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Accused killer Greg Lynn has apologised in court to the families of two dead campers and admitted he deserves punishment for the despicable act of destroying evidence.
But the 57-year-old insisted he did not murder Carol Clay or Russell Hill.
"All I can say to their families is that I'm very sorry for your suffering," Lynn told a Supreme Court jury today.
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"I should be punished for what I did.
"I am innocent of murder."
Defence barrister Dermot Dann KC said Lynn had offered to plead guilty to a charge of destroying police evidence, before the murder trial begin.
Lynn is the defence's only witness as he faced week four of a trial over the deaths of Hill, 74, and Clay, 73, in the Wonnangatta Valley, in Victoria's north-east, in March 2020.
He claimed he would have lost his career as a Jetstar pilot, putting his family in financial jeopardy, if police found out Hill had taken a gun from his car and used it to accidentally shoot Clay.
"Storage of the firearm, related to the death of one person, and my understanding was with that sort of significance … I would not be able to hold an ASIC (Aviation Security Identification Card) and my career would be over," he said.
"We still had a mortgage on our house … it would've caused severe financial hardship."
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But he admitted that "things are worse for me now" as he was on trial for two murders.
"It's a disaster and it would've been a disaster if I had've gone to police. At the time it seemed magnitude of disaster was irrelevant," Lynn said.
"I never expected to be in this court house."
He said he went into crisis mode after Hill accidentally shot Clay in the head and then came at him with a knife, leading to Hill being fatally stabbed in the chest.
His training as a pilot helped give him presence of mind to burn the campsite and dispose of the camper couple's bodies.
"I had the presence of mind to achieve those things and it was my training to remain calm," he told the jury.
"I was a panicked person, I've been trained to remain calm. I can manage stress."
Lynn put the bodies in his car's trailer and took them to remote bushland of the Union Spur track, returning in November 2020 to burn the remains.
He said his idea after covering up Hill and Clay's deaths was to "disappear" and admitted that destroying police evidence was "despicable".
Earlier, Lynn described struggling over a gun with Hill, raising his arms as he showed how he was trying to retrieve the gun from Hill.
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Four or five shots went off during the struggle, with a bullet going through the car's side mirror and then into Clay's head, he said.
He said he was not sure whether Hill was intending to shoot him.
"Probably not, I think he was trying to keep the shotgun for himself and scare me off," Lynn said.
After realising Clay had been shot, he said Hill came at him with a knife and another struggle ensued leading to Hill's death.
Dann asked Lynn about the crime scene, which the accused double murder said was covered in blood and skin tissue.
"There was a large pool of blood on the ground," Lynn said.
He said he used gloves to clean up the scene, which he had inside his car from when he helped Jetstar crew clean up after he flew planes.
"Most of the pilots take off and leave the cabin crew do that, but I always grabbed gloves and helped them do that," he said.
Asked why he used gloves to clean the campsite scene, he replied: "The scene was horrendous."
The court's upstairs public gallery had to be closed as it became full before he gave evidence, with Lynn's wife Melanie and one of his sons watching on.
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.
https://omny.fm/shows/the-missing-campers-trial/the-man-accused-of-murder-speaks/embed?style=cover
