How the glamorous wife of accused murderer was kept in the dark

The wife of former Jetstar pilot Greg Lynn had no idea he had been living a secret double life directly under her nose until police charged him with two murders. 

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

Lynn, 57, has pleaded not guilty in the Supreme Court of Victoria to the murders of Russell Hill, 74, and Carol Clay, 73, in the Wonnangatta Valley, in Victoria’s Alpine region, on March 20, 2020.

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

Wrapped in a doona within the ice-cold interview room of the Sale police station, in Victoria’s Gippsland region, Lynn told detectives his wife was clueless about what he had been up to since his fateful run-in with the elderly campers.  

While Lynn has always denied murdering the couple, the jury has repeatedly heard he freely admitted to cleaning up the alleged crime scene and destroying the evidence.

When Lynn was arrested in November 2021 in Victoria’s rugged wilderness, his wife was caught by complete surprise. 

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

An image of Lynn’s dark-coloured Nissan Patrol, towing the trailer he admits using to dumping the bodies, had appeared on Channel Nine’s 60 Minutes program.  

‘The car in the images did look a lot like my car,’ Lynn explained to the jury on Thursday. 

‘It, um, it was my car. My family still didn’t believe that it was my car. Um, they thought that was quite comical that it looked so familiar. 

‘But it certainly did look like my car and removing the awning made it look less.’

Video of Lynn removing his 4WD’s awning was played to the jury this week. 

It showed Lynn pull into the driveway of his Caroline Springs home with a gas tank before returning to remove the distinct awning that was attached to the vehicle in the image shown on 60 Minutes. 

Lynn had already gone to the effort to change the colour of his vehicle and sell the trailer that featured on the program. 

An image shown to the jury captured Lynn using an ordinary roller to paint his vehicle in June 2020 – just months after police allege he murdered the campers.

His own wife had taken the supposed happy snap later used in evidence against him. 

‘Well, she’s seen me paint it many times before,’ Lynn told police during his record of interview. 

Lynn said he used Dulux Metal Shield to perform the paint job, using a ‘sandbank’ colour he had previously bought for the intention of painting his Jayco Hawk campervan.

‘So, you know, “Oh, here he goes again, he’s painting his car,”‘ Lynn told police.

At the time, Lynn had been stood down from his job as a pilot due to the first of many Covid lockdowns.

Lynn told police his wife had been preoccupied with Victoria’s first lockdown when he returned from his fateful trip into the wilderness.

‘When I came back from that one, the whole world was just falling apart. Yeah. That was on Sunday,’ he told police.

‘I’d spoken to her on the Saturday, and she told me, “Greg, the whole country is going into lockdown, this is absolute pandemonium.”

‘I said, “I could tell something was up, ’cause of all the cars just driving every which way.”‘

Lynn told police his wife was more worried about obtaining basic supplies in the Covid lockdown than what he had been up to out in the bush.

‘And she said, “You can’t buy toilet paper, you can’t buy cleaning stuff ’cause the stores are just empty,”‘ Lynn said.

‘When I arrived, she took me to the refrigerator, and she had up there a Covid plan that she’d taken from the paper, and spent the whole afternoon telling me what I missed the past week as the world was – world was unravelling.

‘So that was how that day was spent – she didn’t ask anything about my trip.’

Taking to the witness box, Lynn told the jury he still hadn’t talked to his family about what went on in the wilderness. 

He claimed he did not tell his wife out of fear of making her an accessory to the crime of destroying evidence. 

‘I lied to my wife,’ Lynn said. 

‘It would be involving her in a problem that was nothing to do with her… I lied to my wife to protect her… If I told her, then she would then be involved in it.’

Lynn told the jury he had been placed into financial difficulty by the Covid-19 lockdowns directly after the alleged murders. 

‘At that time I was living with my wife and we still had a mortgage on our house. She had part-time work as a flight attendant, which is not well-paid, and it would have caused severe financial hardship for us, for I still had two boys living at home at that stage; one in high school,’ Lynn said.

At the time of his arrest, Lynn had been working as a pilot for 36 years. 

‘I picked asparagus once during one period of unemployment,’ Lynn claimed. 

‘I’ve been retrenched several times and I’ve done menial jobs. I worked as a river guide once in Tasmania, but I have no formal qualifications for anything.’

Lynn maintained the campers died as a result of a tragic accident, claiming Mr Hill shot Ms Clay dead before falling on his own knife moments later in a deadly struggle. 

‘I am innocent of murder,’ he told the jury. ‘I haven’t killed anyone.’

Lynn told the court he was happy to wear any punishment handed down for his ‘despicable’ efforts to cover-up what happened that night.

‘All I can say to the families is that I am very sorry for your suffering that I caused,’ Lynn said.

‘I should be punished for what I did.’

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