Inside the campers’ murder trial: A daughter’s perspective

During a five-week trial, the man accused of murdering Debbie Hill’s father looked at her only once – a dismissive glance after she testified.

“It was as if he thought I was irrelevant,” Debbie says.

She is talking about commercial pilot turned killer, Greg Lynn, charged and acquitted of murdering her father Russell Hill, 74, and convicted of the murder of fellow camper Carol Clay, 73.

Lynn gave sworn testimony that Clay was killed by an accidental shot when he and Russell Hill struggled over a shotgun, and Hill died when he accidentally stabbed himself trying to attack Lynn.

In the witness box, Lynn said: “All I can say to the families is that I am very sorry for your suffering that I caused.”

Russell Hill with granddaughter Jordan (left) and his daughter Debbie.

Reflecting on his apology, Debbie says: “He was so calm and collected telling his story as if he had practised it. When he apologised, there was no feeling behind it. He didn’t look at the families. He said it just to please the jury.”

Debbie watched the public trial both in court and online, as well as the pre-trial negotiations that were kept from the public. She is staggered by how much was not told to the jury.

She watched as the case against Lynn almost sank before it began. “The case was stacked against the prosecution,” she says.

The process is like a new play. There are closed rehearsals where the cast and director work out what will be released and then there is opening night with the audience none the wiser at what was left behind.

But first, we ask, what sort of man was her father?

Russell Hill was the father of three girls, a loner and hard worker. He was a logger in Heyfield before the family bought a small farm in Yarra Glen. He supplemented the farm income as a bulldozer and truck driver.

In his days working on the bulldozer, he helped build tracks in the Wonnangatta Valley that started a lifetime love of the area. Debbie says he would sometimes visit a plaque in the mountains to remember his nephew Gary, accidentally shot dead by a deer hunter.

Debbie says Russell’s first big hobby was amateur radio. “He took up camping when he was nearing retirement.”

She says he was not quick to anger, didn’t lose his temper and shied away from conflict, but “he could be grumpy, particularly with bad drivers when he was driving trucks”.

The first sign that his March 2020 camping trip may have gone wrong came with a call from Debbie’s mother, Robyn. “Mum rang me to say she hadn’t heard from him for a few days, but she wasn’t too worried because she thought he could be out of radio range.”

Clockwise from left: A sketch of the Bucks Camp site Gregory Lynn drew for police; Lynn; Carol Clay; and Russell Hill.

Then the burnt-out camp was discovered. Debbie believed there had been an accident. “I thought he could have been burnt in the fire and ran to the creek where he could have been washed away.

“I also thought he may have fallen down a mineshaft – I didn’t think it was something sinister,” she says.

For weeks, then months, and then for more than a year, the case stalled. Bush searches revealed nothing, the fire-destroyed scene was forensically barren and police pleas for public help resulted in hundreds of calls that were dead ends.

As accidental deaths, a suicide pact or an attempt to start secret lives became less likely, police thought murder was the probable explanation.

Suspected murder victims have no secrets when police search for motives, and when Hill and Clay went missing at Bucks Camp, it soon became apparent the childhood sweethearts were in a relationship.

The Hills and Clays had so many questions. Initially, detectives had few answers.

Russell Hill with his extended family.

Then police confided there was a breakthrough.

What they didn’t say was that pilot Greg Lynn was well in the frame. Police knew he had been in the area, he had lied about his movements, repainted his 1997 Nissan Patrol a different colour with a roller and Hill’s phone had pinged when Lynn turned onto the road at Mount Hotham.

They began a slow build-up of pressure using media stories in the hope that Lynn would make admissions in his bugged house or car.

Debbie was asked to co-operate with a 60 Minutes story: “Brett Florence [a key investigator] said they were keen to see how some people reacted.”

In November 2021, police rang her to say they were about to make an arrest, so that the family didn’t hear through the media. “They were really good,” she says.

Back to the trial. Lynn claimed Hill and Clay were killed accidentally, that he panicked, collected evidence to burn at the crime scene, left a false trail, loaded the bodies into his covered trailer, drove into even more remote country to dump them, returned months later to burn the remains, smashed them into thousands of pieces and then hid in plain sight.

The prosecution said (among other things) the methodical, near surgical and successful destruction of the scene pointed to a person not acting in panic but with cold-blooded precision.

Debbie says the courts should have put more weight on Lynn’s deliberate interference with evidence to the point that a cause of Hill’s death could not be forensically established.

“He was rewarded for getting rid of as much evidence as possible,” she says, believing that the cover-up should go towards a guilty mind.

Debbie points out that after his initial destruction of evidence, conducted in supposed panic, Lynn continued to hide the truth. A key point in his defence was that it was Hill who grabbed Lynn’s gun and it was Hill who accidentally fired the shot that killed Clay – a defence rejected by the jury.

If this was the case, Debbie says, why would Lynn later meticulously clean the gun, destroying Hill’s DNA that would support the accidental death theory?

“It would have proven someone else had handled the gun,” she says.

Russell Hill, Carol Clay and the murder weapon.

An army firearms expert familiar with Barathrum-style weapons questions how Hill could steal the shotgun, load the magazine in the dark, release the safety latch and fire the shots that killed Clay, as claimed by Lynn: “He [Hill] must have had four hands.”

During the pre-trial arguments, the police case was shredded. The defence argued a crucial police interview with Lynn in the Sale police station that went for days was unlawful.

The suspect, on legal advice, gave a no-comment response to multiple questions, but he did agree at first that an earlier statement he had given where he denied seeing Hill or Clay was true.

Police persisted and eventually, after more than 1600 questions, Lynn said: “I am going to ignore my solicitor’s advice and tell you what happened right from scratch.”

At the request of the defence the whole interview of nearly 3000 questions was thrown out as it was judged that police should not have persisted when Lynn initially refused to answer on legal advice.

An earlier interview conducted at Lynn’s home was also ruled inadmissible because it was secretly taped. Justice Michael Croucher ruled that once the record button was pressed by police, Lynn was a suspect and should have been cautioned.

In his Sale police station interview, Lynn told detectives his version of what happened and drew maps to show where he hid the remains.

With the interview ruled inadmissible, the evidence gained from Lynn’s answers was redundant. The jury would not know that Lynn admitted to a confrontation with Hill, gave a version of how the couple died, how he dumped the bodies and how he returned to burn and crush the victims.

The police case would have been: Lynn was in the area; they found human remains which DNA proved were from Clay and Hill; Lynn painted his car after they went missing; and Hill’s phone pinged at the same location at Mount Hotham where Lynn’s car was recorded.

Lynn’s lawyers would have said there were about a dozen cars that went through that spot at the time, and Lynn had repainted his car before. They would have asserted there was no motive, no cause of death and no proof Lynn was at Bucks Camp at the time.

The prosecution took the judge’s ruling to the Court of Appeal. It ruled that some (not all) of the Sale interview should be heard by the jury.

Game on.

The defence told jurors Lynn had answered all police questions truthfully, but they were not told he had lied constantly in the part of the interview that had been ruled inadmissible.

Lynn and his wife Melanie were recorded watching the 60 Minutes sting program. While the transcript was introduced as evidence, the actual recording was not.

“She said it looked a lot like your vehicle and cackled,” says Debbie. “I thought it was a nervous laugh as if it just dawned on her that it could be him.

“The jury should be given all the evidence, not just part. Let the jury decide.”

John Silvester lifts the lid on Australia’s criminal underworld. Subscribers can sign up to receive his Naked City newsletter every Thursday.