A jury tasked with deciding the fate of former Jetstar pilot Greg Lynn has retired to consider its verdict after hearing five weeks of evidence.
Lynn, 57, pleaded not guilty in the Supreme Court of Victoria to the murders of Russell Hill, 74, and Carol Clay, 73, in the Wonnangatta Valley, in the state’s alpine region on March 20, 2020.
On Friday, Justice Michael Croucher finished his final address to the jury, ending the epic trial that saw Lynn himself enter the witness box to address jurors in person.
Lynn’s barrister Dermot Dann KC had been scathing of the prosecution case in his final address to the jury on Wednesday.
Mr Dann told the jury they had been left with no evidence to work with to convince themselves beyond reasonable doubt Lynn was guilty of the murders.
‘There is no factual basis on the prosecution case. They have none, nought, total blank,’ Mr Dann said.
‘There’s no evidence … you’re being asked to find a man guilty of murder.
‘On the prosecution case there is zero factual foundation, zero motive – just a complete blank.
‘Does that sit well with you? I mean how can it?’
On Friday, Justice Croucher too took a swipe at Crown prosecutor Daniel Porceddu for breaking the well established rules of ‘fairness’ in its closing address.
‘The rule of fairness was breached by Mr Porceddu when making arguments to you,’ he told the jury.
‘Had Mr Porceddu Mr Lynn these questions, put these propositions to him, Mr Lynn may well have been able to respond in a powerful and convincing way.’
The jury heard Mr Porceddu made the mistake of making submissions in his closing address that he did not give Lynn an opportunity to answer while he was in the witness box last week.
‘In assessing the prosecution case on these matters you must take into account Mr Lynn … was not given the opportunity by the prosecutor to directly answer these points,’ he said.
‘Because of this breach in basic rules of fairness and because of those consequences of the breach, you may more readily reject the prosecution argument and may more readily reject the inferences the prosecution wants you to draw.’
Mr Dann said while his client admitted to the crime of disposing of evidence, he could not be found guilty of murder based on the evidence presented at his trial.
‘On the prosecution case there is zero factual foundation, zero motive – just a complete blank.
‘Does that sit well with you? I mean how can it?’
‘We’re in a murder trial. You’re trying to do your duty as jurors and being asked to convict a man. Well you just can’t say “well look we don’t have any evidence but let’s just convict him anyway”. That’s not how it works,’ Mr Dann said.
While Lynn has always denied murdering the couple, the jury heard he freely admitted to cleaning up the alleged crime scene and destroying the evidence.
‘It was despicable,’ Lynn conceded.
‘All I can say to the families is that I am very sorry for all of your suffering that I’ve caused … yes I should be punished for it. For what I did.’
The jury heard Lynn had offered to plead guilty to the destruction of evidence before going on trial, but it had been rejected by the prosecution.
‘I am innocent of murder,’ he said. ‘I am innocent (of manslaughter too). I haven’t killed anyone.’
Dressed neatly in a suit and dark-rimmed spectacles, the former pilot spoke in a cool and calm manner as he took the jury through the bloody details of what police allege was cold blooded murder.
The jury heard Lynn claimed the couple died after Mr Hill stole his shotgun and the pair engaged in a deadly struggle for control.
‘I don’t know if he intended to shoot me or not, probably not,’ Lynn told the jury. ‘I think he was just trying to keep the shotgun for himself and scare me off.’
The jury heard Lynn had been sitting near his campfire by the river when he saw Mr Hill take his shotgun and load the magazine.
The doors of Lynn’s Nissan Patrol had been left wide open to ‘liberate all the music’ from his car stereo, which in the pilot’s own words was done in a ‘childish effort’ to annoy Mr Hill after a previous run-in with him.
Lynn created a sketch of the scene to help jurors work out how he claimed Mr Hill gained access to his Nissan Patrol to steal his shotgun.
The image showed a depiction of Lynn’s 4WD with all of its doors open, allowing Mr Hill to take Lynn’s shotgun from the rear and ammunition clip from the front.
Lynn claimed Mr Hill accidentally shot Ms Clay through the head as he attempted to wrestle the shotgun away from him.
Pressed upon the bullbar of Mr Hill’s Landcruiser, Lynn claimed Mr Hill pulled the trigger, blasting off the side mirror and hitting Ms Clay directly in the head.
Mr Hill died moments later after falling on his own knife during another struggle, Lynn claimed.
The jury heard Lynn had placed a laser sight on the shotgun which killed Carol Clay to ensure he could focus on the heart and lungs of the deer he enjoyed stalking.
Lynn suggested had he wanted to kill Ms Clay, he would not have blasted off the side mirror of Mr Hill’s Landcruiser in the process.
‘Well the whole point of having a laser sighting on the shotgun … is so that you can put the dot of the laser on the target and you are certain that the round will hit that target,’ Lynn said.
‘So the slug went through the mirror, if I had done what the police have said I’ve done … if someone had shot Carol Clay with the laser sight on, the laser would have illuminated on the mirror not on Carol Clay.’
Lynn described in gruesome detail the bloody aftermath of the alleged crime scene, which he has admitted to going to great lengths to destroy and clean.
‘The scene was horrendous,’ Lynn said.
‘There was blood splatter on the hitching rails and the tray base of the Toyota Landcruiser. There was some on the inside of the canopy.
‘I wiped all of that off … the solar panels … they had blood and other material on them and over the camp furniture.
‘Some of those pieces were covered in a lot of tissue and blood. There was a very large pool of blood on the ground in between the Landcruiser and the tent where Carol Clay was.’
Lynn was cross-examined by Crown prosecutor Daniel Porceddu, who closed the prosecution case on Wednesday, before Lynn began giving his version of events.
‘You’ve heard the accused gave a version of events in his interview and in the witness box last week. For reasons I’ll go into in due course, the prosecution says that that account in completely fanciful,’ he told the jury in his closing address.
‘You can comfortably reject it as being an elaborate fiction.’
Mr Porceddu ran the jury through all of the evidence they have been presented over the past month.
‘He tells you Mr Hill and Ms Clay both died accidentally in separately instantaneous, or near instantaneous, fatal incidents both brought about by the conduct of Mr Hill,’ Mr Porceddu said.
‘The accused’s story is indeed a series of very unfortunate events. Like the book series of that name, it is also a complete fiction.’
Mr Porceddu claimed Lynn had made further errors in his account to police about the alleged confrontation with Mr Hill.
‘There are a number of reasons the story that the story is completely implausible,’ he said.
Mr Porceddu said Lynn had made a mistake in his account of the supposed struggle with Mr Hill by not taking into account the rope tied from the bullbar of his Landcruiser to the toilet.
The jury heard the struggling men would have become hopelessly entangled in the rope had Lynn’s version of events been true.
‘He knows he’s sunk because he knows that he and Mr Hill would have become tangled up in the guy rope,’ Mr Porceddu said.
Mr Porceddu claimed Lynn came up with his story in the 18-months it took police to arrest him.
‘The so-called struggle for the gun is the whole linchpin in the accused’s story. Once that falls like a house of cards everything else tumbles with it,’ he said.
‘You don’t believe a word of it. We urge you to see the accused’s account for what it is – a carefully constructed fiction developed over one year, eight months. During that time the accused was able to gain through the media an understanding of the evidence emerging.
‘It was an account that was clearly carefully rehearsed so much so that he can repeat it almost word-for-word over two separate days of a police interview. It is an account crafted in such a way to shift the blame to Mr Hill.’
The jury heard Lynn’s story about Mr Hill stealing his gun from his car made no sense.
‘If you’re a person concerned about firearm safety, you’ve snuck up to the accused’s campsite to confiscate his gun, and you’re trying to do that without him knowing, why are you loading it when all you’re looking to do is take it back to your campsite?’ the prosecutor said.
Mr Porceddu said it was also unreasonable to think Mr Hill would have taken the shotgun and left Lynn’s rifle in the car.
‘If you’re going to confiscate the gun of a person you’ve not been on the best of terms with, who you’ve allegedly been provocative towards and you’re doing it to eventually report him to the police, don’t you think you’d make he wasn’t left with another gun?’ he said.
The jury heard police allege Lynn likely murdered Mr Hill after some kind of dispute before eliminating Ms Clay because she was the only witness.
‘Had she been allowed to live, Ms Clay would have been in a position to identify the accused,’ Mr Porceddu said.
‘While it is not kown how Mr Hill was killed because the accused deliberately burnt the body of Mr Hill and obliterated any forensic evidence … the evidence establishes Ms Clay was killed by a gunshot to the head.’