Andrew Rule: How police knew missing campers had met grisly fate

While theories swirled about the whereabouts of two elderly campers, police were quietly closing in on a suspected killer with a ghastly secret in his head and a repainted Nissan Patrol in his driveway.

Many months after Carol Clay and Russell Hill vanished, police were quietly closing in on a suspected killer with a ghastly secret in his head and a repainted Nissan Patrol in his driveway — a 4WD of the type that countless Australians use, including deer hunters who go shooting in the high country.

Investigators were confident they knew the identity of the last person to see Hill and Clay alive.

Unless the Nissan driver was cleared by watertight alibi or forensic science, he would become prime suspect for the couple’s presumed deaths. Police were certain the missing pair met violent ends at their Wonnangatta Valley campsite and that their bodies had been moved by a third party.

The timing of the deaths helped the third party flee the scene because the Covid pandemic which hit Victoria that week dominated media coverage and hindered public collaboration and police investigation for days, if not weeks.

But if the Nissan driver felt lucky in the first week or two, when it still seemed possible the missing pair were lost or had secretly run away, he was wrong. In truth, his luck had soured on that first night when he had tried to slip away from the high country by a back track, towing the trailer that would later vanish.

Automatic Number Plate Recognition images of Greg Lynn driving on the Great Alpine Road the morning after the alleged murders. Picture: Supplied.

By chance, risky driving conditions had caused rangers to lock a gate across a back track that would eventually have brought the driver near Myrtleford on the northwestern side of the ranges without having to detour on better roads via Mt Hotham.

If the Nissan driver had cut the lock or simply smashed through the gate, he would probably never have been identified. But he didn’t, perhaps because nearby campers might have heard the noise or he feared the narrow track ahead might prove impassable.

Instead, he did a laborious “30-point turn” and headed towards Mt Hotham to take the alpine highway across the ranges towards the Hume. Choosing that route meant his Nissan was routinely recorded by automatic cameras at Mt Hotham.

Later, months of careful detective work narrowed the field of potential suspects to those who were in the mountains around March 21, 2020 — but had not voluntarily come forward. In other words, those who had drawn attention to themselves by trying not to draw attention.

Such evasiveness is not proof of criminality but evasive people greatly interested detectives following two strands of investigation.

The first was to identify a 4WD (seen in the Wonnangatta area in late March) which remained unaccounted for.

The other clue was mobile telephone use. Sophisticated ways of analysing phone data across the high country at the crucial time pinpointed those people who had been present but had failed to identify themselves.

If Lynn had taken the back roads, he may have avoided detection.

Police now routinely use mobile phone records to pinpoint suspects in murders such as Jill Meagher’s death in Brunswick in 2012 — and, this year, the presumed murder of Samantha Murphy near Ballarat. Hunting international terrorists has improved interpretation of mobile phone data, which is why the Wonnangatta investigators sought overseas help.

When police started reeling in persons of interest, they asked them what they were doing at Wonnangatta on certain days in March 2020.

A flat denial might be a provable lie and so a reason for suspicion. An admission would set up the next question: Why not voluntarily identify yourself the way others have?

After that, questions would lead towards the big one: “Where are the bodies?”

Investigators were playing a long game after a slow start. By the time a passing camper reported Russell Hill’s burnt-out tent and scorched Toyota to Sale police, days had passed. Initial reports did not make that time lapse clear, confusing potential witnesses.

At first, it seemed reasonable that the pair had got lost and that their tent had coincidentally burned — accidentally or through arson by opportunist thieves.

The fact that Russell Hill’s expensive drone was missing raised the possibility that the pair went looking for it in the bush, became lost then died from exposure, their bodies eaten by wild dogs. That grisly scenario has often played out in the mountains.

But two things pointed towards sudden violent death.

Photos taken by another camper of Russell Hill and Carol Clay's destroyed campsite in the days after they disappeared in the Wonnangatta Valley in March 2020. Picture: Supplied.

First, searchers could find no trace of the missing couple. Second, investigators calculated that their sleeping bags were missing because no zips were found in the ashes, implying the bags might have been used to move bodies.

Meanwhile, it was increasingly clear the pair didn’t stage their disappearance. Computerised banking, credit cards and the nationwide network of security and traffic cameras showed no signs they were alive.

Russell Hill, an experienced bushman, had worked in the area as a logger and was unlikely to get lost. Against that was the macabre longshot possibility of an elaborate murder-suicide committed by a secretive man leading a double life.

Time makes mysteries deeper. The fact that three other people had disappeared in the high country in the previous nine years bred rumours about an eccentric spear hunter dubbed “Button Man”, soon discounted by police.

Detectives looked back to when Hill picked up Carol Clay from near her Pakenham home on the morning of March 19, 2020.

To a casual observer, there wasn’t much to see. An older man in a Toyota LandCruiser with a pleasant woman his own age. Just grey nomads off on a trip, except for one thing: no-one else in either family knew that they were going camping together.

Hill and his wife were long-time friends of Carol Clay. The Hills lived in Drouin after returning from Heyfield, where they’d spent the 1980s while Russell worked in the bush, logging, often in timber coupes towards the old Wonnangatta Station site.

Russell Hill picked up Carol Clay before the pair headed off camping.

No-one else in either family knew the pair were going camping together.

Hill apparently took his usual route through Heyfield and Licola to Wonnangatta. The pair vanished some time in the 18 hours after Hill made a radio call to a friend late on March 20. He said he was about to camp near the old station.

Some time that night or next morning, the pair disappeared. By the time a passing traveller saw their camp around 2pm next day, the tent had burned, scorching the Toyota. The ashes were cold; so was the trail.

When Sale police arrived, they found the Toyota locked. They assumed Hill was probably carrying his keys and mobile phone. Hill was unlikely to have locked his car while sitting next to it — but would probably lock it if they went for a walk.

The tent fire was puzzling. Was it arson or an accident caused by their campfire? Thieves often set fires, whether maliciously or to destroy fingerprints and DNA. Same with killers.

Over time, detectives canned the idea the pair were lost but couldn’t quite rule it out completely. Maybe they’d gone for a walk and got “bushed” after losing the drone in flight?

In the early stages, an alternative theory for the drone’s absence was that Hill left it in the tent and that a passer by stole it before torching the camp. The question was whether such a thief would also kill two pensioners.

Police believed someone had. Long before they made a move, they had a fair idea who was last to see the missing pair alive.

Tracking down Lynn

When police first interviewed Greg Lynn in July 2020, less than four months after the presumed double homicide, he wasn’t a suspect. They came knocking because his vehicle registration was one of several recorded by cameras near Mt Hotham resort the week the couple disappeared.

Missing persons squad detective Abbey Justin would later tell a court that when she and another investigator questioned the then Jetstar pilot in his kitchen, he was just a potential witness. Still, they were interested in his movements — and intrigued by the fact he’d painted the blue Nissan bronze and sold his trailer.

The pilot’s answers did not satisfy the investigators’ curiosity, which had been pricked many weeks before, in May 2020.

That was when analysis of the missing Russell Hill’s mobile phone data showed that between 9.26am and 9.50am on March 21, his phone was moving towards Mount Hotham from the Dargo direction.

Lynn painted his dark grey Nissan beige. Picture: David Caird

Hill hadn’t been in contact with anyone since the previous evening, when he had his regular call with fellow amateur radio enthusiasts. Police are confident the fatal confrontation was later that evening, which means that if Hill’s mobile phone was “travelling” the next morning, it was with someone else. But who?

Just 12 vehicles had passed Hotham around the time Hill’s phone had been detected in that area. One was Greg Lynn’s.

Police spent five weeks researching the pilot before knocking on his door. On July 14, Abbey Justin arrived with her boss, acting sergeant Brett Florence.

The police recorded the conversation and Lynn provided a statement. He was a person of interest well on the way to becoming a suspect.

Between July and December, police checked out Lynn with banks and government agencies, obtained more images from the Hotham cameras, spoke to a witness who’d been in the area at the time, and went back to the hills to search again.

By early December 2020, as other possible candidates fell away, Lynn was in the crosshairs. He was under surveillance with GPS trackers, telephone intercepts and “bugs” in his house and vehicle.

Police spent most of the following year doing further searches, including one at Howitt Plains, where cadaver dogs were used to check anywhere that Lynn might have camped since the murders.

Greg Lynn was photographed by his wife, Melanie, repainting his car on June 4, 2020. Picture: Supreme Court of Victoria

Meanwhile, police were listening to Lynn’s conversations, mostly him talking to himself. He had the professional pilot’s habit of stating what he was doing as he did it, a legacy of long hours piloting aircraft fitted with recorders requiring pilots to describe movements.

Monitoring Lynn’s movements in real time forced the case to a head. Brett Florence and another detective were listening to Lynn speaking to himself as he was driving in late November 2021 when he (Florence later stated) “appeared to be crying and started talking in the past tense and he was engaged in self-talk that was concerning and seemed to indicate a propensity for self-harm.”

Covert listening devices in Lynn's car and home picked up the ex-pilot's ramblings about the missing campers.

Lynn was heading back to the high country, ostensibly to go hunting, but investigators feared he might be planning suicide. So they had to make instant decisions to protect the interests of the grieving families. By this stage they had no doubt that the missing pair had met violent deaths; their duty to the distressed relatives in such cases is to “extinguish all hope” by finding human remains.

After a year of watching and waiting, detectives felt an obligation to stop Lynn harming himself — and to ask him to consider family members desperate to locate their loved ones’ remains.

In a crisis, the urgent outweighs the important, so police threw together a plan to stop Lynn from harming himself. Special Operations Group members headed for the hills by helicopter to intercept him at his camp at Arbuckle Junction. He did not resist when surrounded on November 22, 2021.

Russell Hill and Carol Clay's destroyed campsite.

Apprehending him seemed the humane thing to do in the circumstances but it skewed a copybook investigation. Now they had to build the plane after take off, as the saying goes.

Lynn spent four days at Sale police station helping police with their inquiries. What he told them was, correctly, suppressed. He gave vital information because he steered investigators to another district — Wongungarra, past Dargo, where they uncovered the remains of the missing victims a long way from where they had been killed.

No details were released, naturally. But investigators undoubtedly discussed certain scenarios, such as Lynn being upset by Hill’s drone filming him.

A summary of evidence outlined part of what police believe happened.

“The accused contaminated and staged the crime scene, intentionally destroyed evidence within the crime scene, and removed evidence from the crime scene before transporting and disposing of the bodies and mobile devices to further conceal his involvement and distance himself …”

In other words, he allegedly set fire to their camp and fled with the bodies in his trailer, disposing of them well away from Wonnangatta. The trailer was also later disposed of and has never been found.

Lynn was also alleged to have returned to the scene in May and November 2020 where he burned the remains and dispersed them.

The absence of bodies did not block the investigation. When Hill’s mobile phone went in the car the morning after the murders, it created an electronic trail that led slowly but surely to Gregory Lynn’s door.

To a lay person, it might have seemed inevitable that the accused would be convicted of a double homicide on what at first appeared to be damning evidence. But that perception altered during the course of the trial.

The complete destruction of the crime scene meant there was no contrary version of events but Lynn’s self-serving story, leaving a gap through which a brilliant defence counsel might well steer a judge and jury.

In the event, not all jury members were persuaded.

Originally published as Andrew Rule: How police knew missing campers had met grisly fate