Former Jetstar pilot Greg Lynn has complained in court about being pelted with faeces and ‘bodily fluids’ in prison amid claims he is being spied on by other inmates. 

Lynn, 59, is charged with the murder of Carol Clay, 73, who went missing from a remote campsite in Victoria’s northeast in March 2020, alongside her friend Russell Hill, 74. 

Applying for bail in the Supreme Court of Victoria on Thursday, Lynn told the court a fellow prisoner hurled a bottle of faeces and bodily fluids at him while he was in protective custody.

He told the court that after his arrest he was taken to Melbourne Assessment Prison and locked down in its solitary confinement unit for 14 days because of COVID quarantine.

After that he was allowed out for one hour a day into a small caged yard.

Lynn said he asked staff why he had been put in the unit and whether he could go into the mainstream prison population.

He said they told him it would not be safe because of his public profile, and that prisoners would seek notoriety by attacking him.

Lynn said he spent six weeks in solitary before being gradually introduced to a 12-cell protection unit, where he was out of his cell from about 8am to 4.30pm.

Greg Lynn makes his way into court on Thursday in Melbourne 

He described the unit as no bigger than the courtroom, with up to a dozen inmates in ‘very intense’ living conditions.

Lynn said the attack happened after he had finished giving evidence at his first trial.

He told the court he was alone eating dinner in the unit’s yard when another prisoner came to the door with an empty milk bottle filled with faeces and other bodily fluids and threw it at him.

Lynn told the court he reported the attack to the front desk straight away, naming the man responsible. 

‘He’d prepared this obviously well in advance,’ Lynn said of the prisoner.

‘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.’

Lynn named both inmates and prison staff while giving evidence from the witness box. 

Lynn said he was locked down in the prison’s solitary unit for a week afterwards, even though he was ‘the victim in the attack’.

Lynn’s wife Melanie, a part-time flight attendant, enters court on Thursday alongside her stepson Geordie

He was then returned to his protection unit. 

Lynn told the court a second incident happened 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.’ 

‘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.