Former Jetstar Pilot Greg Lynn to Remain in Jail After Conviction

Former Jetstar pilot Greg Lynn will remain in custody until his High Country murder trial begins in May after the Supreme Court of Victoria rejected his latest bail application.

Lynn, 59, is accused of murdering 73-year-old Carol Clay, who disappeared from a remote campsite in northeastern Victoria in March 2020 with her friend, 74-year-old Russell Hill.

On Tuesday, Supreme Court of Victoria Chief Justice Richard Niall refused bail for Lynn, who has spent almost five years behind bars.

He was arrested on November 22, 2021, when heavily armed Special Operations Group officers arrived by helicopter at a remote campsite near Arbuckle Junction in Victoria’s alpine region.

Lynn had hoped to leave the Supreme Court of Victoria on Lonsdale Street on Tuesday afternoon.

His proposed bail plan involved living with his eldest son, Geordie Lynn, in Melbourne.

Geordie had offered his life savings to the court as a financial surety in support of his father’s release and supervision.

The proposed conditions were described as being “as close to home detention as you can get”.

Lynn had previously assured the court that he would “comply with any conditions they require”.

Senior Crown Prosecutor Mark Gibson opposed the application, arguing Lynn had not established the “exceptional circumstances” required for bail.

Under Victorian law, a person facing a murder charge must demonstrate exceptional circumstances before being released on bail.

Mr Gibson argued that the factors put forward by the defence, considered together, did not meet that demanding legal threshold.

The former pilot’s application was rejected despite his complaints about being targeted with faeces and other “bodily fluids” in prison, as well as being watched by fellow inmates.

During last week’s bail hearing, Lynn told the court that another prisoner threw a bottle containing faeces and bodily fluids at him while he was being held in protective custody.

He said that following his arrest he was taken to Melbourne Assessment Prison and placed in its solitary confinement unit for 14 days because of COVID quarantine requirements.

After the quarantine period, Lynn was permitted to leave his cell for one hour each day to use a small caged yard.

Lynn said he questioned prison staff about why he had been placed in the unit and asked whether he could be transferred into the mainstream prison population.

He said they told him it would not be safe because of his public profile, and that prisoners would seek notoriety by attacking him.

Lynn said he spent six weeks in solitary before being gradually introduced to a 12-cell protection unit, where he was out of his cell from about 8am to 4.30pm.

He described the unit as no bigger than the courtroom, with up to a dozen inmates in ‘very intense’ living conditions.

Lynn said the attack happened after he had finished giving evidence at his first trial.

He told the court he was alone eating dinner in the unit’s yard when another prisoner came to the door with an empty milk bottle filled with faeces and other bodily fluids and threw it at him.

Lynn told the court he reported the attack to the front desk straight away, naming the man responsible.

‘He’d prepared this obviously well in advance,’ Lynn said of the prisoner.

‘He had an empty milk bottle, which he’d filled with faeces and other disgusting material, bodily fluids, and he threw that at me… It was a disgusting attack.’

Lynn named both inmates and prison staff while giving evidence from the witness box.

Lynn said he was locked down in the prison’s solitary unit for a week afterwards, even though he was ‘the victim in the attack’.

Mr Gibson argued that Lynn’s restrictive conditions, including 23-hour lockdowns and separation, largely resulted from his own choices and fixation on the idea that other inmates were police informants trying to ‘lag’ on him for sentence discounts. 

He said this was not the same as unavoidable exceptional hardship imposed by the system. 

Mr Gibson told the court that while Lynn was entitled to the presumption of innocence, the circumstances advanced did not justify bail. 

Last week, Lynn told the court he had refused to share a holding cell with two prisoners he believed were informants.

When he returned to the unit, he said one of them confronted him on a balcony.

‘He was ready to explode. He was like Vesuvius,’ Lynn said.

He said the man made threats mentioning ‘s*** bombs’, said he had ‘killed before and he’d kill again’, and told him to think of his family’s safety. 

Lynn said he asked a prison officer to have the two men separated.

Later that afternoon, as he went out to the yard, the man was standing by a meal trolley.

Lynn said the man told him: ‘So lagging doesn’t work anymore.’

He said he replied: ‘That’s interesting coming from an informant.’

‘And he said, “Who’s an informant?” And I said, “You are”. And he said, “Who am I informing?” And I said, “Me”.’

Lynn claimed the man then threatened to stab him before spitting on him.

Lynn said he walked back inside, reported it at the unit’s front desk and locked himself in his cell.

Mr Gibson put it to Lynn that he was highly sensitive about informants and worried a prisoner might make a false statement against him.

‘I was sensitive to that,’ Lynn said. ‘I was worried that they might make up lies.’

Mr Gibson asked whether he knew that calling someone an informant was the ‘highest insult’ to a fellow prisoner and was likely to provoke a reaction.

‘And it was a very accurate term as well,’ Lynn said. ‘It was the truth.’

Lynn insisted he didn’t think he was insulting the other inmate and added: ‘I was aware that he would probably not take it very well, but it was the truth.’

Mr Gibson claimed the incident ‘wasn’t out of the blue’ and was ‘an argy bargy between two prisoners, one of whom is alleging the other to be a police informant’.

‘I am the victim here,’ Lynn complained.

‘I am the target of this informant. To suggest that I have somehow orchestrated an assault on myself, that is just ridiculous, sir.’