Award-winning journalist Hedley Thomas reveals personal tragedy behind hit podcast The Teacher’s Pet

One of Australia’s top investigative reporters has revealed how a personal tragedy and ‘crossroads’ moment changed the course of his career and helped put a killer behind bars.

One of Australia’s top investigative reporters has revealed how a personal tragedy changed the course of his career and helped put a killer behind bars.

Award-winning journalist Hedley Thomas admitted he was “at a crossroads” in his life and grieving his father’s death when he started work on his 2018 The Teacher’s Pet podcast.

The 17-episode series which investigated the 1982 murder of Sydney mother Lynette Dawson would later earn Mr Thomas a Walkley Award.

Wedding photo of Chris and Lynnette Dawson.

“I had reported on Lynette’s disappearance and probable murder many years earlier, going back to 2001,” he said.

“I was familiar with the story and I had kept my files on that story for 16 years.

“I always wanted to go back to it because it was such a sad story and a solvable case.

“It was a really important case to investigate and because it was so detailed and there were so many strands to it, I almost had to obsess over the evidence.

“It was also very distracting from the sadness I had experienced since my dad died.”

A former Gold Coast Bulletin copyboy and cadet, Mr Thomas experienced another “crossroads” moment in his long and successful career back in 2002.

While working as an investigative reporter at The Courier Mail, several shots from a high-powered weapon were fired into his family’s Brisbane home.

Investigative journalist Hedley Thomas and his wife Ruth outside the Indooroopilly Police Station after their home was shot at. (AAP Image/Gillian Ballard)

One bullet went through the bedroom window, sailing about 30cm above the heads of Mr Thomas and his wife.

“If we were getting up or if we had been 30cm the other way, we could have been hit,” the journalist said.

“It was a very traumatic period.”

Mr Thomas later spoke of having narrowed the potential shooter down to three or four stories he had written, but decided to let it go.

Police look for evidence outside the Brookfield home of journalist Hedley Thomas after the shooting. Picture: Giulio Saggin

While his family was temporarily relocated from the home, they continued living there up until six months ago.

Most of the work for his podcasts The Teacher’s Pet, The Night Driver (on Janine Vaughan’s disappearance) and Shandee’s Story (Shandee Blackburn’s death) was carried out from this same home.

Mr Thomas and his Shandee’s Story podcast co-creator Dr Kirsty Wright headlined the 2023 Storyfest Business Lunch at RACV Royal Pines on Thursday.

'Shandee's Story' podcast creators Hedley Thomas and Dr Kirsty Wright headline the Storyfest Business Lunch. Picture: Richard Gosling

Their talk explained how the series unearthed a web of failures in Australia’s national criminal justice system, exposed systemic failures at Queensland’s state-run DNA Forensic Laboratory over the past decade and prompted a major public inquiry.

The event raised funds for the Storyfest Development Fund, which allows disadvantaged students from both local and regional areas to access books and authors.