Chris Dawson tried to hire hitman to kill wife Lynette, a court hears
Chris Dawson took the teen babysitter he was having sex with when he tried to hire a hitman to kill his wife Lynette, a court has heard. SEE NEW PICTURES
NSW
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Alleged murderer Chris Dawson once drove a teenage babysitter who felt like a “sex slave” to a building site in Western Sydney to make inquiries about hiring a hit man to kill his wife, a court has heard.
Dawson, who met the teenager when he was a PE teacher and she was a student in her Year 11 class, is on trial for the murder of Lynette who went missing from her Bayview home in 1982, aged just 33.
Identified only as JC for legal reasons, the babysitter told the court on one occasion which was in about October 1981 that they had probably left from the high school to venture south across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in his car and arrived somewhere “out west”.
“I could see a chain wire fence in front of the car where we’d stop … I could see a building quite far away … like a building site,” she said.
“I was told to wait in the car … I kept a low profile … “I was in my school uniform and I wasn’t supposed to be there.”
She told Dawson he had to go inside “for a minute”.
When he returned he revealed the reason for the cross-town trip.
“He said ‘I went inside to get a hit man to kill Lyn’,” she told the court.
She said but he ultimately didn’t go through with it.
Earlier she told the court of the events of months later on December 23 1981, when Chris Dawson left his wife to flee Sydney with the babysitter — but they never arrived in their planned destination of Queensland because she broke out in hives and had gastro.
“I got sick on the way up, I had hives and gastric disturbance … I was unhappy and wanted to go home … I missed my family,” the former babysitter told the court on Thursday morning.
She also said they had previously planned on moving into a rented flat in North Manly but those plans were abandoned after Chris Dawson spoke to his solicitor brother.
She said: “If he moved off the Gilwinga Drive property that would jeopardise his rights to his property.”
They also heard that at the 1981 school formal she attended she sat with teachers and their partners.
Crown prosecutor Craig Everson asked who her date was. “Chris Dawson,” she said.
The court heard she told Chris Dawson she didn’t want to be with him and went on a holiday with her sister to South West Rocks.
Dawson called her soon after.
“He said Lyn is gone, she is not coming back, come back to Sydney and help me look after the children and be with me.”
She told the court did and then slept in Chris Dawson and Lynette’s bed in their Bayview home.
She said she observed that Lyn’s diamond rings were left behind and the wardrobe was “overflowing” with clothes.
In 1982, as the months went by she became “cranky” with the situation of having to look after two children she would ask when Lynette was coming back, the court was told.
“I was 18, I was taking care of two children, having to learn to cook, having to learn to clean, having to learn how to be the substitute housekeeper, sex slave, stepmother, babysitter, slave.”
She said that when she became frustrated, she would ask as to the whereabouts of Lyn.
“He would fob me off, he would say she has been seen in Perth or seen in the Central Coast… there was never any solid evidence that was the case,” she told the court.
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