How police ruled Button Man out of high country campers investigation

Before police charged Greg Lynn, they had to eliminate the enigma known as Button Man from their investigation into the missing campers.

Police said Button Man is “known to scare campers and hunters in the night”.

The mountain enigma known as Button Man, a feared local identity and many others were eliminated from inquiries before Greg Lynn was charged with murdering Russell Hill and Carol Clay.

Mr Lynn, a former Jetstar pilot, was this week ordered to stand trial over the killings but only after a major police effort which excluded, among others, Button Man and a local with a history of violent offending and indiscriminate use of firearms.

This week’s Melbourne Magistrates’ Court committal hearing for Mr Lynn heard that detective acting Sgt Brett Florence had reviewed other missing person cases in the course of the Hill-Clay investigation, codenamed Lexicon.

“A person of interest commonly referred to as the ‘Button Man’ was nominated through public appeal at the time,” the Missing Person Squad detective wrote in his statement.

“He is a person that camped in the high country at a location known as 5 Ways near Mount Howitt who was known to scare campers and hunters in the night.”

Sgt Florence’s searches led him to identify the mysterious “Button Man” as a 74-year-old Reservoir man.

Detective acting Sergeant Brett Florence outside a Melbourne court. Picture: David Crosling

But the people living at Button Man’s known address said he no longer resided there, and hadn’t for some time.

Just over a month (April 28, 2020) after the disappearance of childhood sweethearts Mr Hill and Ms Clay, Victoria Police’s Search and Rescue Squad tracked down “Button Man” at Five Ways in the high country.

He said he was camping there at the time the couple went missing.

The distance between Five Ways and Wonnangatta was “too great for him to have seen them and their vehicle”, he said.

In May, Sgt Florence made a rare call out for journalists to stop looking at “Button Man” as a person of interest.

There was “ongoing media speculation and increasing risk”, the detective said.

By the end of the year, Sgt Florence would meet Button Man at the police complex on Spencer St, in Melbourne’s CBD, where he’d give a formal account of his movements.

Another man from the area was flagged as a person of concern by Parks Victoria.

The man, from one of the localities closest Wonnangatta, is regarded in the area as violent and aggressive and has access to firearms.

Greg Lynn was charged with murdering Russell Hill and Carol Clay. Picture: Facebook

Phone data later led to that man being discounted from involvement.

But in the end, it was Mr Hill’s phone — pinging off towers at Mount Hotham the morning after he was allegedly slain — that helped police track down the accused killer.

In late May 2020, officers drove to Harrietville and Bright searching for any CCTV they could find from two months earlier, but were told by local businesses that “they couldn’t assist”.

At Mount Hotham, they had better luck.

The resort manager told them there was a licence plate recognition camera that operated “all year around”.

After a warrant was executed, they found that twelve cars drove through the Great Alpine Road camera within the 10 minutes of Mr Hill’s phone pings the morning of March 21, 2020.

Police tracked down the vehicle owners who “all were able to provide an account” of their movements.

But only one car, a blue Nissan Patrol towing a trailer, drove through the camera at 9.48.01am — just 10 seconds after Mr Hill’s phone pinged off the nearby tower.

“No other vehicle travelled through the camera at this time frame,” Det Florence said.

It was Mr Lynn.