Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Speaker 1: Detective see a side of life the average persons never
Speaker 1: exposed her. I spent thirty four years as a cop.
Speaker 1: For twenty five of those years I was catching killers.
Speaker 1: That's what I did for a living. I was a
Speaker 1: homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
Speaker 1: I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
Speaker 1: The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
Speaker 1: from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
Speaker 1: and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
Speaker 1: of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
Speaker 1: no one who comes in the contact with crime is
Speaker 1: left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into
Speaker 1: this world. Welcome back to Part two of my chat
Speaker 1: with Greg Hedrick, the TV writer, producer and author of
Speaker 1: the book In the Dead of Night, which is about
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty murder investigation in the disappearance of Russell
Speaker 1: Hill and Carol Clay, whose burnout campsite was governed in
Speaker 1: remote Victorian wilderness.
Speaker 2: Greg, welcome back, Thanks Garry. Well we left you with well.
Speaker 1: We left our listeners in part one with all the
Speaker 1: information that the police had at the time and just
Speaker 1: rehashing it that these couple were camping. Their campsite was
Speaker 1: found abandoned and it had been set alight. Their car
Speaker 1: had been abandoned. The police got a report of their
Speaker 1: disappearance about five days later. When the communications weren't coming
Speaker 1: through from the remote location. Then there was lines of inquiry.
Speaker 1: Police were trying to establish who was in the era
Speaker 1: and when we talked remote, we're talking extra really remote,
Speaker 1: extremely remote, and they came through a number plate recognition camera.
Speaker 1: They got the name of Greg Lynn. The police were
Speaker 1: spoken to Greg Lynn. He gave an account and was
Speaker 1: forthcoming in his movements down there, and that's basically where
Speaker 1: the police had been left with.
Speaker 3: That's and in fact, even at that stage they still
Speaker 3: hadn't talked to the button man they went. It was
Speaker 3: a few weeks after that they take that, and there
Speaker 3: was an other suspect that they had that other homicides
Speaker 3: told them about who lived nearby, who was as likely
Speaker 3: as Greg was. And in fact, the way it was
Speaker 3: described to me, as I say in the book, was
Speaker 3: that it was only when those two were eliminated as well,
Speaker 3: that they looked on their board of all the people
Speaker 3: who'd been in the valley or all the people who
Speaker 3: were suspects, and they could eliminate everyone except Greg.
Speaker 1: So on the version of events he had, they couldn't corroborate.
Speaker 3: That's right. It sounded, you know, really feasible, but they
Speaker 3: could corroborate nothing, So it.
Speaker 2: Makes it difficult.
Speaker 1: I always approached complex investigations with opportunity, capability of motive.
Speaker 1: Maybe who's a hard one with this, because it's why
Speaker 1: were these people killed. Opportunity is about being in the
Speaker 1: vicinity and capability have they got that?
Speaker 2: Are they the.
Speaker 1: Type of person that could commit a crime of that nature.
Speaker 1: They've gone through all the people they've identified in the area,
Speaker 1: so they're looking at opportunity. So they're ticking those and
Speaker 1: then eliminating people. I assume because of the information they provided.
Speaker 1: They had cameras, you said, pictures of Jim camping or whatever,
Speaker 1: had people with them that could where they were. But
Speaker 1: you've got Greg sitting there on his own, that's given
Speaker 1: the version, and the police had nothing, nothing that could
Speaker 1: corroborate it or contradict it.
Speaker 2: That's right, So where do you go? So what do
Speaker 2: you do?
Speaker 3: What do you do?
Speaker 1: And I would imagine. I would imagine that would be
Speaker 1: the briefing what happens now? You would all be standing
Speaker 1: I get how this would play out. You'd always standing
Speaker 1: in the interview room looking at the whiteboards, staring there
Speaker 1: and going, well, what do we do?
Speaker 3: What we do? The first thing? What the first thing
Speaker 3: they did was go, let's he's a jet Star pilot.
Speaker 3: Let's see if we can ask other Jet Star pilots
Speaker 3: what they think of him. And they quickly realized that
Speaker 3: he's someone who people like to stay clear of, wary
Speaker 3: of that, he's a little bit feared, very good at
Speaker 3: his job, but not well liked at all. And so
Speaker 3: it just starts to put him in a different category.
Speaker 3: When they're thinking, well, is he someone who conceivably could
Speaker 3: have done this? You're looking at someone who's known to
Speaker 3: be cold and calculating, not particularly friendly, not particularly warm,
Speaker 3: and they just build up a picture.
Speaker 1: Well looking, you've been trying to get the profile of
Speaker 1: the type of person you're looking at. Yeah, So before
Speaker 1: we move on, and I think, because investigations of this
Speaker 1: nature and I can see how hard the cops have worked,
Speaker 1: tell me a little bit about the about the investigative team.
Speaker 3: The ones. There are some I don't know about. The
Speaker 3: ones the ones that I do know about. The first
Speaker 3: informant was Abby Justin, who very smart, capable young woman
Speaker 3: in the mid thirties. From the very beginning, Brett Florence
Speaker 3: was around. Brett is the one that goes the whole way.
Speaker 3: Even though so Abby was the first informant, Brett stayed
Speaker 3: with investigation right through to the final interview. Another one
Speaker 3: involved was Candace Robson, and she was involved for a
Speaker 3: long time, but then she took leave to have a
Speaker 3: child about halfway through. And after Candace left, the head
Speaker 3: of the missing person squad who oversaw everything, Andrew Stamper,
Speaker 3: He and Brett decided they sat down and decided to
Speaker 3: bring in Dan passing him which was an interesting move
Speaker 3: because Dan Dan was a cop who was known to
Speaker 3: be good camper, four wheel driver, recreational shooter, et cetera,
Speaker 3: so he could talk Greg's language.
Speaker 1: I thought that was a really interesting, interesting move and
Speaker 1: a clever move on behalf of the team bringing Dan
Speaker 1: in because Dan, yeah, understood the type of person he
Speaker 1: was in the world that Yeah, the others might have
Speaker 1: been city dwellers and yeah, trying to understand that world
Speaker 1: of four will driving and hunting and hanging out in
Speaker 1: the bush.
Speaker 3: And that did pay off in the interview, in the
Speaker 3: report of interview.
Speaker 2: Okay, well we'll get back to Greg.
Speaker 1: So you got this situation, he's your best person of
Speaker 1: interest at this point in Tom what saw the moves
Speaker 1: did the police make.
Speaker 3: To the next thing? They took the I think the
Speaker 3: big pictures They took the view. They were not confident
Speaker 3: they had enough to just arrest and charge. Now they
Speaker 3: were developing theories and he was the only one left
Speaker 3: that they knew about. But there was so much they
Speaker 3: still didn't know. There was nothing that actually connected Greg
Speaker 3: to the burnt out campsite at all yet. So they decided,
Speaker 3: as often happens with homicide investigations, they needed surveillance. They
Speaker 3: needed to see if they could that The theory was
Speaker 3: put surveillance in his house and you know, car, etc.
Speaker 3: Then try and calibrate things so you could just prod
Speaker 3: him to think about that event, but not far enough
Speaker 3: to make him think he was the suspect. And of
Speaker 3: course what they found in terms of putting the surveillance
Speaker 3: devices inside his house was it was far more difficult
Speaker 3: than usual because it was COVID lockdown and everyone was
Speaker 3: living in the house.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thats it makes it very hard, very difficult situations.
Speaker 1: They managed to do it. We won't reveal how they
Speaker 1: did it, but they managed.
Speaker 2: To do it.
Speaker 1: There was a couple of things when they're building the
Speaker 1: case and they're working on hypothesis this might have happened,
Speaker 1: that might have happened. There was a couple of Really
Speaker 1: I think smart police work in what they've done and
Speaker 1: how they've interpreted things. One of the information correct me
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong. One of the information that Greg provided
Speaker 1: the police in that informal chat when they first spoke
Speaker 1: to him was that he got up in the morning,
Speaker 1: left at seven am when it was light. But they
Speaker 1: had records of his car having the car headlights on
Speaker 1: at ten am in the morning. And I think one
Speaker 1: of the detech is I don't know who they would
Speaker 1: attribute it to, but it was in a group discussion
Speaker 1: said well that's unusual. Maybe he was driving all night
Speaker 1: and forgot to turn his lights off.
Speaker 3: That's clever thinking, yeah that and I think that was Brett.
Speaker 3: It might have been heavy, but I think it was Brett.
Speaker 3: And yeah, so they had from the shots they had
Speaker 3: of his car going through the AMPR cameras Crade Outline road.
Speaker 3: The one the public saw later was the one from behind,
Speaker 3: but they also had the one from in front as
Speaker 3: it was approaching the camera and his lights were on.
Speaker 3: That's right, and they and it wasn't it was. It
Speaker 3: wasn't that. As soon as they got the phone, day
Speaker 3: went aha. It was later on they went, well, hang on,
Speaker 3: why would he's saying He actually said something like the
Speaker 3: sun comes up, you pack your camp camp up and
Speaker 3: you get going, and they're going. If he's not packing
Speaker 3: his camp up till the sun comes up, and he's
Speaker 3: been there since four o'clock, why are his headlights on?
Speaker 1: Simple thing? Simple thing like that. But that says little
Speaker 1: details that can get missed, and full credit to him
Speaker 1: that they okay, that's enough to pike your interest and
Speaker 1: look a little bit deeper at him. Then you start
Speaker 1: adding things like this and this is not it's not
Speaker 1: enough to get a person convicted. He changed the color
Speaker 1: of his car, Okay, So that's saying, well, okay, what's
Speaker 1: going on there. We know whatever happened at the camp site,
Speaker 1: the person was trying to cover up things. Then you've
Speaker 1: got a person that's changed the color of his car.
Speaker 1: Reasonable explanation. I'm sure a highly paid defense barrister could go, well,
Speaker 1: we all did strange things during COVID. Yeah, he just
Speaker 1: changed the color of his car. But they're little things
Speaker 1: that added up. When we're looking at a person of interest,
Speaker 1: you're trying to build a profile, the history, what this
Speaker 1: person's done. They've spoken to the Jetstar employees and he's
Speaker 1: not well liked, and a few other things that were said. So, okay,
Speaker 1: he's a bit of an outlier. He's not your average person.
Speaker 1: But there was something else about the victim, Russell Hill,
Speaker 1: that was quite interesting that comes into play. Then that's
Speaker 1: the victimology. That his nephew was killed in a hunting accident. Yes,
Speaker 1: his nephew in the mid nineties. His nephew Gary was
Speaker 1: actually mistaken for a deer and was shot by a
Speaker 1: dear hunter. The important thing was that a deer hunters
Speaker 1: had mistaken his nephew for a wild animal and had
Speaker 1: shot him accidentally and killed him. And Russell from that
Speaker 1: had never been a shooter anyway, but from then was
Speaker 1: kept a close watch on any hunters when he was camping.
Speaker 1: Did not like hunting and shooting all that much, and
Speaker 1: kept maps of where the hunting areas were, you know,
Speaker 1: where they couldn't couldn't hunt. So he's almost like his
Speaker 1: own little policeman in terms of policing the hunters in
Speaker 1: the various outback areas that he went and knowing. And
Speaker 1: that's where it gets interesting. You've got profiling the person
Speaker 1: of interest, you're profiling the victim, and you're trying to
Speaker 1: work out well, if they've met, has there been a class?
Speaker 1: So you've got this shooter that doesn't like being told,
Speaker 1: as in Greg, and then you've got Russell that doesn't
Speaker 1: like shooters, that.
Speaker 3: Doesn't like shooters and likes to put them in their place.
Speaker 3: And Greg who owned seven weapons. Okay, so you know,
Speaker 3: not many I don't know many jets star pilots would
Speaker 3: own seven weapons, but you know he did.
Speaker 1: And other things that they built a case, and the
Speaker 1: case theory more than anything. But the victim's phone was on. Now,
Speaker 1: the assumption being well, if you're in the room location,
Speaker 1: why have you got your why would the phone be
Speaker 1: turned on? But there's an explanation for that, yeah there is.
Speaker 1: And again it took them a little while to go ah.
Speaker 1: Of course he about a month or two before he'd
Speaker 1: bought a drone. Russell Hill had bought a drone, and
Speaker 1: he was very proud of being able to sort of
Speaker 1: fly his drone around and you know, check on what
Speaker 1: was happening in the in the various areas. You know,
Speaker 1: we might be good for fishing or camping or whatever.
Speaker 1: And what they realized was that, you know, drones are
Speaker 1: controlled through your phone. So while almost everybody who goes
Speaker 1: into the wond and gat a valley or the Great
Speaker 1: Alpine Road turns their phone off because you can't get
Speaker 1: recept anyway save the battery, his was on because it
Speaker 1: was controlling the drone. And so that's almost certainly why
Speaker 1: it was still on when it was being driven past
Speaker 1: those towers. And someone mightn't have realized that or forgot,
Speaker 1: They wouldn't have the attention the detail whether it.
Speaker 3: Was gregor whether it was Greg or someone else. The
Speaker 3: likelihood is that they never did find the drone, But
Speaker 3: the likelihood is the phone wasn't right there, and if
Speaker 3: they just picked up Carol and Russell's phone, the assumption
Speaker 3: would be they'd both be off.
Speaker 1: So they're building this case and all these red flags,
Speaker 1: indicators and all that. But you start to put it together,
Speaker 1: but still it's just a hypothesis of what might have
Speaker 1: happened that it can't be put any stronger. At what
Speaker 1: stage we talked about the data for the far the
Speaker 1: movement did they did that start to tighten up in
Speaker 1: the movements of confirm what they thought it was. It's
Speaker 1: basically locking it in. It is this is the path
Speaker 1: the phone travel.
Speaker 3: It was about nine or ten months later but they
Speaker 3: finally had the the full true call records I think
Speaker 3: they're called I think It's true call and where the
Speaker 3: mathematical analyst who was doing that could pinpoint at ten
Speaker 3: second intervals where Russell's phone was, and it was it
Speaker 3: was going up the Dargo Highplanes Road, it was turning
Speaker 3: left into Great Alpine Road and where the A ANDPR
Speaker 3: cameras are. It sort of hit bounced against the Mount
Speaker 3: Hotham tower just before and just after and in that
Speaker 3: time Russell's car went straight through the camera. In court,
Speaker 3: you can pretty much prove the phone had been in
Speaker 3: that car.
Speaker 1: And then you look at possible defenses building the case.
Speaker 1: Did someone just plant the phone in there? Someone throw
Speaker 1: the phone in there? All sorts of things that come in.
Speaker 1: But the case is starting to get stronger now, so
Speaker 1: it'd certainly been in the suspect stage. But that opens
Speaker 1: another consideration. This dude's a jet Star pilot, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure they they had issues because quite often when we're
Speaker 1: looking at people and you know what they're doing, well,
Speaker 1: are they potentially if we stir them up, are they
Speaker 1: going to do something horrific? Someone in charge of flying
Speaker 1: planes as a high risk How did that play out?
Speaker 1: Because I would imagine the police would be, well, the
Speaker 1: moment we put this up, he's going to they're going
Speaker 1: to have to take him away from his work so
Speaker 1: that the game's up that we're looking.
Speaker 3: It was a real there was a real crisis point
Speaker 3: for them when they realized that they as Jetstar. For
Speaker 3: the first few months the investigation, Jetstar wasn't flying, it
Speaker 3: was COVID. Then when jets Star started back up again,
Speaker 3: they thought, well, we can't. You know, what do we
Speaker 3: do If we'd call Jet Star head of security and say, look,
Speaker 3: it's one of your check pilots is just on the quiet,
Speaker 3: just on the quiet, and an investigation for a double murder,
Speaker 3: they'd be grounded immediately. And they'd have to tell him
Speaker 3: while he was grounded, he would know. And what they
Speaker 3: knew was if Greg knew, definitely he was their number
Speaker 3: one suspect. He shut up and they would never have
Speaker 3: any chance of getting any further evidence. On the other hand,
Speaker 3: if they if they didn't say anything. Some of the
Speaker 3: police psychologists were saying, well, if he starts to twig
Speaker 3: or you know, think about what had happened, or think
Speaker 3: maybe he might be in the frame, there's a chance
Speaker 3: he will crash a plane and they go.
Speaker 2: That would be a hard one to explain.
Speaker 3: That would be a very difficult one. So they were
Speaker 3: in a bind, and they were very close to actually
Speaker 3: picking up the phone to jet Star and resigning themselves
Speaker 3: to the fact that they'd gone as far as they could.
Speaker 3: When he was stung by one of his own bees.
Speaker 3: He'd brought some bee hives during lockdown, and one of
Speaker 3: his own bees stung him and he had an anaphylactic reaction,
Speaker 3: which meant his pilot's license was canceled for another six
Speaker 3: months until he got a health check again.
Speaker 1: I don't know how the police got the bees in there,
Speaker 1: but he did.
Speaker 3: Well. Him stung by a bee, we were thinking that
Speaker 3: we make an electronic you know, vic pop be that
Speaker 3: did it, et cetera. But no, it was just it
Speaker 3: was sheer luck, sheer.
Speaker 1: Luck, because that would be a real hard decision to
Speaker 1: make and you'd probably have to err on the side
Speaker 1: of the cause. And as it got tighter and tighter,
Speaker 1: you couldn't sit on that and let him fly planes.
Speaker 1: You'd have to have to move. So that was fortunate.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you need those lucky breaks. And that's incredible. I'd
Speaker 1: be really impressive if they managed to orchestrate that. That's
Speaker 1: one of the best undercover operations I've ever seen, getting
Speaker 1: someone stung by a bed.
Speaker 2: Okay, So that's given them some breathing space.
Speaker 1: They're working physical surveillance, electronic surveillance, and covert electronic surveillance.
Speaker 1: And you also addressed the difficulty of getting approval for
Speaker 1: having an electronic surveillance and you know, you've got to
Speaker 1: go through judges and everything that goes with that. And
Speaker 1: it's not just granted, it's not. So they were working
Speaker 1: with the pressures of that. What so what was their
Speaker 1: next move or when did they decide to.
Speaker 3: Live on their next move? Because having when they first
Speaker 3: put all that surveillance on him. Their thought was, most
Speaker 3: times someone has a confidence somewhere in their life. You know,
Speaker 3: it can be your wife or your husband, but often
Speaker 3: it's not. Often it's whoever you know Joe at the pub,
Speaker 3: and they were surprised to realize that Greg didn't have anyone.
Speaker 3: He actually didn't have any close friends at all, and
Speaker 3: so they thought, well, let's try and give him one
Speaker 3: and see if. And so it was going to be
Speaker 3: tricky to do. To get someone to become an acquaintance
Speaker 3: stroke friend of someone who actively avoided friendship wasn't going
Speaker 3: to be easy. So they needed someone with a particular
Speaker 3: set of circumstances that would appeal to Greg, that was
Speaker 3: very like minded, et cetera. And they had to go
Speaker 3: to Wa to find a cop who had all the
Speaker 3: boxes tipped as someone who could probably pull this off
Speaker 3: for them and get Greg just to slip up for
Speaker 3: three to five seconds. All they needed was to him
Speaker 3: to say the wrong thing for three to five seconds,
Speaker 3: and suddenly the case wouldn't be just circumstantial. They'd have something.
Speaker 3: And they had this all in place, and if you remember,
Speaker 3: there was a COVID positive test in Perth and Mark
Speaker 3: McGowan closed the Wa Borders.
Speaker 1: I love the power of those premieres.
Speaker 2: Let's close the world, I do remember.
Speaker 3: And it was a hard border shutdown and Wa you
Speaker 3: cut itself off from the rest of the world and
Speaker 3: they couldn't get him over And so that was like.
Speaker 1: And the detail is in the book and people want
Speaker 1: to find the detail. I can only imagine how frustrating
Speaker 1: that would be and going real like, can we just
Speaker 1: sort this out? But no, A hard lockdown is a
Speaker 1: hard lockdown. Okay, So they've got a case I would
Speaker 1: describe as circumstantial, but a fairly weak circumstantial.
Speaker 2: You put it before the courts.
Speaker 1: You'd be worried about him walking out on it, So
Speaker 1: they need more. There was one other thing that he did,
Speaker 1: if I remember it correctly, after the lockdown was removed
Speaker 1: from Victoria that midnight. First thing he does is drive
Speaker 1: straight straight back, yeah, back down there.
Speaker 3: That's the other clue they had, is they and it
Speaker 3: was before they had put all the surveillance on it,
Speaker 3: because they had so much trouble getting the surveillance on it.
Speaker 3: But when they were checking his phone records and they
Speaker 3: realized that after the first lockdown finished at midnight before
Speaker 3: one am, his phone was on the road driving straight
Speaker 3: back to we want to get highly.
Speaker 2: So who's desperate to get down?
Speaker 3: He was desperate to get there, and they did think
Speaker 3: who does that? Well again, there's like defense barishes are
Speaker 3: great at coming up with reasons. But you present that.
Speaker 1: At court and they go, he's been lockdown. Weren't we
Speaker 1: all frustrated during COVID?
Speaker 3: You didn't. We just want to get free, And you go.
Speaker 1: I know, So it's funny you look at it through
Speaker 1: the lens of Okay, Well, that's certainly painting the pitch
Speaker 1: from a prosecution point of view. But the alternative is
Speaker 1: the defense can rip it apart.
Speaker 2: So they're still looking for more.
Speaker 1: But they decide they're going to have to move on him,
Speaker 1: and they came up with a plan, as I understand that,
Speaker 1: to put pressure on all the people, priful people, on
Speaker 1: him when he's doing one of these trips when he's
Speaker 1: off grid. So when he comes back, the phone's just
Speaker 1: going to beep and all his friends' associates are going
Speaker 1: to be going, why the police knocking on their door talking.
Speaker 3: To m Yeah, they came to the view because the
Speaker 3: surveillance that the timeframe for the surveillance sports was running out,
Speaker 3: and they knew they wouldn't get another extension, So there's
Speaker 3: a sort of ticking clock here as well. So yes,
Speaker 3: they decide, first there's the segment they did on sixty minutes,
Speaker 3: and then later at the moment you're talking about, they
Speaker 3: felt they needed to rattle him somehow. They had to
Speaker 3: get him rattled so that in an interview situation he'd
Speaker 3: tell them more than he might otherwise do, and to
Speaker 3: do that he Jetstar was about to put him back
Speaker 3: in the air again. They didn't want that to happen.
Speaker 3: He told Melanie he was going to go camping up
Speaker 3: in the Grampians, which is sort of the Northwest, and
Speaker 3: yet they came up with this plan that to really
Speaker 3: rattle and panick him that when he came back on
Speaker 3: the grid, he would find that almost everybody he knew
Speaker 3: suddenly been spoken to.
Speaker 1: And there was a lot of I have jumped ahead,
Speaker 1: so I'll wind it back because the use of sixty
Speaker 1: minutes with the media. They'd been consulting with a psychiatrist
Speaker 1: or psychologist about how to put pressure on Greg to
Speaker 1: make him trip up or get further evidence, and the
Speaker 1: opportunity presented itself in sixty Minutes reached out to them
Speaker 1: to do a segment on the story. Yeah, and they
Speaker 1: came to an agreement with Andrew Andrew Stamper. Stamper came
Speaker 1: to an agreement, Yet, we should do it, and we
Speaker 1: control what we're going to release.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and I believe you know sixty Minutes' main
Speaker 3: point was they wanted to do for them. It's human interest.
Speaker 3: It's the emotional side, you know, the grief and stress
Speaker 3: that the families are going through, and you know, can
Speaker 3: the public help them, etc. And as far as Breton
Speaker 3: Andrew Stampho were concerned, it was that's great, can we
Speaker 3: also do this? And although it was dressed up and
Speaker 3: sold to sixty Minutes with how much they believe it
Speaker 3: or not, I don't know that it would be an
Speaker 3: appeal to the public about the car. For them, it
Speaker 3: was an appeal to one man. They knew he watched
Speaker 3: sixty Minutes. They knew Melanie was interested in the case.
Speaker 3: It was all designed for Greg and the idea was,
Speaker 3: and I think this came from the psychologists as well,
Speaker 3: was if it had been clean and simple Greek sort
Speaker 3: of deals with that you know, he's a very cool
Speaker 3: make a checklist, you do that. That's how I deal
Speaker 3: with this situation. If it somehow doesn't quite make sense.
Speaker 3: It sort of does, but sort of doesn't. He's there going,
Speaker 3: what the fuck are they talking about? Is it? Is
Speaker 3: it my car?
Speaker 1: Is it not?
Speaker 3: I thought they knew I've already been talked to. If
Speaker 3: I have been talked to, why are they doing this
Speaker 3: If I haven't, why does it look like my car?
Speaker 3: And so the idea was just to throw him off
Speaker 3: balance and get him a little bit panicked, and it worked.
Speaker 1: I think that's great use of strategy, using the media
Speaker 1: or taking opportunities and playing that and the subtlety of it.
Speaker 1: That's what I really enjoyed about reading the book and
Speaker 1: really enjoyed full credit to the cops looking at the subtle,
Speaker 1: subtle ways of putting pressure on people, because it's not
Speaker 1: you can't just crash through a door on this. It's
Speaker 1: got to have meaning. So they got the sixty minutes out,
Speaker 1: though he didn't. He went to bed because what was
Speaker 1: it dancing with the start?
Speaker 3: It was the block? It was in reality it is
Speaker 3: the finale of the block. So they were frustrated because
Speaker 3: he didn't watch it on the on the night because
Speaker 3: the block ran over and so it didn't start on schedule.
Speaker 2: So it was watched a couple of days later.
Speaker 1: Okay, So that's sort of pressure, and that's you know,
Speaker 1: and this is what the point I want to make Greg,
Speaker 1: like going through the ball. This is the way a
Speaker 1: murder investigation evolves. This is the way you're trying this,
Speaker 1: and you've put all your hopes there and go, this
Speaker 1: will break it, This will break the person. He's going
Speaker 1: to start talking, and you know, the message to panic
Speaker 1: and confuse him. This is what we want to do
Speaker 1: because that's the type of personality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fascinating.
Speaker 1: So wind at forward now to when I said they
Speaker 1: were going to rattle all the people around him when
Speaker 1: he was going off into the bush. What happened there?
Speaker 1: They're surprised. They thought he was going to head to
Speaker 1: the Grampians and they were getting ready to do that,
Speaker 1: but instead that was another lie to Melanie. He headed
Speaker 1: straight back to the one to go a valley and
Speaker 1: that did throw them a little bit and they went,
Speaker 1: oh my god, where's what's he doing?
Speaker 3: Where's he going? So they quickly canceled what they were planning.
Speaker 3: To do because they were listening to him in his car.
Speaker 3: Microphones were still on in the car, and they realized
Speaker 3: he really was stressed, and he really was thinking a
Speaker 3: net was closing, and he really didn't quite know, you know,
Speaker 3: where this was going and what they knew and what
Speaker 3: they didn't know. It got to the point where the
Speaker 3: investigators were they were starting to worry that he would
Speaker 3: kill himself. And at that point, if he did, they'd
Speaker 3: lose any chance of finding the bodies. They wouldn't be
Speaker 3: able to have closure for the families, they wouldn't know
Speaker 3: what really happened, they wouldn't even know if it really
Speaker 3: was him. So for a whole host of reasons, they said,
Speaker 3: we can't let that happen. And so that's when they
Speaker 3: called the Special Operations Group and the helicopters swooped in
Speaker 3: and he was arrested, and the surveillance worments were about
Speaker 3: to run out anyway, they knew they had to act
Speaker 3: within days. But that's when they decided to pounce now,
Speaker 3: and we have to arrest him, and we have to
Speaker 3: roll the dice on the fact that we have pushed
Speaker 3: him to that level that during an interview situation, we
Speaker 3: can make that work for us.
Speaker 1: Okay, even that was dramatic in the circumstances because of
Speaker 1: the location. So you got two helicops, we the soggies
Speaker 1: on board being dropped off and then creeping into his
Speaker 1: camp site from every direction. And when the men in
Speaker 1: black jump up and yeah, tell him to not move,
Speaker 1: you're under arrest or whatever comments were made, he didn't.
Speaker 3: React, didn't react at all. So they had someone who
Speaker 3: was so stressed out in his car they thought he
Speaker 3: might be about to kill himself. And yet when he's confronted,
Speaker 3: what do you guys want can help? Scary figures coming
Speaker 3: out the teeth?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, in black.
Speaker 3: So that's the other side of Greek and we're totally cool, unflappable, nothing.
Speaker 3: Just just got to think my way through this, and
Speaker 3: so he just switched.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So this is a delicate time in the investigation. You've
Speaker 1: got your circumstantial brief, but you don't know whether that's
Speaker 1: enough to get you across the line, whether it's enough
Speaker 1: to charge him. Even at that stage, if that's the
Speaker 1: game that you want, all the path you want to
Speaker 1: go down. So the detectives were looking to get more
Speaker 1: information from him in the interview, and this has been
Speaker 1: it was a contentious interview for a lot of reasons,
Speaker 1: and argued in court and all sorts of things happened
Speaker 1: with it in court. Do you want to just take
Speaker 1: us through the story there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well very quickly. I mean one of the things
Speaker 3: the book does, which wasn't because that first six hours,
Speaker 3: first day and a half of that interview was still
Speaker 3: ruled in admissible, so the jury never got to see
Speaker 3: that at all. And yet from my perspective, that was
Speaker 3: some of the greatest work of the investigation. There was
Speaker 3: also a sense that they had to get him talking
Speaker 3: because he was the only one who could tell them
Speaker 3: where the bodies were, and that their prime priority was
Speaker 3: to locate the bodies. They were the Missing Persons squad,
Speaker 3: They had spent a lot of time with the families,
Speaker 3: and they I think also they knew that if they
Speaker 3: arrested and charged him without finding where the bodies were,
Speaker 3: it would be a really, really difficult case. And yet
Speaker 3: he was the only one who could tell them where
Speaker 3: they were. So that's what the police are confronted with.
Speaker 3: They charged with that circumstantial brief of evidence. So I'm
Speaker 3: just thinking from a defense point of view, I'd be
Speaker 3: playing the card they deceived their partners for all these years.
Speaker 3: Why don't you think they've deceived us and run off
Speaker 3: and lived happily ever after. So we haven't even got bodies.
Speaker 3: So I don't even have the bodies. Greg's version was that, yes,
Speaker 3: Russell had been using his drone to film him while
Speaker 3: he was doing a hunt. In Greg's version, he hadn't
Speaker 3: done anything wrong on that hunt, but that Russell said
Speaker 3: he had, and that he was going to take that
Speaker 3: footage to the police, et cetera, et cetera, and the
Speaker 3: breach of I was gonna say crime. I guess it
Speaker 3: is a crime that Greg admits to is he leaves
Speaker 3: his shotgun on and his rifle on the back seat
Speaker 3: of his car, and the properly secure, not properly secure,
Speaker 3: but that night he just left them on the back
Speaker 3: seat with magazines of ammunition on the front seat, and
Speaker 3: that Russell had and he blasted the music up to
Speaker 3: really annoy this is Greg Greg Greglin has turned the
Speaker 3: music right up to annoy Russell and Carrol because Russell
Speaker 3: said is going to dob him into the police. Russell's
Speaker 3: come over. Russell has not. There's one report his daughter
Speaker 3: has of him using what we think was a brake
Speaker 3: action shotgun back in the early eighties. Other than that,
Speaker 3: he hasn't He's had an active dislike of shooters and
Speaker 3: hunters and hasn't touched a gun in thirty six years.
Speaker 3: But he gets Greg's Breatham shotgun from the back seat,
Speaker 3: finds the right magazine of bullets on the front seat
Speaker 3: in the dark, loads it in the dark, knows he
Speaker 3: has to prime it to be able to fire it,
Speaker 3: fires it twice, then primes it again so that it's
Speaker 3: ready to fire again.
Speaker 1: He's clever.
Speaker 3: And goes back to his camp with one of the
Speaker 3: two guns, leaving the other rifle on the back seat.
Speaker 3: You go anyway, This is Greg's version of events. Greg
Speaker 3: goes over to his car to try and actually get
Speaker 3: his gun back, and he's crouched down by it because
Speaker 3: he hears the second shot, I think. And he crouched down
Speaker 3: by the driver's side door of Russell's white Toyota land Cruiser.
Speaker 3: He sees Russell put the barrel over the front of
Speaker 3: the bonnet. Greg jumps up, wrestles with the gun, puts,
Speaker 3: you know, pulls Russell on the front of the car.
Speaker 3: They're wrestling over the shotgun. It veers like this, it
Speaker 3: goes off accidentally. The shot goes through the side rearview
Speaker 3: mirror of the car and hits Carol in the head,
Speaker 3: who's crouching down beside the wheel, beside the rear wheel.
Speaker 3: And a million to one chance of that happening why
Speaker 3: Carol's there, who knows, But anyway, that's his version having
Speaker 3: shot a woman in the head. What Greg does next
Speaker 3: is take the shotgun back to his car, fired in
Speaker 3: the air again to make sure it's unloaded. In other words,
Speaker 3: it doesn't go and check out Carol is But anyway,
Speaker 3: this is the version. And next thing he knows, Russell
Speaker 3: is running toward him with a knife, furious because he's
Speaker 3: killed his girlfriend. Parry Is Russell. They get into a wrestle,
Speaker 3: fall to the ground, and the knife goes through Russell's
Speaker 3: heart again. Highly So there are two once in a
Speaker 3: lifetime miraculous freak accidents that happen to people twice in
Speaker 3: five minutes. Yeah, but it does. There is given what
Speaker 3: they found afterwards, because now they know what they're looking
Speaker 3: for with all the particles they've raked up from the ground.
Speaker 3: Et cetera. They do find some cranial segments from Carol's skull.
Speaker 3: They do find some blood spatter inside the canopy of
Speaker 3: the Total land Cruiser when they always thought it was closed.
Speaker 3: They do find the bullet which still has Carol's DNA
Speaker 3: on it that shot her, So that the evidence that
Speaker 3: Carol was shot while she was crouching down by the
Speaker 3: rear wheel of the land cruiser is overwhelming. The evidence
Speaker 3: for what happened, And to Russell, there's none. The body's
Speaker 3: been completely destroyed in a blue.
Speaker 1: So that's the version of events he's given given the police.
Speaker 1: And this is over a.
Speaker 3: Two day or yeah, this is the end of the
Speaker 3: end of the second day into the third day. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: what they've got there at the risk of it being
Speaker 3: thrown out, they would be desperate for the body. How
Speaker 3: did they recover any body?
Speaker 2: Party?
Speaker 3: He had to tell them the full story. He'd said
Speaker 3: where he'd placed the bodies, which was on the Union
Speaker 3: Spur track, which is I think about one hundred and
Speaker 3: ten and twenty k's away from the camp. So the
Speaker 3: reason why they didn't find anything was it's miles away
Speaker 3: on a track that doesn't go anywhere. They but then
Speaker 3: he also said he'd gone back in early November and
Speaker 3: he'd burnt both bodies to dust and then destroyed whatever
Speaker 3: it was left that wasn't burnt, et cetera, so they
Speaker 3: wouldn't find anything. And the cops went up there knowing
Speaker 3: they had they'd been warned by the DPP on the
Speaker 3: that come before the end of the third day they
Speaker 3: had to charge him. This was getting ridiculed, and so
Speaker 3: they drove back, hopefully to find the bodies before they
Speaker 3: charged him. But it was just the investigators, it was
Speaker 3: Dan and Andrew I think who went back up there.
Speaker 3: It just looked like burnt bark and trees from bushfire.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they couldn't identify anything, so they they got into
Speaker 3: a forensic psychiatrist who couldn't get there until sorry, forensic
Speaker 3: anthropologists who couldn't get there until the following day. So
Speaker 3: they they actually charged Greg before they were they'd been
Speaker 3: to the spot where he said he'd dropped the bodies
Speaker 3: and then destroyed them. They were yet to confirm that
Speaker 3: the bodies.
Speaker 2: Were actually their body parts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but they had to charge him anyway.
Speaker 1: So they charged him and the next day they got
Speaker 1: the anthropologist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the next day they went up there with Siren,
Speaker 3: and being a forensic anthropologist who's worked in war crime
Speaker 3: zones all around the world, she does know what she's
Speaker 3: looking at. And yeah, there's that line which is in
Speaker 3: the book, which is I'm told is real where she
Speaker 3: went there, you go, that's a piece of human sterner
Speaker 3: and they went, well we found them. That.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of a lot of relief for a
Speaker 1: lot a lot of people. The story and the pressure
Speaker 1: of the investigation, then the fact that two lives have
Speaker 1: been taken, well, yeah, that's can you imagine how terrifying
Speaker 1: it would have been.
Speaker 3: For it's Yeah, I often think you know when well,
Speaker 3: particularly later when Justice Crouch is talking about, you know,
Speaker 3: fairness for the accused, he is very big on that.
Speaker 3: You think, what was Carol thinking when she was crouching
Speaker 3: beside a rear wheel with a shotgun aimed at her head? Yeah,
Speaker 3: I know that's and and you know, even in the
Speaker 3: interview he's he's after sympathy for himself and how they've
Speaker 3: ruined his life, and you think, you know, they've lost
Speaker 3: both their lives.
Speaker 2: So again that's what the jury get presented with.
Speaker 3: And that's what you know, a lot of people in
Speaker 3: the public gallery who sort of knew the biggest story
Speaker 3: we're going So, first of all, the interview in the
Speaker 3: statement he did when they first went around to see
Speaker 3: him on July fourteen, completely in admissible, thrown out concution. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and you're right. Originally the whole record of've new you're
Speaker 3: thrown out. Yeah, And I think that that's one of
Speaker 3: the points I try and make in the book, is
Speaker 3: that is that, Yeah, if if you're saying to a
Speaker 3: jury you are the deciders of what is fact and
Speaker 3: not fact, then you trust a jury to be able
Speaker 3: to take their job very seriously. And I'm told, and
Speaker 3: I certainly believed in this case, juries in murder trials
Speaker 3: do take their job very seriously. They can decide, you know,
Speaker 3: when they think the police are being oppressive, if they're
Speaker 3: being oppressive, or when they're not, et cetera. They can
Speaker 3: make those decisions on fact and not fact. It's all there,
Speaker 3: it's unedited.
Speaker 2: You see it all.
Speaker 1: I pushed for an open justice system and show everything,
Speaker 1: don't have a filtered version. What was the end result
Speaker 1: with the jury went out the trial ramp for about
Speaker 1: five weeks.
Speaker 3: Five weeks, Yeah, and the jury was out for about
Speaker 3: eight days.
Speaker 1: Okay. That would been the nervous time for everyone involved.
Speaker 3: It would have been at the beginning of the trial,
Speaker 3: Gregor's facing two charges of murder and two charges of
Speaker 3: manslaughter at the end before the jury retired for reasons
Speaker 3: I still find a little bit I can sort of
Speaker 3: understand intellectually, but I find it puzzling anyway, they took
Speaker 3: manslaughter off the agenda, so he was only and I
Speaker 3: think the short position of that is the prosecution's main
Speaker 3: case regarding all the incriminating behavior that he'd done. Posts
Speaker 3: the deaths could only be explained if he'd murdered them.
Speaker 3: Only a murder. We haven't got that, yeah, could only
Speaker 3: be explained to my murder or maybe manslaughter. No, it
Speaker 3: was only murder.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's interesting.
Speaker 3: And although the you know, the jury don't need to
Speaker 3: explain that. When they came back after eight days, which
Speaker 3: is nerve wracking for the cops and the families, and
Speaker 3: I'm sure it was ne vacking for greg too. The
Speaker 3: first thing they're asked is about Russell, and he's found
Speaker 3: not guilty, and you could sort of sense everyone going
Speaker 3: because the whole prosecution case had been built on he
Speaker 3: must have killed Russell first and then killed Carol because
Speaker 3: she was a witness to it. And yet if they'd
Speaker 3: found him not guilty of the murder of how are
Speaker 3: they going to do that? But when they're asked, they're
Speaker 3: verdict on the murder of Carol, they say guilty. And
Speaker 3: on the one sense, there's sort of relief from those
Speaker 3: who believe he is guilty from the families. It's never
Speaker 3: the jury never explains it. The best understanding is given
Speaker 3: there was not a scrapper forensic evidence about how Russell
Speaker 3: died at all anywhere. Can you say murder beyond reasonable doubt?
Speaker 1: Okay, so they might have got stuck on that.
Speaker 3: They might have got stuck on. It only needs one
Speaker 3: of them to get stuck at the twelve to go, well,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe that was Maybe they got into a
Speaker 3: fight and it was an accidental, unlawful killing. Maybe it
Speaker 3: wasn't murderous intent. So the best thinking is that not
Speaker 3: all twelve of them believed they could say he murdered
Speaker 3: Russell beyond reasonable doubt to find Carol guilty. I believe
Speaker 3: they must have bought the prosecution case that that death
Speaker 3: happened first, which is what the cops always believed and
Speaker 3: that Carol's murder.
Speaker 2: Was cleaning up, cleaning up witness.
Speaker 3: Yeah, cleaning up the witness.
Speaker 1: Do you get a sense of how the victim's families felt.
Speaker 3: Look, I personally haven't approached the families. They gave a
Speaker 3: very dignified statement to the press after that where they
Speaker 3: were thanking the police um and they were clearly irritated
Speaker 3: by the criminal justice system. I think Russell's daughters in
Speaker 3: particular feel particularly aggrieved that he's been found in a
Speaker 3: sin of their fathers.
Speaker 1: I can understand their thanks that that that would be
Speaker 1: a real and frustrating feeling the anger for them. So
Speaker 1: it's fascinating case. The detectives. They came under a lot
Speaker 1: of criticism. And it doesn't matter what you do. If
Speaker 1: you go to a murder trial, you're going to be criticized.
Speaker 1: I say that to young homicide detective starting ready, get ready,
Speaker 1: and you can see some people are shocked. But we
Speaker 1: didn't do anything wrong, I know, but we're going to
Speaker 1: get criticized.
Speaker 2: It does not matter.
Speaker 1: But for them to do what they did, and they
Speaker 1: pushed it, but they pushed it. It wasn't just out
Speaker 1: of vego. It wasn't how it was pushing it for
Speaker 1: the right reason and testing the waters. If they didn't
Speaker 1: go down that path, I dare say that he wouldn't
Speaker 1: be convicted.
Speaker 2: Of any match.
Speaker 3: I don't think he would have been.
Speaker 1: And it's you see the frustration with the justice system,
Speaker 1: which I thought should be therefore to serve the society
Speaker 1: that the system set up for. I don't think you'll
Speaker 1: have any police, any reasonable minded police, understanding that you
Speaker 1: need to protect the rights of the accused. We understand,
Speaker 1: we understand that, but I would just like people to
Speaker 1: understand that when you sit down in an interview room
Speaker 1: with someone that you suspect of murder, you haven't got
Speaker 1: a house to sell it. You're not like a real
Speaker 1: estate agent going, hey, Greg, do you want to buy
Speaker 1: this house? They're going to if they're sitting there, they're
Speaker 1: trying to talk their way out of a horrendous crime,
Speaker 1: and you've got to do certain things.
Speaker 3: What are the expectations of society? What are the standards
Speaker 3: the normal law abiding member of society expects from police
Speaker 3: in that situation.
Speaker 1: And at no time did I get the sense in
Speaker 1: the way it's been portrayed that Greg felt intimidated or
Speaker 1: out of his depth. It was his ego that got
Speaker 1: him talking more than you think. That was my take
Speaker 1: on it. Well, it's been a fascinating story in the
Speaker 1: way you've relayed it. And I want to shout out
Speaker 1: for the book, Like, if you want to get a
Speaker 1: sense of what the murder investigation is like, have read
Speaker 1: that book. And that was a horrendous crime that captured
Speaker 1: everyone's attention, wasn't it.
Speaker 3: It was? Yeah? But thanks Gary, thank you.
Speaker 2: Is this the start of you your career? It well
Speaker 2: could be.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'd never like to be bored and so
Speaker 3: you know, something new, if the right right story came along, I'd.
Speaker 2: Have to do it again.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I think all those years that were doing the
Speaker 1: TV shows, you learned something from the crooks, You learned
Speaker 1: something from the cops, and you really understand the little
Speaker 1: subtle nuances of what it's all about. What other projects
Speaker 1: are you're working on at the moment.
Speaker 3: At the moment, I'm doing an audio series for BBC
Speaker 3: Sounds and BBC Radio four over in the UK, and
Speaker 3: that's but that's available here in Australia on BBC Sounds,
Speaker 3: Google Central Intelligence Stars Kim Katrell and Ed Harris, they're
Speaker 3: big names and yeah, and it was great to see
Speaker 3: them work. And it's about the CIA's director of operations
Speaker 3: in the forties, fifties and sixties, and all the intent
Speaker 3: of the shows to show that to a large degree
Speaker 3: or a significant degree, the world we live in now
Speaker 3: is because of the operations they ran then in Iran
Speaker 3: and Guatemala and Indonesia and Romania and everywhere Chile.
Speaker 2: That's a deep, dark world to dive in. It is, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that would be fascinating.
Speaker 3: It is fascinating.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, look great to see you. Thanks for coming
Speaker 1: in and pleasure.
Speaker 2: All the best.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Greg Hadrick has a fascinating insight into the world of crime.
Speaker 1: I think it's from all the stories and the TV
Speaker 1: series he's been involved in. His book In the Dead
Speaker 1: of Night is a fascinating read and it really takes
Speaker 1: you on into an insight into what it's like to
Speaker 1: be involved in the police investigation. And whenever we're talking
Speaker 1: about murders, we shouldn't forget the victims, Russell Hill and
Speaker 1: Carol Clay. It was a tragic set of circumstances where
Speaker 1: they lost their lives. Then the du Diem