to him and I asked him why he was using the drone. He said he didn’t like deer hunters and had video footage of me hunting close to camp.

“He said he had pictures and would take them to the police, I said; ‘this is ridiculous’.

“He said; ‘I’ll say you shot through camp’.”

Mr Lynn said he was annoyed and blared music from his car, admitting it was a “childish” action to annoy Mr Hill.

“I think I picked the most annoying things I could play,” he said.

“I shouldn’t have wound him up with the music ... I should have had everything locked away.”

Later the same night about 9pm or 10pm, he told the officers, he heard Mr Hill swiping a shotgun from his car and confronted him.

“When I advanced towards him, he had the magazine in the shotgun at this stage, he pulled back and let off a couple of shots,” he said.

Mr Lynn said he wrestled Mr Hill for the gun, and it “discharged”, killing Mrs Clay.

“I told him to let it go, he wouldn’t. We just kept wrestling and then bang.”

In the video, the accused man loudly sighed as he said; “my hand was not on the trigger, it was on the barrel.”

He told police Mr Hill immediately dropped the gun, and he emptied the remaining shot before returning it to his car and locking the doors.

He said he turned around as Mr Hill advanced “towards me with a knife in his right hand”.

On Mr Lynn’s account, they fought, before Mr Hill fell on the knife.

“I panicked and I thought it’s my shotgun, there’s one person dead and he’s dead as well,” Mr Lynn said.

“And, um, I’m guilty of trying to cover it up”.

Mr Lynn said he panicked, set fire to their camp and dumped the bodies off a dirt track, later realising the area near the Grant Historic Area was a “tourist attraction”.

In the video he told police he threw Mr Hill and Mrs Clay’s phones in a river near Lake Buffalo and burned Mr Hill’s drone and car keys.

He returned later in November to set fire to the remains with kerosene, camping overnight while the fire burnt, he said.

“I’ve got to finish this,” he said.

There’s nothing there, there’s nothing to find, I’m sorry. That’s the truth, that’s the best I can give you, it’s not going to be much relief for the families.

“I just guess that, um, in my attempt to hide it I thought I might be able to move on and continue with my life, my family and my career.”

Mr Lynn told the detectives he knew he was being watched by police after returning home but he’d been “trying to keep my head down and just move on”.

“It’s subtle but noticeable,” he said of the perceived surveillance.

He detailed several encounters where people asked him about hunting and camping, with the accused man saying he believed they were in contact with police.

When Detective Sergeant Brett Florence claimed this wasn’t the case, Mr Lynn said “OK maybe I’m just paranoid”.

Asked if perhaps his mind was playing tricks on him, Mr Lynn said “quite possibly”.

“I just wish it never happened I just wanted it to go away... it’s been stressful,” he said.

In the recording, Mr Lynn said he knew he had been on the police’s radar because “ too many people have said odd things to me.”

“It’s a bit like the Truman Show, where everyone knows you’re on TV but you don’t,” he said.

Before the video was played, Justice Michael Croucher advised the jury “irrelevant parts” had been edited out to avoid wasting their time.

“You’ll notice at points there’s blips or editing, that’s a standard thing that occurs at trials,” he said.

He said the editing process was still going on and jurors wouldn’t see the remainder of the three and a half hour video until Tuesday.

Earlier on Monday, Detective Sergeant Brett Florence appeared short of breath and occasionally coughed as he took the stand and was questioned by crown prosecutor Daniel Porceddu.

Last Thursday, the jury was sent home early for the weekend as Justice Michael Croucher said Detective Florence was “crook”.

“You may have noticed that the informant, Detective Florence, who usually sits behind the prosecution barristers there, hasn’t been there this week,” he said.

“He is crook and is in the process of getting over his illness … but we expect he’ll be here on Monday.”

The jury was told Detective Florence was the ‘lead investigator” in the missing persons case, and had laid the charges against Mr Lynn.

He said in May 2020, the investigation received cell phone data from Mr Hill’s phone showing it had briefly reactivated in the morning of March 21 — on the other side of the valley to where the elderly couple entered two days earlier.

Detective Florence told the jury he travelled out to the area on May 26 looking for CCTV that could assist the investigation and located four automatic number plate recognition cameras.

Two of these on the Great Alpine Rd, he said, were in the area of where Mr Hill’s phone last pinged.

The Sergeant said he was given copies of 12 vehicles passing through the cameras within a 30-minute window.

Other than Mr Lynn’s Nissan Patrol, Detective Florence said, the 11 other vehicles had been captured on corresponding cameras entering the resort on the other side of Mount Hotham.

He told the jury he visited Mr Lynn’s home on July 14, and noticed his car had been repainted to a “beige” colour from the dark grey or blue identified on the camera.

Prosecutors allege Mr Lynn killed the pair “without lawful excuse”, likely following a spat with Mr Hill over his drone or footage on his drone.

“The precise circumstances of the killings are not known. Nor is the motivation,” crown prosecutor Daniel Porceddu said at the start of the trial.

It’s alleged Mr Hill was “most likely” killed first, with Mrs Clay shot in the head second as a witness to the first slaying.

Through his barrister, Dermot Dann KC, Mr Lynn is arguing that both died in tragic accidents that were not “of his making”.

The defence lawyer told the jury Mr Lynn was camping at the same site while on a deer hunting trip, and his initial exchange with the couple was “exchanging pleasantries”.

On his account, the situation turned south when Mr Hill accused the former pilot of hunting too close to their camp and swiped his gun in the evening of March 20.

The shotgun accidentally discharged as the two men wrestled for control, striking Mrs Clay in the head after first passing through the side mirror of Mr Hill’s vehicle, Mr Dann submitted.

Mr Hill then died after falling on a knife as he advanced on Mr Lynn.

Both the prosecution and defence agree Mr Lynn set fire to the couple’s campsite, before moving and later burning their bodies.

Prosecutors allege this can be seen as an implied admission of guilt, while the defence say he panicked and made “terrible choices”.

The trial continues.