How police extracted location of missing campers Carol Clay, Russell Hill bodies in six-hour interview

Greg Lynn initially refused to talk to police, but after a gruelling six hour probe by detectives— he caved, starting a chain reaction that would eventually lead to his arrest.

Detectives Brett Florence and Daniel Passingham drilled thousands of questions at Greg Lynn over four gruelling days.

In a freezing cold interview room at Sale police station in November 2021, the detectives quizzed the former airline pilot about the whereabouts of Russell Hill and Carol Clay.

The campers had vanished in the High Country 20 months earlier.

The detectives peppered the now convicted killer with thousands of questions but he refused to budge.

Wearing a surgical mask, Lynn spoke to a lawyer over the phone, telling police he had been advised to give a “no comment” interview.

They refused to take no for an answer.

In an amiable fashion they piled on the pressure with every question, and after almost six hours of questioning and 45 hours in custody, Lynn cracked.

The conduct of detectives during the interview would later become a major source of legal argument that threatened to derail the prosecution.

In one instance, the detectives used a bizarre analogy likening Lynn’s lawyer to a flight attendant telling a pilot how to fly a plane.

After six gruelling hours, Greg Lynn cracked under police interrogation.

They also made promises, known as inducements, suggesting he might get his car keys back – implying he could be released – but only if he told them what happened.

At 2.20pm on November 24, 2021, Lynn – accustomed to being the smartest man in the room but now painted into a corner – gave the missing persons squad detectives the breakthrough they sought.

“In the interests of the inevitable and just getting it resolved now, I’m going to ignore my solicitor’s advice and tell you what happened right from the start,” he told them.

Wrapped in a blanket and wearing a surgical mask, Lynn methodically recounted how the campers were accidentally killed before he panicked and dumped their bodies in remote bush near Union Spur Track, where he later returned and burnt them.

At the end of the interview, the detectives told Lynn he would be charged with murder.

“I haven’t behaved well, I’ve made some poor decisions. But murder, as I understand it, I’m innocent of,” he replied.

He later drew a map showing where the bodies had been dumped, in a small bush clearing metres from the dirt road.

It was an important moment for investigators.

Extracting the location of Mr Hill and Ms Clay’s remains eliminated a major potential defence avenue for Lynn.

Lynn was “painted into a corner” by investigators.

While the primary objective was to return Mr Hill and Ms Clay to their families, there were investigative priorities in the post-arrest interview.

Police sources say finding nothing would have meant Lynn – if ever put before court – could have argued they may still be alive.

Detectives knew a clever lawyer would have been able to advance the theory they had run away to start a new life together. Though it was not the case, that scenario would have been easier to sell by the fact that Mr Hill and Ms Clay were in a secret relationship.

But there would later be significant issues at court surrounding the marathon interview at Sale police station in which Lynn confessed to disposing of their remains.

After weeks of legal argument late last year, Justice ­Michael Croucher ruled the interview and the evidence that flowed from it inadmissable because police had undermined Lynn’s legal advice.

While he was critical of police, labelling their conduct “appalling”, the judge noted that without Lynn’s account, the pair’s remains would probably never have been found.

“The Wonnangatta Valley is a vast mountainous area,” he said in his ruling.

“To find the evidence that was obtained from that site would have been not just like finding a needle in a haystack, but more like finding a speck in a dust storm.”

Working out Lynn was their man in the first place was the result of months of painstaking detective work.

The killer could have ­escaped by many routes.

The first investigators knew of his presence was when his Nissan’s ghostly image was retrieved weeks later from a camera near Hotham Heights.

The snap was taken at 9.48am the day after Mr Hill and Ms Clay had disappeared, a time detectives viewed as unusual for departure but proof of nothing.

Others who passed the camera were steadily discounted but Lynn could never be eliminated as the inquiry ground on.

“He wasn’t what you’d call the archetypal murder suspect,” one source with knowledge of the case said.

Without a confession, the judge said finding the bodies of the missing campers would have been akin to finding a “speck in a dust storm”. Picture: Jason Edwards

A roadside camera snapped the Nissan near Hotham Heights a day after Mr Hill and Mrs Clay disappeared.

Investigators’ interest in the pilot and family man intensified when he did not come forward in response to police appeals for those who had been in the region at the time to come forward.

A home decorator paint job to change the colour of the Nissan was another factor, ­explained away by Lynn as a Covid activity for his children but an element that was suspicious to detectives.

Examination of Lynn’s background added still more intrigue. It showed a highly intelligent man who had indications of a capacity for “Jekyll and Hyde” behaviour.

By the spring of 2021, the mounting evidence had ­investigators contemplating when to make an arrest. That became urgent when Lynn read a Sunday Herald Sun article on the case on November 21 and became alarmed, leaving home the next morning and heading east in defiance of his stated plan for a trip to the Grampians.

“That was a game-changer,” a source said.

Listening devices in the vehicle had police fearing Lynn may take his own life and the special operations group was dispatched to arrest him in the remote east Gippsland bush.

Days later, Lynn surrendered where and how he had disposed of the campers.

Greg Lynn repainting his Nissan wasn’t just a lockdown pastime. Picture: Supreme Court of Victoria.

“It’s the most brutal dismemberment of two human beings that you could ever imagine,” a source said. “The biggest piece no bigger than a 20-cent coin. It was a systematic attempt to wipe them from the face of the earth.”

Lynn later said the deaths were the result of a tragic ­sequence of long-odds events that started with a struggle with Mr Hill and ended with his death from a stab wound and Ms Clay suffering a fatal gunshot injury.

The scenario was more than a jury of 12 could accept and it convicted him of murdering Ms Clay. He will be sentenced at a later date.