A single asterisk on a hand-drawn diagram of a campsite in Victoria’s high country marks the spot where an interaction between campers turned fatal.
There are disputed accounts of what occurred on 20 March 2020 at the remote site in the Wonnangatta Valley that led to the deaths of Russell Hill, 74, and Carol Clay, 73.
On Thursday, for the first time, the jury in the double murder trial heard directly from the accused killer, Gregory Stuart Lynn, a 57-year-old former Jetstar pilot who has pleaded not guilty.
“I haven’t killed anyone,” he told them.
He described to a packed courtroom in the state’s supreme court a confrontation that he said led to the pair’s accidental deaths. Jurors heard from him about how he panicked, and tried to cover up the scene, later dumping and setting fire to the bodies.
Lynn, who acknowledged his actions after the deaths were “despicable”, apologised to Hill and Clay’s families for the suffering he caused. He maintains he is innocent and says he had no reason to murder Hill and Clay.
But during a fiery cross examination, crown prosecutor Daniel Porceddu said Lynn could have immediately reported the deaths to police or left the scene untouched.
Lynn feared he would be blamed for the deaths, the former pilot replied, particularly due to his improper storage of a firearm.
“Clearly, things are worse for me now. It’s a disaster and it would have been a disaster if I had gone to the police,” he said.
A drone, and a dispute over deer hunting
The court previously heard that Hill and Clay were childhood sweethearts who were engaged in an affair for about 14 years. The pair had set up camp near Lynn, who had taken two firearms to the camp.
The prosecution has alleged he killed the pair with murderous intent, although they do not know the motive or circumstances.
In Lynn’s police interview from November 2021, played to the jury earlier this week, he said the initial interactions with Hill at the Bucks Camp site were cordial. But Hill appeared to have cooled towards him when he came across them again the following morning, on 20 March 2020, while on his way to stalk deer, he told police.
He said he noticed a drone flying above him later that day, and when he returned to the campsite he saw Hill with a drone.
Lynn said Hill had accused him of hunting too close to the campsite, saying he would take the pictures he had captured to police. In response, Lynn played loud music from his car stereo.
According to Lynn, he then heard Hill walking away from his Nissan Patrol vehicle with his shotgun and a magazine of ammunition.
He told the jury Hill was “trying to keep the shotgun for himself and scare me off”.
A ‘horrendous’ scene
In the police interview, Lynn said he asked for the gun back, ran after Hill and let “a couple of rounds go into the air”. He told police he struggled with Hill for control of the loaded shotgun.
This week, the court heard Lynn’s description of how Clay was shot in the head the moment before the weapon discharged.
“Russell Hill had his back towards the bull bar, and I was pushing him against the bull bar and as we struggled, he slipped,” he said.
He said the gun accidentally fired through the car’s side mirror and struck Clay in the head, killing her.
According to Lynn, Hill then dropped the gun, enabling Lynn to retrieve it and secure it in his car. Lynn told police Hill then came towards him with a knife, and it was plunged into the older man’s chest as they struggled over it.
He then told the jury he had cleaned up the campsite because the scene was “horrendous”.
There was a large pool of blood between the pair’s tent and Hill’s LandCruiser, and blood splatters on the hitching rails and tray base of the vehicle, the court heard.
Before Lynn took the stand, the jury had already been told that more than 2,000 skeletal fragments from the two dead campers had been recovered from Union Spur track. The court heard this was where Lynn had dumped the bodies, and later returned to burn the remains.
In video footage of the police interview played to court, Lynn was shown drawing diagrams to explain his account of events, including a map of where he took the bodies.
‘Calm’ or ‘panicked’?
Lynn took the stand after the jury had heard from expert witnesses called by the prosecution.
A Victoria police ballistics expert, leading Snr Const Paul Griffiths, told the jury about his investigation of the projectiles found at the campsite and a gun seized from Lynn’s home. He said he tested a 12-gauge Barathrum Arms shotgun, and testified that it would be difficult for it to be discharged accidentally.
Griffiths told the court of a trigger pull test he conducted that measures the amount of force that has to be applied to the trigger to fire a shot.
The trigger pull for Lynn’s gun was 3.9kg, slightly above the industry standard of between 1.8kg and 3.6kg.
“Being higher means [having] to pull [the] trigger harder to discharge the gun,” Griffiths told the court.
On Thursday, Porceddu said that with a “presence of mind”, Lynn had removed the firearm, gathered up Hill and Clay’s camping gear, put it in the tent, set fire to it and searched the pair’s phones.
The barrister pressed Lynn: “These are signs of a very calm person?”
“No, I was a panicked person. I’ve been trained to remain calm. I can manage stress.”
Lynn told the court that during a November 2021 60 Minutes TV episode about Hill and Clay’s disappearance, which aired footage of his Nissan Patrol, his family thought it was “quite comical” that the vehicle looked so similar to his.
After the program aired, Lynn removed a side awning on his vehicle to change its appearance, the court heard.
He said he lied to his wife, Melanie, when his car was shown and told her he had “nothing to do with it, knew nothing”.
Asked why he lied to his wife, Lynn said: “I was trying to disappear. I wanted it all to go away.”
Lynn said also he was trying to protect his wife but Porceddu told the court Lynn had lied to protect himself.
The court heard previously that police had installed surveillance devices at Lynn’s home and listened to the couple while they watched the 60 Minutes program.
In his final moments in the witness box, Porceddu put to Lynn that his account of Hill seizing his shotgun “never happened.”
Lynn rebutted: “He did.”
Closing arguments in the case will begin on Tuesday.
