A win for journalism and victims

By rejecting the appeal of Teacher’s Pet murderer Chris Dawson, a three-judge panel of the NSW Court of Appeal has confirmed the public good that forensic examination of cold cases by investigative journalists can bring. Had Dawson’s appeal succeeded on the claim that too much time had elapsed before he was charged and brought to trial, it would have made the task of putting a public spotlight on other lapsed investigations more difficult.

The Teacher’s Pet podcast series, by The Australian’s national chief correspondent, Hedley Thomas, did not convict Dawson but it helped to uncover overlooked evidence that allowed the police and courts to do their job. Thomas is back on the case with a new podcast series investigating the disappearance of another young mother, Bronwyn Winfield, from her northern NSW home 31 years ago. As in the Dawson case, which involved the murder of Lyn Simms by her enraged husband, Winfield vanished without trace, leaving behind two small children and an estranged partner. Investigations to date confirm that police had suspicions of foul play in Winfield’s disappearance but important opportunities were missed by investigating police at the time she went missing.

A unanimous decision to dismiss Dawson’s appeal by court president Justice Julie Ward, Justice Christine Adamson and Justice Anthony Payne confirms the forensic work of trial judge Ian Harrison SC. In a wholly circumstantial case, Justice Harrison found beyond reasonable doubt that Dawson had killed his wife in a premeditated crime of passion to avoid losing his relationship with teenage babysitter JC, with whom he had an obsessive infatuation.

Justice Harrison said his guilty verdict had been fortified by the lies told by Dawson at the time of his wife’s disappearance, lies about his relationship with the young babysitter, JC, whom he later married, and lies about the state of his relationship with his wife. And lies to police that were calculated to deflect attention away from him and were explicable only by a guilty conscience. In his appeal, Dawson’s legal team argued that Justice Harrison erred in failing to find that Dawson suffered a significant forensic disadvantage because of the delay in Dawson being charged.

But Dawson was convicted on the basis of his own words at the time of the crime in transcripts of interviews with police. Those interview notes only came to light because of the tenacious reporting of Thomas in the Teacher’s Pet podcast series.