Police investigate threats to Chris Dawson’s brother and lawyer
Police are investigating threatening emails and phone calls made to the brother and lawyer of Chris Dawson, who has been charged with the cold case murder of his wife Lynette.
Police are investigating threatening emails and phone calls made to the brother and lawyer of Chris Dawson, who has been charged with the cold case murder of his wife Lynette.
The high-profile case that has attracted international notoriety with the success of The Teacher’s Pet podcast took the latest sinister twist after Dawson’s arrest last week.
Since then, his older brother Peter Dawson, and Dawon’s lawyer Greg Walsh, have received “filthy” emails and threatening phone calls.
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Chris Dawson, 70, is being held in strict protection in jail for his own safety as he prepares to apply for bail on Friday.
“Officers from St George Police Area Command are investigating after reports a man received several threatening emails,” a police spokesman said yesterday.
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Peter Dawson said most of the emails and calls were about what should happen to him and Mr Walsh and what should be done to his brother in jail.
They use both the c word and the f word.
“The language is obscene, it’s absolutely disgusting,” Peter Dawson, a lawyer, said.
“It’s mostly what they are going to do … and that I should be included in jail.”
He said he had been ignoring the emails but called in the police when they started to go to his staff, who are female.
“The language is filthy and my staff are all female and should not have to put up with that,” he said.
The telephone calls are all from men and police are working at tracing them along with the senders of the emails which have also gone to Mr Walsh.
Chris Dawson was extradited from his Queensland home last week to face court in Sydney charged with murdering his wife, a 33-year-old former nurse, overnight on January 8 and 9, 1982.
Two days later he moved his teenage lover, Joanne Curtis, who he had taught at Cromer High School, into the family’s Bayview home on Sydney’s northern beaches.
Chris Dawson has maintained that Lynette had walked out on him and their young daughters Shanelle and Sherryn and Mr Walsh said he would be pleading not guilty.
In 1984, Chris and Joanne married and moved to Queensland.
When they separated in 1990, Ms Curtis moved back to Dee Why and she is expected to be a key witness if Chris Dawson faces trial for murder.
Almost four decades after Lynette Dawson disappeared, The Australian newspaper produced the Teacher’s Pet podcast which has now been downloaded over 31 million times.
Peter Dawson said some of the phone calls came through work hours but most came after hours with messages left.
“My staff do not get paid to listen to this. It’s not part of their job,” Mr Dawson said.
His brother’s application for bail at Sydney’s Central Local Court is expected to be a lengthy hearing as it is being opposed by the prosecution.
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