A former airline pilot accused of murdering two campers told police he feared being killed during a confrontation that led to their deaths, before he “panicked” and tried to destroy evidence at the “messy” scene.
Gregory Stuart Lynn has pleaded not guilty to murdering Russell Hill and Carol Clay at a remote camping site in Victoria’s alpine region in March 2020.
An excerpt of Lynn’s interview with police on 24 November 2021 was shown during his trial in the Victorian supreme court on Monday.
Lynn said that after initially cordial interactions with the couple, who had set up camp near him in the Wonnangatta Valley, Hill appeared to have cooled when he came across them again the following morning while on his way out to stalk deer.
He told police Hill had told him he had been in the area to honour a friend who had died deer hunting.
Later that day, Lynn said he heard a buzzing sound, “like I had stood on a bee hive or a wasp’s nest or something”, but could not see anything. The sound disappeared, before he heard it again, and then looked up to see “it was a bloody drone, right above my head”.
“That was bizarre,” Lynn told police in the interview. “And then whoosh, it was gone.
“I thought, OK, what’s this all about?”
Lynn said when he returned to camp, he saw Hill with the drone.
He did not raise the incident straight away, he said, but decided to later while he was preparing his dinner.
Lynn said Hill told him he didn’t like deer hunters and had captured footage of Lynn hunting near the camp, which Lynn refuted, saying he had been in the valley. Hill told him he would go to police, to which he responded that was “ridiculous”.
Lynn said he then went back to his camp and that while he was annoyed, did not do anything about Hill’s complaint.
“But I did turn the stereo up and play some loud music, which was a bit of a childish thing to do … just to annoy him back,” Lynn told police.
He said he then heard rustling, and looked up to see Hill walking away from Lynn’s car with his shotgun and a magazine of ammunition.
Lynn said he confronted him and asked for the gun back, but Hill said he was taking it to the police too, before letting “a couple of rounds go into the air”.
“I immediately ran around the back here, fearing I might cop the next one,” Lynn told police.
“I didn’t want to run back to my car, because if he was going to shoot me he would have a clean shot.”
Lynn said that soon after this he saw the barrel of the gun, and leapt up to try to seize the weapon.
“To try and disarm him, I jumped up and grabbed the shogun barrel with my right arm, I had the left arm on the stock, right arm on the barrel, and the shotgun was pointed over this way, and it discharged, my hand was not on the trigger … [I was] pushing up against him, he wouldn’t let it go, and it discharged … [and] killed Ms Clay dead.”
Hill immediately dropped the gun, which Lynn said he took back to his car to secure, he told police.
He then saw Hill advancing on him, with a knife in his right hand and his left fist clenched, Lynn said. Hill threw a punch with his left hand, which Lynn said he blocked, before attempting to stab him with his right.
A struggle ensued, and as Hill pushed Lynn over, the knife went into his chest, police were told. Hill crawled a little afterwards, then stopped, Lynn said.
“I went over, Ms Clay was clearly dead. I went back, Mr Hill was clearly dead. There was no pulse,” Lynn told police.
“And from here, I panicked. It’s my shotgun, there’s one person dead, and now he’s dead as well.
“[I thought] I’m going to be found guilty of this, and I tried to cover it up, and everything else is pretty much as you say.”
It was about 9 or 10pm and completely dark, Lynn said, apart from the light of his campfire and a light coming from the back on Hill’s car.
He agreed that “in hindsight” he should not have done what happened next: covered up the deaths as best he could by destroying evidence, including at the “very messy” scene.
“I wanted it to go away and never think about it again, but clearly that’s not going to happen,” Lynn told police.
He detailed driving back up twice to where he dumped the bodies off the Union Spur Track, once to cover them up with sticks and branches and then another to set them alight.
“I drove back up there, and I set fire to them, there’s nothing there … I’m sorry,” he said.
“But that’s the truth, and that’s the best I can give you. It’s not going to give much relief to the families, there’s nothing to see, there’s nothing to be found.”
Lynn said he knew he was “on a watch list” before he was arrested, but “I’ve just been trying to keep my head down and just move on with life and just forget about it, but I obviously can’t and it’s just caught up with me”.
He told police in the interview that the evidence they had was “compelling”, but that he believed his account would “tick every one of those boxes” that had been found during the investigation.
“Even if I come to you, with this evidence, back in March 2020, it still would have been an absolute disaster, not as bad as it is now, but still an absolute disaster.
“That’s why I tried that pathway, which was wrong, I know that … I’m not making excuses for it.”
The interview was shown during the evidence of Det Sgt Brett Florence, the informant in the case who was expected to be the final witness in the trial.
In the video, Florence was shown during the interview reenacting the scenario given to police by Lynn, with a marker pen used as a shotgun or to demonstrate how Hill was said to be holding the knife.
At one point, both men stand to act out how Lynn says he came to grapple with Hill, immediately before he says the knife plunged into Hill’s chest.
“You’ve fallen and then the knife has gone into his chest … yeah, that makes sense,” Florence is seen saying in the interview.
Lynn says the knife was a black-handled kitchen knife that he burnt along with the bodies.
He also told police it was “confronting” to see Clay after she had been shot in the head, and said he had not told his wife anything about the deaths.
Lynn said that he felt paranoid about the conduct of several people after the deaths, including a colleague.
“It’s a bit like the Truman show, where everyone knows what’s going on, but you don’t.”
The hearing continues.
