Friend claims she saw missing Lyn Dawson alive at royal visit
Lynette Dawson had been missing for more than a year when, a 101-year-old family friend told a court today, she was spotted darting in front of Princess Diana and Prince Charles’ motorcade in Sydney.
NSW
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An elderly confidant of Lynette Dawson believes she saw the missing mother run in front of Diana and Charles’ royal motorcade a year after she vanished and once more on an episode of Antiques Roadshow.
The same woman told a court she comforted the “distraught” Mrs Dawson because the teenage girl who moved into their family home wanted “to get rid of me”.
Elva McBay gave evidence before Dawson’s committal hearing in Sydney via audiovisual link on Tuesday. He has pleaded not guilty to murdering his wife.
The 101-year-old Mrs McBay recalled becoming close with the Dawson family after Chris’ twin brother, Paul, started working at Kogarah High School where she was conducting a study in the 1970s.
Dawson’s barrister Phillip Boulten SC, described Mrs McBay as a “lifelong, Bluebags, mad keen supporter” of the Newtown Jets, the team both Dawson twins played for.
Mrs McBay visited Chris and Lynette after they moved to Bayview on multiple occasions, particularly for birthdays.
It was at one of these parties where Mrs McBay saw Mrs Dawson “distraught”, crying and trembling, in the kitchen of the home.
“She said ‘I had the most dreadful row with (the teenage girl) this morning, she said she wants to get rid of me’,” Mrs McBay told the court.
“I said ‘oh Lyn, you can’t be hurt like this. You should get her out of the house before she causes any more trouble’.”
Mrs Dawson said her own mother gave her similar advice.
About six months later, in January 1982, Mrs Dawson disappeared from Bayview and was never seen again.
Mrs McBay, now legally blind, remembered being told the young mother had phoned her family, at the time she first went missing, saying she “needed to have time to think about things”.
But, more than a year after that in 1983, Mrs McBay was standing in a heaving crowd in Sydney which had turned out to catch a glimpse of Princess Diana and Prince Charles on one of their first major tours as husband and wife.
Mrs McBay and her husband were up against the barricade when police motorbikes, heading the procession, began making their way up Macquarie Street.
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A few metres away, Mrs McBay told the court on Tuesday, she saw a woman push into the crowd and duck under the barricade.
“(The woman) stood up, turned quickly to see where the procession was and I saw her face for a few seconds, and then she ran straight across in front of the motorbikes,” Mrs McBay said.
She thought it was “terribly dangerous” for the woman to run in front of the motorcade but her face was familiar.
“I turned to my husband and said ‘I think that was Lyn Dawson’,” Mrs McBay told the court.
The court also heard Mrs McBay, some years ago, was sent a photograph by one of the Dawson twins which showed a woman who had appeared on the Antiques Roadshow television program.
“I thought it looked very, very much like Lyn,” she told the court.
Mrs McBay described Dawson as a devoted husband.
“Chris was very quiet, very placid, easy going, good fun,” she said.
“I never saw him bad tempered, never saw him angry.”
Mrs McBay’s only criticism of Dawson’s character was that he “not aggressive enough” on the footy field.
The hearings continue.