Russell Hill told his family he was no longer seeing Carol Clay after being given an ultimatum in 2006 by a neighbour to tell his wife about the affair he was having, a murder trial has heard.
Hill’s wife of more than 50 years, Robyn Hill, also told the double murder trial of former airline pilot Gregory Stuart Lynn that her husband was killed not far from where his uncle died in a deer-hunting accident more than two decades earlier.
Lynn, 57, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Hill and Clay in the state’s alpine region in March 2020.
Robyn Hill told the Victorian supreme court on Tuesday that her husband told her he was camping alone when he left their Drouin home about 7.30am on the morning of 19 March 2020.
He said he would be camping in the Wonnangatta Valley, a place the couple had previously camped in together and which he knew well and enjoyed visiting. She helped her husband pack, and gave him $20-$30 cash for lunch so he did not have to use his credit card, the court heard.
Hill tuned in to high frequency radio almost every night at 6pm to speak with other radio enthusiasts and friends, but Robyn Hill said he told her he would not do so that night as he would be unable to set up his antenna in time once he arrived.
She heard his voice on the radio the next night. She told police he was missing on 25 March, after he failed to tune in to any other radio meetings.
Robyn Hill told the court that a neighbour had given Hill an ultimatum in 2006 to come forward to his wife about an affair with Clay, otherwise the neighbour would. After the ultimatum, Robyn Hill believed her husband had stopped seeing Clay.
She had previously thought it “strange” when Hill and Clay twice went walking alone together during holidays that she and Hill had taken with Clay and her husband to Cowes, on Phillip Island.
Hill had also previously told Robyn Hill that Clay was his first cousin, but she said that she later discovered that was not the case.
Their eldest daughter, Deborah Hill, told the court that she understood her father had given a commitment to have ended his relationship with Clay, and would have no further contact with her.
Deborah Hill also said her father told her he would be camping alone on the trip to the Wonnangatta Valley.
Robyn Hill said that while her 74-year-old husband was fit and active, he had started to slow by the time of his disappearance.
“He walked slow, and he would think slow,” she said
“I just thought he was getting old.”
Hill had taken antidepressants for several decades, she said.
She confirmed that Hill did not like hunting, though he had friends who were deer hunters, and he had previously owned two firearms despite not having a licence.
Robyn Hill said she believed she handed the guns in during a police amnesty, but could not recall when.
The guns had been given to Hill by his father when he moved off a farm, she told the court.
Robyn Hill confirmed her husband’s uncle, Gary Hill, had been accidentally shot by a nephew in 1994, and that a plaque had been erected at a place called Hilly’s Camp, not far from where Hill was killed.
“Not every stag under a … tree is a deer,” the plaque reads in part, the court was told.
Deborah Hill said that she had a memory of her father once shooting dead a duck on a property they lived on around 1984, but she could remember little else about the firearms.
She said her father’s attitude towards them was that they were unsafe.
Lynn’s lawyer, Dermot Dann KC, previously told the court that the deaths were the result of a tragic accident, in part spurred by an argument Lynn had with Hill about hunting in the area.
The prosecutor, Daniel Porceddu, has said police do not know the circumstances or motive behind the alleged double murder.
On Tuesday morning, justice Michael Croucher informed the jury on Tuesday morning that a juror had been discharged after falling ill. He said he felt it was better for the trial to continue rather than to wait and see if they felt better.
A jury of 15 were empanelled in the case last week, in part to protect against the risk of illness during a trial which could stretch for six weeks, but only 12 jurors are required to rule on a verdict.
The hearing continues.
