Former Jetstar pilot Greg Lynn has told a court he was targeted with faeces and other “bodily fluids” in prison, while also claiming fellow inmates have been watching him.
Lynn, 59, is facing a murder charge over the death of Carol Clay, 73, who disappeared from a remote campsite in northeastern Victoria in March 2020. Clay vanished alongside her friend Russell Hill, 74.
During a bail application in the Supreme Court of Victoria on Thursday, Lynn said another prisoner threw a bottle containing faeces and bodily fluids at him while he was being held in protective custody.
He told the court that, following his arrest, he was taken to Melbourne Assessment Prison and placed in the solitary confinement unit for 14 days while undergoing COVID quarantine.
He was then permitted to leave his cell for just one hour each day, spending that time in a small enclosed yard.
Lynn said he questioned prison staff about why he had been placed in the unit and whether he could be moved into the mainstream prison population.
According to Lynn, staff told him it would be unsafe because of his public profile and warned that other prisoners might attack him to gain notoriety.
He said he spent six weeks in solitary confinement before being gradually moved into a 12-cell protection unit, where inmates were allowed out of their cells from about 8am until 4.30pm.
Greg Lynn arrives at court in Melbourne on Thursday
Lynn described the protection unit as being no larger than the courtroom, with up to 12 prisoners living in what he called “very intense” conditions.
He said the alleged attack took place after he had finished giving evidence during his first trial.
Lynn told the court he was eating dinner alone in the unit’s yard when another prisoner approached the door carrying an empty milk bottle filled with faeces and other bodily fluids, then threw it at him.
He said he immediately reported the incident to the front desk and identified the prisoner he alleged was responsible.
“He’d prepared this obviously well in advance,” Lynn told the court.
“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.”
While giving evidence from the witness box, Lynn named two inmates as well as prison staff.
He said he was placed back in the prison’s solitary unit for a week after the incident, despite being “the victim in the attack”.
Lynn’s wife Melanie, a part-time flight attendant, arrives at court with her stepson Geordie on Thursday
He was later transferred back to the protection unit.
Lynn also told the court about a second incident, which he said occurred on July 5 this year at the Metropolitan Remand Centre, where he has been held since October 2024.
He said tension in his unit had built ‘over many months’ as more prisoners arrived whom he believed were informants.
‘They would clearly lie about their own mother for a sentence discount,’ he said.
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 Lynn to ‘think of my family’s safety’.
Lynn’s barrister Dermot Dann KC (right) enters court on Thursday
Lynn’s wife Melanie, a part-time flight attendant, had been present in court alongside her stepson Geordie, whom she arrived with hand-in-hand.
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.’
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‘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.
Greg Lynn told the court wife Melanie ‘earns peanuts’ in her flight attendant job
He told the court that the next morning, other prisoners in the unit shouted abuse at him for up to an hour.
He said the abuse referred to his family and his home suburb, and included threats that he would be stabbed or bashed.
Crown prosecutor Mark Gibson SC 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’.
Lynn is accused of murdering Carol Clay (left) who had been on a camping trip with Russell Hill (right)
‘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.’
The prosecutor also said CCTV of the July incident showed no physical interaction between the two men.
‘He pokes me and he spat on me. That must be seen on the CCTV. I challenge you to bring it here and show it,’ Lynn said.
Mr Gibson told the court the footage had been destroyed because it showed nothing.
Lynn said he is now held in a unit where he is locked down for 23 hours a day.
He said staff had suggested other units, but he did not feel safe there.
If bailed, Lynn hoped to return home to live with his son.
Police informant Sergeant Brett Florence arrives at the bail hearing on Thursday
Lynn addressed a concern that he could misuse the airport security pass held by his wife.
He told the court he had ‘heard this story’ and rejected it, saying the idea was ‘ridiculous’.
‘The security pass has a picture of Melanie on the front. I would not pass as a tall, thin, blonde female,’ he said.
‘Anyone who had to look at the pass would see that this has clearly been stolen.’
Asked what he would do with it, he said: ‘Steal an airplane? It’s ridiculous.’
Lynn said his wife was a part-time flight attendant for a budget carrier and would be the one to suffer if he did anything with her pass.
‘She earns peanuts. She lives below the poverty line, and she really struggles to get by,’ he said.
‘She would definitely lose her job, and she’d never get a job in aviation again. It would plunge her into severe poverty, and it is just ridiculous to suggest that I would do something to my family.’
The bail hearing before Chief Justice Richard Niall continues.
Lynn will go to trial over the alleged murder of Ms Clay in May.