Chris Dawson case: A family’s agony: ‘She just dropped out of our life’

It was a day of last things. Of final communications, fragments of conversation and the fragile skeins of memory left when a loved one disappears into thin air.

Lynette Dawson’s brother Greg Simms on Tuesday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dylan Coker

It was a day of last things. Of final communications, fragments of conversation and the fragile skeins of memory left when a loved one disappears into thin air.

The Sydney trial of Christopher Michael Dawson, 73, charged with the murder of his wife Lynette in 1982, on Tuesday heard evidence from that most ­intimate of circles – her siblings.

Lyn’s older sister, Pat Jenkins, and younger brother, Greg Simms, shared with the court tales of Lyn’s early life, her gentleness, her need to stand up for what was right. A portrait of a loving family unfolded.

Ms Jenkins appeared via video-link from a police station “somewhere in NSW”, an elderly, kind-faced woman in a blouse and lavender cardigan, her greying hair covering her ears.

When her sister Lyn disappeared in the first week of January 1982, Ms Jenkins was living in “the country”, raising her own family.

She told the court that she spoke to her sister on the telephone just prior to Christmas 1981 and that Lyn, herself mother to two young daughters, had arrived home at Bayview Heights on ­Sydney’s Northern Beaches to find that husband Chris had gone – he’d taken his clothes, his pillow, and had left her a note. It said not to “paint too dark a picture” of him to his daughters.

“She was speaking very quickly, she was upset, she was breathing heavily … from the note she said she didn’t know if Chris was coming home again or not,” Ms Jenkins said.

Recalling this moment, Ms Jenkins retrieved a tissue from a box out of sight of the camera and dabbed her eyes.

“She said to me he was always so angry with her all the time … his black eyes flashing … she thought he needed to go and see a doctor,” Ms Jenkins continued.

With that, the court was taken deeper into the family’s pain during that period when Ms Jenkins was asked about the daily diaries and voluminous letters that their mother, Helena Simms, kept and sent over the years.

Three of those diaries and extracts from certain letters were produced in court.

Some diaries are written for posterity. Most mean nothing beyond the orbit of the author, these volumes filled with life’s daily ­minutiae – groceries purchased, records of phone calls and encounters, trips to the beach, urgent household repairs.

Ms Simms’ diaries were of the latter variety. Until her daughter Lyn went missing. Crown prosecutor Craig Everson SC on Tuesday read several dozen extracts from Ms Simms’ diaries and letters into the court record, beginning in October 1981.

Ms Simms wrote of the Dawsons’ babysitter, the schoolgirl JC, and how the young woman was “C’s (Chris’s) shadow”. Lyn was “very unhappy, almost in tears about Chris”.

Then on December 6, 1981, at a Christmas party in the Simms family home in Clovelly. Chris said: “I only want to look after my two little girls.” I said: “What about Lyn?” He said: “She can get in the bloody kitchen where she belongs.”

The diaries note a phone call Ms Simms made to Lyn shortly before her daughter disappeared on Friday, January 8, 1982: “Rang Lyn. Sounded half sozzled.”

Ms Simms was to meet Lyn and her granddaughters at the Northbridge pool the next day. She never heard from her again.

More letters and diary entries from days, weeks, and months after Lyn disappeared, and it was harrowing listening.

Ms Simms wrote in a letter dated November 6, 1982 – 10 months after Lyn vanished – when Mr Dawson arrived at her home in Clovelly to drop off Lyn’s ­personal belongings: “Sunday he arrived with 10 black garbage bags with her things. JC sat in car out the front and watched all the proceedings.”

A grieving mother. A perplexed family.

As Ms Jenkins told the court: “With all due respect, you don’t know what it’s like when someone you love drops out of your life.”

In the afternoon, Lyn’s younger brother, Mr Simms, took the stand. He was tall and had all the bearings of a former police officer. Which he was – he served in the NSW police for 27 years, and throughout his evidence on Tuesday he referred to Mr Dawson only as “the accused”.

He told the court he was at the Clovelly house when Lyn’s belongings were dropped off. He later went through the bags.

He told the court the bags were filled with “a pair of gardening gloves with dirt still on them. There were clothes, Lyn’s nurse’s badges. One was a circular one. A badge nurses wore when they were on duty to show their qualifications. There was a small blue container with contact lenses.”

There was jewellery. And underwear.

Defence barrister Pauline David asked Mr Simms if his sister Lyn was under a lot of pressure at the end of 1981 and if he was distressed about the state of her relationship. He agreed.

“You also said Lyn Dawson loved Chris Dawson with all her heart and soul,” Ms David said.

“That is correct.”

Love and loss, last words and things left behind.

Mr Dawson, who has pleaded not guilty to murder, sat in his customary position under the white-faced courtroom clock.

As it struck 3.32pm, the Honourable Justice Ian Harrison said: “Is this a convenient moment?”

And the day was over.