Teacher’s Pet podcast the ‘game-changer’ in Chris Dawson case, says Hedley Thomas

Five years ago, journalist Hedley Thomas decided to revisit the story of Lynette Dawson’s probable murder – a mystery that first captured his attention in the early 2000s.

Journalist Hedley Thomas outside the Supreme Court in Sydney on Tuesday. Picture: Justin Lloyd

Five years ago, Gold Walkley Award-winning journalist Hedley Thomas decided to revisit the story of Lynette Dawson’s probable murder – a mystery that first captured his attention around the turn of the century.

It was a case that had been the subject of two coronial inquests in the early 2000s, both of which found the mother of two had been murdered.

But her killer had never been charged.

Thomas had always retained a strong interest in the Dawson case, and in 2017 he felt compelled to refocus the media spotlight on the matter, via a podcast.

At the time, the concept of journalism podcasts was still a relatively untested phenomenon, but Thomas believed it would be a powerful platform from which to revisit, and hopefully solve, the murder of Lyn, most likely at the hands of her husband, Chris Dawson.

The police investigation into the case was gathering dust on a shelf in Sydney, and Thomas’s old notes on the story were doing the same in the roof of his carport at his Brisbane home.

Having dispatched his teenage son, Alexander, into the attic space to retrieve his reporting notepads from 15 years earlier, Thomas got to work on what was his first-ever podcast.

Sixty million downloads later, Thomas reflected on the global reach of that investigative podcast, The Teacher’s Pet, which arguably established an industry blueprint on how to the deliver powerful journalism via the medium.

“One of the most important things I’ve learned as a result of the journalism that’s gone into The Teacher’s Pet – and the subsequent podcasts I’ve done, The Night Driver and Shandee’s Story – is that even after exhaustive investigations by police, even where coroners have run hearings … there is always so much more material, so many more witnesses you can talk to, more evidence that can be gleaned,” Thomas explained.

“This is one of the great advantages of podcast journalism in its long form, that we can unpack these cases in such detail.

“And in doing that, reach many millions of people and encourage … some of them to come forward with further evidence that could be a game-changer.”

Thomas said one of the driving forces behind his work is a desire to achieve results, not to just to retell a story.

“My overriding aim with these podcasts is to solve crimes. That’s why I’m going after cases that are unsolved,” Thomas said in an interview earlier this month with The Australian’s Claire Harvey.

“It would be much easier for me to develop a podcast series looking back at a solved case, and I’m sure we could make it interesting and it would be compelling. But what’s the point?

“This case (Dawson) has been going on for more than 4½ years now for us, but obviously it’s been 40 years for Lyn’s family.

“But if we’re going to put that much effort in, let’s try and change what’s happened.

“Let’s try to uncover and identify a culprit.”

Thomas recalled reading news reports in 2001 about the first inquest into Lyn Dawson’s death.

“I was riveted by the story and just thought that if I got into this story it might make a very interesting investigative piece,” the journalist said.

Thomas subsequently flew from Brisbane to Sydney to take a deeper look into the evidence from the inquest, which was stored in boxes at a suburban police station in Dee Why, in the city’s north.

“I remember reading that material in this northern beaches police station and emerging, blinking,” he said.

“I was just stunned at how much detail, how much concerning, alarming information was contained within those files.

“And I knew it was going to be a really powerful story, and I hoped that it would lead to a prosecution for murder.”

More than two decades after a disbelieving Thomas walked out of Dee Why police station, he was in court on Tuesday to witness police handcuff Chris Dawson and take him into custody for the murder of his wife.