What the jury wasn’t told about the missing campers case

In the lead-up to the murder trial of Gregory Stuart Lynn, the evidence against him was painstakingly tested.

His high-profile defence barrister won an application from the trial judge to keep vast swaths of the police case from the jury, on the basis his client’s rights had been breached, a police interview room was icy cold and Lynn’s admissions about what had happened to Russell Hill and Carol Clay were gathered under duress.

Among the excluded evidence were thousands of secret recordings of Lynn, two days’ worth of his interview with police, details about the former pilot’s character and the views of his first wife’s family on her traumatic death.

The details have remained secret from the jury and the public, but can now be revealed after the verdict in the missing campers murder case. Lynn was found guilty on Tuesday of murdering Clay but not guilty of murdering Hill.

The police investigation

When Hill and Clay were reported missing in late March 2020, police did not immediately turn their minds to murder.

In the first few weeks of the pair’s disappearance, and even during the first search of their campsite, it was suspected they had become lost or run away together.

Detective Senior Constable Abbey Justin, formerly of the missing persons squad, was the first to take charge of the investigation, codenamed Lexicon.

On April 13, 2020 her team travelled to Sale, where they were briefed about the missing couple, with notes aired during pre-trial arguments showing just how unsure the squad was as to whether the pair’s disappearance was suspicious.

“There was just very little known,” she said.

“We knew Mr Hill was married, but he and Ms Clay had been friends for a long time and there was talk that they were in a relationship. At this point [Mr Hill’s wife] did not know he was away with [Clay].”

Police later took forensic samples from the Hill and Clay households and checked the missing pair’s accounts.

But at that time, Victoria, like much of the world, was in the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic, and lockdowns affected investigators’ abilities to make inquiries.

Detective Senior Constable Brett Florence, an officer of more than 30 years’ experience, took over as investigation leader in May 2021.

“Victoria had gone into [lockdown] ... crime management limited us in where we could go and who we could speak to,” he said.

Florence first visited the Wonnangatta Valley in November 2020, eight months after Hill and Clay were last heard from. He used the trip to pick up three bags of fire debris collected earlier by a Parks Victoria officer from the missing pair’s campsite.

But after a litany of questionable decisions, the white Toyota LandCruiser Hill had taken on the camping trip was returned to his family, who then sold it to another person.

Florence explained this happened because “it was considered either they’d eloped and there was a misadventure and they were lost. That was the initial investigation.”

It wasn’t until mid-2020 that officers suspected the pair had been murdered. Police eventually tracked down the ute, with its professionally installed canopy, in February 2022 – almost two years after the deaths – and examined it seven times.

Despite the vehicle having been in the possession of a new owner for months, it was then that forensic experts discovered blood spatter and fatty tissue inside the canopy, which was later DNA-matched to Clay.

Button Man

All the while rumours about what had happened to Hill and Clay continued to swell, with hundreds of tip-offs from the public flooding in.

One person repeatedly nominated as being a suspicious character was colloquially known as the Button Man.

He was a High Country loner who made buttons out of deer antlers to sell in nearby areas and was known, even feared, for his unusual behaviour.

“We had numerous IRs [information reports] nominating [the Button Man] as a person of interest,” Senior Constable Justin told a pre-trial hearing.

“We had people, members of the public or police officers submitting weird or strange encounters with this person. He frequented the area. Some people were saying we should probably go and speak to him.”

One person had said the Button Man “could look straight through you and lie, great bushman and could easily dispose of a body as well”.

By July 2020, police had received 159 information reports, with 50 still to be processed.

“It was constant,” Justin said.

Phone records eliminated the Button Man from police investigations.

The first house interview

The best piece of hard evidence police had in the early part of their investigation came from fixed traffic cameras, left running from the snow season, along the Great Alpine Road.

In June 2020, police learnt 12 vehicles had travelled through the automatic number plate recognition cameras between 9.40am and 10am on March 21.

The timing was significant because it was around when Hill’s mobile phone registered its last contact with a mobile phone tower in the same area.

Over the following weeks, 11 other campers and motorists were methodically eliminated from the police investigation. Police were left with one unaccounted for car – a dark-coloured Nissan Patrol.

Checks uncovered the owner, Gregory Lynn, was a shooter connected with two gun clubs who had seven registered firearms.

Police began homing in.

In July 2020, they arrived at Lynn’s Caroline Springs house to ask him about his movements in the High Country when Hill and Clay went missing. Detectives insisted Lynn was a person of interest at that stage, not an official suspect.

But then they noticed his car. The pilot’s dark-coloured Nissan Patrol was now painted beige.

“Mr Lynn had told us it was a COVID activity with his children, that they painted the car together,” Justin said. “When Detective Florence and I got into the vehicle, I said I felt very uncomfortable during the encounter.

“I expressed that I felt uncomfortable during that encounter [and] I took a photo of the car.”

The jury never heard what Lynn told police at that meeting, when he lied about being in the valley two days earlier than Hill and Clay.

The judge ruled the details of what Lynn told police at that meeting could not be given to the jury, but a pre-trial hearing was told Lynn had lied about being in the valley two days earlier than Hill and Clay. He said he didn’t know them and hadn’t seen them.

Police didn’t tell Lynn his car had been captured on the roadside camera, but the discussion was enough to move him from person of interest to suspect.

Secret recordings

As police homed in on Lynn, they installed secret listening devices in his home and car.

Police obtained more than 5000 recordings of conversations between the Lynn family and of their suspect talking to himself on drives in his car.

During one, Lynn and wife Melanie watched a 60 Minutes program on the missing couple in November 2021. Lynn could be heard saying there were only four hours in the day that he, Hill and Clay were in the valley together, as Melanie Lynn “cackled” in the background about the similarity of the wanted vehicle to her husband’s.

This, the judge ruled, should not be played to the jury because most of the recordings were irrelevant or the sound quality was too poor.

In other recordings, police said, Lynn was regularly heard talking to himself and singing in the car.

The arrest

On the day of Lynn’s arrest on November 22, 2021, police were listening live to the covert recording device in his car. Lynn wound his way from his home across the city to Arbuckle Junction, a remote location to the south-east of the Wonnangatta Valley.

Detectives said they had learnt Lynn was driving up to the High Country to go hunting and heard what initially appeared to be Lynn crying and talking in the past tense.

“The conversation he was having was that his wife would be left with three children, and she would have to care for them. There was also mention at one point ... about being bitten by a snake would be a good way to go,” Florence said.

“He regularly spoke to himself.”

The recording captured Lynn’s ramblings: “I saw some people fishing, what’s that, a snake bite. Would be a good way to go. Just f---ing never know when it’s coming, f---, shit. Australia’s gift.

“I think she knows I’m on the way up, one of the pages of the final chapter.”

Police grew concerned Lynn sounded depressed, and knowing he was in a remote location with firearms, decided to move in. Special operations group police jumped in a helicopter and rushed to the valley where they arrested Lynn late at night.

“We’ve met before,” Lynn said as Florence took him into custody for the drive to Sale police station.

The police interview

Police grilled Lynn over three days at Sale police station. Despite having nine hours of video of the interview, which spanned thousands of questions, only a four-hour portion, from the final day, was played to the jury.

But in fact, Lynn had spent two days refusing to answer questions.

Lynn’s lawyer, Dermot Dann, KC, told the trial his client had been asked and answered 1057 questions during that portion of the interview, painting him as forthright and truthful.

But a pre-trial hearing was told Lynn had spent two days refusing to answer questions. Put in touch with a legal aid lawyer after his arrest, Lynn repeatedly told police he had been advised to make no comment.

During the interview, Lynn was shown documents, maps and photographs of the High Country.

“She just told me to say ‘no comment’,” he said of his legal aid lawyer.

Florence replied: “Yes that’s fine, makes it awfully difficult to ... get an explanation from you about such a serious offence … without some explanation from yourself.”

Lynn: “I don’t know what her agenda is, but no matter what I say today, you’re not going to say, ‘Here’s the car keys’ ... I’ll be remanded in custody. That’s what she said.”

Detective Leading Senior Constable Daniel Passingham: “You understand you have this opportunity to explain your story? It’s up to you though; it’s your story, not hers. You’re an adult, a well-educated man.”

Finally, Lynn revealed he wanted to offer a “pathway to resolution”.

When asked if that meant he planned to lead detectives to the bodies of Hill and Clay, Lynn said: “If that’s what you’re looking for, yes.

“In the interests of the inevitable and getting it resolved now, I’m going to ignore my solicitor’s advice and tell you what happened from scratch. Do you have a piece of paper?”

The pilot then drew diagrams of Bucks Camp and the separate location at Union Spur Track where 2100 fragments of human bone were found.

During his police interview and while giving evidence at his trial, Lynn maintained the campers’ deaths were accidental and he’d been attacked.

Police said they had tried to build rapport with Lynn during the interview to help them “obtain the truth”. They denied Dann’s claim they had used tactics to undermine the legal advice Lynn had received.

Dann also argued there was no mental health assessment of Lynn and alleged there had been an abuse of his client’s rights. He questioned police on whether the whole interview was an “abject failure”.

Under fierce questioning about the interview during pre-trial argument, Florence defended his team’s approach and maintained the investigation was a success.

“To return the remains to the [campers’] families, to me at the end of the day, was a success. It was a success of the whole operation,” Florence said.

“There is only one living person from that event.”

Police tactics

Dann argued the three-day interview with his client was excessive.

He and the judge also placed fierce scrutiny on what was described as the PEACE Method [preparation and planning, engage and explain, account, closure, evaluate] interview tactics the two detectives were told to use.

The method, which encourages those questioning an accused person to befriend them, had been criticised by the Court of Appeal in 2016.

In fighting for the entire police interview to be scrapped from the trial, Dann argued the officers’ conduct was a sustained, full-blown assault on Lynn’s right to silence.

He alleged the interview went on until Lynn gave the detectives a version of events they wanted to hear, labelling it oppressive conduct that fell into the category of abuse of police power.

Dann also noted that the room was so cold, there was reference made in the interview to them “freezing their balls off”.

“It’s submitted that not even Albert Einstein would be immune to these types of tactics,” Dann said. “You’d have to have a mind of steel … a heart of stone not to be affected by that.”

During pre-trial questioning, Leading Senior Constable Passingham accepted that three days was a long time for an interview, and that, during his career, he’d never seen one last for more than two days.

When pressed on the same matter, Florence said: “It appeared to me he [Lynn] had a story to tell. I believe that we were still within the Crimes Act powers to do that, to have him in custody over that period of time.”

The death of Lisa Lynn

In October 1999, Lynn’s first wife, Lisa, died in the front yard of her Mount Macedon home amid a separation between the pair.

Her death was investigated by a coroner, who found she had overdosed on pills and alcohol. Lynn was never charged over her death and a coroner found no evidence any other party had been involved.

At a pre-trial hearing, Crown prosecutor Daniel Porceddu raised the possibility of calling Lisa Lynn’s family to give evidence about Lynn’s character and how they maintained their daughter had died.

In open court, Porceddu read statements from Lisa Lynn’s parents.

He said her mother had said in a statement that she thought Gregory Lynn was to blame for her daughter’s death.

“As far as I am concerned, Greg is responsible for my daughter’s death by mental torture. I know she was living in absolute fear of Greg. Her actions were a combination of the fear and terror she lived under,” Lisa Lynn’s mother wrote.

“I made many trips to Mount Macedon … to help Lisa with the kids because she wasn’t getting any support from Greg.

“In addition to not gaining any support from Greg, he would subject her to physical and mental abuse on a frequent basis. Losing his temper for no reason, blaming Lisa for anything that went wrong. He then would yell and throw things at her and push her around.

“I was not inclined to interfere and Lisa would plead with me not to interfere. Lisa would say to me if I got involved ... it would make things worse for her when I went home.

“He has a warped mind. He has done things in the past like killing animals and neighbours’ pets, and refused to feed the children.

“On one occasion, he exploded into a fit of uncontrollable rage when we went for dinner at the Macedon Hotel. He verbally attacked a man in the bar … then redirected that rage to Lisa when we left the hotel.”

Lisa Lynn’s father wrote that his daughter feared repercussions from Lynn and lived in terror, so she did not pursue charges against him once they separated.

“When their relationship commenced, everything was good. For some time Greg wandered in and out of employment with various jobs,” he wrote.

“My relationship with Greg was always amicable, but I was aware of the verbal abuse Greg was always inflicting on Lisa since the marriage began. Before their separation, Lisa told me that Greg had been making very serious death threats against her and these continued through until her death,” her father said.

“Lisa kept a diary from the day Greg left the marriage. The diary details the abusive phone calls and death threats and verbal abuse to their children made by Greg.

“I am also aware ... Greg broke into the house and stole the car, leaving Lisa with two young children and no form of transport … no money.

“[It was] very messy and bitter from Greg’s side. Greg asking for totally unreasonable demands.”

The statements were withheld from the jury after Lynn’s defence labelled them slabs of prejudicial material and the trial judge agreed.

Those who knew the captain

To the outside world, Lynn appeared to be a likeable, polite and intelligent pilot who almost made it into the RAAF as a fighter pilot.

A high school graduate who spent a year at the University of Sydney in the mid-1980s before joining the Air Force cadets, Lynn went on to work as a pilot at Ansett before its demise, and then Jetstar, where he met both his wives.

But in October 1999, when Lisa Lynn died, a neighbour said she left behind two baby boys, one still in nappies. Those who attended her funeral said Lynn never turned up.

A roommate of Lynn’s in the 1990s recalled him flying an air ambulance out of Tullamarine.

The man said even back then the pilot loved to walk alone in the bush, often going on multi-day hikes through Victoria’s High Country and parts of Tasmania.

“He was not a pleasant person. Pedantic (which probably makes a good pilot). Moody and easy to anger. Tight with money ... I learnt to avoid him,” he told this masthead.

“He was obviously a good pilot. He had lots of stories of tough flying conditions in the Air Ambulance. He was always well groomed and well presented. Very smooth. I’m sure he was the perfect pilot.

“Towards the end of my time in the house, he got a job with Ansett. $90K, they bragged. They bought a house in Mount Macedon.

“It’s a bit of a shock to see him accused … the man underneath the pilot’s uniform.”

A new podcast from 9News, The Age and 9Podcasts follows the court case as it unfolds. The Missing Campers Trial is the first podcast to follow a jury trial in real time in Victoria. It’s presented by Nine reporter Penelope Liersch and Age reporter Erin Pearson.