This is Life in Crimes. I'm Laura Placella, standing in for Andrew Ruhl, who's on assignment. Last week I was joined by my colleague at The Herald's son, Myles Proust, to discuss one of the most compelling trials that we've seen in recent years. But if you missed our first bonus episode, the case centers on the deaths of Russell Hill and Carol Clay, two people who were camping in a remote area called the Wanagata Valley in Victoria's North. The man who stands accused of their murder is former
Jetstar pilot Greg Lynn. He is standing trial in the Supreme Court and Miles has been in court every single day to listen to the evidence put to the jury. This episode will dive into the details of everything that has happened over the last seven days. It's so great to have you back, Myles, thanks for being here.
Thanks Laura, good to be here.
Well, it's been a really interesting seven days in this trial, and we will talk about what happened last week a little bit later, but there were some pretty big revelations that came out in court this week.
Can you tell us what happened so that's right.
There were some big revelations in court this week, more so to do with the affair between Russell Hill and Carol Clay. So just to give a recap on that, Russell Hill and Carol Clay were two childhood sweethearts who rekindled their relationship in about two thousand and six. They would spend time together on these camping trips essentially to spend time together. Yesterday we had Robin Hill, who is the widow of Russell Hill, called to give evidence. She's
an older woman, she's quite frail. She was ceded to give her evidence and she actually revealed that she was aware of this affair from the very beginning. So she said in the mid two thousands, around two thousand and five or two thousand and six, a neighbor had actually given mister Hill an ultimatum telling him to come clean with his wife about the affair, otherwise the neighbor was going to tell her themselves. And so Russell did that he can claim to his wife he told her about
the affair and he said it was over. And Robin said she thought that was the end of it, but in reality this affair kept going.
So how much did Missus Hill know about missus Clay.
So Robin revealed she had known missus Clay for decades as well. Missus Clay used to be married to her now former husband, and Robin said, these two couples, so this is Robin Russell, Missus Clay and her husband, would holiday together down.
At Phillip Islands.
Oh so all four of them.
All four of them there, that's right. So they would go on these holiday trips together. And she said she thought it was strange because she used to see Russell and Carol go on these walks together and it just stuck out in her mind as being a bit weird.
One other major revelation.
Is that mister Hill lied to Robin and said that missus Clay was his first cousin.
So this whole time, while they've been going on these trips, Missus Hill is under the impression that missus Clay is just mister Hill's cousin.
That's right.
Yeah, And she obviously found out that wasn't true when the affair was exposed.
Was there anything else surprising about missus Hill's evidence?
There was another thing that Robin said she spoke about her husband's battles with depression over the years, and the fact that he was on medication at different points.
Did you mention anything else about his health.
Yeah, she did touch upon his health. She spoke about him being an outdoors man, a very physical man. He's quite tall, mister Hill, He's about six foot two. She said he stayed the same way.
As he got older.
He used to operate chainsaws and some of these camping trips. He would still go out on these camping trips, but she did say he started to slow up in his later years, both the way his mind operated and also physically.
So you've taught us a lot about missus Hill's evidence. Have we heard from many other interesting witnesses this week.
On Monday, we heard from some other campers in the area who came across the campsite in the days after the couple disappeared. One camper, a guy called Nicholas Lindon, He was camping in the valley with his eleven year old son when he came across this destroyed campsite and mister Hill's abandoned toyot lancus Or in March twenty five,
so about five days after they were allegedly murdered. He describes how it was an alarming scene, especially for his young son to come across, and it was something a bit different, and they did camp the night nearby, but the next day they decided to get going and when he returned home he reported it to police. We also heard from some local police who were basically the first ones to go up into the valley investigate these missing people.
We had a guy called Leading Senior Constable Christopher Skiber and his partner from Mafra Police. They conducted two searches of the valley in the days after the pair were reported missing. They came across the campsite on March twenty eight after they were provided the coordinates from some other campers. They took some photos of the scene they had to look through. They looked through the windows. They could see there were some wallets sitting in the foot wells of
mister Hill's land cruiser. They actually got some information from higher ups how to unlock the car. There was a spare key in between the cabin and the canopy of the car and they were actually get in, yeah, exactly, and they were able to actually get in that way and they found there were wallets in the foot wells of the car and they could see there were bank cards missing and also cards around like sitting around scattered around them.
They turned the car on and.
There was nothing wrong with it, and then Constable Skiber ended up helping a tow truck move it out of the valley. Another camp of Tom Matthews, who was camping in the valley with his family around the time the couple were allegedly murdered, also gave.
Evidence on Monday.
He spoke about this instance where it was about midnight. He thinks he wasn't sure of the exact time on March twenty, so this is a few hours after the alleged murders took place. He was camping sort of an inn area next to a river, and the river there was a track next to it that led out of the valley, and that part of the track was actually shut It had a road closed sign on it. He reckons about midnight he hears a big four drive drive
past their camp site. He's woken by it's towing a trailer and then he hears it get to the road closure and then do a reverse back up and do a U turn and drive away. And he just said it was a bit strange to hear this forward drive doing this maneuver in the middle of the night.
Did his description of the car match that of mister Lynn's it did.
He didn't get out of his tent to investigate. But we know mister Linn was driving a forward drive and he was towing a trailer. He mister Matthews said it sounded like a forward drive, it was towing a trailer, sounded like it was petrol, and it was an automatic transmission.
So you've been in court for a few days. Can you tell us a bit more about what it's like there in the courtroom.
Yeah, I think everyone's settled into their roles now. Now that were a few days into evidence. The running of the trial seems to be quite smooth. We're getting through witnesses quite quickly. There hasn't been any sort of technical issues that have held things up too much, so I think everyone's feeling pretty comfortable with where things are. Just a little bit about mister Line himself. He's seated in
the dock towards the back of the courtroom. He's still wearing the same clothes each day, which is sort of a black suit, a blue shirt and silver tying glasses. He's been taking notes during pretty much throughout the whole trial. His wife and a couple of his children have been caught, not necessarily in every day, but a couple of days they've been in in the public gallery. He doesn't give much away, but he is carefully taking notes, and he's
obviously part of proceedings. You can see when any witnesses up, he's definitely listening, intently, taking in their evidence and considering what they're saying.
So has the public gallery been full? I remember you saying that on the first day it was pretty packed and people had.
To stand Yeah, it has been. It has been for pretty much every day. A few people have been forced to stand up there, but it does empty out throughout the day. Not necessarily everyone has a connection to the case. While I'm sure there is plenty of family or people who have some sort of connection to the people involved in this case, I think a lot of people are just people who are interested in what this is about and coming to check it out for themselves.
Yeah, not a lot of people know that you can just walk into a courtroom, sit down and take it all in.
That's right, open justice.
So let's talk about last week who was on the stand. Did we have any interesting witnesses.
Yeah, I'll just run you through them one by one quickly if you like. So we had fifteen witnesses last week. On Tuesday, which is when we had the openings in the afternoon, I think we spoke last time. I said there was a parks ranger and a hunter who met mister Hill sort of a week before he was allegedly murdered. The next day we had six witnesses. We had two other hunters who were on that same trip as the bloke from the day before, who spoke similar sort of
evidence about their interactions with mister Hill. We had another camper who met mister Hill and Missus Clay on a trip in February twenty twenty. We had a friend of mister Hill called Michael Allen, who was an amateur radio enthusiast. We had and this is the first time we had one of the family members. We had a woman called Emma Davies. She is the daughter of Carol Clay and she was the first family member of one that deceased
to give evidence. And then we had another guy called Wayne Foon who was a park ranger who had an interaction with mister Lynn. On Thursday, we had four witnesses, Weed Spray's Robert Williams and Walter Gibbs, and these were guys who were in the Wanaganda Valley around the time the couple vanished. And then we also had two hunters from New South Wales who gave their evidence via video link. They both required a Serbian translator, and again they had
a couple of interactions with the deceased. On Friday, we had three of mister Hill's friends from his amateur radio group, and yeah, they gave evidence about sort of the type of person he was.
So let's break down that list a little bit. Can you tell us a bit more about Emma's evidence?
Yeah, sure, so.
As I said, she is the daughter of Carol Clay. She was the first family member of one of the deceased to give evidence. She looked like she was about in her late thirties or early forties, and she was brought to the witness box. And anyone who's ever been inside a courtroom can understand how intimidating it can be, let alone giving evidence into the alleged murder of your mother. She spoke very well, She was very well composed, and she really spoke a little bit about what happened after
her mother disappeared. So she was contacted by police on March twenty nine, So in the days after her mother disappeared by investigators from Sale Police, and they firstly asked
if she had spoken to her mother. She said she hadn't, and if they could release a media statement or a media release basically about her mother's disappearance, and she revealed she was aware of her mother's relationship with mister Hill and one of the things that concerned her was that this media release was going to alert others to the
fact that mister Hill and missus Clay had been camping together. Oh, I see, But ultimately she said, you know, her mother was missing, So she did sign off from that, but it was a concern that was in her mind.
So did I hear that there was a witness called Robbie Williams. What did he have to say?
Yeah, that's right, Robert Williams or Robbie Williams as he was better known, just as Croucher, actually did a joke about that he was a weed sprayer contracted by Parks Victoria to do weed spraying in the Wantagata Valley around the time of the couple's disappearance, and he actually had interactions with both who we believe was miss de Lynne, and interactions with people we believe were missus Clay and
mister Hill. So he spoke about on March twenty, twenty twenty, this is the day the alleged murders took place, he saw a white Toyota land Cruiser. He described it as being pretty snazzied up and he wouldn't have minded having it for himself, driven by an older man, and there was a woman sort of seated next to him and
as a weed sprayer, and one of these contractors. He said, most people would actually stop and talk to them while they're working in the valley, but he thought it was a little bit surprising to see this car drives through and when they saw him, he says, he accelerated.
Yeah.
Yes, He described it as being very unusual seeing this older man just whiz by him. And then he spoke about how after they finished their day's work, him and his colleagues, they returned to the camp site and he noticed a drone flying above, and this drone's actually circled above their camp site. And he's waved to it, and then the drone has tilted its wings to acknowledge his wave, and then it's flown sort of further on down the campsite.
He didn't know who it was owned by, but as we all know, the prosecution case is mister Hill was murdered by mister Lynn after an argument over their drone. Under cross examination, mister Williams said he found the drone a bit rude.
Oh interesting comment, absolutely, and didn't you say that mister Williams also had an interaction with mister Lynn.
We believe he was speaking about mister Lynn. When these people giving this evidence, they're not referring to them by their names or pointing to the man in the dock. They're saying, you had an interaction with a man driving so and so vehicles. So we can't exactly say it
was him, but it sounds like it was him. So in March eighteen, he mister Williams describes how he was working to his wheat spraying when a man driving in a Navy NISS patrol which is the same vehicle mister Lynn owned, approached.
Their camp site. He got out.
He was wearing a singlet or a t shirt shorts. He was quite sweaty. He was wearing gaiters, which are these sort of protective clothing that you wear over your ankles to stop grass seed and from snakes and.
That sort of thing.
And he said he approached asking where the best camp site was in the area, and mister Williams said, he thought the man this is right at the started COVID, appeared sick and he asked him to stand back. The man said he wasn't sick, he'd just been hunting. Mister Williams described it as quite a friendly conversation. He recommends camp at Bucks Camp, which was a few hundred meters away, and that's of course the site where these alleged murders took place.
A very fateful discussion exactly.
And so this man then has driven off. He's seen him.
He's working a few hundred meters away, so he can't see clearly, but he sees them pull into the site and he can actually see his bullbar through the scrub, and that indicated he was camping towards the back of the site. So that was interesting. A person that's had these interactions with both parties, we think, so did.
You mention that some of Russell Hill's mates also gave evidence on Friday. What did they have to say?
Yeah, that's right.
So a few of mister Hill's friends who were part of this amateur radio group gave evidence on Friday. Just give me a bit of information about what they did, and also about the relationship mister Hill had with Missus Clay. So just for context, these are a group of friends who are amateur radio enthusiasts.
They hold something called.
An amateur radio license which enables them to communicate with each other on these shared frequencies and they all have these amateur radio setups. Now, this group of friends would check in with one another most nights of the week around about six pm and they would just do general chit chat and they were I think a lot of them met through radio, but a lot hadn't actually met in person until some years later. We had one guy called Robin Ashland. So he's a man from Gippsland. He
was friends with mister Hill. He's been a longtime friend of him. He was a pretty knock about, sort of funny bloke, pretty sort of country I would say, And he spoke about after mister Hill's disappearance how he spoke with mister Hill's wife, Robin, So mister Ashland spoke a little bit about his knowledge of missus Clay and mister Hill's affair. He spoke about how he actually had suspicions himself. He had been out to visit some friends for lunch.
Mister Hill and missus Clay were there, and mister Hill introduced missus Clay as his friend. But mister Ashland said even blind Freddie could see how they looked each other. There was a bit more going on, so he had his suspicions.
So what did mister Ashland reveal about the affair and what he knew?
So, as I said, mister Ashland had some suspicions after meeting missus Clay at lunch, but those suspicions were really confirmed when he spoke to mister Hill's wife, Robin in the days after the couple disappeared. She asked him if Carol Clay, missus Clay, was on the trip. She said there had been some involvement. She'd been on the scene for about twenty years or so. So according to mister Ashland his account, his version of events, he said, in
this conversation he had with Missus Hill. She said her husband and Missus Clay had planned to leave the respective partners so that they could be together, but he broke his promise after Missus Clay had already divorced her husband, so he stayed together with Missus Hill. Robin, this is the account mister Ashland has given, so that just has to be weighed up with the other other evidence.
So let me get this straight. At some point in time, Missus Clay has left her husband to hopefully be with mister Hill. But even though they've had this agreement to leave their partners respectively, mister Hill hasn't held up his end of the bargain and he's decided to stay with his wife even though he has told her about that pact, at least according to mister Ashland, so it seems like at this point in time, he's only one having an affair.
Yeah, that's the evidence mister Ashlin gave to the court on Friday.
Now, there has been a lot of drama in court over the last seven days, but it wasn't all serious, was it.
Yeah.
Look, anyone who's ever been in court understands they are pretty serious places. But there are also workplaces, and that there's shades of humor and lightness in any place, including court rooms. Probably one of the funniest parts from the trials so far is when mister Ashland described a little bit about the last conversation he had with mister Hill, which is on the radio about six pm on the night he was allegedly murdered, and he said he sounded
like he was as happy as a piginhit. And he said that once, and then during cross examination he said it again, and then the defense said, oh, I wasn't expecting you to say that again, and then he said, I'm sorry, mate, but I say it how it is.
So both those moments were pretty funny.
Well, I'm glad we could end on a light note. Thank you again for your time. Miles. Andrew will be back this Saturday for his regular show, and we'll be back next week for yet another bonus episode outlining all the latest in the trial. But Miles will be in court every day. He's not going anywhere, so please be sure to check the heralds on website and the paper for his daily updates. Thanks again, Miles, Thanks.
Laura, thanks for listening.
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