Speaker 1: You're listening to a Mother Mea podcast. Mother Mea acknowledges
Speaker 1: the traditional owners of land and waters. This podcast was
Speaker 1: recorded on It's March nineteenth, twenty twenty. Deep in Victoria's
Speaker 1: Rugget high Country, the warn and Gada Valley is quiet
Speaker 1: and still, apart from the sounds of the bush birds
Speaker 1: the sounds of water from the nearby river wind rustling
Speaker 1: through the trees. It's the kind of place only serious
Speaker 1: camp as venture into, and Russell Hill and Carol Clay
Speaker 1: have just set up their tent in bucks. Camp Aged
Speaker 1: in their seventies, this couple have a secret. They're having
Speaker 1: an affair, and going out bush has proven to be
Speaker 1: the perfect way for them to meet without the fear
Speaker 1: of prying eyes. Here they have very little phone reception
Speaker 1: and they rarely have to interact with anyone, but this
Speaker 1: trip is different. Usually, Russell checks in with his wife
Speaker 1: every few days via his high frequency radio, but she
Speaker 1: doesn't hear from him. After day one. As time stretches on,
Speaker 1: Robin Hill starts to get worried. The line is never
Speaker 1: this silence. Something's not right. When police finally reach the
Speaker 1: campsite eight days later, they find Russell and Carroll's burnt
Speaker 1: out campsite. Beside it, they find a locked ute with
Speaker 1: the contents of the couple's wallets strewn across the floor.
Speaker 1: Russell and Carol are nowhere to be found, and detectives
Speaker 1: are immediately suspicious. I'm Jemma Bath and this is True
Speaker 1: Crime Conversations, a Muma Mere podcast exploring the world's most
Speaker 1: notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the
Speaker 1: most about them. The one in Gadda Valley is the
Speaker 1: perfect place for anyone hiding a secret, anyone who doesn't
Speaker 1: want to be found, the perfect place to have an affair,
Speaker 1: but also the perfect place to get away with murder.
Speaker 1: Over the years, several people have gone missing there, never
Speaker 1: to be found again, and that very nearly happened to
Speaker 1: seventy four year old Russell Hill and seventy three year
Speaker 1: old Carol Clay. But thanks to some careful police work,
Speaker 1: detectives were able to track down a man named Greg Lynn.
Speaker 1: By his own admission, he'd been camping close to the
Speaker 1: couple in March twenty twenty. Eventually he'd tell them a
Speaker 1: story about what happened next.
Speaker 2: Shouldn't shut Shubert to him? I saw her in the peripheral.
Speaker 2: I didn't actually see which way she was standing, but
Speaker 2: when later she was lying face down on the ground.
Speaker 1: He says their deaths were accidental. Police say it was murder.
Speaker 1: But this isn't just a story about what happened at
Speaker 1: that camping spot. It's a story about an affair that
Speaker 1: got revealed in the most extraordinary and devastating of ways.
Speaker 1: Because the very same day Russell's wife and family found
Speaker 1: out he was missing, they also found out he'd been
Speaker 1: lying for a very long time, as his daughter's told
Speaker 1: sixty minutes.
Speaker 3: No, we didn't know anything about him and Carol being together.
Speaker 3: It's been really hard on mum because not only losing
Speaker 3: her husband, but also all did it talk about Carol.
Speaker 3: So she's got both. She's lost her husband and she's
Speaker 3: grieving the lots of her relationship.
Speaker 1: This case is still ongoing. A murder trial has just concluded,
Speaker 1: and Lynn is waiting to find out how long he'll
Speaker 1: spend by in bars. Journalist and author Sarah Krasnustein is
Speaker 1: writing a book about the missing campus as the case
Speaker 1: has been referred to by the media and has been
Speaker 1: at court for every moment of the trial. She joins us.
Speaker 1: Now to debrief.
Speaker 4: Sarah.
Speaker 1: I want to set up the various relationships at play here. First,
Speaker 1: Russell and his wife Robin. What do we know about
Speaker 1: the life they created together.
Speaker 4: They met in the sixties, they married in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 4: and they had three daughters, and for a time in
Speaker 4: the seventies Russell worked as a logger. They lived in
Speaker 4: what could be described as country towns, and then later
Speaker 4: in life, Russell reunited with his childhood's sweetheart, who was
Speaker 4: a woman called Carol Clay. What he had actually been
Speaker 4: her first boyfriend when they were teenagers, and then they
Speaker 4: had drifted away and married other people, had children with
Speaker 4: other people, and then in the early two thousands they
Speaker 4: reunited socially and romantically. Clay divorced her now ex husband,
Speaker 4: but Russell stayed with Robin, and at the time of
Speaker 4: his death they had been married for over fifty years.
Speaker 4: So he would I'll meet up from time to time
Speaker 4: with Carol for getaways and their camping trip in the
Speaker 4: Wan and Gedda Valley was the last of those.
Speaker 1: And what did Robin know or not know about their
Speaker 1: relationship over the years.
Speaker 4: So we heard in the court that he had told
Speaker 4: her early on that Carol was his first cousin and
Speaker 4: that kind of accounted for seeing her socially or various catchups,
Speaker 4: and she believed that, I think for a number of decades.
Speaker 4: And then a neighbor I think gave him an ultimatum
Speaker 4: that unless he told Robin about the affair, she was
Speaker 4: going to do it. So he ended up telling her.
Speaker 4: I think there was also mention that Carol and Russell
Speaker 4: had had an agreement that they would both leave their
Speaker 4: respective spouses, and she followed through on that and Russell
Speaker 4: ended up staying with Robin. And so there was also
Speaker 4: a sense that the families knew about the affair. They
Speaker 4: all kind of knew Russell and Russell's family knew Carol,
Speaker 4: but I don't think they were across the details of
Speaker 4: the frequency of when they would go away together. And
Speaker 4: on that last camping trip, Robin thought he had got along.
Speaker 1: And so these camping trips, this wasn't the first trip
Speaker 1: that Russell and Carol had taken together.
Speaker 4: No, we heard from Russell's mate, one of his radio friends,
Speaker 4: that Russell had told him earlier about the affair and
Speaker 4: he was kind of led into that knowledge. He had
Speaker 4: gone camping with them as well, But there were other
Speaker 4: of those radio friends in the high frequency radio group
Speaker 4: that Russell was a part of for a very long
Speaker 4: time who had no idea, so he seemed to be
Speaker 4: fairly discreet about it, and the family had reached some
Speaker 4: sort of understanding and in the court. I think another
Speaker 4: point is that we know so much about the private
Speaker 4: lives of the victims, things that otherwise would have been
Speaker 4: their business only, and that people may or may not
Speaker 4: have various opinions or judgments on. But at the end
Speaker 4: of the day, we only know what we heard in
Speaker 4: evidence in a trial, and it seemed an added tragedy
Speaker 4: on top of the loss of life to have this
Speaker 4: kind of public knowledge of those private family matters. So
Speaker 4: it was quite uncomfortable in that respect, but it did
Speaker 4: draw a picture of what was going on at the time,
Speaker 4: which was necessary to kind of understand why they were there,
Speaker 4: who they were, and the loss of life and what
Speaker 4: it represented to all the people that they left behind.
Speaker 1: I just want to touch on something you mentioned, just
Speaker 1: because people might be like, what do you mean by
Speaker 1: a high frequency group.
Speaker 4: Yes, so, Russell Hill was an amateur radio enthusiast and
Speaker 4: for most of the rest of us, like myself, who
Speaker 4: were unfamiliar with radio enthusiasms. Russell had a group of friends.
Speaker 4: I think they were all men who lived in and
Speaker 4: around Victoria, and they would chat most nights, if not
Speaker 4: every night, around six pm, and they all built their
Speaker 4: own radios. They had special licenses for operating the radios.
Speaker 4: The talk wasn't limited to radios themselves, but it was
Speaker 4: an interest that kind of united this group of older men,
Speaker 4: and that was a whole world that was interesting and
Speaker 4: new for me to see this madship that had grown
Speaker 4: in that context.
Speaker 1: And it's significant to this story because where Russell and
Speaker 1: Carol went camping was so remote that there wasn't much
Speaker 1: phone cell data. They were mainly relying on these radios
Speaker 1: if they did need to contact anyone.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Absolutely, Like the Wantageta Valley, like many other places
Speaker 4: in the Alpine National Park, which is in Victoria's high country,
Speaker 4: does not as a rule have mobile reception, so if
Speaker 4: you want to have contact with the outside world, they
Speaker 4: need a satellite phone or a high frequency radio. I
Speaker 4: think a few of the radio friends were campers as well,
Speaker 4: and they would use this six pm daily call to
Speaker 4: check that everything was going well, and they said that
Speaker 4: they used it in that capacity as well as for
Speaker 4: social reasons. We also heard that Robin Russell's wife didn't
Speaker 4: have the license that would have allowed her to have
Speaker 4: a chat on the radio and to actually be using
Speaker 4: the airwaves, but she was allowed to turn it on
Speaker 4: and listen to it in terms of the licensing regulations,
Speaker 4: and she would do that as well when Russell went
Speaker 4: away on his camping chips to check that he was
Speaker 4: going all right. She wouldn't necessarily listen to the whole thing,
Speaker 4: but she'd turn it on here his voice, and then
Speaker 4: she'd be comforted by that. So the radio did play
Speaker 4: a huge part in this particular case.
Speaker 1: Because Russell camped with Carol, but he also camped alone,
Speaker 1: didn't he He was quite an experienced bushman.
Speaker 4: Yes, he was familiar generally with the high country and
Speaker 4: then specifically with the Wangata Valley. He'd worked there as
Speaker 4: a logger, and he also was instrumental in cutting one
Speaker 4: of the main tracks into the valley, the Ziga Spur track,
Speaker 4: which was also figured in the narrative of the killings.
Speaker 4: So he was familiar with this area and he really,
Speaker 4: by all accounts, loved it. Loved being out in nature,
Speaker 4: love the solitude and the tranquility of it, and he
Speaker 4: also loved to bring the people he loved there. I
Speaker 4: think he had brought Robin there before, and this last
Speaker 4: trip he was there with Carol.
Speaker 1: Because when we think about going into Australian bushland, especially camping,
Speaker 1: you might still think bitchuman roads. You know, some nice
Speaker 1: camping areas with potentially like a pit toilet. But this
Speaker 1: was rugged as it comes, wasn't it.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean that's part of my initial attraction to
Speaker 4: the story was the physical landscape in which the crime occurred.
Speaker 4: The valley itself is about three hundred and fifty kilometers
Speaker 4: northeast of Melbourne where I'm sitting now, and it's surrounded
Speaker 4: on all sides by very steep mountains, and they're the
Speaker 4: kind of mountains you'd see in The Man from Snowy River.
Speaker 4: The movie of The Man from Snowy River was actually
Speaker 4: filmed not very far from the area that we're talking about,
Speaker 4: So very steep sided mountains, mountain cattleman country, and the
Speaker 4: valley itself is only accessible by foot, horse, helicopter or
Speaker 4: four wheel drive, but you have to be quite proficient.
Speaker 4: Had four wheel driving because the tracks leading into it
Speaker 4: are graded like ski runs, and so they're extremely steep.
Speaker 4: There've been a number of fatalities of people who weren't
Speaker 4: that great drivers. And you need to know what you're
Speaker 4: doing and have a pretty firm grasp on the weather
Speaker 4: because it can be quite treacherous just to get there.
Speaker 1: So on the day that Russell and Carol go camping,
Speaker 1: Russell's wife thinks he's going on a solo trip. He
Speaker 1: picks up Carol. They go into the valley, they start camping.
Speaker 1: When did it become apparent that something might be going wrong.
Speaker 4: They got there, the campsite was called Dry River Camp
Speaker 4: or Bucks Camp. One of the other things I should
Speaker 4: mention is that many of these places are not even
Speaker 4: marked on maps, so they have different names, or they
Speaker 4: use trails or tracks that are subject to weather changes,
Speaker 4: and it's a really rugged terrain. So they get there,
Speaker 4: they set up camp in this beautiful spot. It's a
Speaker 4: wonderful spot that they chose near the river. And the
Speaker 4: last call that Russell made on the radio was the
Speaker 4: Friday night six pm call on the twentieth of March
Speaker 4: twenty twenty. It wasn't unknown for one of the group
Speaker 4: to miss a night here and there, that wasn't a
Speaker 4: big deal. But when he failed to check in on
Speaker 4: the Saturday the twenty first, and the Sunday the twenty second,
Speaker 4: and the Monday the twenty third, the friends generally, and
Speaker 4: a man named Robin Ashland specifically, who was the head
Speaker 4: of the group, knew that something was not right. And
Speaker 4: so in that sense, he would have known before most
Speaker 4: of Russell's family that something was not right. Robin was
Speaker 4: already across this because she had been checking in and
Speaker 4: not hearing him for that very odd patch of three days.
Speaker 4: And so they had a chat on the Monday, Robin
Speaker 4: and he advised her to go to the police, and
Speaker 4: she did that the next day.
Speaker 1: So what did the police do next? Do They immediately
Speaker 1: head to the campsite.
Speaker 4: After Robin had gone into the station. We heard evidence
Speaker 4: that they called Robin Ashland for exact directions where the
Speaker 4: campsite was. There is then a slight lag in actually
Speaker 4: arriving there first. That's, as I understand it, logistical because
Speaker 4: it takes a degree of preparation to actually get to
Speaker 4: that spot physically. But also you have to remember that
Speaker 4: this was the exact time that Melbourne was going into
Speaker 4: lockdown and the world was closing down. This is literally
Speaker 4: when COVID hit. So everything is on fire. And what
Speaker 4: had been explained to the police with the best knowledge
Speaker 4: and information that Russell Hill's wife and friend had looked
Speaker 4: for all intents and purposes like a missing person's case.
Speaker 4: So that was the presumption when police arrived at the campsite,
Speaker 4: and they got there in the twenty eighth of March,
Speaker 4: so the killings happened on the twentieth of March, and
Speaker 4: then Robin Hill goes to the police on the Tuesday,
Speaker 4: which I think was the twenty fourth of March, and
Speaker 4: then on the twenty eighth the police are there looking
Speaker 4: at what appears to the naked eye to be really
Speaker 4: strange scene of a burnt out campsite. So there's no
Speaker 4: immediate evidence that something has gone wrong, that people have
Speaker 4: been killed there. It looks strange and quite confronting because
Speaker 4: there's this huge burnt out fire. The side of Russell's
Speaker 4: white Land Cruiser has fire damage. The tent that housed
Speaker 4: the outdoor camping toilet that they had is still standing.
Speaker 4: All their equipment is there, all their food is there,
Speaker 4: but their wallets are kind of strewn in the footwell.
Speaker 4: The contents of the wallets have all been taken out,
Speaker 4: so it might be a robbery, but it might be
Speaker 4: something else. So there wasn't blood. They were looking at bodies.
Speaker 4: They had a very confusing scene to process and the
Speaker 4: immediate thinking was that these were campers who were gone missing.
Speaker 4: They seemed to have vanished into thin air.
Speaker 1: And at that point with the police only looking for Russell,
Speaker 1: when they arrived, they realized they also had another missing person, Carol.
Speaker 4: So immediately or soon after arriving, they could see her
Speaker 4: wallet with her ID in it, her Medicare card was,
Speaker 4: their driver's license was there, and there was clearly the
Speaker 4: equipment of two people. Her handbag there's two straw hats,
Speaker 4: two sets of runners, So there was that. And then
Speaker 4: in that week when Carol Clay's family report her missing,
Speaker 4: is that kind of additional knowledge that her family gives
Speaker 4: the police that she is probably with Russell.
Speaker 1: Obviously, when the police arrives, they can see that the
Speaker 1: scene looks strange and immediately suspicious. Do they jump immediately
Speaker 1: to foul play because you've got two people here who
Speaker 1: they discover are having an affair. I can imagine that
Speaker 1: they would go down that line of thinking first that
Speaker 1: potentially they've run away together and they're trying to make
Speaker 1: out to their families like they've run away. Was that
Speaker 1: something that was discussed, Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think early on it was one of the potential
Speaker 4: lines of inquiry, and then when there was nothing really
Speaker 4: to justify that in terms of bank statements or phone records,
Speaker 4: they moved on to this last in the bush or
Speaker 4: death by misadventure in the bush, or missing somewhere after
Speaker 4: something went wrong on a bushwalk. And that high country
Speaker 4: terrain has seen experienced ampers go missing without a trace,
Speaker 4: so that would have been part of the thinking as well.
Speaker 4: And the early searches were looking for live people who
Speaker 4: had straight away from the path, which is extremely easy
Speaker 4: to do in this terrain where the bush is so
Speaker 4: dense that it's difficult to move through it quickly. It's
Speaker 4: difficult to move through it at all. In some places
Speaker 4: you can lose the track even a meter away from
Speaker 4: the track. And you know, I write for a living,
Speaker 4: but it's difficult to explain with words unless you're looking
Speaker 4: at it. The sheer density of this surrounding bush. So
Speaker 4: missing person in the bush would have been I think,
Speaker 4: for a time the most logical conclusion.
Speaker 1: There have been reports, and even in researching this story,
Speaker 1: I've seen lots of chatter about potential strange people that
Speaker 1: have been seen in this area. One that pops up
Speaker 1: a lot is the Button Man.
Speaker 4: So during the trial we heard from the informant, who
Speaker 4: was Detective Sergeant Brett Florence, that this particular case generated
Speaker 4: a notably high volume of information coming through crime stoppers.
Speaker 4: And in those early months the police were looking at
Speaker 4: a number of possible theories and eliminating a number of
Speaker 4: potential suspects, each of whom was eventually cleared of any involvement.
Speaker 4: And so in the online forums and in the newspapers
Speaker 4: early on, popular speculation began to cluster around that person
Speaker 4: called the button Man. He was described in different ways.
Speaker 4: He's a white guy around seventy. They call him a loner, oddball,
Speaker 4: gun bushman. And what is true is that he lives
Speaker 4: in the High for months at a time at a
Speaker 4: particular campsite, perpetually camping, and he gathers deer antlers to
Speaker 4: slice into dear plugs that resemble buttons, and various campers,
Speaker 4: including some that i've spoken to when I was up there,
Speaker 4: have had run into with him. Generally they describe him
Speaker 4: as kind of like socially a bit weird sort of vibe,
Speaker 4: but not dangerous or particular scary. But then we hear
Speaker 4: all of these stories that he just materializes at the
Speaker 4: campsite and you don't know he's there, or he remains
Speaker 4: hidden and just kind of pops up, spooking hunters who
Speaker 4: thought they had been alone, or that campers get home
Speaker 4: and they find a photo of themselves sleeping on their
Speaker 4: camera that he might have took. So all of that reading,
Speaker 4: I initially thought that was some sort of urban myth
Speaker 4: or campfire ghost story. And then I read that the
Speaker 4: police had actually found him and interviewed him for this
Speaker 4: investigation and cleared him of any involvement.
Speaker 1: So the button Man's cleared. Yes, were police able to
Speaker 1: find anything in tracking the phones or devices. We know
Speaker 1: that they've got patchy phone reception, but there was a
Speaker 1: little bit of reception.
Speaker 4: There was a little bit of reception. Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4: So one of the early pieces of evidence was through
Speaker 4: phone analysis of Russell Hill's phone, and it was moving
Speaker 4: along the Great Alpine Road at a particular time on
Speaker 4: the morning of the twenty first of March, the Saturday morning,
Speaker 4: so there was enough analysis for that to be pinpointed.
Speaker 4: The phones were never.
Speaker 1: Found, there were cameras up on one of the roads
Speaker 1: into the valley that police were able to use to
Speaker 1: track vehicles, and that actually became pretty much vital to
Speaker 1: their investigation. Can you describe that why it became so important.
Speaker 4: So this landscape, this terrain happens to be where one
Speaker 4: of the best ski resorts in Victoria is located. And
Speaker 4: one of the most important early breakthroughs was the CCTV
Speaker 4: on Mount Hawtham, which I think is used to enforce
Speaker 4: the resort's entry fee and has number plate recognition. And
Speaker 4: so just before ten am on the twenty first of March,
Speaker 4: it filmed Greg Linn driving his niece on patrol down
Speaker 4: the Great Alpine Road and so that, in combination with
Speaker 4: the phone analysis that showed Russell Hill's phone was also
Speaker 4: traveling down that road at that time, was one of
Speaker 4: the first solid pieces of evidence that turned police's mind
Speaker 4: to greglin as the princesspect in this case.
Speaker 1: You're listening to true crime conversations with me, Jimmy Bath.
Speaker 1: I'm speaking with Sarah Krasnasdin about the missing campus trial.
Speaker 1: Up next, Greg Lynn tells detectives his side of the story.
Speaker 1: Did they get onto that clue and Greg Lynn is
Speaker 1: a possible suspect fairly quickly? Because that feels like quite
Speaker 1: intricate police work.
Speaker 4: Yes, it is so. Yeah, I mean I think in
Speaker 4: the sum of things, it was fairly quickly. Once they
Speaker 4: had eliminated all other kind of case theories, and the
Speaker 4: footage showed twelve different cars traveling through that area at
Speaker 4: that time, it was not super unusual. There are so
Speaker 4: many witnesses in this case, specifically, and witnesses who weren't
Speaker 4: called because all that COVID buzz was in the air,
Speaker 4: and people were thinking, Okay, well, maybe this is the
Speaker 4: last time I can get a weekend away here. Maybe
Speaker 4: they're going to close the parks, workers shutting down. We
Speaker 4: might as well have out. So there was nothing inherently
Speaker 4: suspicious about being on the road at that time. But
Speaker 4: Lind's carr was the only one on the road at
Speaker 4: the specific time that Russell Hill's phone was pinpointed, and
Speaker 4: then after the passage of some time, he was the
Speaker 4: only one who hadn't contacted the police. To explain who
Speaker 4: they were and where they were going. So from about
Speaker 4: mid twenty twenty they were zeroing in on Redlin.
Speaker 1: Can you give us some background on who Greg Limb
Speaker 1: was in twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: So we hear a lot, and I think it's because
Speaker 4: it's quite unusual that he's a pilot, a commercial pilot.
Speaker 4: And I think also just earlier I said, we know
Speaker 4: so much about the lives of the victims in trials
Speaker 4: like this, but we know comparatively little about the private
Speaker 4: life of the accused. And that's just part of how
Speaker 4: our system is structured. It's related to the presumption of
Speaker 4: inn since, but it's just something that doesn't sit particularly
Speaker 4: well in terms of fairness, not legally defined that people
Speaker 4: who had no choice in the matter have their lives
Speaker 4: on view while the person who created this tragedy gets
Speaker 4: to retain a measure of privacy. We'll find out a
Speaker 4: bit more about who he is and who he was
Speaker 4: at his sentencing hearing, when more personal information is presented
Speaker 4: to the court, psychological information about his personality, makeup, and
Speaker 4: his experience and background. But at the moment we still
Speaker 4: have kind of a fairly vague picture of him. He's
Speaker 4: fifty seven. He was most recently working for jet Star.
Speaker 4: He is married to a woman called Melanie Lynn, who
Speaker 4: is a flight attendant, and she's also the stepmother to
Speaker 4: his two sons from an earlier marriage to Lisa Lynn,
Speaker 4: who died in nineteen ninety nine. Linn had wanted to
Speaker 4: be a fighter pilot initially, and he joined the Air
Speaker 4: Force in the mid nineties as a cadet. His performance
Speaker 4: there did not seem to match his aspirations, and so
Speaker 4: far as he was not selected for the elite stream,
Speaker 4: so he became then a commercial pilot, first in Tasmania
Speaker 4: and then with Anset, and when Ansett collapsed around two
Speaker 4: thousand and one, he was hired by Qatar Airlines and
Speaker 4: he returned to a showy on two thousand and seven
Speaker 4: working for jest Star. I think his last role was
Speaker 4: as a training captain. We know that he held a
Speaker 4: firearms license, that he owns more guns and knives than
Speaker 4: were admitted into evidence at the trial before the jury,
Speaker 4: and that he's a keen camper and hunter.
Speaker 1: So police have their eye on him, and in July
Speaker 1: twenty twenty they turn up in his doorstep, not to
Speaker 1: arrest him though, just to chat what was the purpose
Speaker 1: of that visit.
Speaker 4: So yeah, midway through June to actives pull up at
Speaker 4: his home in the Melon suburb of Carolina Springs. Those
Speaker 4: detectives are Bret Florence and Habby Justin. This is the
Speaker 4: home where Lynn lives with his wife, Melanie and his kids.
Speaker 4: When the police arrive, they see that the Nissan that
Speaker 4: they've seen on the camera, the Nissan Patrol, which was
Speaker 4: dark blue on the camera, has changed color since it
Speaker 4: was filmed on Mount Hotham is now a tan color.
Speaker 4: So they go in. They speak with him in his kitchen,
Speaker 4: and what they hear confirms their suspicions about his privacy
Speaker 4: as the suspect. And so they spend the next few
Speaker 4: months speaking with witnesses and making various searches in the
Speaker 4: high country I think for human remains, could have her
Speaker 4: dogs are used up point and all of that time
Speaker 4: they're gathering further information about Greg Lynn, until at the
Speaker 4: start of December in twenty twenty, they're issued with the
Speaker 4: warrants that allow him to intercept his phone calls and
Speaker 4: play surveillance devices in his home and in that four
Speaker 4: World drive.
Speaker 1: Well, it takes him another sixteen months to actually arrest him.
Speaker 1: That's insane. So they spent that whole time just monitoring
Speaker 1: him before they actually pounced.
Speaker 4: They were listening for over eleven months and they made
Speaker 4: at least five thousand different recordings. That's a literal five thousand.
Speaker 1: That's insane.
Speaker 4: So they are listening to him for something that can
Speaker 4: be submitted in evidence. He spoke frequently to himself, which
Speaker 4: was of some aid. The detective who was on those
Speaker 4: intercepts listening was Daniel Passingham, and he made a note
Speaker 4: at one point characterizing what he heard as narcissistic, misogynistic, racist,
Speaker 4: and chauvinistic to characterize the general tenor of what he
Speaker 4: was hearing. None of that on its own is an
Speaker 4: offense per se. But they were getting a picture of
Speaker 4: him and trying to compile the case against him so
Speaker 4: that they could arrest him in charge him.
Speaker 1: When they finally did arrest him, what happened. Did he talk?
Speaker 1: Was he charged immediately? What did that look like?
Speaker 4: Well, that story is also interesting on itself. So in
Speaker 4: early November twenty twenty one, now the police had enough
Speaker 4: information that they strategically released some of it to the
Speaker 4: media to the effect that they were closing in on
Speaker 4: a particular suspect, and that a dark blue four wheel
Speaker 4: drive Nissan Patrol had been captured on cameras and that
Speaker 4: they were in a good position to sw the case.
Speaker 4: So that was a deliberate kind of strategy to put
Speaker 4: pressure on reg Lynn specifically, and it worked. So on
Speaker 4: the twenty second of November, not very long after that
Speaker 4: information was all over the media. Sixty minutes and in
Speaker 4: various newspapers. The surveillance devices showed Lynn heading back to
Speaker 4: the high Country from his home in Caroline Springs with
Speaker 4: at least one shotgun, and that he appeared to be
Speaker 4: mentally distressed, crying, talking about himself in the past, tense
Speaker 4: out loud on his own in the car, and the
Speaker 4: self talk was sufficiently concerning that they feared that he
Speaker 4: might self harm, and so they arrested him and then
Speaker 4: they took him to the nearest police station, which was
Speaker 4: in Sale, which is a country police station about two
Speaker 4: and a half hours east of Melbourne.
Speaker 1: And what happened there.
Speaker 4: He spends three days in the police station at Sale.
Speaker 4: It's freezing in the police station. They have a heating problem,
Speaker 4: and he is given blankets, he's showered he's fed, and
Speaker 4: he's not interviewed for three continuous days. He's interviewed over
Speaker 4: a number of hours each day by the detectives passing
Speaker 4: him in Florence. He spent the first two days refusing
Speaker 4: to answer the questions put to him. I mean, I
Speaker 4: think his first question to them was why am I here?
Speaker 4: He spoke to a legal aid judy lawyer who had
Speaker 4: advised him to make no comment, and he does have
Speaker 4: that right to silence, and so that seemed to be
Speaker 4: what he was doing for the first two days, and
Speaker 4: the police pushed back on that by saying it's making
Speaker 4: it difficult for them to get an explanation. This is
Speaker 4: his chance to explain the story, and so eventually greg
Speaker 4: Lynn says that he wants to give what he called
Speaker 4: a pathway to resolution. He then told them his version
Speaker 4: of what had occurred on the night of the twentieth
Speaker 4: of March when Hill and Clay died, and he also
Speaker 4: told them where they could find what was left of
Speaker 4: their bodies. At the conclusion of that interview, and from
Speaker 4: listening to it and watching it, it seems that he
Speaker 4: was slightly surprised by this. He was told by Detective
Speaker 4: Lawrence that he would be charged with the murder of
Speaker 4: Russell Hill and with the murder of Carol Clay.
Speaker 1: That admission that he gave was incredibly detailed. Yes, can
Speaker 1: you give us an overview of what he said happened
Speaker 1: to Hill and Clay.
Speaker 4: So the two schools have thought about this in terms
Speaker 4: of trial argument or advocacy. The first one is that
Speaker 4: it's a bit unusual for a suspect to give a
Speaker 4: record of interview that so closely matches the available evidence.
Speaker 4: On the other hand, it's highly unusual to have a
Speaker 4: commercial pilot charged with two murders and to have eighteen
Speaker 4: months as the only living witness to think about a
Speaker 4: story that matches the available evidence. His story and the
Speaker 4: first time I heard it, I thought it couldn't possibly
Speaker 4: be true because it seemed to stretch the imagination incredibly.
Speaker 4: Lynn said that on the twentieth of March he was
Speaker 4: also camping at Bucks Camp and he got into a
Speaker 4: dispute with Hill over Hill's use of the drone. After
Speaker 4: exchanging pleasantries with the couple in the morning, he was
Speaker 4: slightly taken aback that they were camped fairly close to
Speaker 4: his site, not super close, but he said he got
Speaker 4: over that, and they exchanged pleasantries and he went off hunting.
Speaker 4: When he came back, he finds this drone over him,
Speaker 4: taking footage of him, and that this was so invasive
Speaker 4: that it led to an argument with Russell Hill. Greg
Speaker 4: Lynn goes back to his campsite, has his dinner, opens
Speaker 4: the doors of his four wheel drive blasts music loudly.
Speaker 4: By this point, it's between nine and ten, and Russell
Speaker 4: and Carol are in their tent. Anyone who's at gun camping,
Speaker 4: it's fairly late, it's dark. This is a couple in
Speaker 4: their seventies there in bed, and he's blasting music. The
Speaker 4: way he explained that was he was rude to me,
Speaker 4: so I could be rude back, and he also said
Speaker 4: it was fairly childish. Fine. As he's having his dinner
Speaker 4: with the music blaring, he says that. Russell Hill goes
Speaker 4: into his four wheel drive, takes one of his shotguns
Speaker 4: and the ammunition to load it, and fires it into
Speaker 4: the air and takes it back to his campsite. So
Speaker 4: greg Lynn follows him. There's a tussle over the gun
Speaker 4: as he tries to get it back off Russell. In
Speaker 4: the process, it accidentally discharges with Russell's finger on the trigger,
Speaker 4: killing Carol Clay with a single shot to the head
Speaker 4: as she's cowering behind Russell's car. Then Gregland said that
Speaker 4: Russell was so enraged by this that he got a
Speaker 4: kitchen knife and came towards greg Lynn with the knife.
Speaker 4: They then tussled over that. Russell Hill then fell on
Speaker 4: his own knife, stabbing himself through the chest and died instantly.
Speaker 4: Greg Lynn then said he panicked. He thought that it
Speaker 4: would look as though those two accidental deaths were deliberate,
Speaker 4: and that they would derail the rest of his life
Speaker 4: and everything that had given it, meaning his family, his
Speaker 4: capacity to work as a pilot, and various gun clubs
Speaker 4: or sports clubs that he had recently joined. So he
Speaker 4: thought the only thing to do was to eliminate the evidence.
Speaker 4: He admitted to burning the items that had blood on them,
Speaker 4: to wiping blood off of the car as much as
Speaker 4: you could see it, and then putting the bodies into
Speaker 4: the trailer on the back of his car and driving
Speaker 4: them through the night on the Great Alpine Road to
Speaker 4: hide them at a site on the other side of
Speaker 4: the valley near a town called Dargo.
Speaker 1: And he says that he actually went back to the
Speaker 1: bodies several months later, doesn't he? What did he do
Speaker 1: that for?
Speaker 4: We heard that he went back twice. So immediately after
Speaker 4: the killing, Greg Lynn went back to Melbourne and we
Speaker 4: went down into lockdown, so he had no opportunity to
Speaker 4: go back and check on the bodies, or to go
Speaker 4: back and do anything at all and fly under the radar.
Speaker 4: So as soon as we had a break in that
Speaker 4: first lockdown, which I think was May, he went back
Speaker 4: to the site where he had buried them under some
Speaker 4: sticks and logs. He said to avoid the wild dogs
Speaker 4: and other animals that are in this area. They had
Speaker 4: not been substantially disturbed either by animals or humans. We
Speaker 4: then went back into lockdown. He returned from that trip,
Speaker 4: and then when there was the next break, he had
Speaker 4: started to pick up on enough details, either legitimately or
Speaker 4: through his own fears, that he thought that he had
Speaker 4: no other options kind of how he phrased it, than
Speaker 4: to return to that area and eliminate the only remaining evidence,
Speaker 4: which was their bodies. He spent all night burning them
Speaker 4: I think was twelve hours. He reduced them into tiny
Speaker 4: bone fragments and a few other remaining pieces of physical evidence,
Speaker 4: and then he hid the remains in a root ball hole,
Speaker 4: which is the hole in the ground left when a
Speaker 4: tree falls over, so all of the space taken up
Speaker 4: by its roots. He piles all that debris into the
Speaker 4: root ball hole and he considers that he has, in
Speaker 4: his words, disappeared.
Speaker 1: Were the police able to recover those remains what was left?
Speaker 4: They were. We heard from a number of crime scene
Speaker 4: specialists about the nature of their work, and it has
Speaker 4: a quiet heroism that is very understated and easily missed.
Speaker 4: There's a forensic anthropologist who doesn't tell you the cause
Speaker 4: of death, but can read these bone fragments to tell
Speaker 4: you what information they hold. So the forensic anthropologist is
Speaker 4: not going to give you a narrow of about causes.
Speaker 4: But in this case, her name is doctor Soren Blau,
Speaker 4: and she can say these two tiny pieces of cranial
Speaker 4: bone had DNA that was consistent with Carol Clay's DNA.
Speaker 4: They show tiny fragments of material that are consistent with
Speaker 4: being close to a piece of metal like a bullet,
Speaker 4: And so she is just giving the facts that are
Speaker 4: part of her work. She was an extremely compelling witness.
Speaker 4: We heard from a forensic odontologist who is a dentist
Speaker 4: who works in legal matters about the identification of dental remains.
Speaker 4: There was a partial bridge that was found to be russels,
Speaker 4: and we heard from a forensic entomologist who's an insects
Speaker 4: specialist about the blowfly maggot casings that were found and
Speaker 4: how they can actually be used as little clocks or
Speaker 4: indication about timing because they eat human remains and then
Speaker 4: they burrow underground, so that's another way of dating the material.
Speaker 4: But it's extremely confronting to see what is twenty one
Speaker 4: hundred tiny bone fragments of two people reduced to almost dust,
Speaker 4: a small charred watch face, and a small piece of
Speaker 4: dental bridge. And so the work that they do, the
Speaker 4: care with which they do it, and the attention that
Speaker 4: they gave to finding these almost indiscernible things in this
Speaker 4: vast bush area was a nice counterbalance to just how
Speaker 4: dark the loss of life was in this case.
Speaker 1: That's such a good point to bring up the fact
Speaker 1: that for the family sitting in that courtroom seeing what
Speaker 1: was left of their loved ones, can only imagine how
Speaker 1: horrible that must be.
Speaker 4: Each one of these tiny fragments is handled with such
Speaker 4: care and taken so seriously and restored to the dignity
Speaker 4: that I think each human life deserves. It's unexpectedly harrowing
Speaker 4: but also unexpectedly moving when you hear the forensic specialists
Speaker 4: talk about their work.
Speaker 1: So during the trial, Linni is charged with two murders,
Speaker 1: He's given this account of what he says happened, and
Speaker 1: it's obviously the prosecution's job to disprove that and poke
Speaker 1: holes in that. What were the biggest holes they were
Speaker 1: able to show the court.
Speaker 4: They were tasked kind of with this idea that just
Speaker 4: because he was truthful about some things, the jury shouldn't
Speaker 4: necessarily assume and in this case it would be unwise
Speaker 4: to assume that he was truthful about everything. Their task
Speaker 4: was to show that he intentionally acted twice to deliberately
Speaker 4: kill each of Russell Hill and Carol Clay. They were
Speaker 4: up against it because of Greglin's admittedly deliberate destruction of
Speaker 4: evidence that could aid in constructing the story that took place.
Speaker 4: As I mentioned, the phones were missing. He said he
Speaker 4: took them and he threw them in the Rose River.
Speaker 4: The drone was missing, and so the prosecution were not
Speaker 4: able to tell a story in the fullness of its details,
Speaker 4: provable beyond reasonable doubt. But they did not go with
Speaker 4: the defense narrative of an accidental struggle in which Carol
Speaker 4: was killed first and Russell was killed second. They said
Speaker 4: that Ussell Hill was probably killed first and in circumstances
Speaker 4: that were comprised murder, and that Carol Clay was deliberately
Speaker 4: killed second because she had witnessed what had happened. That
Speaker 4: they were killed because of this dispute over whatever it
Speaker 4: was that had been captured by Russell Hill on his phone.
Speaker 4: And again what that is is a matter of speculation
Speaker 4: because we do not have the evidence. It could have
Speaker 4: been hunting too close to the campsite. It could have
Speaker 4: been And I still don't understand why this wasn't pinpointed
Speaker 4: as going to motive. I'll just say that you don't
Speaker 4: need to prove motive as part of the elements of murder,
Speaker 4: but it helps persuade a jury about those elements because
Speaker 4: they're put in a context of human action. Greg Lynn,
Speaker 4: and telling this story about how Russell came and took
Speaker 4: the gun from his car, said that the guns were unsecured,
Speaker 4: as was the ammunition, and that having unsecured guns and
Speaker 4: ammunition is a violation of the Firearms Code, and that
Speaker 4: any violation about firearms would have been sufficient to disqualify
Speaker 4: him from getting the security clearance required to be a
Speaker 4: pilot and he would be unable to work. So then
Speaker 4: that made me think that if there was a campsite
Speaker 4: dispute about anything in the morning, and we know that
Speaker 4: Russell Hill was particularly wary about guns because he had
Speaker 4: had a relative killed accidentally on a deer hunting trip,
Speaker 4: and he didn't have a firearms license. He inherited a
Speaker 4: shotgun that his father used on his farm when he
Speaker 4: was young, which would be a relic compared to the
Speaker 4: source of weapons that greg Lynn had, So there might
Speaker 4: have been some tension around Greglinn's use of the guns
Speaker 4: at the campsite, whether he was to be using them safely.
Speaker 4: Both of these men seem to have personalities that wouldn't
Speaker 4: have taken well to being questioned or policed in any
Speaker 4: way about their activities, and so if Russell Hill took
Speaker 4: a photo of those guns unsecured or the ammunition unsecured
Speaker 4: in Gregland's car while greglin had been camping, perhaps that
Speaker 4: might have been enough to trigger off the subsequent chain
Speaker 4: of events, or equally, perhaps greg Lynn was hunting too
Speaker 4: closed against it or carrying the weapon in a way
Speaker 4: that violated the code or the laws, and Russell Hill
Speaker 4: had footage of that. But it's one thing for us
Speaker 4: to put together evidence in that way. It's another thing
Speaker 4: for the Crown prosecutor, who is restricted to what they
Speaker 4: can prove on the evidence available. So they weren't able
Speaker 4: to put together a theory in those details, but they
Speaker 4: elicited sufficient information that Greglan's story, at least in relation
Speaker 4: to Carol Clay, was not persuasive to the jury.
Speaker 1: And one of the ways I guess they could do
Speaker 1: that as well was to prove that the extent that
Speaker 1: he went to to hide the fact that they died
Speaker 1: kind of showed that he potentially killed them, because why
Speaker 1: would you do that? Why would you go to such links?
Speaker 4: Correct? And it's accessible now there's a mental ocuatory appeal
Speaker 4: court judgment, So that means that instead of waiting till
Speaker 4: the end of the trial to see if a particular
Speaker 4: point of law was correctly applied and then going to appeal,
Speaker 4: they can pause the proceedings send that small confined point
Speaker 4: up to the Court of Appeal, who can give a
Speaker 4: clear answer and then the trial can proceed on short footing.
Speaker 4: It's a good use of resources when there's an ambiguity
Speaker 4: in the law. But the ambiguity was precisely about this,
Speaker 4: the circumstances in which what we call post offense conduct
Speaker 4: like destroying evidence, moving bodies, anything that happens after the
Speaker 4: offending can be used to reason backwards towards intentioned murder.
Speaker 4: And the Court of Appeal said that on the facts
Speaker 4: of this particular Crown case it could be used for
Speaker 4: that purpose, and then the jury would need to find
Speaker 4: in order to use it in that way that there
Speaker 4: was no other possible explanation for the conduct except that
Speaker 4: he was guilty of murder, so that it was so
Speaker 4: disproportionate to an accidental situation. And of course that's complicated
Speaker 4: by this question of panic. Panic doesn't follow rational rules.
Speaker 4: So we're saying, is it possible, Yes, many things are possible.
Speaker 4: Is it probable? I don't think so in the circumstance,
Speaker 4: And is it possible that Greg Lynn, with everything that
Speaker 4: we know about his training as a pilot, the methodicalness,
Speaker 4: the diligence, the planning, would have been panicked only at
Speaker 4: that stage and not previously, or that he wouldn't have
Speaker 4: stopped and used the radio and called for help or
Speaker 4: preserve the evidence of these two improbable deaths, and the
Speaker 4: jury that they could answer that question confidently in relation
Speaker 4: to Carol Clay, but clearly not confidently in relation to
Speaker 4: Russell Hill.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I need you to explain this to me, because
Speaker 1: it's so tricky to understand when you've got these two
Speaker 1: accidental deaths. You've got the same amount of evidence for
Speaker 1: both of them, which is very little in terms of
Speaker 1: physical stuff, and the jury was able to find him
Speaker 1: guilty of murder for one of the deaths, yes, and
Speaker 1: not the other. Please explain.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's tricky, and we will not know the jury's
Speaker 4: reasoning process. We're not allowed to ask about it. It
Speaker 4: remains a locked box. But it seems that they concluded
Speaker 4: that Hill was killed in circumstances that could not be
Speaker 4: proven beyond a reasonable doubt, so that they couldn't confidently
Speaker 4: say that he was going to see the murder, but
Speaker 4: that Lynn murdered Carol because she was a witness to
Speaker 4: that death. So they used the evidence that was presented
Speaker 4: to come to those two conclusions and the standard that's
Speaker 4: required beyond reasonable doubt operated differently. I think, having sat
Speaker 4: through it, that the fact that there's direct physical evidence
Speaker 4: relating to Carol's bones coming into contact with the metal
Speaker 4: that's likely to have been a bullet played a role,
Speaker 4: and the total absence of physical evidence about Russell's death.
Speaker 4: There's nothing to say that it was a gunshot. There's
Speaker 4: nothing to say that it was a knife. There's nothing
Speaker 4: at all that obviously weighed on the jury with sufficient
Speaker 4: weight that they couldn't say what happened beyond reasonable doubt,
Speaker 4: but they could say that whatever it was that she witnessed,
Speaker 4: she was killed because of it.
Speaker 1: Do you think that this was a particular tricky case.
Speaker 1: Some cases are quite black and white. You know, there's
Speaker 1: enough evidence for a jury to go away and deliberate
Speaker 1: for a few hours. But this jury took days and
Speaker 1: days and days, and I don't envy what they had
Speaker 1: to do. It sounds like it was really hard this
Speaker 1: particular case.
Speaker 4: Yes, I had the thought for the whole six weeks
Speaker 4: of the trial that they were in an almost impossible position,
Speaker 4: and it's very difficult because you're sitting there and we
Speaker 4: had access to a whole range of information that the
Speaker 4: jury did not have access to, and they have to
Speaker 4: rely on their common sense, as the judge will remind them,
Speaker 4: and their close attentiveness to all of this information. And
Speaker 4: then there are twelve very different people in a room
Speaker 4: who have to come to an accord unanimously. So there's
Speaker 4: so many sorts of factors that determine these outcomes, and
Speaker 4: every jury is in a sense unique, and every verdict
Speaker 4: is in a sense unique, because most experienced counsel and
Speaker 4: judges would tell you that you can't be confident until
Speaker 4: the moment of verdict about what it's going to be.
Speaker 4: So it was an extremely tricky case for a number
Speaker 4: of reasons. The total absence of evidence, the admission about
Speaker 4: acting despicably, in the words of rig Lunn's lawyer Dermot
Speaker 4: dan Ac, that it was despicable to destroy this evidence,
Speaker 4: But that destroying evidence is not the same thing as
Speaker 4: having proved the unreasonable doubt of two murders. So they
Speaker 4: have to put together everything that they are seeing and
Speaker 4: everything that they are hearing and reviewing, and they have
Speaker 4: to do it all unanimously. So really tricky situation.
Speaker 1: What did you make of Lynn's character during the trial,
Speaker 1: and especially when that one guilty one not guilty verdict
Speaker 1: came back.
Speaker 4: He was interesting to watch and fairly consistent in his
Speaker 4: affect how he presented from the earliest days of these hearings,
Speaker 4: which were initially on zoom because we're still kind of
Speaker 4: coming out of COVID, he has been engaged and attentive
Speaker 4: to what's been going on. He's also been vigorously taking notes.
Speaker 4: He has a little yellow file of papers and documents
Speaker 4: that he carried into the court each day, and throughout
Speaker 4: weeks and weeks of evidence, he would be looking down
Speaker 4: and taking notes. Now, part of that is for the
Speaker 4: purposes of giving his lawyer instructions, because he is the
Speaker 4: person who is being represented and again the only living witness,
Speaker 4: But in my understanding, a lot of that was what
Speaker 4: sociologists refer to as impression management. We all want to
Speaker 4: be perceived in a certain way, we all want to
Speaker 4: exercise some control over our image. But in terms of
Speaker 4: the personality type that was being discussed, I found it
Speaker 4: interesting that this normalization of the vironment that he is
Speaker 4: at work, that he has important things to be doing,
Speaker 4: that he is not meeting the gaze of the people
Speaker 4: who are looking at him, or that it was kind
Speaker 4: of a distancing measure, and my understanding was that it
Speaker 4: kind of solidified this image of a man who needed
Speaker 4: a certain measure of control at any cost.
Speaker 1: Can you talk us through what happens next, Because we've
Speaker 1: got the verdict, Now we wait for the sentencing and
Speaker 1: within that the victims' families get a chance to say something.
Speaker 1: Lynn also has the potential to appeal after the fact.
Speaker 1: What are we looking at for the next few months.
Speaker 4: So on the nineteenth of July, there'll be a sentencing hearing.
Speaker 4: To prepare for the sentencing play, evidence will need to
Speaker 4: be gathered by both parties for the purposes of arguing
Speaker 4: what sentence Lynn should receive for the murder of Carol Clay.
Speaker 4: And then all that evidence will need to be gathered.
Speaker 4: That'll be slightly different evidence from the evidence we heard
Speaker 4: at the trial. It'll be evidence about his background and circumstances,
Speaker 4: his character, both by the Crown and by the defense.
Speaker 4: And then there will be the sentencing plea which all
Speaker 4: of that will be presented to the judge, Michael Croucher,
Speaker 4: and then there will be time needed to go off
Speaker 4: and formulate the sentence and the reasons for a sentence,
Speaker 4: so it'll be another few months before we're aware of
Speaker 4: what his sentence is going to be.
Speaker 1: I keep thinking about Russell's wife and Russell's daughters, because
Speaker 1: this must be really hard for them, because they did
Speaker 1: get them not guilty, whereas Carol's family is getting that justice.
Speaker 4: That was something that I noticed and that weighed heavily
Speaker 4: on me at that moment of hearing the verdict. The
Speaker 4: fourth person was asked about the verdict for Russell Hill first,
Speaker 4: and so we heard not guilty first. In the press
Speaker 4: box is located next to additional seating where one of
Speaker 4: Russell's three daughters, Debbie, was sitting, and watching her receive
Speaker 4: that verdict can be quite still. It was almost like
Speaker 4: time stopped, and you could get a small sense of
Speaker 4: the scope of that pain and that lack of kind
Speaker 4: of closure or redemption. Then the four person was asked
Speaker 4: about the verdict for Carol Klay, and then the guilty came.
Speaker 4: And when a guilty comes in child's like this, it
Speaker 4: seems to just expand and fill the room. There's a
Speaker 4: kind of weightiness to it that is as close as
Speaker 4: I think I can come to a experience of redemption
Speaker 4: in the courtroom, and it's quite a significant thing. And
Speaker 4: so with outcomes like this, which are ones that might
Speaker 4: make neither side of the bar table happy, it's a
Speaker 4: small measure of solace I think to say, Okay, well
Speaker 4: now he is guilty of murder, and some of that
Speaker 4: can go towards what happened to Russell Hill. But I
Speaker 4: think that there will be a feeling of loss there
Speaker 4: and perhaps of anger for the families.
Speaker 1: You're writing a book on this case. You've sat through
Speaker 1: every single day in court. You know this story back
Speaker 1: to front. What are you hoping in your writing to
Speaker 1: bring to this narrative and to share with the world.
Speaker 4: So it won't be what many might expect in terms
Speaker 4: of genre. It will be a trial book, but it
Speaker 4: will explore this case and these human actions in their
Speaker 4: broadest possible context, because of the landscape in which this occurred,
Speaker 4: of the nature of the investigation, and of all the
Speaker 4: personalities involved in their histories. There's themes here that I
Speaker 4: think have kept us captivated as readers for the last
Speaker 4: one hundred and fifty years of Victoria's history. And so
Speaker 4: I'm interested in our fixation with this story. I'm interested
Speaker 4: in my own fixation about the story. Why when we
Speaker 4: didn't have a word about what happened to these two
Speaker 4: people for eighteen months and there was literally almost no
Speaker 4: new information, it remained alive in the headlines.
Speaker 1: So do you think that this is one of those
Speaker 1: stories that in decades to come we will still remember
Speaker 1: it viscerally? This is kind of a story that really
Speaker 1: is going to shape the Australian crime scene.
Speaker 4: I think there's enough indication so far that the answer
Speaker 4: has to be yes. There was that full media saturation
Speaker 4: very early on. Despite having new COVID news every day,
Speaker 4: we kept these missing campers at the forefront of our
Speaker 4: minds and at the front of the papers. They're consistently there.
Speaker 4: People are consistently clicking on them and interested in them.
Speaker 4: We have the high volume of information coming through crime stoppers.
Speaker 4: I think that the police said that it was one
Speaker 4: of the most responded to cases that they'd ever had.
Speaker 4: So again, this kind of activation around people going missing,
Speaker 4: around the particular landscape in which it occurs, the deaths
Speaker 4: that get our attention and the deaths that don't get
Speaker 4: our attention, and then who we choose to believe in,
Speaker 4: why all of those things are operative here in a
Speaker 4: way that makes people really interested. Now I can't follow
Speaker 4: what most people find interested. I'm too anti authoritarian to
Speaker 4: go like that. I think I would still be working
Speaker 4: as a lawyer if I wasn't this much of a
Speaker 4: lone wolf. But I think I'm saying that I'm one
Speaker 4: of those people who was very interested. I see it
Speaker 4: in myself, and I'm curious to explore why the attention
Speaker 4: is going there, what's at play there. There's so many
Speaker 4: archetypal themes with any criminal case, with any murder, but
Speaker 4: particularly ones that have all of these feature They activate
Speaker 4: something in us, and I'm curious to find out what
Speaker 4: that is.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Sarah Krasnustein for assisting us to tell this story.
Speaker 1: True Crime Conversations is a Muma mea podcast hosted and
Speaker 1: produced by me Jemma Bath, with audio design by Scott Stronik.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Live Proud. Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1: I'll be back next week with another True Crime Conversation