Police believe Peter Dawson murdered his first wife and second wife’s daughter
VICTORIA Police cold case homicide detectives believe they have solved the 1980 sex slaughter of Barbara Dawson and linked her murderer with another killing in 1972.
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POLICE believe they have solved the decades-old cold case sex killing of Melbourne woman Barbara Dawson — and identified a double murderer in the process.
Ms Dawson’s throat was slashed and her naked body was found lying face down on rocks in shallow water off Kororoit Creek Rd in North Altona on November 1, 1980.
A new probe into 20-year-old Ms Dawson’s death by Victoria Police’s cold case homicide team has fingered Ms Dawson’s stepfather, Peter Alwyn Dawson, as the prime suspect.
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The now dead Mr Dawson — a former Port of Melbourne security officer — was charged in 2005 with the murder of his first wife, Patricia Dawson.
That charge was laid 33 years after she went missing from their Ingle Farm home in South Australia.
Patricia Dawson’s body was never found and the murder charge against her husband was later dropped.
The then South Australian Director of Public Prosecutions, Stephen Pallaras, QC, withdrew the murder charge in 2006, despite senior magistrate Bill Ackland finding there was enough evidence to commit Mr Dawson for trial in the Supreme Court.
Victorian detectives recently made an application to State Coroner Judge Sara Hinchey to set aside the original finding in the Barbara Dawson inquest.
That 1981 finding by the then coroner, Kevin Mason, was that Barbara Dawson died of a haemorrhage from a lacerated throat and that the injuries were “feloniously unlawfully and maliciously inflicted by a person or persons unknown to me”.
Barbara Dawson was naked when her body was found in Kororoit Creek three days after she disappeared from the Dawson family home in Gwelo St, West Footscray.
Her head and upper chest area was covered by a large plastic bag. A second plastic bag was around her legs from the knees down.
A green cord had been tied around her neck on the outside of the bag and led down her body to be tied again around her knees.
An autopsy revealed Barbara Dawson had recently had sex — and that bruising on her neck indicated she was still alive when her killer tied the cord around her neck and knees, forcing her, gasping for breath, into a crouching position.
The Herald Sun has discovered Mr Dawson was home alone with his stepdaughter Barbara on the day she went missing.
When Mr Dawson was interviewed by Victoria Police after Barbara’s death he said he had met her mother Helen in South Australia in 1971 and married her in Melbourne in 1979 — it was the second marriage for both of them.
Mr Dawson’s first wife, Patricia disappeared in 1972 when she was aged 33.
He told police he had last seen her at 11.15pm on April 11, 1972, when he drove from their Ingle Farm home to Adelaide to buy a newspaper.
Mr Dawson claimed he had left her at home with their two children, then aged four and six.
Mr Dawson told police he returned home at 12.30am and soon after discovered his wife wasn’t there and the children were still in bed asleep.
He also claimed to police that he discovered about $390 in cash had been gone from his wife’s bedroom wardrobe and some of her clothing was missing.
Mr Dawson later told family members she had gone off in a black car with her boyfriend.
His claims led police to believe Patricia Dawson had left home voluntarily so they didn’t treat her disappearance as suspicious.
It wasn’t until a review of the case more than 30 years later that detectives from South Australia’s major crime squad discovered sufficient new evidence to charge Mr Dawson with murdering his first wife.
In Adelaide Magistrates’ Court in 2006, prosecutor John Wells alleged Mr Dawson was having an affair with a married woman who moved in with him shortly after his wife Patricia disappeared in 1972.
The prosecutor said Patricia Dawson had not left home voluntarily, saying she was a “committed, loving, doting mother”.
He alleged Mr Dawson and his wife had a heated argument earlier on the evening she disappeared.
Evidence suggests Mr Dawson murdered his first wife in 1972 and went on to murder his second wife’s daughter, Barbara Dawson, in 1980.
One of Barbara Dawson’s sisters recently told the Herald Sun their stepfather Peter Dawson died several years ago.
She said she would contact the Herald Sun if she wanted to say anything further about her sister’s murder, but hasn’t yet done so.
A Victoria Police spokeswoman said the force couldn’t comment on the Barbara Dawson case as it was still before the coroner.
A Herald Sun investigation has discovered it was almost certainly double murder suspect Peter Alwyn Dawson who sent the telegram that initially fooled police and family members into thinking his stepdaughter Barbara had run away.
He probably figured that when her body turned up the telegram would also help keep attention away from him — which it did for decades.
Mr Dawson, then aged 38, and Barbara Dawson, 20, were home alone at 56 Gwelo St, West Footscray on Wednesday October 29, 1980.
The next time anybody saw Barbara was when her bound and naked body was found face down in Kororoit Creek on the following Saturday at 1.10pm.
Police weren’t able to identify her until after a television appeal for help three days later.
Mr Dawson got home from his nightshift job as a Port of Melbourne security guard about 6.50am on the Wednesday Barbara disappeared.
His wife Helen left for work a few minutes later and by 9am Barbara’s brothers and sisters had also left for either work or school.
Mr Dawson later told police Barbara had told him she was taking a day off work to visit the doctor.
“She was watching cartoons on the television,” he told homicide squad detective Michael Glenane soon after Barbara’s body was found.
“When I went to bed Barbara was still sitting in the lounge room.
“Before going to bed I asked her what time she was going to the doctor and she just told me, ‘later’.
“At about 10am that morning I woke up and decided to drive around to the shops to buy some things.
“When I got up I didn’t notice whether Barbara was home or not. I didn’t see her but I didn’t look for her either.
“After coming home I lay down on the bed but didn’t go to sleep.
“At about 1.30 in the afternoon there was a knock at the door and when I answered it I saw that it was the telegram boy.
“He delivered to me a telegram which read, ‘decided to be on my own for a while let you know where I am later’, and it was signed ‘Babs’.
“When I read it I went to see if Barbara was in her bedroom, but she wasn’t.
“I looked in her drawers and it was obvious her clothing was gone. I was quite shocked at this.
“I then went and showed Sal (his nickname for Barbara’s mother Helen), at her work, the telegram.
“This would have been after 2pm. Then Sal and I went to Barbara’s work at Coles in Footscray to see if she was there.
“No one knew anything about where Barbara may be. By this time we were in a state of panic.
“On the Saturday morning, the 1st of November, 1980, I went, with Sal, to Footscray police station to report that Barbara was missing.
“On the Monday night, the 3rd of November, 1980, I saw a picture of a young girl on television.
“This picture was the picture of a young girl who had been murdered on the previous Saturday at Altona North.
“The resemblance to my daughter, Barbara, was too great to forget about.
“That evening, Sal, myself and Willie McKnight, and my older daughter, Julie, went to the city mortuary, where Barbara was identified as being the girl who was murdered.
“I have no idea why Barbara left home. She always appeared to be quite happy living at home.
“I got on well with her. I exercised what I considered to be normal parental control over her.”
Police tracked down the Telecom employee who took the order for the telegram.
“I received a request by phone for a telegram to be sent to Mr and Mrs Dawson at 56 Gwelo Street,” Christine Ann Cole told detective Dick Daly.
“The message was, ‘decided to be on my own for a while let you know where I am later’, and signed ‘Babs’.
“The caller was male and he sounded to me as though he was aged between 35 and 50 years.
“I recall that when he said Gwelo St I had to query him as to the spelling of the street and he became quite annoyed.
“I also formed the impression that he had to think about the message as he gave it to me as he was hesitant and obviously didn’t have the message written down.
“After I received the message I forwarded it for dispatch through the usual channels.
“I also recall that the caller appeared to be in a hurry.
“He didn’t want me to read it back to him, but I did read it back to him and he hung up straight away.”
Police were able to establish the telegram was placed from a public telephone box in front of the Footscray post office in Nicholson St at 1pm and the caller paid the $6.40 charge by inserting 32 20c coins into the phone’s coin slot.
The telegram was delivered to Mr Dawson 30 minutes later. If it was him who sent the telegram — and police now believe it was — then he had enough time to get from the post office to his nearby home before it arrived.
He also would have had plenty of time from when he and Barbara were home alone from 9am to murder her and dump the body and be back in Footscray by 1pm to send the telegram.
While Mr Dawson claimed to police there was no tension between he and Barbara — with her treating him as her father, rather than her stepfather, and him treating her as his daughter, rather than his stepdaughter — her friends told police she was keen on a boy she worked with at Coles, Joseph Sidari, and that Mr Dawson didn’t approve of the budding relationship.
Mr Sidari told homicide squad detective Michael Glenane he liked Barbara and that the week before she disappeared he asked her to meet him after work and she had agreed.
“The next day at work, the Thursday, I saw Barbara at work. When she saw me she ignored me,” Mr Sidari said.
“Later on I asked her what had happened last night and she told me that she had an argument with her father about me. It was because he didn’t like Italians.
“She had been crying because her eyes were all red and puffed up.
“That afternoon we went and had lunch in my motor car. She told me about the argument she had with her father about Italians.
“After this I asked Barbara to accompany me to a 21st birthday party that was to be held on the 8th of November, 1980 at a friend’s place in Werribee South.
“She said she’d come if her father would let her go.”
It’s possible Barbara and Mr Dawson argued about that party invitation on the day she disappeared.
There were signs all was not well at home and that Barbara might have been planning to leave, possibly to get away from Mr Dawson.
Her mother, Helen Dawson, told police of some recent unusual actions by Barbara.
“The weekend before Barbara went missing Barbara sorted out all her clothes and gave some of them to Susan (Barbara’s younger sister),” Mrs Dawson told detective Dick Daly.
“She explained this by saying that she was going on a diet.
“The weekend before this Barbara sorted out her papers, but I thought that she was doing this because she wanted to increase her insurance policy.”
Two days before Barbara’s disappearance she withdrew $1400 from her bank account, leaving a credit balance of $186.65.
Housewife Beth Young told police how she and her sister Ruth found Barbara’s body.
“On Saturday afternoon, the 1st day of November, 1980, at approximately 1.10pm, I was travelling in the front passenger seat of my sister’s vehicle,” she said.
“We were travelling along a dirt track known as Racecourse Rd, Williamstown, at the time.
“As we crossed over the Kororoit Creek ford I noticed what appeared to be a store mannequin lying in some grass on top of some rocks which were in the water.
“I mentioned this to my sister and she stopped the car. She got out and had a look.
“She then came back to the car and said that it was a body.
“We then drove to the Altona North police station where I reported what I had seen.”
Constable Silvio Taverna and his partner were then sent to check it out.
“As we crossed the ford I noticed what appeared to be a body lying in the creek some two and half metres north of the concrete ford and partially hidden behind some reeds,” Constable Taverna said.
“We alighted from the police vehicle and I observed the naked body of a young female.
“The body was on its left side in a crouched position.
“I saw that the head was covered with a dark green plastic bag.
“Around the neck was a green cord that extended down towards the legs.
“I also noticed that the feet and ankles were also covered with a dark green plastic. The body was partly submerged in the water.”
An autopsy performed by the then senior government pathologist, James Henry McNamara, found Barbara died as a result of her throat being cut.
The then coroner, Kevin Mason, found her injuries were “feloniously unlawfully and maliciously inflicted by a person or persons unknown to me.”
Victoria Police cold case homicide squad detectives recently made an application to State Coroner Judge Sara Hinchey to set aside that 1981 finding in the Barbara Dawson inquest.
It remains to be seen whether Judge Hinchey ends up implicating the now dead Mr Dawson in the murder of his stepdaughter.
Originally published as Police believe Peter Dawson murdered his first wife and second wife’s daughter