How the glamorous wife of former Jetstar pilot Greg Lynn was kept in the dark about his role in the double death of elderly campers

By William On Jun 10, 2024

The wife of former Jetstar pilot Greg Lynn had no idea he was leading a secret double life right under her nose until police accused him of two murders.

Melanie Lynn attended court every day during her husband’s trial, navigating through hordes of photographers as they fired dozens of shots in her direction.

Lynn, 57, has been acquitted in the Supreme Court of Victoria of the murders of Russell Hill, 74, and Carol Clay, 73, in the Wonnangatta Valley, Victoria’s Alpine region, on March 20, 2020.

Melanie Lynn makes her way into the Supreme Court of Victoria, past a waiting cameraman

Greg Lynn managed to fool his entire family that he had nothing to do with the secret RV mystery

Lynn had in fact managed to convince his entire family that he had nothing to do with the camper mystery, which a jury heard had been the subject of widespread media reports for more than a year before the pilot’s arrest.

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 encounter with the elderly campers.

Although Lynn has always denied killing the couple, the jury has heard repeatedly that he openly admitted to cleaning up the alleged crime scene and destroying evidence.

When Lynn was arrested in the rugged wilderness of Victoria in November 2021, his wife was taken completely by surprise.

Just days earlier, the couple had joked about how similar a vehicle linked to the alleged murders looked to his own.

An image of Lynn’s dark-coloured Nissan Patrol, towing the trailer he said he used to dump the bodies, had appeared on Channel Nine’s 60 Minutes programme.

“The car in the images looked a lot like my car,” Lynn explained to the jury on Thursday.

“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.”

Greg Lynn used a roller and regular house paint to disguise his Nissan Patrol

Video of Lynn removing the awning from his 4WD was shown to the jury this week.

It showed Lynn pulling into the driveway of his Caroline Springs home with a tank of gas before returning to remove the distinctive awning attached to the vehicle in the image 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.

Greg Lynn removed the awning from his car after watching a 60 Minutes report featuring his 4WD

Greg Lynn had managed to convince his family that he had nothing to do with the alleged murders

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.

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 implicated.”

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.

“I am innocent of murder,” he told the jury. “I didn’t kill anyone.”

Lynn told the court he would happily face the punishment imposed for his “despicable” attempts to cover up what happened that night.

“All I can say to the families is that I am deeply sorry for the suffering I have caused,” Lynn said.

“I should be punished for what I did.”

The jury is expected to retire at the end of this week to consider its verdict.

HOW PILOT CLAIMS Campers Died

Greg Lynn claims that elderly camper Russell Hill stabbed himself in a fight between the two men after Mr. Hill accidentally shot his lover and childhood sweetheart Carol Clay in the head.

The jury was told that Mr Hill stole Lynn’s shotgun after he became enraged because Lynn was playing loud music the night he was murdered.

“He went to Mr. Hill to try to get the gun back, to take control of the gun. Mr. Hill fired the gun into the air and Mr. Lynn initially took cover in the back of his car,” said Lynn’s attorney Dermot Dann, QC.

Lynn would later tell police he was left ‘s***less’ by Mr Hill’s actions.

“He decided the only way to make things safe was to get his gun back,” Dann said.

The jury heard that when Lynn tried to wrestle the firearm away from Mr Hill, the gun went off and Ms Clay was hit in the head.

When he saw what had happened, Mr. Hill dropped the gun and rushed to Ms. Clay’s body.

Mr Dann said Lynn picked up the gun and fired the remaining shots into the air before being attacked by an irate Mr Hill.

“The next thing is Mr. Hill comes up to him with a knife and yells at him, ‘She’s dead,'” Mr. Dann said.

‘There was a struggle over the knife. Mr. Lynn tries to defend himself – they are engaged in this struggle – and as part of that struggle the two men fall to the ground and the knife goes through Mr. Hill’s chest.”

The court heard that Hill and Lynn had argued earlier in the day about Lynn hunting deer so close to other campers.

Later that evening, Lynn decided to turn up the volume on his car radio in an attempt to irritate Mr Hill, the jury heard.

What happened next will be determined by the jury.