Surprise new defence witness testifies at Chris Dawson trial

Accused murderer Chris Dawson has sensationally begun his defence with a witness who claims to not only have seen his missing wife Lynette but spoken to her.

Accused murderer Chris Dawson has sensationally begun his defence with a witness who claims to not only have seen his missing wife Lynette but spoken to her.

Paul Cooper said he had bought the woman he believes to be Lynette Dawson a white wine at Warners Bay Hotel and got the impression she had walked out on her husband to “set him up” and make it look like he had killed her.

Dressed in a grey suit with an open-neck white shirt, 60-year-old Mr Cooper said the woman told him she had left everything behind including her purse and had no identification.

“I said to her that by her leaving all her belongings, her purse and everything else at home, that there was a good chance that people would think that her husband had done something to her, that he had knocked her,” he told the Supreme Court.

“When I looked back at her, she had a different demeanour at that time and she shocked me. I thought that might have been the intent.

Chris Dawson is on trial for the murder of his wife Lynette. Picture: Monique Harmer

“I thought ‘she’s setting her husband up’. It was an unforgettable afternoon.”

Former teacher Dawson, 73, who played rugby league in the mid-1970s with the Newtown Jets, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of his first wife Lynette who disappeared, aged 33, from their home in Sydney’s northern beaches in January 1982.

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

The prosecution alleges Dawson murdered 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.

Mr Cooper, who said he didn’t know anyone in the Dawson family, said he had approached the woman in question as she sat at a table in the hotel and tried to talk her into going home. He said it was early 1982 and “still warm”.

He said the woman asked him to get a motel room with his own ID.

“I thought the obvious, you know, I thought it was for me and her and she put me in my place and she said she didn’t want one for that, she wanted me to book a motel for her in my name,” Mr Cooper said.

Star witness, Paul Cooper (in black jacket) outside Sydney’s Supreme Court.

He said the meeting had a profound affect on him but he didn’t do anything about it until about three years ago when he saw a photograph of Lynette Dawson on A Current Affair.

“I never forgot her smile,” he said.

He said he didn’t have “a good rapport” with the police, admitting he had spent time in jail for dishonesty offences, armed robbery and false pretences.

Instead he tracked down Dawson’s solicitor Greg Walsh and got in touch.

“That was the woman, she was alive when I saw her,” he said.
Mr Cooper said the woman he later identified as Lynette Dawson had told him she had left her husband because he had been “playing up on her” and she was waiting to get a passport from someone who she was going to meet in a couple of weeks and then head to Bali and onwards.

Composite image showing Chris and Lynette Dawson and an image of JC. Images tendered to the NSW Supreme Court

She did not take up his offer to get ID for her.

He said he tried to talk her into going home for the sake of her children because he knew what it was like to grow up without parents around.

In cross-examination, Crown prosecutor Craig Everson SC asked: “When are you going to put up your hand to claim the reward for information leading to solving the disappearance of Lynette Dawson?”

Mr Cooper said: “I didn’t know there was a reward.”

Mr Cooper is continuing to give evidence at the trial before Justice Ian Harrison.