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A trial is always about what happens in the court, not what happened at the crime scene. Which means a jury of six men and six women in the Supreme Court spent seven days deciding what happened 346 kilometres away and 1558 days earlier.

(There had been a plan to take the murder jury to the crime scene on a giant army Chinook helicopter, but it was deemed to be too expensive.)

There was only one eyewitness and he was the defendant – Greg Lynn – charged with the murders of campers Carol Clay and Russell Hill. The jury found him guilty of Clay’s murder and not guilty of Hill’s.

It is a huge endorsement of the jury system that 12 people would study the evidence so closely to deliver a split decision, choosing not to blindly accept either the versions presented by the defence or the prosecution. They were more rigorous than that.

On hearing the verdict Lynn showed no emotion, which is not surprising. He was a commercial airline pilot. They are selected only after rigorous psychological testing shows they have logical and ordered minds and then trained to remain calm in potentially catastrophic circumstances. This is why when a pilot loses an engine they go to the book, not the parachute.

Lynn may be a strange man who did strange things, but that does not make him a murderer.

The prosecution was based on logic. The defence on Lynn’s sworn testimony. The prosecution said Lynn’s case was based on lies. The defence said the prosecution was guessing.

A strong case can be based on independent eyewitnesses (human and electronic), crime scene evidence, pathology reports and admissions from the accused.

Clockwise from left: A sketch of the Bucks Camp site Gregory Lynn drew for police; Lynn; Carol Clay; and Russell Hill.

The Lynn case had none of the above. The prosecution could not prove how the couple died because Lynn had dumped, burned and pulverised the bodies, and police were unable to gather vital evidence from the scene as Lynn had burned the site.

What was agreed was that Lynn had a confrontation with Hill at a remote campsite. That Hill, 74, and Clay, 73, died violently and that Lynn destroyed the crime scene, left clues to make it look like it could be a robbery and hid the bodies.

The prosecution said Lynn shot them then destroyed evidence and hid the bodies because he was a murderer.

The defence said Lynn was present when they died, panicked, then destroyed evidence and hid the bodies because he believed police would think he was a murder. This scenario goes against all of Lynn’s training. All flight staff are taught to self report any possible mistakes. “It is drilled into us,” says one experienced flight staff.

When the judge removed the option of finding Lynn guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter it appeared the jury would have to find Lynn guilty of two murders or set him free.

They did neither.

They found a third version – one that was not put to them in open court. Rather than choose to side with the prosecution or the defence, the jury reviewed Lynn’s evidence and testimony from a ballistic expert to analyse Lynn’s claim Clay was accidentally shot.

It would appear the jury concluded that Hill was killed in unprovable circumstances, but Lynn then murdered Clay because she was a witness to the death. With the option of manslaughter off the table the jury had to conclude whether Hill was........

© The Age