Seven key players in the unsolved murder case of Lynette Dawson
The case of missing Sydney mother Lynette Dawson has haunted her family for almost 37 years. After two inquests and a lengthy podcast series, an arrest has finally been made. Here are the key players involved in the mystery.
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The disappearance of Sydney mother-of-two Lynette Dawson has haunted her family for almost four decades.
After two inquests into Mrs Dawson’s death and countless pleas for justice from her siblings Greg Simms and Pat Jenkins, a breakthrough arrest has finally been made.
Mrs Dawson’s former husband Chris Dawson will be extradited to NSW from Queensland and will be charged after being arrested over her suspected 1982 murder.
These are the key players in the 37-year unsolved case.
CHRIS DAWSON
In the 1970s and ‘80s Chris Dawson was a professional footy player for the Newtown Jets and part-time jeans model turned sports teacher on Sydney’s Northern Beaches.
At the time of his wife Lynette’s disappearance, the couple had been living together with their two young children while Dawson had begun an affair with his teenage pupil Joanne Curtis.
Dawson was well known in the area at the time, he was handsome, successful and well liked by men and women alike.
Dawson moved to Queensland in 1985 with Joanne where they had a daughter together before divorcing in 1993.
Two coronial inquests in 2001 and 2003 recommended charges be laid on Dawson but the DPP refused to prosecute in both cases, citing a lack of evidence. Dawson has maintained he had no involvement in his wife’s disappearance and suspected death.
PAUL DAWSON
Paul Dawson is the identical twin brother of Chris.
Both Chris and Paul played rugby union for Eastern Suburbs after high school before they switched to league and signed with the Newtown Jets as second-rowers.
When the brothers retired from professional football in the late 1970s, they both transitioned into careers as PE teachers at Cromer High.
Paul and his wife Marilyn moved to Queensland in the 1980s and were followed soon after by Chris and his new wife Joanne.
JOANNE CURTIS
Joanne Curtis began a secret affair with Chris Dawson when she was a 16-year-old student at Cromer High.
Dawson introduced Joanne to his family as the babysitter in 1980 and persuaded his wife Lynette to let Joanne move into their family home due to troubles with her violent stepfather.
A year later, Chris and Joanne fled to Queensland to start a new life together but on the journey north, the pair returned to Sydney after Joanne had second thoughts.
Chris formally divorced Lyn in the mid-1980s after her disappearance and married Joanne. The couple moved to Queensland and had a daughter together soon after before their marriage broke down and Joanne returned to Sydney in 1990.
Joanne Curtis gave evidence at the second coronial inquest into Lynette’s death.
SHANELLE DAWSON
Chris and Lynette Dawson had been trying to conceive for six years when they discovered Lynette was pregnant with their first child Shanelle in 1977.
Shanelle was just four when her mother vanished, she started school just weeks later.
Shanelle told The Teacher’s Pet podcast that her mother was never mentioned after her father married Joanne Curtis and there was an “uncomfortable silence” surrounding the topic.
Unlike her younger sister Sherryn, Shanelle has supported the investigation into her mother’s disappearance.
In her adult years Shanelle retreated to remote hippy communities. She was overseas when the two separate coroners found her father murdered her mother.
Shanelle is now a mother herself, of a three-year-old girl she is raising on her own at Hervey Bay, 290km north of Brisbane.
SHERRYN DAWSON
For 36 years, Sherryn Dawson remained silent about the disappearance of her mother Lynette before public interest led by The Teacher’s Pet podcast prompted her to speak up.
While her sister Shanelle has not commented publicly about her father Chris Dawson, Sherryn has defended him.
“It’s a witch hunt on my dad,” she told The Gold Coast Bulletin earlier this year.
Sherryn, who was just two when her mother went missing, said her father was getting hounded because people “have got it in for him.”
The two sisters remain close, despite their differing ways of responding to their mother’s case and the public interest surrounding it.
GREG SIMMS AND PAT JENKINS
Lynette Dawson’s brother Greg Simms said today he just wanted to find out every minute detail of what happened to his sister 37 years ago following the dramatic arrest of her husband at his Queensland home.
“I’m the happiest man alive today and if Lynette is up there looking down, she’d be smiling at us,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
“I am ecstatic, very emotional and teary.
“This was our last chance with the DPP.”
Greg and his sister Pat Jenkins have been seeking answers since Lynette’s disappearance in 1982, providing evidence at both inquests and speaking to the media regularly in the hope charges would be laid.
Lynette’s family have dedicated a memorial bench to her at Clovelly beach, where they grew up.