Almost two years to the day missing camper Carol Clay was shot in the head in the remote Wonnangatta Valley,crime scene examiners scouring the bush floor found a single fragment of skull.
A week later a further collection of unburnt cranial fragments was uncovered at the same camping site,colloquially referred to as Bucks Camp and popular with deer hunters.
A police crime scene photo of Bucks Camp in the remote Wonnangatta Valley.Supplied by the Supreme Court of Victoria
They would be the only remains of Clay found and linked to her via DNA testing during an extensive police investigation that culminated in an arrest and police statement from accused killer Gregory Lynn.
Lynn,who has pleaded not guilty to murdering Clay,73,and Russell Hill,74,as all three camped in the valley on March 20 in 2020,told police both retirees
He says Clay was shot in the head as he and Hill struggled for control of a shotgun after a dispute over a drone. Lynn claims Hill then fell on his own knife during a subsequent scuffle,before the 57-year-old set fire to Hill and Clay’s campsite.
Lynn’s dark-coloured 1997 Nissan Patrol 4WD,towing a box trailer,was captured the following day on a traffic camera near Mount Hotham at the same time Hill’s mobile phone pinged a nearby tower.
The prosecution disputes Lynn’s account and alleges the registered hunter killed the pair.
This week,jurors overseeing Lynn’s murder trial in the Supreme Court were taken through forensic analysis of Bucks Camp for the first time,alongside a search zone at a second location called Union Spur Track. This was where Lynn told police he subsequently drove the bodies,then burnt and scattered the pair’s remains nearby eight months later
At Union Spur Track,the jury was told forensic experts located two separate areas of interest – one where the bodies of Hill and Clay were burnt,and a second,16 metres away,where Lynn used a dustpan to deposit the remnants of the fire.
On Friday,defence barrister Dermot Dann,KC,questioned the validity of some of the forensic evidence for the first time and whether a piece of lead found at Bucks Camp in March 2022 – believed to have come from the firing of a gun – could have laid undiscovered for two years.
In questioning crime scene examiner Leah Thowless,Dann asked whether it was possible the lead fragment had,in fact,only “arrived” more recently where it was found.
Dann also asked whether forensic crews may have handled the item,which was later found to contain DNA connected to Clay,with bare hands.
A police crime scene photograph of a lead fragment at Bucks Camp.Supplied by the Supreme Court of Victoria
“I can’t comment on how it arrived in that position,” Thowless said.
The jury was told Thowless and a team of others examined Lynn’s vehicle,containing a Linkt toll tag and his firearms licences,the Union Spur Track site,and then Bucks Camp on two occasions in March 2022.
During those March 2022 searches,she said further plastic and glass fragments were found during a grid search of the campsite,as well as a lead fragment and a piece of human skull.
These searches,she said,involved experts searching the ground on their hands and knees,and the help of a metal detector.
The trial continues.
A new podcast from 9News,The Age and 9Podcasts will follow the court case as it unfolds. The Missing Campers Trial is the first podcast to follow a jury trial in real time in Victoria. It’s presented by Nine reporter Penelope Liersch and Age reporter Erin Pearson.