Eleven reasons why Chris Dawson is guilty: Prosecutors
Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield has outlined in court the 11 reasons why Chris Dawson is guilty.
Eleven “pillars” of evidence point to Chris Dawson having killed his wife, prosecutors say, as the ex-rugby league star fights to be freed from prison, a court has heard.
The former teacher has returned to a Sydney courtroom two years after he was jailed for the murder of his wife Lynette Simms, who disappeared more than 40 years ago and hasn’t been heard from since.
Dawson has taken his case to the state’s highest court – the Court of Criminal Appeal – in an effort to have his conviction overturned and be released from prison.
Ms Simms in January 1982 disappeared from her Bayview home, which she shared with her husband and their two young children.
Dawson’s barrister, senior public defender Belinda Rigg SC, has told the court that Dawson’s conviction ought to be quashed because of the unavailability of key evidence and witnesses.
She added it could not be established beyond a reasonable doubt that Ms Simms was not alive after her last known contact on Friday January 8, 1982.
The former Newtown Jets rugby league player was sentenced to 24 years in prison, with an 18-year non-parole period, after Supreme Court judge Ian Harrison found him guilty of murder.
Justice Harrison found that Dawson killed his wife to be with a young student, JC, who moved into Dawson’s Gilwinga Drive home in the days following.
Ms Simms’ body has never been found and she has never contacted her friends or family, including her two children.
THE PHONE CALL
During a 1991 police interview, Dawson told detectives he dropped off his wife at a Mona Vale bus stop on the morning of January 9 and she was supposed to meet him later that afternoon at the Northbridge Baths, where he worked as a part-time lifeguard.
Dawson told police while at work he received a long-distance phone call from his wife saying that she needed time away.
One woman, who worked at the Northbridge Baths as a teen, told the court she recalled on one occasion in the summer of 1981-82 that she picked up a long-distance call and a female on the other end asked to speak to either Chris Dawson or his brother Paul.
Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield told the court on Tuesday that there could have been a call —— but it could not have been from Ms Simms, who he said was killed either late on January 8 or early January 9.
“The phone, we would submit, there could have been a call ... that it was the (Ms Simms) on the other end of the phone is a lie, a deliberate lie,” Mr Hatfield said.
Ms Rigg earlier told the court it could not be established beyond a reasonable doubt that Ms Simms did not make the phone call.
Justice Julie Ward on Tuesday noted the only evidence about the phone call coming from Ms Simms was from Dawson.
11 PILLARS
On day two of the three-day hearing before the Court of Criminal Appeal, Mr Hatfield outlined what he described as 11 “pillars” of the case which he said reinforced Dawson’s guilt.
“There is not a significant possibility that an innocent person has been convicted in this case,” Mr Hatfield said.
Mr Hatfield said the first “pillar” which led to Dawson’s conviction was the fact that Ms Simms never spoke to or had contact with any person after January 8, 1982.
Secondly, he said, it was “inherently unlikely” that she would have “voluntarily abandoned the husband she idolised” and the “children she adored”.
Particularly he pointed to Ms Simms’ effort to have children, which included undergoing a fertility procedure.
Mr Hatfield’s third point was that she would not have cut off communication with her parents and her siblings even if she had left Dawson.
He also said that at the time Ms Simms disappeared, Dawson was attempting to establish a “public, permanent, long-term partnership” with JC, including asking her to marry him and attending her school formal as her date.
Fifthly, Mr Hatfield said, Ms Simms was committed to her marriage despite it deteriorating in 1981 when she became aware that Dawson had cheated on her.
“If she wasn’t leaving when those other things occurred, why would she leave when it was looking better after the counselling?” Mr Hatfield said.
Mr Hatfield also pointed to what he described as the “atmosphere” of Dawson’s relationship with JC, which he said was “marked by a degree of desperation and obsession”.
He said, in his seventh point, that Dawson had made attempts to leave Ms Simms, including attempting to move to Queensland, planning to move into a North Manly flat with JC and attempting to sell his own.
According to his eighth point, he said that Dawson had refused to accept JC’s attempt to break off their relationship before she left to holiday at South West Rocks.
He also said that Dawson was the last person to see Ms Simms alive and had the “opportunity and motive” to kill her on January 8 and 9, 1982.
In his tenth point, Mr Hatfield said that after his wife disappeared, Dawson conducted himself in a manner which was “completely irreconcilable with any purported belief that (Ms Simms) was alive and might return home.”
This included moving JC into their home, where she slept in the matrimonial bed, and allowing her to go through Ms Dawson’s clothing and jewellery.
Lastly, Mr Hatfield said that there was no evidence of Ms Simms being alive despite proof of life checks during a missing person’s probe and three separate police investigations.
‘REASONABLE POSSIBILITY’
Ms Rigg on Tuesday morning told the court that there was evidence that Dawson was willing to carry on his relationship with JC even if he remained married to Ms Simms.
“He was no doubt capable of continuing that relationship if JC was willing, regardless of his wife either living with Ms Dawson or more likely separated from her,” Ms Rigg said.
Dawson’s legal team argues that the only impediment to his relationship with JC was the young woman’s wish to call it off.
The court was told that before Christmas 1981, Dawson and JC packed up his car and attempted to move to Queensland; however, she became ill, asked him to return to Sydney and subsequently expressed a desire to leave him.
“Lynette was never an impediment as far as JC was concerned,” Ms Rigg said.
“And (Dawson) demonstrated himself to be well prepared to lose his relationship with his wife if JC would continue the relationship with him.”
The court was told that in early 1982, JC travelled to South West Rocks to holiday with friends and her sisters and was asked to call him at his home every day.
During the trial, the court was also told that on the day she was last seen, Ms Simms attended marriage counselling with Dawson.
Dawson later told detectives that on that Friday evening, he fixed his wife a glass of wine and was upbeat about the prospects of resolving their problems.
“It was supposed to be a sexy celebration,” Dawson told detectives in 1991.
Ms Rigg raised the prospect that JC had phoned Dawson at home on the evening of Friday, January 8, 1982, leading to Ms Simms deciding to leave her family the following day.
“Ms Dawson’s heart was wholly committed to the applicant, and she had little control as of 8 and 9 January 1982 over what would happen in her marriage,” Ms Rigg said.
“And a decision to leave her home to think things through and demonstrate to the applicant her dissatisfaction is clearly a reasonable possibility.”
THE JEWELLERY
One of the three judges hearing the appeal has questioned whether Ms Simms would have voluntarily run away and left behind her jewellery.
The court was told that Ms Simms did not pack a bag and her clothes and jewellery were left behind inside her home.
The Crown prosecution during the trial pointed to JC being allowed to keep Ms Simms’ clothes when she moved into the Dawson home.
“She’s conveniently left her jewellery behind has she?” Justice Julie Ward asked.
“I think that’s the evidence, yes, that the jewellery was left behind,” Ms Rigg said.
“That’s what I mean. So he drops her at the station not wearing her wedding ring or her engagement ring?” Justice Ward said.
“I think that’s the evidence, yes,” Ms Rigg replied.
THE POOL
Ms Rigg told the court on Monday there was a “reasonable possibility based on the evidence” that Ms Simms was alive on the afternoon of January 9, 1982 and that she made the phone call to the Northbridge Baths.
Dawson has maintained that his wife walked out on him and their children — despite the court hearing that she underwent a procedure to conceive a child.
Justice Christine Adamson on Monday questioned whether it was plausible that she would have walked out given there was evidence that she was “really desperate to be a mother” and “adored” her daughters.
THE 40-YEAR DELAY
Central to Dawson’s appeal, which will be heard over three days, is his claim that he suffered a “significant forensic disadvantage” owing to the nearly 40 years between his wife’s disappearance and the matter going to trial.
Several witnesses, including Sue Butlin, who died in May 1988, were unable to give evidence at his highly publicised trial in 2022.
Ray Butlin – a Dawson family friend – told the court during the trial that his former wife Sue had told him of seeing Ms Simms at a roadside fruit barn sometime after her disappearance.
Ms Butlin worked a weekend job at a fruit and vegetable shop on the side of the Pacific Highway at Kulnura on the Central Coast.
Mr Butlin told the court that Ms Butlin had told him that she once she saw Ms Simms during one of her shifts.
“The substance was that (Ms Butlin) saw a person that she believed was Lyn Dawson,” Mr Butlin said during the trial.
“She walked towards her and the woman proceeded, without turning around, and got into a car and drove off.”
Ms Rigg told the court that Ms Butlin never made a police statement and Dawson lost the prospect of her coming to court to contribute to a reasonable doubt.
“The only evidence to be placed before a court by a witness was a hearsay account by her husband of a conversation which occurred 40 years earlier,” Ms Rigg said.
Another key witness who died before the matter went to trial was Phillip Day, who was present at the Northbridge Baths on the afternoon Ms Simms did not arrive to meet her family.
He gave a statement to police in February 2001 in which he said he saw Dawson being summoned to the pool office and when he returned Dawson said he had received a call from Ms Simms.
In a grounds of appeal, Dawson’s lawyers argue he suffered a “miscarriage of justice” because Justice Harrison found beyond a reasonable doubt that he did not receive a phone call from his wife.
Ms Rigg told the court that because of the passage of time, phone records had been lost.
She said Dawson “could have received a call from his wife from the Central Coast” saying she needed time away.
However Justice Adamson – one of three judges who is hearing the appeal – pointed out that in his judgment, Justice Harrison had explicitly said he had taken into account the significant delay.
“I must remain constantly vigilant to identify and make allowance for the possibility that Mr Dawson’s ability adequately to respond to the Crown case may have been unfairly compromised by the fact that he faces a trial for murder in 2022 and not 1982,” Justice Harrison wrote.
During the trial, the Crown prosecution argued that Dawson “cunningly” arranged for Mr Day to be present at the pool to drive his children to Ms Simms’ mother’s house that day.
Ms Rigg told the court it was never suggested during the trial that some other woman may have made a long-distance phone call to Dawson at the pool.
“There was no one else suggested who might have called (Dawson) there, far less an STD call,” she said.
Last year, Dawson was also convicted of one count of carnal knowledge after a judge found he engaged in sexual activities with one of his students at a Sydney high school in 1980.
He was sentenced by Judge Sarah Huggett to three years in jail and had one year added onto his non-parole period.
His non-parole period is due to expire in August 2041, by which time he will be 93 years old.
New “no body, no parole” laws passed by NSW parliament – dubbed “Lyn’s law” – mean that Dawson will not be paroled until he reveals where Ms Simms is buried.
The hearing before Justices Ward, Anthony Payne and Christine Adamson continues.
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