Watson’s lawyer: Police concertedly and repeatedly used suggestive practices to secure ID.

Murder accused and two alleged accomplices on trial in High Court at Whangarei

Jurors have been asked to put themselves in the shoes of an airline pilot accused of killing two campers when they retire to decide whether he is guilty of their murders.

Greg Lynn's barrister Dermot Dann KC asked a Supreme Court jury of 14 on Wednesday to contemplate what they would have done if their improper gun storage had led to the deaths of two people.

"He thought he was going to be blamed for the deaths and he was 100 per cent correct," Dann told the court in Melbourne.

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"He thought he was going to be wrongly blamed and he is being wrongly blamed."

Lynn is on trial charged with two counts of murder over the deaths of campers Russell Hill and Carol Clay in Victoria's alpine region in March 2020.

The 57-year-old told police, and the court, that the deaths were accidental.

Lynn claims Clay was shot in the head after a struggle between the two men as he tried to get his shotgun back from Hill, who he said took it from Lynn's car.

Hill died during a second struggle over a knife, when Lynn claims he was trying to defend himself.

Prosecutors told the court on Tuesday this story was a "fanciful" work of fiction and that Lynn had one year and eight months to concoct a script about what had happened at Bucks Camp that evening.

But Dann has taken aim at gaps in the prosecution's case during his closing address, labelling it "a shambles", "desperate" and "hopeless".

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"You're being asked to find a man guilty of murder, there's on the prosecution case zero factual foundation, zero motive, just a complete blank. Does that sit well with any of you?" he asked the jury on Wednesday.

Dann told the jury his client had admitted the charges he was guilty of – improper firearm storage and destruction of police evidence by burning the crime scene and bodies of the two campers.

He said a gun storage charge would have cost the Jetstar pilot his career, as Dann asked jurors what they would do in that situation.

"He's left the gun in the car, the magazine in the car, it's unsecured and he's failed in his storage of the gun," Dann said.

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"You've got to put yourself in Mr Lynn's shoes, presuming of course that he's innocent.

"This was a disaster… of course he's thinking about himself, of course he's selfish, of course he was callous."

As his barrister gave his address, Lynn's wife Melanie and son Geordie sat in front of him and behind his lawyers on Wednesday, holding hands and nodding along in full view of the jury.

Dann will finish closing the defence case on Wednesday afternoon.

Justice Michael Croucher will then outline details of the charge to the jury, before they are sent away to deliberate on a verdict.

She also reduced teachers to tears with the aggressive way she ran her school.

The extension was necessary due to an ‘unprecedented’ asbestos find.

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Paul Goldsmith became the minister after Melissa Lee was demoted.

Almost eight out of every 10 Australians surveyed are hoping to change jobs in the next year in a bid to increase their salary and alleviate cost-of-living pressures.

According to recruitment giant Hays' latest salary guide, 77 per cent of workers have either started looking for a new role or plan on doing so in the next 12 months.

After years of high inflation and interest rates, it's little surprise that the cost of living was the top reason causing people to seek new work.

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Some of the other factors driving the trend were a lack of promotional chances, poor workplace culture, bad management, and changes in personal circumstances.

While the vast majority of employers (86 per cent) are planning on offering pay rises in upcoming reviews, the report says their offers are likely to fall short of workers' expectations.

"The mismatch between what employees want and what employers are willing to offer will play out over the next year, with almost 40 per cent of employees being dissatisfied with their salaries and 73 per cent saying it doesn't reflect their individual performance," Hays Asia-Pacific CEO Matthew Dickason said.

"We are seeing a trend of employees expecting higher salary increases over the past three Salary Guide reports.

"In 2019, 67 per cent of employees expected a pay rise of less than three per cent.

"In just five years the pendulum has swung to 61 per cent of employees expecting a pay increase of more than three per cent."

One of the main considerations for employers who were planning to offer a raise was new pay transparency laws, with large organisations now required to publish their gender pay gap every year.

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"When determining the value of a pay rise, employers' considerations have changed dramatically over the past 12 months, reflecting the current cost of living crisis and the new pay transparency laws," Dickason said.

"Individual performance remains the number one consideration for a pay increase (84 per cent).

"Other factors employers will consider include benchmarking for the role, responsibilities (74 per cent), expertise (53 per cent) and the organisation's performance (50 per cent)."

Like graduating seniors everywhere, members of Newtown High School's class of 2024 expect bittersweet feelings at their commencement ceremony — excitement about heading off to college or careers and sadness about leaving their friends and community.

But about 60 of the 330 kids graduating today will also be carrying the emotional burden that comes from having survived one of the deadliest school shootings in US history and knowing many former classmates won't get to walk across the stage with them.

Twenty of their fellow first-graders and six educators were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012.

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The victims will be honoured during the ceremony, but details have been kept under wraps.

Soon, these Sandy Hook survivors will be leaving the community that many call a "bubble" because of the comfort and protection it's provided from the outside world.

Five of them sat down with the Associated Press to discuss their graduation, future plans and how the tragedy continues to shape their lives.

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'They'll be there with us'

"I think we're all super excited for the day," Lilly Wasilnak, 17, who was in a classroom down the hall from where her peers were killed, said.

"But I think we can't forget … that there is a whole chunk of our class missing.

"And so going into graduation, we all have very mixed emotions — trying to be excited for ourselves and this accomplishment that we've worked so hard for, but also those who aren't able to share it with us, who should have been able to."

Emma Ehrens was one of 11 children from Classroom 10 to survive the attack.

She and other students managed to flee when the gunman paused to reload and another student, Jesse Lewis, yelled for everyone to run.

Jesse didn't make it. Five kids and both teachers in the room were killed.

"I am definitely going be feeling a lot of mixed emotions," Ehrens, 17, said.

"I'm super excited to be, like, done with high school and moving on to the next chapter of my life.

"But I'm also so … mournful, I guess, to have to be walking across that stage alone. … I like to think that they'll be there with us and walking across that stage with us."

Grace Fischer, 18, was in a classroom down the hall from the killings with Ella Seaver and Wasilnak.

With only 11 days to go before Christmas, the school was in the holiday spirit and the children were looking forward to making gingerbread houses that day.

"As much as we've tried to have that normal, like, childhood and normal high school experience, it wasn't totally normal," Fischer said.

"But even though we are missing … such a big chunk of our class, like Lilly said, we are still graduating. … We want to be those regular teenagers who walk across the stage that day and feel that, like, celebratory feeling in ourselves, knowing that we've come this far."

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Leaving home and the 'bubble'

Many of the survivors said they continue to live with the trauma of that day: loud noises still cause them to jump out of their seats, and some always keep an eye on a room's exits.

Many have spent years in therapy for post-traumatic stress, depression and anxiety.

The town provided an array of services to the families.

Officials shielded them as much as they could from the media and outsiders, and the students said leaving such a protective community will be both difficult and somewhat freeing.

"In Sandy Hook, what happened is always kind of looming over us," Matt Holden, 17, who was in a classroom down the hall from the shooting, said.

"I think leaving and being able to make new memories and meet new people, even if we'll be more isolated away from people who have stories like us, we'll be more free to kind of write our own story. … And kind of, you know, not let this one event that happened because we were very young define our lifetimes."

Ehrens said she feels some anxiety over leaving Newtown, but that it's a necessary step to begin the next chapter of her life.

"It definitely feels for me that we're kind of stuck in the same system that we've been stuck in for past 12 years," she said.

"For me, I feel like it's definitely going to get better and be able to break free of that system and just be able to become my own person rather than, again, the Sandy Hook kid," Ehrens said.

Fischer echoed that sentiment, saying that although it will be hard leaving the town and friends she's grown up with, she'll make new friends and build a new community as she explores new challenges at college.

"Sandy Hook will always be with me," she said.

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Tragedy spurs activism, shapes their futures

All five seniors have been active in the Junior Newtown Action Alliance and its anti-gun violence efforts, saying they want to prevent shootings from happening through gun control and other measures.

Last week, several of them met with Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House to discuss their experiences and call for change.

They say their fallen classmates have motivated their advocacy, which they all plan to continue after high school.

Seaver, 18, said working with the alliance makes her feel less helpless.

She plans to study psychology in college and to become a therapist, wanting to give back in a way that helped her.

"Putting my voice out there and working with all of these amazing people to try and create change really puts a meaning to the trauma that we all were forced to experience," Seaver said.

"It's a way to feel like you're doing something. Because we are. We're fighting for change and we're really not going to stop until we get it."

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Ehrens said she plans to study political science and the law, with the aim of becoming a politician or civil rights lawyer.

Fischer said she, too, hopes to become a civil rights lawyer.

Holden plans to major in political science and wants to push for gun policy changes.

Wasilnak, meanwhile, said she hasn't settled on a major, but that she intends to continue to speak out against gun violence.

"For me, I knew I wanted to do something more since I was younger when the tragedy first happened," Wasilnak said.

"I wanted to turn such a terrible thing into something more, and that these children and educators didn't die for nothing. Of course it was awful what happened to them, and it should have never happened.

"But I think that for me, something bigger needed to come out of it, or else it would have been all for nothing."

Gabby Petito once asked Brian Laundrie to stop calling her names, according to a letter she wrote released in a collection of FBI documents, signaling tensions between the couple prior to the 2021 road trip that would end with Laundrie killing his 22-year-old fiancée.

"Brian, you know how much I love you. So (and I'm writing this with love) just please stop crying and stop calling me names because we're a team and I'm here with you," Petito wrote in the undated letter, included among 366 pages of records from the FBI's investigation of the case. "I'm always going to have your back."

"You in pain is killing me," Petito writes. "I'm not trying to be negative but I'm frustrated there's not more I can do."

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While it's unclear when the letter was written, Petito references plans to work together on the van that they would later take on the trip, which ended late in the summer of 2021 with Petito's disappearance. She was found more than a week after her parents reported her missing, strangled in Wyoming's Bridger-Teton National Forest. The coroner determined she had been dead for three to four weeks before being found.

By that time, Laundrie – who returned to his parents' North Port, Florida, home without Petito – had vanished into a nature reserve, leading to a weekslong manhunt. His remains were eventually found alongside a number of his personal items, including a notebook in which the FBI said he admitted killing Petito. A medical examiner determined he died by suicide.

Petito's letter to Laundrie makes up just two of the hundreds of pages included in the FBI documents published on a website where the agency shares records released in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.

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A number of the documents are redacted, but they outline the FBI's efforts to trace the couple's movements around the time of Petito's disappearance reported on September 11, 2021, recounting interviews with witnesses and descriptions of surveillance footage captured at gas stations and stores across the US.

Also included are scores of photographs of items recovered by authorities after the execution of a search warrant on September 20, 2021, including Petito's letter to Laundrie. The address where the warrant was executed is redacted, but the records indicate they stemmed from an investigation in North Port.

Asked about the letter, Steven Bertolino, an attorney for Laundrie's parents, told CNN Tuesday that Petito and Laundrie "both had their moments and had their issues."

"This is a tragedy that I've said all along that has affected two families," he said, describing a "lopsidedness" that has taken a "toll" on his clients.

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"There are always two sides to every story but as of this moment, there has only been one side put out there and that's the side that everybody's running with," Bertolino said.

CNN has reached out to an attorney for Petito's parents for comment on the letter.

There is no context for Petito's letter, and it's unclear why the couple was at odds when she wrote it. But it appears to foreshadow strains in the relationship that would spill out into the open over the course of their trip, perhaps most notably in Moab, Utah, where police body camera footage captured the pair two weeks before Petito's death.

The incident – now at the heart of a lawsuit by Petito's parents against the Moab Police Department – occurred after a witness "saw Brian hit Gabby," according to an amended complaint filed earlier this year.

The footage shows Moab police officers talking to Petito and Laundrie, who admitted having a fight in which Petito said she struck her fiancé first. The officers let the couple go after they agreed to spend the night apart.

The lawsuit claims the officers improperly concluded Petito was the "primary" aggressor despite injuries to her face, failing to recognise that Petito's attempt to take responsibility for the altercation was an "obvious" sign she was a victim of domestic abuse.

"The purpose of this lawsuit is to honour Gabby's legacy by demanding accountability and working toward systemic changes to protect victims of domestic abuse and violence and prevent such tragedies in the future," James W McConkie, an attorney for Petito's parents, said in a statement when the lawsuit was first filed.

The city of Moab has previously said its officers "acted with kindness, respect, and empathy" toward Petito, noting they "are not responsible" for her death.

"The attorneys for the Petito family seem to suggest that somehow our officers could see into the future based on this single interaction. In truth, on August 12, no one could have predicted the tragedy that would occur weeks later and hundreds of miles away, and the City of Moab will ardently defend against this lawsuit," the city said.

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