Teeth and a charred watch: The police search for missing campers’ remains (2024)

Down on their hands and knees for three days, forensic investigators sifted through dirt and leaves in their search for missing campers Russell Hill and Carol Clay.

At the base of a fallen tree off a remote alpine track they found bone fragments, teeth and a charred wristwatch.

It was one of two sites of interest to experts, the Supreme Court heard on Thursday, during their search for answers about what happened to the pair.

The jury heard that after examining a burnt campsite at Bucks Camp, in the Wonnangatta Valley where police allege the murders occurred, forensic scientist George Xydias moved to a second location near Dargo, off Union Spur Track.

Xydias said a team of forensic scientists, including an anthropologist, graded a clearing to the side of the unsealed track and worked between November 29 and December 1, 2021, looking for biological remains linked to Hill, 74, and Clay, 73.

He said two areas of interest were found there, about 16 metres apart. One was at the base of the fallen tree, also referred to as a root ball cavity, and the second a clearing of bush.

He said it appeared a fire had been lit in the indented clearing, and the remains of the fire then moved to the second location near the tree base.

Xydias, who specialises in investigating fatal fires, explosions and bushfires, took the jury through photographs of both sites, pointing out the bone fragments uncovered, some blackened by the fire.

“Effectively, it was hands and knees across this location,” Xydias said.

“We then ran instruments over the site, and then following that, heavy equipment came through.

“The top six to 12 inches of soil was removed and sieved over days.”

Under the tree, he said investigators found a significant amount of heat-affected biological matter including bone remnants, several teeth and the partial remains of an older type of wristwatch.

At the second site, where the fire is believed to have occurred, the scientist said remnants of the blaze were still visible 30 centimetres down from the topsoil.

Gregory Lynn, a 57-year-old airline pilot, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Hill and Clay at Bucks Camp in the Wonnangatta Valley on March 20, 2020.

Lynn’s legal team says the pairdied accidentally, while the prosecution alleges Lynn, a hunter, killed them with murderous intent.

Hill and Clay’s campsite, including Hill’s white ute, was torched by Lynn, who bundled their bodies into his trailer and drove them out of the valley.

Lynn’s legal team does not dispute that their client moved the bodies and later burnt them at Union Spur Track.

Defence lawyers say this was done amid a series of terrible choices, in the aftermath of two accidental deaths, as the pilot feared his life would be “screwed” and tried to make the disaster go away.

On Thursday, in questioning Xydias, defence barrister Dermot Dann, KC, told the jury that in Lynn’s police interview he said he had used a small amount of kerosene to start the second fire to burn the bodies at Union Spur Track, in November 2020.

Loading

Dann said his client told police he then used a dustpan to deposit the remnants of that Union Spur Track fire in a second spot close by.

Dadna Hartman, a molecular biologist and DNA specialist at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, said her team received four bones and a tooth – all from Union Spur Track – for testing.

Hartman said only one of those items was suitable for DNA testing – a single piece of bone. Testing, she said, “supported the proposition” that it was Hill’s.

The court heard pieces of bone collected from Bucks Camp in March 2022 were also later tested at the institute. Hartman said testing showed they were likely Clay’s.

No bone fragments matching Hill’s DNA profile were found at the alleged murder scene at Bucks Camp, the court heard.

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.