Greg Lynn: Jury retires to consider fate of ex-Jetstar pilot accused of murdering secret lover campers
A jury charged with deciding the fate of former Jetstar pilot Greg Lynn has retired to consider his sentence after hearing five weeks of evidence.
Lynn, 57, pleaded not guilty in the case High Council from Victoria to the murders of Russell Hill, 74, and Carol Clay, 73, in the Wonnangatta Valley, mountain region of the state on March 20, 2020.
On Friday, Judge Michael Croucher completed his final address to the jury, ending the epic trial that saw Lynn himself take to the witness stand to address the jurors personally.
Greg Lynn is charged with the two murders
Lynn’s lawyer Dermot Dann KC had delivered a scathing response to the prosecution case in his final speech to the jury on Wednesday.
Mr Dann told the jury they had no more evidence to work with to convince themselves beyond a reasonable doubt that Lynn was guilty of the murders.
‘There is no factual basis for the prosecution case. They have nothing, nothing, completely blank,” Mr Dann said.
‘There is no evidence… you are being asked to find a man guilty of murder.
‘In the prosecution case there is no factual basis whatsoever, no motive, there is just a completely blank story.
‘Are you okay with that? I mean, how is that possible?’
Mr Dann said although his client admitted the crime of disposing of evidence, he could not be found guilty of murder based on the evidence presented at his trial.
‘In the prosecution case there is no factual basis whatsoever, no motive, there is just a completely blank story.
‘Are you okay with that? I mean, how is that possible?’
‘We are in a murder case. You are trying to fulfill your duty as jurors and are asked to convict a man. Well, you just can’t say, “Well, look, we don’t have any evidence, but let’s convict him anyway.” That’s not how it works,” Mr Dann said.
Lynn’s lawyer Dermot Dann, KC (left) attacked the prosecution case on Wednesday
L:ynn claims that Carol Clay was shot and killed by Russell Hill during a fight over his gun. Mr. Hill died moments later at the end of his own knife, Lynn said
Although Lynn has always denied killing the couple, the jury heard that he had openly admitted to cleaning up the alleged crime scene and destroying evidence.
“It was despicable,” Lynn admitted.
‘All I can say to the families is that I am very sorry for all the suffering I have caused… yes, I should be punished for it. For what I did.’
The jury heard that Lynn had offered to plead guilty to destroying evidence before going to trial, but this was rejected by the prosecutor.
“I am innocent of murder,” he said. ‘I am innocent (also of manslaughter). I didn’t kill anyone.’
Smartly dressed in a suit and dark glasses, the former pilot spoke in a cool and calm manner as he guided the jury through the gory details of what police say was cold-blooded murder.
The jury heard Lynn claimed the couple died after Mr Hill stole his shotgun and the pair engaged in a deadly battle for control.
“I don’t know if he intended to shoot me or not, probably not,” Lynn told the jury. “I think he was just trying to keep the shotgun for himself and scare me off.”
The jury heard that Lynn had been sitting by his campfire by the river when he saw Mr Hill take out his shotgun and load the magazine.
The doors of Lynn’s Nissan Patrol were wide open to release “all the music” from his car radio, which the pilot said was done in a “childish attempt” to irritate Mr Hill after a previous run-in with him.
Greg Lynn faces life in prison if convicted of the murders
Lynn claims there was a deadly struggle at the front of this Landcruiser
Lynn sketched the scene to help jurors figure out how he claimed Mr. Hill gained access to his Nissan Patrol to steal his shotgun.
The image showed an image of Lynn’s 4WD with all the doors open, allowing Mr Hill to grab Lynn’s shotgun from the back and the ammunition clip from the front.
Lynn claimed Mr Hill accidentally shot Ms Clay in the head when he tried to wrestle the shotgun away from him.
Lynn pressed the bull bar of Mr Hill’s Landcruiser and claimed Mr Hill pulled the trigger, breaking the side mirror and hitting Ms Clay directly in the head.
Mr Hill died moments later after falling on his own knife during another struggle, Lynn claimed.
The jury heard Lynn placed a laser sight on the shotgun that killed Carol Clay to ensure he could focus on the heart and lungs of the deer he liked to stalk.
Lynn suggested that if he had wanted to kill Mrs Clay, he would not have destroyed the side mirror of Mr Hill’s Landcruiser in the process.
“The whole point of having a laser sight on the shotgun … is that you can point the tip of the laser at the target and be confident the bullet will hit that target,” Lynn said.
“So the slug went through the mirror, if I had done what the police said I did… if someone had shot Carol Clay with the laser sight on, the laser would have shined on the mirror and not on Carol Clay. ‘
Lynn described in gruesome detail the bloody aftermath of the alleged crime scene, which he admitted went to great lengths to destroy and clean up.
“The scene was horrible,” Lynn said.
Carol Clay was shot in the head. Lynn claims through her secret lover Russell Hill
The shotgun Lynn claims Russell Hill stole from his 4WD
‘There was blood spatter on the tow rails and the bed floor of the Toyota Landcruiser. There was something on the inside of the canopy.
“I wiped all of that off… the solar panels… there was blood and other material on them and on the camp furniture.
“Some of those pieces were covered in a lot of tissue and blood. There was a very large pool of blood on the ground between the Landcruiser and the tent where Carol Clay was.”
Lynn was cross-examined by Crown Prosecutor Daniel Porceddu, who closed the prosecution on Wednesday, before Lynn began giving his version of events.
‘You heard that the suspect gave a version of events during his interrogation and in the witness box last week. For reasons I will go into in due course, the prosecution says this story is entirely fanciful,” he told the jury in his closing address.
“You can safely dismiss it as a complicated fiction.”
Mr Porceddu took the jury through all the evidence presented over the past month.
“He tells you that Mr. Hill and Ms. Clay were both accidentally killed in separate immediate, or near-instantaneous, fatal incidents, both caused by Mr. Hill’s conduct,” Mr. Porceddu said.
“The suspect’s story is indeed a series of very unfortunate events. Like the book series of the same name, it is also a complete fiction.’
Mr Porceddu claimed Lynn made further mistakes in his account to police of the alleged confrontation with Mr Hill.
“There are a number of reasons why the story is completely unlikely,” he said.
Mr Porceddu said Lynn had made an error in his account of the alleged struggle with Mr Hill by not taking into account the rope tied between the bull bar of his Landcruiser and the toilet.
The jury heard that the wrestling men would have become hopelessly entangled in the rope if Lynn’s version of events had been true.
“He knows he sank because he knows he and Mr. Hill would have gotten tangled in the guy rope,” Mr. Porceddu said.
Crown prosecutor Daniel Porceddu (left) claimed Lynn was a murderer
Mr Porceddu claimed Lynn came forward with his story in the 18 months it took police to arrest him.
‘The so-called battle over the weapon is the entire lynchpin in the suspect’s story. Once that collapses like a house of cards, everything else collapses,” he said.
‘You don’t believe a word of it. We urge you to see the suspect’s story for what it is: a carefully constructed fiction developed over a year and eight months. During that time, the suspect was able to gain insight into the evidence that emerged through the media.
‘It was an account that was clearly so carefully rehearsed that he can repeat it almost word for word during two separate days of a police interrogation. It is a report designed to shift the blame onto Mr. Hill.”
The jury heard that Lynn’s story that Mr Hill stole his gun from his car made no sense.
“If you’re concerned about firearm safety and you snuck into the suspect’s campsite to confiscate his gun, and you’re trying to do it without him knowing, why are you loading it when all you’re doing is what is taking you back to your campsite?’ said the prosecutor.
Mr Porceddu said it was also unreasonable to think Mr Hill would have taken the shotgun and left Lynn’s gun in the car.
“If you are going to confiscate the gun of someone you have not been on good terms with, with whom you have allegedly been provocative, and you are doing so in order to ultimately report him to the police, then don’t do that. Do you think you’d make sure he didn’t leave another gun behind?’ he said.
The jury heard that police claimed Lynn probably killed Mr Hill after some dispute before eliminating Ms Clay because she was the only witness.
“If she had been allowed to live, Ms. Clay would have been able to identify the suspect,” Porceddu said.
“Although it is unknown how Mr. Hill was killed, as the suspect deliberately burned Mr. Hill’s body and destroyed all forensic evidence… the evidence establishes that Ms. Clay was killed by a gunshot to the head.”
