WEBVTT - Inside the Wonnangatta investigation 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:04.760 By the time of passing traveler saw their camp around 0:00:04.800 --> 0:00:08.239 two pm. Next day, the tent had burned down and 0:00:08.520 --> 0:00:12.360 it had scorched the toyota. The ashes were cold, and 0:00:12.480 --> 0:00:18.599 so was the trail. Fortune sometimes goes against the bad guys. Ultimately, 0:00:18.800 --> 0:00:22.280 their job was to find the remains of the dead people, 0:00:22.480 --> 0:00:24.919 and the only way to do that was to keep 0:00:25.520 --> 0:00:30.000 their best suspect on the hook without him breaking the line. 0:00:30.240 --> 0:00:34.200 I'm Andrew rule. This is life in crimes. The story 0:00:34.240 --> 0:00:38.680 that is consuming probably many Australians of recent times is 0:00:38.760 --> 0:00:45.120 the trial of Greg Lynn, the former Jetstar pilot who 0:00:45.159 --> 0:00:50.000 has been charged and stood trial for the murders of 0:00:50.520 --> 0:00:55.280 pensioners Russell Hill and Carol Clay in a remote spot 0:00:55.360 --> 0:01:00.720 at Wollongata in eastern Victoria back in March of twenty twenty, 0:01:00.800 --> 0:01:04.080 a trial in which a jury would find Lynn guilty 0:01:04.720 --> 0:01:08.920 of Carol Clay's murder but not Russell Hill's. In fact, 0:01:08.959 --> 0:01:13.560 as our regular listeners and readers will know, their campsite 0:01:13.840 --> 0:01:19.720 was discovered burnt out on precisely the weekend that COVID 0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:26.600 struck Victoria, and so their fate has always been entwined 0:01:26.720 --> 0:01:29.600 with the advent of COVID. In Victoria. And there is 0:01:29.680 --> 0:01:34.240 no doubt that the slow start of the police investigation 0:01:34.600 --> 0:01:39.520 into their deaths or their disappearance and presumed death, was 0:01:39.600 --> 0:01:42.080 due to the fact that the entire country, and to 0:01:42.080 --> 0:01:46.720 some extent the entire globe was suddenly struggling with a 0:01:46.800 --> 0:01:50.960 mass pandemic. And that is the background to the story. 0:01:51.640 --> 0:01:55.200 Now I'm going to take us through the long and 0:01:55.280 --> 0:01:59.400 winding road of this story to get us to the 0:01:59.720 --> 0:02:02.960 trial which has just finished, so we all catch up 0:02:03.160 --> 0:02:06.919 on what happened a long way A year after Carol 0:02:06.960 --> 0:02:10.919 Clay and Mussell Hill vanished in twenty twenty, police were 0:02:11.040 --> 0:02:15.320 quietly closing in on a suspected killer with a ghastly 0:02:15.360 --> 0:02:19.040 secret in his head and a repainted Nissan Patrol in 0:02:19.120 --> 0:02:22.560 his driveway, a four bill drive of the type that 0:02:23.280 --> 0:02:27.120 a lot of Australians use, including hundreds of deer hunters 0:02:27.200 --> 0:02:31.040 who go shooting in the high country. These investigators were 0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:34.640 confident they knew the identity of the last person to 0:02:34.720 --> 0:02:38.160 see Hill and Clay alive twelve months earlier, back in 0:02:38.200 --> 0:02:44.320 twenty twenty, unless this Nissan driver in suburban Caroline Springs 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:50.320 was cleared by a watertight alibi or forensic science, he 0:02:50.440 --> 0:02:56.320 would become prime suspect for the couple's presumed deaths. At 0:02:56.320 --> 0:02:59.520 that stage, police were certain that the missing pair had 0:02:59.560 --> 0:03:04.760 met a violent end at the Woongata Valley campsite, and 0:03:04.840 --> 0:03:09.079 that their bodies had been moved away from there by 0:03:09.240 --> 0:03:12.799 a third party. The timing had helped the third party 0:03:12.840 --> 0:03:15.680 flee the scene because of the COVID pandemic which had 0:03:15.760 --> 0:03:18.799 hit Victoria that week, and of course the pandemic dominated 0:03:18.880 --> 0:03:23.520 media coverage and had hindered public collaboration and police investigation. 0:03:25.280 --> 0:03:27.840 But if the Nissan driver felt lucky for the first 0:03:27.840 --> 0:03:31.600 few weeks, when it still seemed possible that the missing 0:03:31.639 --> 0:03:35.680 pair were lost in the bush or had secretly run away, 0:03:35.960 --> 0:03:39.920 he was wrong. In truth, his luck had soured on 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:42.760 that first night when he had tried to slip away 0:03:42.760 --> 0:03:46.760 from the high country by a backtrack towing the trailer 0:03:47.640 --> 0:03:52.520 that would later mysteriously vanish by chance, risky conditions had 0:03:52.560 --> 0:03:55.960 caused rangers to lock a gate across the track that 0:03:56.040 --> 0:03:59.839 would eventually have brought the driver. The Nissan driver out 0:04:00.280 --> 0:04:04.880 Myrtleford on the northwestern side of the Rangers without having 0:04:04.920 --> 0:04:08.600 to detour back to use better roads via Mount Hotham, 0:04:09.520 --> 0:04:13.480 so if our Nissen man, who is in fact Greg Glynn, 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:18.000 if he had been able to use that backtrack, or 0:04:18.040 --> 0:04:21.680 if he decided to smash the gate and drive through 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:24.080 it and take a chance on getting through there, and 0:04:24.120 --> 0:04:28.159 had he got through, there's every reason to believe that 0:04:28.200 --> 0:04:31.840 he would have got away with murder because when he 0:04:31.920 --> 0:04:35.280 hit that unexpected roadblock and turn around and went via 0:04:35.400 --> 0:04:39.480 Mount Hotham, his car, his Nissen Fool drive that was 0:04:39.600 --> 0:04:42.840 blue when he was driving it on that occasion and 0:04:42.920 --> 0:04:45.760 later he painted a base which is a story in itself. 0:04:46.800 --> 0:04:51.159 When it went through the resort at Mount Hotham, it 0:04:51.279 --> 0:04:56.000 was automatically recorded by security cameras which record the number 0:04:56.040 --> 0:04:59.000 plates of every car going past. And because that happened, 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:03.160 police were able to check which cars are gone passed 0:05:03.200 --> 0:05:09.480 in a certain period, and they also struck some very 0:05:09.520 --> 0:05:13.240 good luck. Because the Nissen driver had been forced to 0:05:13.240 --> 0:05:17.240 go back to Mount Hotham, he came within the range 0:05:17.760 --> 0:05:20.720 of mobile phone towers because where he'd been at One 0:05:20.800 --> 0:05:24.760 and Gata there's no mobile phone coverage and it was 0:05:24.800 --> 0:05:27.880 only when he was forced to drive to Mount Hotham 0:05:28.480 --> 0:05:33.360 and take basically the high road out that he came 0:05:33.440 --> 0:05:37.279 within range, and when he came within range, the mobile 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:44.360 phones in his car pinged on the towers, and the 0:05:44.440 --> 0:05:47.960 mobile phone pinged on the tower belonged to Russell Hill. 0:05:48.560 --> 0:05:53.240 That somehow, in the hurly burly of taking their bodies out, 0:05:53.960 --> 0:05:58.760 he'd also taken Hill's phone. And Hill's phone was turned 0:05:58.800 --> 0:06:03.039 on and it had not gone flat, and it pinned 0:06:03.720 --> 0:06:08.040 on the nearest tower. And so police subsequently, much later 0:06:08.839 --> 0:06:14.159 were able to say Russell Hill's phone was traveling in 0:06:14.200 --> 0:06:17.440 the Mount Hotham area at this particular time, you know, 0:06:17.640 --> 0:06:20.680 nine o'clock in the morning or whatever the morning after 0:06:20.720 --> 0:06:24.800 we think Russell Hill was killed, and it was clearly 0:06:25.080 --> 0:06:29.040 in a car because it was traveling. So which car 0:06:29.120 --> 0:06:32.360 is it? So they find the time down by looking 0:06:32.400 --> 0:06:35.560 at the camera and they say, well, twelve cars went 0:06:35.640 --> 0:06:40.000 through Mount Hotham at that time, a particular time gap 0:06:40.040 --> 0:06:42.440 that we're looking at, just twelve cars, and they looked 0:06:42.480 --> 0:06:44.600 at each of the twelve and one of the twelve 0:06:44.880 --> 0:06:48.240 was a blue missm And it was that confluence of 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:53.320 two events, the blocked backtrack and the fact that he 0:06:53.360 --> 0:06:57.320 had Russell Hill's phone in his car that caught Greg Lynn. 0:06:57.839 --> 0:07:01.040 Because before that there was no sign of Greg Lynn. 0:07:01.160 --> 0:07:03.880 There was nothing to prove exactly when he'd been in 0:07:03.920 --> 0:07:06.360 the high country, and he would have been able to 0:07:07.120 --> 0:07:09.920 lie his way out of it reasonably easily, and he 0:07:10.040 --> 0:07:12.480 was pretty good at it. Had he got out that backtrack, 0:07:12.640 --> 0:07:15.680 there's going to be no sign of Russell Hill's phone 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:21.800 and no number plate recognition camera recording what car is driving. 0:07:21.920 --> 0:07:23.880 He would have come out of the bush. Why haven't 0:07:23.920 --> 0:07:27.840 immertaled for it somewhere many, many many kilometers from the 0:07:27.880 --> 0:07:31.040 crime scene and made his way back to Melbourne down 0:07:31.080 --> 0:07:35.680 the hum Highway. Not a problem. Fortune sometimes goes against 0:07:35.720 --> 0:07:40.520 the bad guys. As former lawyer Andrew Fraser used to say, 0:07:40.880 --> 0:07:45.760 really miserable bad people lose. He used a shorter expression. 0:07:46.520 --> 0:07:51.280 And so the police got two lucky breaks. That meant that, 0:07:51.400 --> 0:07:54.560 after months of detective work, they were able to narrow 0:07:54.720 --> 0:07:59.240 the field of potential suspects to a very small number 0:07:59.280 --> 0:08:03.600 of people who'd been in the mountains on March twenty first, 0:08:04.040 --> 0:08:08.920 twenty twenty but had not voluntarily come forward. And of 0:08:08.960 --> 0:08:12.960 course some people draw attention to themselves by trying not 0:08:13.040 --> 0:08:16.000 to draw attention. So anyone that the police knew had 0:08:16.040 --> 0:08:19.240 been up there, who hadn't come forward to tell them 0:08:19.280 --> 0:08:22.120 that they'd been up there. They were worth looking at. 0:08:22.320 --> 0:08:25.680 Why had they not come forward? Now, obviously they're not 0:08:25.720 --> 0:08:29.520 all murderous. If there's six or eight people who haven't 0:08:29.560 --> 0:08:32.800 come forward, they're not all killers, And in fact none 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:36.000 of them might be killers. But they could be deer 0:08:36.080 --> 0:08:38.840 hunters who were up there when they shouldn't have been. 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:42.520 They might have been people who've got other reasons not 0:08:42.600 --> 0:08:45.640 to go to the police because they might have a 0:08:45.720 --> 0:08:49.720 dope crop up there somewhere. Just people who don't want 0:08:49.720 --> 0:08:51.640 to mix with police, or deal with police, or have 0:08:51.640 --> 0:08:53.880 anything to do with them. Some of them might have 0:08:53.880 --> 0:08:56.240 been people from inter state or had gone into state 0:08:56.280 --> 0:09:00.280 and hadn't realized that the police wanted them. All sorts 0:09:00.280 --> 0:09:04.480 of reasons why you may not come forward, But only 0:09:04.559 --> 0:09:07.360 one person had the big reason not to come forward, 0:09:08.160 --> 0:09:10.640 and that was Greg Linn, and he did not put 0:09:10.720 --> 0:09:17.520 himself forward. This evasiveness does not prove criminality, but evasive 0:09:17.600 --> 0:09:22.320 people greatly interested detectives who were following a couple of 0:09:22.320 --> 0:09:26.240 strands of investigation. On those strands, who were, of course 0:09:26.720 --> 0:09:31.120 the blue Nissen as driven by Greg Lynn and the 0:09:31.200 --> 0:09:36.440 mobile telephone as previously owned and carried by the vanished 0:09:36.679 --> 0:09:41.320 Russell Hill. So police have sophisticated ways of analyzing phone data, 0:09:41.800 --> 0:09:45.800 which is why they now routinely use mobile phone records 0:09:46.000 --> 0:09:50.040 to pinpoint suspects in high profile murders such as Jill 0:09:50.120 --> 0:09:54.640 Mars's death in Brunswick in twenty twelve, and will ultimately 0:09:54.720 --> 0:09:59.920 prove vital to the Samantha Murphy case. Hunting international terrorists 0:10:00.480 --> 0:10:05.760 has improved interpretation of mobile phone data, which is why 0:10:06.040 --> 0:10:10.240 the Woe and Gatter investigators, the missing Persons people looked 0:10:10.480 --> 0:10:15.120 for overseas help. They went to the experts. When the 0:10:15.120 --> 0:10:18.040 police started reeling in persons of interest, they asked them 0:10:18.080 --> 0:10:20.960 what they were doing at Wollongata on certain days in 0:10:21.000 --> 0:10:24.640 March twenty twenty. A flat denial might be a provable lie, 0:10:25.200 --> 0:10:27.960 and that would be a reason for suspicion and a 0:10:28.120 --> 0:10:32.880 mission would set up the next question, why not voluntarily 0:10:33.280 --> 0:10:37.320 identify yourself the way that other people have? And after that, 0:10:37.440 --> 0:10:40.000 of course, the questions would get tougher and they would 0:10:40.080 --> 0:10:43.760 lead to the big one. Okay, where are the bodies? 0:10:44.679 --> 0:10:48.160 Investigators were playing a long game after a slow start. 0:10:48.440 --> 0:10:52.160 By the time of Passing Camper reported Russell Hill's burnt 0:10:52.160 --> 0:10:57.800 out tent and scorched Toyota to Sail police several days 0:10:57.800 --> 0:11:01.800 had passed. Initial reports did not make that time lapse clear, 0:11:02.320 --> 0:11:05.640 which confused potential witnesses. They weren't sure when it was 0:11:06.160 --> 0:11:09.840 that the police thought something bad had happened. At first, 0:11:09.840 --> 0:11:13.120 it seemed reasonable that the pair had got lost and 0:11:13.160 --> 0:11:18.160 that their tent had coincidentally burned down, either accidentally totally 0:11:18.200 --> 0:11:21.960 accident accidentally when a campfire had been blown by the 0:11:21.960 --> 0:11:27.240 wind or something, or through arson by opportunist thieves who'd 0:11:27.280 --> 0:11:31.120 pilfered the camp and then set light to it opportunist thieves, 0:11:31.200 --> 0:11:35.920 not killers. The fact that Russell Hill's expense he drone 0:11:36.240 --> 0:11:39.840 was missing raised the possibility that the pair the missing 0:11:39.880 --> 0:11:42.560 pair Hill and Clay, went looking for it in the 0:11:42.600 --> 0:11:47.120 bush and had become lost and then died from exposure, 0:11:47.440 --> 0:11:50.960 which can happen up there very easily, And if that 0:11:51.040 --> 0:11:54.080 had happened, their bodies would soon be eaten by wild dogs. 0:11:54.480 --> 0:11:57.319 Now that might sound far fetched, but as we've often 0:11:57.360 --> 0:12:02.600 discussed in this podcast, that grisly scenario has often played 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:06.240 out in the mountains over many decades, and not just 0:12:06.320 --> 0:12:10.080 those mountains either. In other patches of bush around Victoria, 0:12:10.760 --> 0:12:15.600 bodies have been consumed by wild dogs, to the extent 0:12:15.640 --> 0:12:18.640 that one body buried by criminals way back in the 0:12:18.640 --> 0:12:21.720 bad old days. All they found was one of his 0:12:21.800 --> 0:12:26.520 shoes and the remains of a tweed jacket which had 0:12:26.559 --> 0:12:30.160 the maker's tag in it, and that enabled the police 0:12:30.160 --> 0:12:34.079 to identify the victim. The rest of him had been 0:12:34.120 --> 0:12:38.200 eaten by the wild dogs. Apparently dogs aren't clean on 0:12:38.240 --> 0:12:42.560 tweed jackets and shoes. Two things pointed towards sudden and 0:12:42.679 --> 0:12:47.560 violent deaths at one and gatter. First, the organized searches, 0:12:47.760 --> 0:12:51.360 in good searches, lots of them, could find no trace 0:12:51.720 --> 0:12:56.880 of the missing people nothing. Second, investigators calculated that their 0:12:56.880 --> 0:12:59.760 sleeping bags were missing because when they looked in the 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:03.240 bashes of the fire, they couldn't find any zips. So 0:13:03.400 --> 0:13:07.079 they reckoned that sleeping bags had been taken, and that 0:13:07.240 --> 0:13:10.920 was an indicator. Probably they'd been used as body bags. 0:13:11.600 --> 0:13:15.960 They didn't think they'd carried them away. Meanwhile, it was 0:13:16.040 --> 0:13:20.559 increasingly clear that the pair did not stage their own disappearance. 0:13:21.720 --> 0:13:24.840 We all know the reasons why these days, computerized banking 0:13:24.880 --> 0:13:29.320 credit cards, nationwide network of security cameras and traffic cameras 0:13:29.800 --> 0:13:35.640 showed no signs that they were alive, not one. Russell 0:13:35.760 --> 0:13:38.760 Hill was an experienced bushman, he'd worked in the area 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:43.520 as a logger and was unlikely to get lost. Against 0:13:43.520 --> 0:13:49.360 that was the macabre, longshot possibility of an elaborate murdered 0:13:49.400 --> 0:13:55.640 suicide committed by a secretive man leading a double life. Now, 0:13:56.160 --> 0:14:00.360 as we all know now, Russell Hill was conducting long 0:14:00.440 --> 0:14:05.120 time affair with his childhood sweetheart Carol Clay. They'd been 0:14:05.160 --> 0:14:09.280 sweethearts as kids, and despite the fact they both married 0:14:09.320 --> 0:14:13.679 other people, they'd renewed the spark of romance at some 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:17.680 stage later in life. And it was true that Russell Hill, 0:14:17.880 --> 0:14:22.080 although under pressure from Carol Clay to end his marriage 0:14:22.080 --> 0:14:24.760 and marry her, was leading a double life. He'd been 0:14:24.800 --> 0:14:28.760 reluctant to leave his own family and he preferred to 0:14:28.800 --> 0:14:33.240 lead a double life, and that, of course raises the 0:14:33.280 --> 0:14:38.760 possibility that he could become depressed about it and commit 0:14:39.160 --> 0:14:42.800 a murder suicide such as one as we've seen down 0:14:43.440 --> 0:14:49.120 in the Otway region in recent weeks, where a couple 0:14:49.200 --> 0:14:53.120 of about this age met their end, and it clearly 0:14:53.280 --> 0:14:58.160 was a murder suicide committed with a gun. And that 0:14:58.760 --> 0:15:02.920 was something that police could not discount, but they did 0:15:02.960 --> 0:15:06.840 such thorough searches that they believed that a third party 0:15:06.960 --> 0:15:11.760 was involved. Time makes mysteries deeper and darker. The fact 0:15:11.800 --> 0:15:14.200 that three other people had disappeared in the High Country 0:15:14.240 --> 0:15:18.600 in the previous nine years bred rumors about an eccentric 0:15:18.680 --> 0:15:23.040 spear hunter that was dubbed button Man, so cool because 0:15:23.040 --> 0:15:25.040 he used to make these sort of buttons out of 0:15:25.200 --> 0:15:28.160 deer antem put them in his ears. Nothing wrong with that, 0:15:28.400 --> 0:15:31.000 just a thing he did detect his look back to. 0:15:31.040 --> 0:15:34.840 When Hill picked up Carol Clay from near her Pakenham 0:15:34.880 --> 0:15:39.840 home on the morning of March nineteenth, twenty twenty. To 0:15:39.920 --> 0:15:42.800 a casual observer, there wasn't much to see, just an 0:15:42.920 --> 0:15:46.120 older man in a Toyota land Cruiser with a very 0:15:46.120 --> 0:15:49.720 pleasant woman of his own age. They were just gray 0:15:49.800 --> 0:15:52.840 nomads off on a trip, except for the one thing. 0:15:53.280 --> 0:15:55.720 No one else in either family knew that they were 0:15:55.760 --> 0:15:59.960 going camping together. That was a secret from their respective family, 0:16:00.920 --> 0:16:04.520 as everyone knows. Russell Hill and his wife Robin were 0:16:04.560 --> 0:16:07.520 longtime friends of Carol, who was well known in the 0:16:07.520 --> 0:16:11.880 Country Women's Association. The Hills lived in Druen after returning 0:16:11.880 --> 0:16:16.280 from Hayfield up in Gippsland, where they'd spent the nineteen eighties, 0:16:16.800 --> 0:16:20.120 while Russell worked in the bush logging, often in the 0:16:20.160 --> 0:16:25.000 big timber coops towards the old Wollongatt station site, which 0:16:25.040 --> 0:16:28.440 is why he knew the area so well. Hill apparently 0:16:28.760 --> 0:16:32.480 drove his Toyota on his usual route through Hayfield and 0:16:32.600 --> 0:16:36.800 Lo Cola to Wollongatta. The pair vanished sometime in the 0:16:36.840 --> 0:16:39.520 eighteen hours after Hill made a radio call to a 0:16:39.560 --> 0:16:42.800 friend late on March twentieth. He said he was about 0:16:42.800 --> 0:16:45.880 to camp near the old station sometime that night or 0:16:45.960 --> 0:16:49.080 next morning. The pair disappeared. By the time a passing 0:16:49.160 --> 0:16:53.200 traveler saw their camp around two pm next day, the 0:16:53.320 --> 0:16:56.480 tent had burned down and it had scorched the toyota. 0:16:56.960 --> 0:17:01.680 The ashes were cold, and so was the trail. When 0:17:01.760 --> 0:17:05.800 sale police arrived, they found the toyota locked. They assumed 0:17:05.800 --> 0:17:09.200 that Hill was probably carrying his keys and his mobile phone. 0:17:09.440 --> 0:17:12.120 Fair enough, a man who'd lived in the country all 0:17:12.119 --> 0:17:15.080 his life, he was probably unlikely to have locked his 0:17:15.119 --> 0:17:18.160 car while sitting next to it, but he probably would 0:17:18.200 --> 0:17:21.000 lock it if they both went off for a walk, 0:17:21.560 --> 0:17:24.920 because you know, even up in the remote spots, casual 0:17:25.040 --> 0:17:27.680 theft can happen, and there's quite a lot of people 0:17:28.040 --> 0:17:30.919 go through that area. If you park there for twenty 0:17:30.920 --> 0:17:33.760 four hours, there would be cars go past, and some 0:17:33.800 --> 0:17:35.560 of them might be driven by people who might pinch 0:17:35.600 --> 0:17:40.560 stuff from your camp. The tent fire was puzzling. Was 0:17:40.600 --> 0:17:45.000 it arson or was it an accident? Thieves often set fires, 0:17:45.240 --> 0:17:51.760 whether maliciously or to destroy fingerprints and DNA, same with killers. 0:17:52.640 --> 0:17:56.879 Over time, detectives canned the idea the pair were lost, 0:17:57.480 --> 0:18:01.760 but they couldn't quite rule it out comple Maybe they 0:18:01.800 --> 0:18:04.240 went for a walk with the drone and got bushed 0:18:04.720 --> 0:18:09.440 after losing the drone in the early stages. An alternative 0:18:09.520 --> 0:18:12.439 theory for the drone's absence was that Hill left it 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:15.919 in the tent and that a passing opportunist stole it 0:18:16.040 --> 0:18:20.600 before torching the camp. The question was whether such a 0:18:20.640 --> 0:18:26.800 thief would also kill and dispose of two harmless pensioners. 0:18:27.040 --> 0:18:31.159 Police believed that someone had. They had a fair idea 0:18:31.560 --> 0:18:33.679 who was the last to see the missing pair alive 0:18:34.600 --> 0:18:39.800 long before they made a move. When police first interviewed 0:18:39.840 --> 0:18:43.680 Greg Lynn in July twenty twenty, less than four months 0:18:43.720 --> 0:18:48.760 after the presumed double homicide, he wasn't a suspect. They 0:18:48.840 --> 0:18:52.760 came knocking at his house because his vehicle registration was 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:55.919 one of several recorded by the cameras at Mount Hotham 0:18:56.240 --> 0:19:00.000 Missing Persons. Detective Abbi Justin would later tell a court 0:19:00.320 --> 0:19:04.200 that when she and another investigator questioned the then Jetstar 0:19:04.320 --> 0:19:07.600 pilot in his kitchen at Caroline Springs, he was just 0:19:08.040 --> 0:19:12.640 a potential witness. Still, they were interested in his movements 0:19:13.080 --> 0:19:16.160 as they were in other people's movements, and they were 0:19:16.160 --> 0:19:19.520 intrigued by the fact that he had painted his blueness 0:19:19.520 --> 0:19:23.000 and bronze and sold his trailer, or he said he 0:19:23.040 --> 0:19:29.640 sold it. The pilot's answers did not satisfy the investigator's curiosity, 0:19:30.240 --> 0:19:34.080 which had been pricked many weeks before, back in May 0:19:34.720 --> 0:19:37.680 twenty twenty, which is only two months after the pair 0:19:37.720 --> 0:19:41.919 went missing. That, of course, was when the analysis of 0:19:42.000 --> 0:19:46.000 Russell Hill's mobile phone data showed that between nine twenty 0:19:46.080 --> 0:19:51.679 six and nine fifty precisely on March twenty first, his 0:19:51.880 --> 0:19:55.719 phone was moving towards Mount Hotham from the Dargo direction, 0:19:56.000 --> 0:20:01.000 so as moving north from Dargo, Hill had not been 0:20:01.000 --> 0:20:04.280 in contact with any one since the previous evening when 0:20:04.320 --> 0:20:08.680 he had his regular call with his fellow amateur radio enthusiasts. 0:20:09.640 --> 0:20:13.120 Police were confident the fatal confrontation was later that night, 0:20:13.359 --> 0:20:16.480 on the twentieth, which meant that if Hill's mobile phone 0:20:16.640 --> 0:20:21.160 was traveling next morning, it was with someone else, not 0:20:21.240 --> 0:20:25.000 with Hill, or not with Hill alive, perhaps with a 0:20:25.040 --> 0:20:28.679 dead Hill. And as we know, just twelve vehicles passed 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:32.000 through Hotham in that time frame, and one of those 0:20:32.160 --> 0:20:38.600 twelve was Gregg Lynne's Nissen, which then was Blue. Police 0:20:38.600 --> 0:20:42.240 spent five weeks researching the pilot before knocking on his door. 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:46.679 On July the fourteenth, Abby Justin and her boss, Acting 0:20:46.720 --> 0:20:51.520 Sergeant Brett Florence, came knocking. The police recorded the conversation 0:20:52.560 --> 0:20:56.560 and Lynn provided a statement he was a person of 0:20:56.680 --> 0:21:00.920 interest well on the way to becoming a suspect. One 0:21:01.000 --> 0:21:04.520 of the problems legally, speaking with recording the conversation is 0:21:04.560 --> 0:21:08.120 that in so doing it showed that he was a suspect. 0:21:08.520 --> 0:21:11.440 But if you are a suspect, you should be cautioned 0:21:11.600 --> 0:21:14.800 about your rights and your right to silence. But of 0:21:14.800 --> 0:21:17.120 course the police didn't want to caution him and put 0:21:17.200 --> 0:21:22.120 him on guard. They wanted him to feel reasonably comfortable 0:21:22.160 --> 0:21:25.960 so that he might make further mistakes or admissions which 0:21:26.000 --> 0:21:31.200 would firm up their suspicions about him. So it's understandable 0:21:31.760 --> 0:21:35.840 what the police did because ultimately their job was to 0:21:35.880 --> 0:21:38.960 find the remains of the dead people, and the only 0:21:39.000 --> 0:21:42.560 way to do that was to keep their best suspect 0:21:42.800 --> 0:21:47.720 on the hook without him breaking the line. Between July 0:21:47.840 --> 0:21:52.040 and December that year twenty twenty, police checked out Lynn 0:21:52.080 --> 0:21:55.800 with banks and government agencies. They obtained more images from 0:21:55.800 --> 0:21:58.159 the cameras at Mount Hotham, they spoke to a witness 0:21:58.160 --> 0:22:00.280 who had been in the area at the time, and 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:04.600 they went back to the hills to search again by 0:22:04.640 --> 0:22:08.520 early December, so this ispot eight months after the disappearances. 0:22:09.440 --> 0:22:13.440 Other possible candidates had fallen away and Lynn had become 0:22:13.520 --> 0:22:17.119 the focus of the investigation. He was under surveillance with 0:22:17.280 --> 0:22:22.440 GPS trackers, telephone intercepts, and bugs in his house and vehicle. 0:22:23.520 --> 0:22:26.400 Police spent most of the following year doing further searches, 0:22:26.480 --> 0:22:30.680 including one at Howart Plains, where Kadava dogs were used 0:22:30.720 --> 0:22:35.200 to check anywhere that Lynne might have camped since the murders. Meanwhile, 0:22:35.200 --> 0:22:39.240 police were listening to Lynd's conversations, mostly him talking to himself. 0:22:39.840 --> 0:22:42.159 He had the professional pilots had as stating what he 0:22:42.280 --> 0:22:45.760 was doing as he did it. A legacy of endless 0:22:45.760 --> 0:22:50.960 hours piloting aircraft fitted with flight recorders monitoring Lyne's movements 0:22:50.960 --> 0:22:54.359 in real time forced the case to a head. Brett 0:22:54.359 --> 0:22:57.639 Florence and another detective were listening to Lynn speaking to 0:22:57.720 --> 0:23:01.520 himself as he was driving in late November twenty twenty one, 0:23:01.920 --> 0:23:06.000 so this is twenty months after the disappearance, and Lynn 0:23:06.280 --> 0:23:09.040 appeared to be crying and talking to himself and talking 0:23:09.040 --> 0:23:13.080 in the past tense about himself, and he was acting 0:23:13.280 --> 0:23:16.600 in a quite a bizarre way and saying bizarre things, 0:23:17.040 --> 0:23:21.919 which was concerning to the police because they thought that 0:23:22.080 --> 0:23:26.400 he was so agitated and acting in such a way 0:23:26.440 --> 0:23:28.800 that he could pose a danger to himself or to 0:23:28.880 --> 0:23:32.120 other people. He was heading back to the high Country 0:23:32.680 --> 0:23:36.760 ostensibly to go hunting, but investigators feared he might be 0:23:36.760 --> 0:23:40.520 planning suicide, so they had to make instant decisions to 0:23:40.600 --> 0:23:43.720 protect the interests of the grieving families, the Hills and 0:23:43.760 --> 0:23:47.520 the Clays. By this stage, police had no doubt that 0:23:47.600 --> 0:23:50.919 the missing pair had met violent deaths. Their duty to 0:23:50.960 --> 0:23:56.120 the distressed relatives in such cases is to extinguish all 0:23:56.240 --> 0:24:00.800 hope by finding human remains. They see that as their 0:24:00.840 --> 0:24:05.119 main mission. After a year of watching and waiting, detectives 0:24:05.160 --> 0:24:09.240 felt obliged to stop Lynn harming himself and to ask 0:24:09.320 --> 0:24:14.880 him to consider the family members desperate to locate their 0:24:14.920 --> 0:24:18.680 loved one's remains. In a crisis like this, the urgent 0:24:18.720 --> 0:24:22.600 outweighs important, so police threw together a plan to stop Linn. 0:24:23.640 --> 0:24:27.600 Special Operations Group members headed for the Hills in helicopters 0:24:27.880 --> 0:24:30.640 to intercept him at his camp at a place called 0:24:30.760 --> 0:24:34.879 h Buckle Junction. He didn't resist when he was surrounded 0:24:35.359 --> 0:24:39.280 on November twenty second, twenty twenty one. He was armed 0:24:39.280 --> 0:24:43.159 with the SOG. Special Operations Group have ways of disarming people. 0:24:44.160 --> 0:24:48.679 Apprehending him seemed the humane thing to do, but it 0:24:48.840 --> 0:24:53.480 skewed a copybook investigation. Now the police had to build 0:24:53.520 --> 0:24:56.200 the plane after take off. As one of them said, 0:24:56.840 --> 0:24:59.920 Lynn spent four days at Sale police station helping PA 0:25:00.160 --> 0:25:05.840 with their inquiries. What he told them was correctly suppressed. 0:25:06.160 --> 0:25:09.679 He gave vital information because he steered investigators to another 0:25:09.760 --> 0:25:14.400 district up at wong Gara, which is past Dargo, where 0:25:14.440 --> 0:25:18.200 they uncovered the remains of the missing victims a long 0:25:18.280 --> 0:25:23.520 way from where they had been killed further west at Wonongata. 0:25:24.760 --> 0:25:30.560 No details were released, naturally, but investigators undoubtedly discussed certain scenarios, 0:25:30.600 --> 0:25:34.200 such as Linn being upset by Hill's drone and getting 0:25:34.240 --> 0:25:39.160 into a confrontation with him. The likely scenario is, in fact, 0:25:39.200 --> 0:25:43.439 that Hill used the drone to film Linn engaged in 0:25:43.560 --> 0:25:47.200 using guns in some way he shouldn't or whatever doing something. 0:25:48.080 --> 0:25:52.160 Linn took objection, and they had a blue and Lin's 0:25:52.760 --> 0:25:54.520 shot him, and then he said to kill the witness. 0:25:54.560 --> 0:25:59.640 That is the logical explanation for what happened. A fight 0:25:59.720 --> 0:26:02.520 between I when an old angry man and a younger 0:26:02.520 --> 0:26:06.560 angry man ending in an inevitable result because one was 0:26:06.680 --> 0:26:10.560 armed and inclined to kill things, as we found out since. 0:26:11.400 --> 0:26:16.320 And then the chilling logical conclusion that he would kill 0:26:16.320 --> 0:26:18.399 the only witness and try to get away with it 0:26:19.280 --> 0:26:22.760 and destroy all the evidence in such a way that 0:26:22.800 --> 0:26:26.600 he almost did get away with it. The summary of 0:26:26.640 --> 0:26:31.359 police evidence is this the accused contaminated and staged the 0:26:31.400 --> 0:26:35.639 crime scene, intentionally destroyed evidence within the crime scene, and 0:26:35.720 --> 0:26:41.080 removed evidence from the crime scene before transporting and disposing 0:26:41.119 --> 0:26:45.040 of the bodies and mobile devices to further conceal his 0:26:45.160 --> 0:26:50.040 involvement and distance himself. In other words, he set fight 0:26:50.080 --> 0:26:52.280 of the camp and fled with the bodies in his trailer, 0:26:52.920 --> 0:26:56.440 disposing of them a long way from modern Gatup. Then 0:26:56.480 --> 0:26:59.720 disposed of the trailer, and then I returned to the 0:26:59.760 --> 0:27:04.359 scene in May and the following November November eight months later, 0:27:05.080 --> 0:27:09.480 where he burned the remains to a very fine ash 0:27:10.080 --> 0:27:14.399 and dispersed the little bits so there were no big 0:27:14.440 --> 0:27:20.320 pieces that could really carry much forensic investigation. The absence 0:27:20.359 --> 0:27:23.520 of bodies did not stop the investigators. When Hill's mobile 0:27:23.560 --> 0:27:27.480 phone went in the car the morning after the murders, 0:27:27.520 --> 0:27:31.880