The wife of former Jetstar pilot Greg Lynn was notably absent from court when a jury found him guilty of murder.
Hand-in-hand with Lynn’s son Geordie – from the now convicted killer’s ill-fated first marriage – Melanie Lynn had been a constant beacon of support throughout her husband’s six week trial.
Day after day the flight attendant would march past the waiting media pack to take her seat within courtroom three of the Supreme Court of Victoria.
Ms Lynn would blow kisses at her shackled husband as he entered the courtroom and wave at him furiously from the top tier.
Towards the end of the trial, Ms Lynn and Geordie sat themselves directly in front of Lynn, who sat in the prison dock just metres from them both.
But on Tuesday, as the verdict sealing Lynn’s fate was announced, only Geordie braved the packed courtroom.
Alone, he was forced to face the media horde that descended upon him as he left the Supreme Court.
The jury heard Ms Lynn and her stepsons had no idea Lynn had been living a secret double life directly under their noses until police charged him with two murders.
Melanie Lynn and son Geordie attend court together during Greg Lynn’s trial
Greg Lynn leaves the Supreme Court of Victoria in Melbourne on Thursday
Lynn, 57, was on Tuesday found not guilty of the murder of Russell Hill, 74, but guilty of murdering Carol Clay, 73.
He had managed to convince his family he had nothing to do with the camper mystery, which the jury heard had been the subject of widespread media reports for more than a year before the pilot’s arrest.
When a car matching the description of Lynn’s was shown on 60 Minutes, the court heard his wife couldn’t contain her laughter such was the similarity.
‘She’s cackling like a hyena, it might be said,’ Justice Michael Croucher observed while the jury was safely tucked away.
The audio had been captured on secret police listening devices in Lynn’s Caroline Springs home and was never played to the jury.
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 had always denied murdering the couple, the jury 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 completely by surprise.
Geordie Lynn navigates past reporters outside the Supreme Court in Melbourne on Tuesday
Greg Lynn used a roller and ordinary house paint to disguise his Nissan Patrol
‘The car in the images did look a lot like my car,’ Lynn explained to the jury while in the witness box.
‘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 also played to the jury.
It showed Lynn pull into the driveway of his 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 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, with 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.
Melanie Lynn makes her way into the Supreme Court of Victoria past a waiting camera man
Greg Lynn removed the awning from his car after watching a 60 Minutes report that featured his 4WD
Melanie Lynn had been a flight attendant when her husband allegedly killed the campers
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 during 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 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.
Geordie, Melanie and Elliott Lynn enter court on May 16
Carol Clay was shot in the head. What happened to Russell Hill is only known by Greg Lynn, who claims he fell on his own knife during a struggle
An image of Lynn’s vehicle as it appeared on 60 Minutes. Police already knew who it belonged to and were listening to Lynn on secret recording devices
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.
The jury didn’t believe him.