Accused Pilot
Cases like this that have a large circumstantial component are always interesting. I have seen a number of Pilots arrested over the years all over the world and the press always has a field day like Pilots are immune to committing crime like the rest of the population.
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You've thus demonstrated why you shouldn't be a juror in this case and why, therefore, the Defendant would be 'keen' not to have you on the jury.
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All came to a head last Sunday when GL’s JQ cabin crew wife confronted him about the murder in their Caroline springs home (which has been bugged for months), GL left to go hang himself. No doubt cops have been holding out trying to build their case but had to pounce before it got too late. Sold the trailer on gumtree mid last year. Ex wife’s autopsy showed high levels of alcohol in blood, which according to friends was unusual for her, cops may reopen this case also.
well ahead of information released by the police and reported in the media.
Looking back over historical posts this was all 100% kosher and how it went down.
Great sources. Thanks.
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Podcast
I’ve been in court most days.
Intriguing evidence and a defence scenario that even more so.
Lynn is an interesting chap.
Intriguing evidence and a defence scenario that even more so.
- March 16, 2020 — Greg Lynn drives to Victoria's High Country for a solo camping and hunting trip.
March 19, 7:30am — Russell Hill picks up Carol Clay from her home, and the pair sets off for the same region.
March 20, 5pm — A Parks Victoria contractor sees a drone in the Wonnangatta Valley, presumably being flown by Mr Hill.
March 20, 6pm — Mr Hill joins a daily high-frequency radio call with friends and signs off 40 minutes later.
March 20, evening — After a dispute over Mr Hill's drone, a violent confrontation involving Mr Lynn, Mr Hill and Ms Clay occurs at a campsite named Bucks Camp. The elderly pair die. Prosecutors claim they were murdered, but Mr Lynn insists the deaths were accidental.
March 20, evening — Mr Lynn takes steps to cover up the deaths, including setting fire to the campsite, placing the bodies in the trailer of his four-wheel drive and destroying evidence. He drives for several hours from Bucks Camp to the Union Spur track, on the outskirts of the Dargo township, and hides the bodies.
March 22, afternoon— Mr Lynn returns home to Caroline Springs.
March 28 — Police examine the scene at Bucks Camp, finding the burnt campsite and damage to Mr Hill's abandoned vehicle.
April 1 — Police allege Mr Lynn tried to sell his trailer on Gumtree in an attempt to distance himself from the deaths. The trailer has never been located.
May 13 — Mr Lynn returns to Union Spur Track to check on the bodies.
June 4 — Mr Lynn allegedly repaints his vehicle, with prosecutors claiming it was an attempt to avoid detection.
November 2020 — Mr Lynn returns to the burial site and sets the human remains on fire.
September 22, 2021— Police plant surveillance devices in Mr Lynn's home and car.
November 22, 2021 — Mr Lynn drives to a secluded camp area in Arbuckle. Police arrest him, and he later tells officers he is innocent of murder.
November 29, 2021 — Forensic experts find human remains and other items at Union Spur Track, finding DNA evidence of Mr Hill and Ms Clay.
Lynn is an interesting chap.
This is why you pay for good legal counsel.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-...rial/103920014
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-...rial/103920014
On Wednesday, Mark Gellatly stood in the witness box and referred to something called the "vacuum theory".
If a person was shot at point-blank range, blood could potentially be pulled into the barrel of a gun, the Victoria Police scientist explained.
As his evidence continued on Thursday, Mr Gellatly was himself sucked into a vacuum of intense questioning by barrister Dermot Dann KC.
Eventually, Mr Gellatly, who has an honours degree in molecular biology, conceded he did not know much about the vacuum theory at all, other than "it may exist and it is a theory".
"You've got zero knowledge. Zero understanding?" Mr Dann said.
"Yes. I'm not a — I'm not a, um, ballistics expert," Mr Gellatly replied.
Mr Dann, representing accused double-murderer Greg Lynn, had rarely challenged 35-odd witnesses who had given evidence earlier in the Supreme Court trial.
Some of those people included family members of alleged victims Russell Hill, 74, and Carol Clay, 73, and forensic experts who analysed the campers' "obliterated" remains almost two years after the pair went missing from Victoria's High Country.
But Mr Gellatly and another police expert, Paul Griffiths, represented a problem for Mr Dann — their evidence had the potential to contradict his client's story about how a deadly conflict unfolded at a campsite in the Wonnangatta Valley in March 2020.
On the opening day of the trial, Mr Dann told the jury there were many elements of the case that the prosecution and defence agreed on.There appeared to be no dispute that an argument occurred, likely over a drone being flown in the area by Mr Hill. There was no dispute a violent incident followed, involving Mr Lynn, Mr Hill and Ms Clay, which resulted in the latter two losing their lives. There was no dispute Mr Lynn tried to cover up the deaths by destroying evidence, including the bodies of the elderly campers. There was no dispute Mr Lynn told police where they could find what was left of the decomposed remains.
The central dispute in the case is whether Mr Lynn committed murder, as prosecutors allege, or whether the 57-year-old pilot was caught in the middle of two tragic accidents.
According to Mr Lynn, the first death occurred when he and Mr Hill were locked in a physical struggle over a shotgun.
With Mr Hill's finger on the trigger, Mr Lynn said the weapon accidentally fired and the shot struck Ms Clay in the head as she crouched near the front of a four-wheel drive.
As Mr Gellatly went through blood spatter analysis of the crime scene, he said investigators took a swab from inside the barrel of Mr Lynn's gun because of the vacuum theory.
"There was staining. Red-brown staining, but the DNA profile that was obtained was a very partial single DNA profile," he told the jury.
Mr Gellatly went on to say that the sample was so poor that it could not be compared to Ms Clay's DNA.
But the possibility of blood in the gun — and the vacuum theory having played out — raised a potential scenario that Ms Clay was in fact shot from a much closer distance than what Mr Lynn had claimed.
Mr Dann was not impressed.
Nowhere in Mr Gellatly's two previous police statements and 476 pages of notes released to the defence was any mention of a vacuum theory. The single reference to a red-brown stain was unclear because of a typo in the notes, Mr Gellatly said.
Mr Dann pressed Mr Gellatly into conceding the red-brown substance may have been gun oil and there was "no evidence" it was Ms Clay's blood.
The barrister also accused Mr Gellatly of colluding with prosecutors to spring the "half-baked" vacuum theory on the defence during the third week of the murder trial.
It was a claim Mr Gellatly denied at first, before shifting his position to say he could not remember if the vacuum theory had been discussed in pre-trial meetings with prosecution lawyers.
Dann: You'd discussed it. You prepared for it. You were going to give evidence about this vacuum theory, weren't you?
Gellatly: I hadn't prepared for anything. I prepared for the case … when I discussed it, and if I discussed it, I don't remember when.
Dann: Well, I'm saying you're lying.
Gellatly: I stand by what I said. I can't recall if and when we discussed it.
Mr Dann questioned the witness on his understanding of the vacuum theory, to which Mr Gellatly said his knowledge came from conversations with police colleagues and articles he had read. Mr Gellatly said he raised the existence of the theory in front of the jury to explain why he conducted the inner-barrel swab testing.
During the barrage of questions on Thursday afternoon, Mr Gellatly repeatedly took sips of water from a cup next to the elevated wooden witness box.
He said the words "I don't remember", "I don't recall", "I don't know" and "I can't recall" more than 40 times during cross-examination.
"Do you have some ongoing difficulty with your memory?" Mr Dann asked.
"No, I don't," Mr Gellatly replied.
Two days earlier, Mr Lynn watched from the dock as ballistics expert Paul Griffiths brought the gun from the fatal incident into the Supreme Court.
Mr Griffiths stood opposite the jury and held up the 96-centimetre-long, Barathrum Arms SP-12 shotgun, equipped with a laser pointer and red dot sight.
During a physical demonstration, the sound of Mr Griffiths loading an empty shotgun magazine, disabling the cross-bolt safety and cocking the weapon echoed through the historic courtroom.
"That's ready to fire," he said at the end of the presentation. "All we need to do now is pull the trigger."
Mr Griffiths said string-line tests were conducted to consider three possible scenarios to determine if Ms Clay could have been hit with a shotgun projectile that passed through the side mirror of the four-wheel drive, while the two men wrestled nearby over the gun.
Mr Lynn told police Ms Clay was crouched, but Mr Griffiths said the testing showed a "plausible" scenario where she was actually standing upright at 160cm tall.
Mr Griffiths said it was "unlikely" Ms Clay was in a "fully-crouched" position at 78cm high, due to where Mr Hill and Mr Lynn were grappling, and the angle of the gun for Ms Clay to be hit.
Mr Dann then asked Mr Griffiths about the middle scenario, where Ms Clay was "semi-crouched" at 110cm tall.
Mr Griffiths said he hadn't done a "full recording" on that test and couldn't find the photo of it being conducted.
"I gave both extremities, the lower and the upper," he said.
"The middle wasn't important."
But the middle test was important, Mr Dann argued, and questioned whether the results were "buried" because they were unfavourable to the police case.
The defence barrister said the middle scenario was "absolutely spot on" with Mr Lynn's account of where Ms Clay was positioned, and argued there were flaws with reference points in the police testing.
Dann: This is just a botched exercise, isn't it?
Griffiths: Well, that's the information that I was given.
Dann: It's a completely botched procedure, exercise.
Griffiths: No, I disagree. Totally accurate.
During the increasingly fiery exchange, Mr Griffiths answered one of Mr Dann's questions with the words: "I don't know. I have no idea."
"That's a good summary of this whole exercise, isn't it. You've got no idea?" Mr Dann said.
"I have a very good idea and the results are accurate," Mr Griffiths replied.
Prosecutors have told the jury they are not exactly sure how Mr Hill died, but argue Mr Lynn's cover-up points to acts of murder.
Forensic witnesses have testified no cause of death could be determined for Mr Hill after analysis of small bones and teeth recovered from the burial site.
Prosecutors suspect Mr Hill was the first to die during the campsite fight, but Mr Lynn claims Mr Hill was killed after Ms Clay.
Mr Lynn told police Mr Hill was enraged shortly after the death of his lover and charged at him with a knife.
When a second struggle took place over that weapon, Mr Lynn said, the pair fell to the ground and the blade went through Mr Hill's chest.
The fourth week of the trial will hear testimony from the lead police investigator, Detective Brett Florence. Defence lawyers have told the jury they will also see Mr Lynn's police interview.
On May 14, Mr Dann quoted Mr Lynn's words from the interview, saying it summed up the entire defence case.
"I'm innocent of murder. I haven't behaved well. I've made some poor decisions, but murder as I understand it, I am innocent of," Mr Lynn said.
If a person was shot at point-blank range, blood could potentially be pulled into the barrel of a gun, the Victoria Police scientist explained.
As his evidence continued on Thursday, Mr Gellatly was himself sucked into a vacuum of intense questioning by barrister Dermot Dann KC.
Eventually, Mr Gellatly, who has an honours degree in molecular biology, conceded he did not know much about the vacuum theory at all, other than "it may exist and it is a theory".
"You've got zero knowledge. Zero understanding?" Mr Dann said.
"Yes. I'm not a — I'm not a, um, ballistics expert," Mr Gellatly replied.
Mr Dann, representing accused double-murderer Greg Lynn, had rarely challenged 35-odd witnesses who had given evidence earlier in the Supreme Court trial.
Some of those people included family members of alleged victims Russell Hill, 74, and Carol Clay, 73, and forensic experts who analysed the campers' "obliterated" remains almost two years after the pair went missing from Victoria's High Country.
But Mr Gellatly and another police expert, Paul Griffiths, represented a problem for Mr Dann — their evidence had the potential to contradict his client's story about how a deadly conflict unfolded at a campsite in the Wonnangatta Valley in March 2020.
On the opening day of the trial, Mr Dann told the jury there were many elements of the case that the prosecution and defence agreed on.There appeared to be no dispute that an argument occurred, likely over a drone being flown in the area by Mr Hill. There was no dispute a violent incident followed, involving Mr Lynn, Mr Hill and Ms Clay, which resulted in the latter two losing their lives. There was no dispute Mr Lynn tried to cover up the deaths by destroying evidence, including the bodies of the elderly campers. There was no dispute Mr Lynn told police where they could find what was left of the decomposed remains.
The central dispute in the case is whether Mr Lynn committed murder, as prosecutors allege, or whether the 57-year-old pilot was caught in the middle of two tragic accidents.
According to Mr Lynn, the first death occurred when he and Mr Hill were locked in a physical struggle over a shotgun.
With Mr Hill's finger on the trigger, Mr Lynn said the weapon accidentally fired and the shot struck Ms Clay in the head as she crouched near the front of a four-wheel drive.
As Mr Gellatly went through blood spatter analysis of the crime scene, he said investigators took a swab from inside the barrel of Mr Lynn's gun because of the vacuum theory.
"There was staining. Red-brown staining, but the DNA profile that was obtained was a very partial single DNA profile," he told the jury.
Mr Gellatly went on to say that the sample was so poor that it could not be compared to Ms Clay's DNA.
But the possibility of blood in the gun — and the vacuum theory having played out — raised a potential scenario that Ms Clay was in fact shot from a much closer distance than what Mr Lynn had claimed.
Mr Dann was not impressed.
Nowhere in Mr Gellatly's two previous police statements and 476 pages of notes released to the defence was any mention of a vacuum theory. The single reference to a red-brown stain was unclear because of a typo in the notes, Mr Gellatly said.
Mr Dann pressed Mr Gellatly into conceding the red-brown substance may have been gun oil and there was "no evidence" it was Ms Clay's blood.
The barrister also accused Mr Gellatly of colluding with prosecutors to spring the "half-baked" vacuum theory on the defence during the third week of the murder trial.
It was a claim Mr Gellatly denied at first, before shifting his position to say he could not remember if the vacuum theory had been discussed in pre-trial meetings with prosecution lawyers.
Dann: You'd discussed it. You prepared for it. You were going to give evidence about this vacuum theory, weren't you?
Gellatly: I hadn't prepared for anything. I prepared for the case … when I discussed it, and if I discussed it, I don't remember when.
Dann: Well, I'm saying you're lying.
Gellatly: I stand by what I said. I can't recall if and when we discussed it.
Mr Dann questioned the witness on his understanding of the vacuum theory, to which Mr Gellatly said his knowledge came from conversations with police colleagues and articles he had read. Mr Gellatly said he raised the existence of the theory in front of the jury to explain why he conducted the inner-barrel swab testing.
During the barrage of questions on Thursday afternoon, Mr Gellatly repeatedly took sips of water from a cup next to the elevated wooden witness box.
He said the words "I don't remember", "I don't recall", "I don't know" and "I can't recall" more than 40 times during cross-examination.
"Do you have some ongoing difficulty with your memory?" Mr Dann asked.
"No, I don't," Mr Gellatly replied.
Two days earlier, Mr Lynn watched from the dock as ballistics expert Paul Griffiths brought the gun from the fatal incident into the Supreme Court.
Mr Griffiths stood opposite the jury and held up the 96-centimetre-long, Barathrum Arms SP-12 shotgun, equipped with a laser pointer and red dot sight.
During a physical demonstration, the sound of Mr Griffiths loading an empty shotgun magazine, disabling the cross-bolt safety and cocking the weapon echoed through the historic courtroom.
"That's ready to fire," he said at the end of the presentation. "All we need to do now is pull the trigger."
Mr Griffiths said string-line tests were conducted to consider three possible scenarios to determine if Ms Clay could have been hit with a shotgun projectile that passed through the side mirror of the four-wheel drive, while the two men wrestled nearby over the gun.
Mr Lynn told police Ms Clay was crouched, but Mr Griffiths said the testing showed a "plausible" scenario where she was actually standing upright at 160cm tall.
Mr Griffiths said it was "unlikely" Ms Clay was in a "fully-crouched" position at 78cm high, due to where Mr Hill and Mr Lynn were grappling, and the angle of the gun for Ms Clay to be hit.
Mr Dann then asked Mr Griffiths about the middle scenario, where Ms Clay was "semi-crouched" at 110cm tall.
Mr Griffiths said he hadn't done a "full recording" on that test and couldn't find the photo of it being conducted.
"I gave both extremities, the lower and the upper," he said.
"The middle wasn't important."
But the middle test was important, Mr Dann argued, and questioned whether the results were "buried" because they were unfavourable to the police case.
The defence barrister said the middle scenario was "absolutely spot on" with Mr Lynn's account of where Ms Clay was positioned, and argued there were flaws with reference points in the police testing.
Dann: This is just a botched exercise, isn't it?
Griffiths: Well, that's the information that I was given.
Dann: It's a completely botched procedure, exercise.
Griffiths: No, I disagree. Totally accurate.
During the increasingly fiery exchange, Mr Griffiths answered one of Mr Dann's questions with the words: "I don't know. I have no idea."
"That's a good summary of this whole exercise, isn't it. You've got no idea?" Mr Dann said.
"I have a very good idea and the results are accurate," Mr Griffiths replied.
Prosecutors have told the jury they are not exactly sure how Mr Hill died, but argue Mr Lynn's cover-up points to acts of murder.
Forensic witnesses have testified no cause of death could be determined for Mr Hill after analysis of small bones and teeth recovered from the burial site.
Prosecutors suspect Mr Hill was the first to die during the campsite fight, but Mr Lynn claims Mr Hill was killed after Ms Clay.
Mr Lynn told police Mr Hill was enraged shortly after the death of his lover and charged at him with a knife.
When a second struggle took place over that weapon, Mr Lynn said, the pair fell to the ground and the blade went through Mr Hill's chest.
The fourth week of the trial will hear testimony from the lead police investigator, Detective Brett Florence. Defence lawyers have told the jury they will also see Mr Lynn's police interview.
On May 14, Mr Dann quoted Mr Lynn's words from the interview, saying it summed up the entire defence case.
"I'm innocent of murder. I haven't behaved well. I've made some poor decisions, but murder as I understand it, I am innocent of," Mr Lynn said.
