The wife of former Jetstar pilot Greg Lynn was notably absent from court when a jury found him guilty of murder.
Hand in hand with Lynn’s son Geordie – from the now convicted murderer’s ill-fated first marriage – Melanie Lynn had been a constant beacon of support during her husband’s six-week trial.
Day after day, the glamorous flight attendant marched past the waiting media pack to take her seat in courtroom three of the Supreme Court of Victoria.
Mrs. Lynn blew kisses to her handcuffed husband as he entered the courtroom and waved angrily at him from the top row.
Towards the end of the six-week trial, Ms Lynn and Geordie sat directly across from Lynn, who was sitting just a distance away from both of them in prison.
But on Tuesday, when the verdict on Lynn’s demise was announced, only Geordie braved the packed courtroom.
Alone, he was forced to face the media horde that descended on him as he left the Supreme Court.
Melanie Lynn and son Geordie attend court together during Greg Lynn’s trial
Greg Lynn leaves the Supreme Court of Victoria in Melbourne on Thursday
The jury heard that Mrs Lynn and her stepsons had no idea Lynn was leading a secret double life right under their noses until police accused him of two murders.
Lynn, 57, was found not guilty of the murder of Russell Hill, 74, but guilty of that of Carol Clay, 73, on Tuesday.
Lynn had managed to convince his entire family that he had nothing to do with the camper mystery, which the jury heard had been the subject of widespread media reports for more than a year before the pilot’s arrest.
When a car matching Lynn’s description was shown on 60 Minutes, the court heard his wife could not contain her laughter, such was the similarity.
“She cackles like a hyena, you might say,” Judge Michael Croucher noted as the jury was safely tucked away.
The audio was recorded on secret police listening equipment at Lynn’s home in Caroline Springs and was never played to the jury.
Wrapped in a duvet in the freezing interrogation room of Sale police station, in Victoria’s Gippsland region, Lynn told detectives his wife had no idea what he had been up to since his fateful meeting with the elderly campers.
Although Lynn had always denied killing the couple, the jury repeatedly heard that he had openly admitted to cleaning up the alleged crime scene and destroying the evidence.
When Lynn was arrested in the rugged wilderness of Victoria in November 2021, his wife was taken completely by surprise.
Geordie Lynn navigates past reporters outside the High Court in Melbourne on Tuesday
Greg Lynn used a roller and regular house paint to disguise his Nissan Patrol
“The car in the footage looked a lot like my car,” Lynn explained to the jury from the witness box.
“It, uh, it was my car. My family still didn’t believe it was my car. Eh, they thought that was kind of funny that it looked so familiar.
“But it certainly looked like my car and removing the awning made it look less.”
The jury was also shown a video of Lynn removing the awning from his 4WD.
It showed Lynn pulling into the driveway of his home with a tank of gas before returning to remove the distinctive awning attached to the vehicle in the image shown on 60 Minutes.
Lynn had already gone to the trouble of changing the color of his vehicle and selling the trailer that was on the schedule.
In an image shown to the jury, Lynn was pictured using a regular paint roller to paint his vehicle in June 2020 – just months after police alleged he killed the campers.
His own wife had taken the so-called happy photo that was later used as evidence against him.
“Well, she’s seen me paint it before,” Lynn told police during his account of the interview.
Lynn said he used Dulux Metal Shield to do the paint job, using a “sandbar” color he previously purchased with the intention of painting his Jayco Hawk camper.
“So, you know, ‘Oh, there he goes again, he’s painting his car,'” Lynn told police.
At the time, Lynn had been laid off as a pilot due to the first of many Covid lockdowns.
Melanie Lynn makes her way into the Supreme Court of Victoria, past a waiting cameraman
Greg Lynn removed the awning from his car after watching a 60 Minutes report featuring his 4WD
Melanie Lynn had been a flight attendant when her husband allegedly murdered the campers
Lynn told police his wife was preoccupied with Victoria’s first lockdown when he returned from his ill-fated wilderness journey.
‘When I left there, the whole world fell apart. Yes. That was on Sunday,” he told police.
“I spoke to her on Saturday and she said to me, ‘Greg, the whole country is going into lockdown, this is absolute pandemonium.’
“I said, ‘I could tell something was going on because all the cars were just going in all directions.’
Lynn told police his wife was more concerned about getting basic supplies during the Covid lockdown than about what he had been up to in the bush.
“And she said, ‘You can’t buy toilet paper, you can’t buy cleaning supplies because the stores are just empty,'” Lynn said.
“When I arrived, she took me to the fridge, and she had a Covid plan there that she got out of the newspaper, and she spent the afternoon telling me what I had missed this past week when the world was shut down – the world fell apart.
“So that’s how that day was spent; she didn’t ask anything about my trip.’
Lynn took the witness stand and told the jury that he still had not talked to his family about what happened in the wilderness.
Geordie, Melanie and Elliott Lynn will appear in court on May 16
Carol Clay was shot in the head. What happened to Russell Hill is only known to Greg Lynn, who claims he fell on his own knife during a struggle
An image of Lynn’s vehicle as it appeared on 60 Minutes. The police already knew who it belonged to and were listening to Lynn on secret recording equipment
He claimed he did not tell his wife for fear of making her complicit in the crime of destroying evidence.
“I lied to my wife,” Lynn said.
“It would involve her in an issue that had nothing to do with her…I lied to my wife to protect her… If I told her, she would be involved.”
Lynn told the jury he was left in financial difficulties by Covid-19 lockdowns immediately after the alleged murders.
‘I was living with my wife at the time and we still had a mortgage on our house. She had part-time work as a flight attendant, which is not well paid, and it would have caused serious financial problems for us because I had two boys living at home at the time; one in high school,” Lynn said.
At the time of his arrest, Lynn had been working as a pilot for 36 years.
“I picked asparagus once during a period of unemployment,” Lynn claimed.
‘I have been cut back several times and have been doing menial jobs. I once worked as a river guide in Tasmania, but I don’t have any formal qualifications for anything.’
Lynn claimed the campers died as a result of a tragic accident, claiming Mr Hill shot Ms Clay dead before falling on his own knife in a deadly struggle moments later.
The jury didn’t believe him.