The Teacher’s Pet: Hedley Thomas to release book on October 10 about Chris and Lynette Dawson case
It was the cold case that gripped Australia – and the world. Now a new book will shed more light on the investigation into Chris Dawson’s murder of his wife Lynette.
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Twenty-two years ago, few had heard of Lynette Dawson, the mother-of-two who disappeared without a trace from Sydney’s northern beaches in January 1982.
But the “utterly appalling” failure of the criminal justice system in the 33-year-old’s case had an immediate and “very powerful” impact on Hedley Thomas, then a “much younger” newspaper reporter at The Courier-Mail, in 2001.
Life got in the way, but “I never forgot [Lyn’s] story”, the Walkley Award-winning journalist tells news.com.au. A seed was planted, setting in motion a series of events that would ultimately make Lyn, her husband Chris Dawson, and Thomas himself, household names.
Released in mid-2018, The Teacher’s Pet – created for The Australian and produced by Slade Gibson – captivated not just the nation, but much of the world.
“I wanted it to be widely heard, because the failure of the criminal justice system in Lyn’s case was utterly appalling. The failure of police in the early years to investigate [her disappearance] was deeply suspicious, the loss or destruction of documents and evidence when it was in police hands through the 1980s was, again, incredible,” Thomas says.
“You just shake your head at how, in the case of a missing woman – potentially murdered – important files and witness statements that police had could be lost forever, [or so] it seemed. And then the successive refusals of very senior lawyers in the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to prosecute Dawson, despite recommendations [since 2001] by highly-experienced coroners who were across the evidence and had questioned and tested the witnesses – that was devastating for Lyn’s family, that the system was failing so badly.
“My objective was to try to find new evidence, new leads, that would cause the office of the DPP to finally … prosecute Dawson for the murder of his wife. And then it would be up to a jury to decide – but he needed to be made accountable.”
The podcast went on to win the nation’s highest journalism honour, and has been downloaded (along with subsequent podcasts The Teacher’s Trial and The Teacher’s Accuser) 80 million times.
Within months of its publication, in December 2018, Dawson was arrested and charged with Lyn’s murder. And last August, forty years after the fact, Judge Ian Harrison concluded, like Thomas had, that Dawson, driven by an infatuation with his teenage babysitter – a student at the school where he taught – had murdered his wife.
“There was a sense of huge relief – a sense that a terrible wrong had finally been corrected,” he says of the August 31 verdict.
“But also a sense of remorse that this man had lived the best years of his life – 40 years – with total freedom. He should’ve been jailed decades ago. And at 74, when he was convicted, the best years of his life were behind him. He’s going to spend the rest of his life behind bars, but … it’s staggering that he got away with it for as long as he did.”
On October 10, Thomas’ years-long investigation into Lyn’s case culminates in the publication of The Teacher’s Pet (MacMillan Australia, $36.99). The book, author Trent Dalton says, is a “monumental work” and a “burrowing, twisting, spine-tingling, genre-defining tribute to the power – and the cost – of asking questions”. “If you think you know this story, think again.”
So much of the case, Thomas admits, still manages to surprise even him.
“I’ve discovered much, much more. And at times I’ve berated myself for not having, in 2018, used some of the material that was in my files and in my interviews in [the] podcast,” he says.
“Obviously the story and the fundamental facts don’t change, but it’s just astonishing the depth and the layers of Lyn’s case.
“When I sat down and really committed to the writing of the book … I looked at all this material and started burrowing into it, and it was like the story came alive again.
“I was going very quickly during the podcast and trying to meet the demands of the weekly production of an episode, [so] inevitably missed certain nuances and features of people’s interviews and observations that I’ve [now] found really compelling, and they’ve changed the way I’ve seen parts of this case – and I’ve tried to convey that in the book.
“I feel like readers are really going to be on the journey with me and my notebook and my microphone.”
He also hopes it demonstrates the “vital” importance of true-crime journalism.
“It can solve cold cases. And it gives families a hope that had been dashed because of the inertia, or the lack of time and resources, of police who after many years have had to move onto other cases,” Thomas says.
“What I’ve tried to also deal with is examination of the fact that people we rely on in good faith in the criminal justice system are just as fallible as the rest of us. They’re not always right – in fact, they often make dreadful errors of Judgement – and it’s incumbent on journalists when that happens to try to help make a difference.
“And we should never be intimidated about doing that, even when there’s pushback from those who would prefer we stayed out of the investigations of unsolved true crime.”
The Teacher’s Pet by Hedley Thomas is published by MacMillan Australia. RRP $36.99. Pre order your copy now here, or find in all good bookstores and online from October 10.
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