Opinion
After Lynn’s murder conviction, all I can think about is the families left behind
Kate Halfpenny
Regular columnistWhen the verdicts about whether Greg Lynn murdered Russell Hill and Carol Clay were read out in Victoria’s Supreme Court, Lynn’s adult son Geordie was there as his father was proclaimed a killer.
Geordie crossed his arms as his father was found guilty of murdering Clay. Shook his head. His own life different now.
Gregory Lynn, Russell Hill and Carol Clay.
Amid all the sensational details of a case that gripped many of us for four years, I couldn’t stop thinking about one thing: those poor families.
Millions of people find out their partner has cheated. Most estimates indicate 70 per cent of all marriages will be buffeted at some point by a physical or emotional affair. It’s a common hand grenade.
And most kids grow up and discover that behind the masks, their superhero parents are flawed, bumbling humans making mistakes and stuff-ups as they go.
But usually the destruction and discoveries are done behind closed doors, often after rumbling warning signs.
Imagine being Hill’s wife Robyn or their children, Clay’s children, Lynn’s wife and children. Imagine the anger, grief and shock that bunch of people experienced, discovering hard truths about their partners and parents at the same time they found out they had disappeared, were dead, were locked up.
And imagine that at the same time you’re mourning what you’ve lost, it’s laid bare to the world. The indignity of that is just so hard.
I feel especially for Robyn Hill. In a cardigan and floral blouse, she laid bare her humiliation to the court. Recounted details of her husband’s long affair, of how she helped him pack for the camping trip from which he never returned.
Told how her habit was to listen in to Hill’s nightly radio group chat to make sure he was safe. And how when he fell silent for days that March, she worried.
Confession: I was one of the intrigued who played along at home with every twist in the real-life mystery from the time Clay and Hill vanished in the high country in March 2020.
There was the theory they’d covered their tracks and run off together. The blue Nissan Patrol carrying bodies, forced to do a 30-point U-turn at a locked gate. The smashed and burned bones which lay hidden for years.
And at the heart of it all, a man who had been trusted with countless lives as a commercial pilot, who ultimately told the court he had the misfortune of having two people accidentally die on him within minutes of each other.
It’s completely understandable why we were hooked and doggedly followed every development. To read about what was included and what the jury didn’t hear in the five-week trial.
To note the accused’s flight attendant second wife Melanie Lynn and her stepson supported each other, to either believe Greg Lynn had lightning strike twice or was a talented liar.
It wasn’t happening to us, so it was easy to get swept up and forget the people showing up for court in honour of their loved ones weren’t Law and Order characters.
With crimes like these that captivate us all, it’s often the people offstage who are left to pick up the pieces that we forget to think about enough.
Think Karen Ristevski’s daughter, so disbelieving her father Borce killed her mother she wrote him a character reference after he confessed. Herman Rockefeller’s family finding out only after his grisly murder he craved sordid sex with strangers.
The Lynn trial showed your dad can be a killer and you can still love him.
You can still love your cheating husband and the long marriage you built, even if it makes it hard to go to the butcher without someone whispering about you. My heart hurts to think Robyn Hill was alone at home, listening remotely and holding her breath when the verdicts were handed down.
God, isn’t the human heart complex and terrible? The things we feel and want. The things we do to each other.
Kate Halfpenny is the founder of Bad Mother Media.
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