Chris Dawson’s sick present for schoolgirl babysitter JC

Chris Dawson is spending his first Christmas in jail and it can be traced back to a key moment 42 years earlier around the same time.

In December 1980, Chris Dawson slipped one of his female students a Christmas card with the word “Petal” printed on the envelope.

The card was given to a young girl, JC, who was 16 years old at the time and a student at the northern beaches school where Dawson taught physical education.

Now, 42 years later, Dawson is spending his first Christmas in jail for the murder of his wife Lynette Simms because of a series of events that can be traced back to that card.

In a stunning conclusion to one of the country’s most famous cold cases, Dawson was in August found guilty of his wife’s murder.

Judge Ian Harrison found that Dawson was motivated to kill Ms Simms due to his “possessive infatuation” with JC and desire to start a new life with her.

Dawson was sentenced to 24 years in jail and will first be eligible for parole in 2040 when he will be 92 years old.

However, he has been told he can expect to die in jail.

Chris Dawson walks into Sydney’s Supreme Court in August in what would be his final moments of freedom. Picture: NCA NewsWire/ Gaye Gerard

Lynette Simms was murdered by her husband so he could be with a younger woman. Picture: ABC.

THE SCHOOLGIRL AND THE ‘GROOMING STAGES’

In early 1980, Dawson began teaching a year 11 physical education class in which JC was a student.

During her evidence to the Supreme Court, she described her interactions with Dawson in the schoolyard in early 1980 as “the grooming stages” of their relationship.

She told the court that he would brush up against her in the schoolyard and leave notes and love letters in her school bag.

One, dated Christmas 1980, read: “Happy Christmas. Once or twice every minute. Love always. God.”

Asked why Dawson had signed the card as “God”, JC said: “He wanted to disguise who he was because it was 1980 and I was 16 and that’s what he called himself.”

Justice Harrison found that the cards demonstrated that even at that early stage, Dawson harboured “an infatuation of significant strength” and that he became “increasingly jealous” of any interest shown in JC by young boys.

JC would later become the babysitter for Dawson’s two young children, setting off a chain of events that led to his wife’s murder.

JC was the prosecution’s key witness during the trial. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Damian Shaw.

A card given to JC by Dawson at Christmas in 1980. Picture: Supplied

SOUTH WEST ROCKS

JC moved into the Dawsons’ Gilwinga Drive home in late 1981 but was kicked out by Ms Sees when she confronted her about “taking liberties” with her husband.

During her stay at the Dawson home, JC walked around the family pool topless and in a G-string and would regularly have sex with Dawson after his wife had fallen asleep.

Ms Simms was last seen on January 8, 1982, when she spoke to her mother on the phone.

Her body has never been found and a “proof of life” check failed to uncover any suggestion that she was alive after that point.

The Crown prosecution argued in the months leading up to her death that Dawson hatched four plots to leave his wife, including attempting to move into a flat in Manly and, just before Christmas 1981, packing up his belongings and setting out for Queensland with JC.

Dawson left a note for his wife saying: “Don‘t paint too bad a picture of me to the girls.”

However, missing her family and feeling ill, JC forced him to turn around.

Justice Harrison found that while Dawson offered her the kind of stable male figure that her life had been lacking, she did not share his enthusiasm for their relationship.

JC on the day she left with Dawson to start a new life in Queensland. His car can be seen in the background.

They arrived back in Sydney on Christmas Day, but instead of returning home to be with his wife, Dawson spent the day with JC hiding out at his brother Paul’s house.

Meanwhile, Ms Simms and her two daughters went to Chris’s parent’s house for Christmas celebrations.

Early in the new year, JC travelled to South West Rocks where she holidayed with friends and family but only after telling Dawson she wanted to end their relationship.

And it was during this fateful trip that Dawson resolved to kill his wife.

“Mr Dawson was in Sydney, hundreds of kilometres from JC, with no knowledge of what she was doing or with whom, while he remained shackled to a wife that he had only days before shown himself to be more than enthusiastic to leave,” Justice Harrison said.

“I am satisfied that the prospect that he would lose JC so distressed, frustrated and ultimately overwhelmed him that, tortured by her absence up north, Mr Dawson resolved to kill his wife.”

Ms Simms with baby daughter Shanelle.

Dawson and Ms Simms as teenagers. Picture: Supplied

MYSTERY REMAINS

JC and Dawson went on to marry and have one child together however went through an acrimonious separation in 1990, during which she made her first statement to police and a series of serious allegations.

She claimed to police that on one occasion she had accompanied him to a club somewhere south of the Harbour Bridge where he told her he tried to hire a hitman to kill his wife but changed his mind.

However, Justice Harrison found “it seems improbable in the extreme that Mr Dawson, or more generally anyone who … was contemplating killing his wife, would tell his young and impressionable … lover that he was contemplating arranging for his then wife to be murdered.”

Dawson gave one interview to police, in Queensland in January 1991, during which he claimed that “(JC) also doesn’t know of nights that I lay awake crying my heart out hoping for some contact from Lyn”.

But Justice Harrison said Dawson had a series of lies over decades that demonstrated a consciousness of guilt.

Ms Simms’ disappearance was the subject of two coronial inquests but it wasn’t until the release of the Teacher’s Pet podcast that kickstarted interest in the case that led to Dawson’s arrest in late 2018.

Dawson and Ms Simms on their wedding day.

It’s not known how Ms Simms died or where her body is buried.

Dawson declined to give evidence at his sentence hearing and has refused to make admissions about his former wife’s resting place.

He has flagged that he will appeal his sentence, but Ms Simms’ family have said they will pay no attention to those proceedings.

“From today on we would like her to be known as Lynette Joy Simms,” her brother Greg Simms said on the steps of the Supreme Court after Dawson was jailed.

“No sentence is long enough for taking someone’s life. We respect and thank Judge (Ian) Harrison for his sentence.

“We hope Chris Dawson lives a long life in order to serve that sentence.”