Dawson family ripped apart by mum Lyn’s mystery disappearance

Just before Christmas 1981, adoring mum Lyn Dawson commissioned some sketches of her beloved daughters Shanelle and Sherryn. Sadly, she never got to see them.

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These haunting drawings of Shanelle and Sherryn show the sisters before their world and their beliefs were ripped apart.

The sketches were commissioned by their adoring mum Lyn Dawson just before Christmas 1981. Ms Dawson never got to pick them up.

When the artist went to the Dawsons’ Bayview home on Sydney’s northern beaches at the end of January 1982 to drop them off, she was told by Lyn’s husband, Chris Dawson, that his wife no longer lived there and she didn’t want them.

Adoring mum Lyn Dawson commissioned a series of sketches of her daughters Sherryn, 2, and Shanelle, 4, which she never got to see.

Drawn into one of the country’s most gripping murder mysteries, the sisters have since taken different sides.

The youngest Sherryn, two at the time of her mum’s disappearance, lives near her father on the Gold Coast and believes in his innocence, labelling the investigation a “witch hunt”.

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An undated picture of Lyn Dawson with husband Chris and daughter Shanelle.

Shanelle, who was four, slowly came to the belief her mother would never have walked out on the family.

“I just don’t believe for a moment that she left us voluntarily and then stayed away all this time,” Shanelle has said.

The Daily Telegraph revealed in 2013 that the sketch had become part of police evidence after it was discovered with the artist by Detective Sergeant Damian Loone.

Lyn Dawson's brother Greg Simms with his wife Merilyn Simms. Picture: Liam Driver

Yesterday after their dad was charged with their mum’s murder, the girls’ uncle, Greg Simms, said he wanted to reach out to Sherryn and bring her back into the family.

A sketch of Sherryn Dawson at two year’s of age.

“We hope it might unite the sisters and we will get to know (Sherryn) again,” Mr Simms, Lyn Dawson’s brother, said.

While the sisters remain close despite their opposing views, Mr Simms said the family had had no communication with Sherryn since her grandmother’s funeral in 2001.

“She said we had persecuted her father,” Mr Simms said.

Lyn’s sister, Pat Jenkins, said the arrest would be hard on the girls but hoped the news will unite the family.

“I’m sure for (Shanelle) it will be very mixed, for (Sherryn) — she will be devastated, (she) believes totally in her father,” Ms Jenkins said at her Seaforth home.

“ (Shanelle) wants the truth, she wants to honour her mother, she always talks about honouring her mother … the truth has to come out.”

Lyn Dawson's sister Pat Jenkins. Picture: Justin Lloyd

But Ms Jenkins said she hoped the news would bring their family together as the case proceeded to the courts.

Their dad has been relentless in attempting to convince Shanelle her mother was alive.

In 2011 he sent her a video he had recorded of Antiques Roadshow which he claimed showed Lyn in the background. He enclosed a long letter she promptly handed over to police investigating Lyn’s disappearance and suspected murder.