Chris Dawson had four plans to get rid of wife Lynette, court hears

Chris Dawson had four ideas to get out of his marriage but when none of them worked, he “decided to murder his wife alone or with the assistance of others”, Crown prosecutor Craig Everson SC said in his closing address.

Ex-teacher Chris Dawson had four plans to get out of his marriage to Lynette Dawson and take up with his schoolgirl lover but when they all failed, he turned to murder, the Supreme Court has been told.

“He decided to murder his wife alone or with the assistance of others,” Crown prosecutor Craig Everson SC said as he continues his closing address in the NSW Supreme Court in Dawson’s judge-alone murder trial.

Dawson, 73, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of his first wife who disappeared, aged 33, from their home in Sydney’s northern beaches in January 1982.

He claims she walked out of their marriage, leaving their two daughters behind.

The prosecution alleges Dawson killed her on January 8 or 9 so he could move his young lover, known only as JC, who he met when she was a year 11 student, into their Bayview home.

Chris Dawson (right) and his brother Peter Dawson battle Sydney’s bad wet weather on their way to the Supreme Court on Tuesday. Picture: Gaye Gerard

JC, who subsequently married Dawson and had their baby when she was aged 19, has given evidence that he had asked her to marry him first when she was 16 and asked her over and over again until she said yes in 1981, when he was still married to Lynette.

It was “astounding” that he even attended her school formal with her as her date despite everyone at the school knowing his wife, Mr Everson said.

Chris and Lynette Dawson on their wedding day.

Mr Everson said it was the Crown case that Dawson’s Plan A was to move into a rented flat in Manly with JC and he had put a deposit down on the flat.

He said the plan was abandoned after his older brother Peter Dawson, a lawyer with experience in family law, told him in a phone call that by moving out of the family home, he would jeopardise his rights to the property.

JC has given evidence that she heard Dawson’s side of the conversation. Peter Dawson has given evidence that such a conversation never occurred.

Plan B, the prosecution alleges, was to consider getting a hit man which Mr Everson described as “one of the most controversial things in this trial”.

Mr Everson took the judge to evidence given by JC that she had been in the car in her school uniform when they drove south of the Harbour Bridge to an unknown hotel and he got out.

Lynette and Chris Dawson in 1974.

JC claims that told her he had considered getting a hit man but dropped the plan in case other people got hurt.

Plan C, Mr Everson said, was to get his wife to sell the family’s home on the Northern Beaches of Sydney. On December 21, 1981, Dawson had signed an agreement with a real state agent but Lynette refused to sign.

There was evidence she told her brother that she did not want to sell the house.

Ms Everson said Plan D was for Dawson and JC to move to Queensland. A few days before Christmas 1981, he packed up his car with everything including his pillow and left behind a note for his wife: “Don’t paint too black a picture of me to the children”, the court heard.

But on the way to Queensland, JC became sick and wanted to return to her family. They got back to Sydney on Christmas Day and spent the day in the bed of his twin brother Paul and Paul’s wife, Mr Everson said.

“He saw his wife as an impediment to living with JC,” Mr Everson said.

“His obsession with JC and his fear of losing her and the impediment his wife posed ultimately motivated him to murder her.”

The trial before Justice Ian Harrison continues.