Former teacher Chris Dawson found guilty of murdering wife Lynette
The judge in the murder trial of Chris Dawson said he is satisfied the former teacher ‘resolved to kill his wife’ and found him guilty of murdering her just over 40 years ago.
Police & Courts
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The judge in the murder trial of Chris Dawson has handed down his verdict, finding Dawson guilty of murdering his wife Lynette.
Justice Ian Harrison returned from a half-hour lunch break to complete delivery of his verdict, and said he is satisfied the former teacher ‘resolved to kill his wife’.
He then declared Dawson guilty beyond all reasonable doubt. Mr Dawson was immediately handcuffed and led out a side door of the court.
Security was earlier beefed up outside of Sydney’s Supreme Court, as the reading of the reasons for the imminent Chris Dawson murder verdict continued. Multiple police officers and security were in the front of the building. The summation resumed at 1.30pm after a short break for lunch.
Earlier today, the judge delivering his verdict said the former schoolteacher had lied about phone calls from missing wife Lynette Dawson.
Justice Ian Harrison also says he is satisfied Lynette Dawson “did not leave home willingly” and was satisfied she is dead.
“I am satisfied that she died on or about 8 January 1982 and she did not voluntarily abandon her home.”
Dawson himself had said he found it “extremely strange” Lyn phoned him and no-one else, Justice Harrison said.
“I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Lynette Dawson never telephoned Mr Dawson after 9 January 1982,” the judge said.
“That leads me to conclude that Lynette Dawson did not leave her home voluntarily.”
The once high-flying rugby star, model and high school teacher is today learning his fate four decades after he reported his wife Lynette’s disappearance to police and moved his teenage lover into their home.
Dawson arrived early at the Supreme Court accompanied by his twin Paul and their older brother Peter.
Lynette’s family members wore pink, her favourite colour, in her honour but the couple’s two daughters were not expected to attend the verdict.
Drawn into one of the country’s most gripping mysteries, their beliefs were ripped apart by their father’s arrest.
The oldest, Shanelle, who was four when her mum went missing in January 1982, has said she slowly came to the belief that her mother would never have walked out on the family and stayed away all this time, never getting in touch.
Her younger sister, who cannot be named and was two when her mum disappeared, has been living near their father on the Gold Coast and believes in his innocence, labelling the homicide investigation a “witch hunt”.
The most haunting evidence during Dawson’s trial were the sketches of the two sisters which their mum had commissioned in December 1981, getting the girls carefully dressed in their Sunday best for the artist. The sketches were never picked up.
Lynette Dawson went missing aged 33 on January 8 or 9, 1982.
When the artist went to the Dawsons’ Bayview home at the end of January 1982 to drop the sketches off, she was told by Chris Dawson that his wife no longer lived there and she didn’t want them.
Lynette’s brother Greg Simms, a former veteran police office of 27 years, told Dawson’s trial that he never wanted to talk to his former brother-in-law again. He has sat through the marathon trial with his wife Merilyn and other family members behind the prosecution on the right hand side of the court.
Thrice-married Dawson, 74, has been accompanied to court every day by his older brother Peter Dawson, a Dural lawyer who has been working with the defence team on the left hand side of the court.
Justice Ian Harrison, who heard the trial alone without a jury because of a tsunami of publicity in the lead up to Dawson being charged with his wife’s murder in 2018, will hand down his verdict after 10am on Tuesday as to Dawson’s guilt or innocence.
If convicted, Dawson can expect to have his bail revoked and remanded behind bars pending sentence. He would be taken handcuffed from the court to the maximum-security Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre for two weeks of Covid isolation.
He still faces a charge of carnal knowledge with a girl between the ages of 10 and 17 which is due to go to trial in May next year.
In the heady days of the 70s on Sydney’s laid back northern beaches, Chris and Lynette Dawson seemed to be the perfect couple. He was a handsome popular sports teacher, she was a nurse and a doting mother. They had build their own home just two doors away from Chris’s identical twin brother Paul and his wife.
But cracks appeared in their marriage when Dawson began his affair in around 1981 with their teenage babysitter, known as JC, who became the star prosecution witness in his trial.
Dawson pleaded not guilty to the murder of his first wife. He has maintained that he dropped her off at a bus stop at Mona Vale near their Bayview home early on January 9, 1982, so she could go shopping in the city. She never held a driving licence.
He has maintained she was supposed to meet him and their daughters that afternoon at Northbridge Baths, where he was working as a lifeguard, but instead she called the kiosk at the pool saying she needed some time to herself.
The prosecution has alleged Dawson murdered her so he could have an “unfettered” relationship with his young lover whom he met when she was a year 11 student.
JC moved into the family’s Bayview home days after Ms Dawson disappeared. The couple married and had a child.
The court heard it was during their acrimonious divorce 10 years later when JC went to police and said she believed he had murdered his first wife that the first serious police investigation began.
Dawson has maintained that JC was motivated by bitter custody proceedings and his defence team has attacked all three of the police investigations as inadequate and biased, saying the cops never went looking for Lynette but assumed he had killed her.
His trial heard from witnesses who believe they have seen Lynette since then, including at the royal visit to Sydney in March 1983 running across Macquarie Street as the car carrying Prince Charles and Princess Diana approached.
The reported sightings were all discounted by the prosecution.
Then there was the question of how Dawson would have disposed of his wife’s body if she had been killed.
His trial heard that on the evening of Friday, January 8, Lynette had two telephone calls, including one with her late mother Helena Simms. Ms Simms has since died without knowing what happened to her daughter.
Dawson’s counsel, Pauline David, who has been appointed as a District Court judge since the trial ended, had argued in court that he would have had no idea – or time – to dispose of her body. She had said there was no weapon, no forensic or scientific evidence of any murder and questioned how Dawson could have killed his wife and carried her body out to his car to dispose of it when they had no garage and the car was parked outside.
Their daughters were asleep in their beds at the time.
Chris Dawson has always said that he just wants the truth to come out. Justice Harrison will decide what that truth is.
VERDICT EXPECTED IN TEACHER’S PET PODCAST CASE
The journalist whose Teacher’s Pet podcast focused global attention on the disappearance of Lynette Dawson said that Tuesday’s verdict in Chris Dawson’s murder trial is all about the family, not himself.
Hedley Thomas came under fire in the Supreme Court for potentially prejudicing Dawson’s trial and influencing witnesses after his award-winning podcast had close to 60 million “listens”. It was taken offline in 2019 pending the court case.
The Australian’s chief correspondent had a flash of pink packed as he flew from his Queensland home to join Ms Dawson’s family who plan to wear pink in the Sydney courtroom as it was her favourite colour.
“It’s more important for her family than for me,” Thomas said on Monday about the verdict.
“It’s now a matter for the judge.”
Justice Ian Harrison will hand down one of the country’s most anticipated verdicts after hearing the trial without a jury.
Throughout the podcast, Thomas had been critical of a lack of a proper police investigation which did not take place until years after Ms Dawson was reported missing in 1982. Evidence which may have helped both the prosecution and the defence had been lost with time.
“I am sure that Lyn’s family and friends appreciate that this judge has conducted a fair trial of an alleged murderer in circumstances where if a proper police investigation had been done in the early 80s, there would have been much more for the prosecution and the defence to unpack,” he said.
His unedited recorded conversations with which he built the podcast together with emails were used as evidence in the trial and also in the earlier unsuccessful application by Dawson’s defence team to get a permanent stay of the proceedings.
When she rejected the application to stay the case, Justice Elizabeth Fullerton was critical of Thomas and said in her judgment: “Mr Thomas accepted in his evidence countenanced no scenario other than that (Dawson) was guilty of murder and that (Dawson) has told a succession of lies over many years to conceal his guilt.”
He gave the same evidence during Dawson’s trial.
Dawson and his twin brother Paul were vocal about their opinions of Thomas in telephone calls in 2018 which they believed were being tapped by police.
“Hedley, you’re a f..king wanker,” one of the brothers said, asking that police pass their comments on to Thomas.
One of the most controversial aspects of the podcast was when the former NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller directed senior investigating police to join Thomas for lunch at a Surry Hills restaurant before Dawson was charged in late 2018.
Thomas has said that if he had his time again, he would do nothing different regarding the podcast. It was broadcast between May and December 2018. Dawson was charged with his first wife’s murder in December 2018.
The Australian is published by Nationwide News, which also publishes The Daily Telegraph.
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