Chris Dawson case: ‘Why would I leave if he was loving?’

Marriage break-up laid bare by murder accused’s ex-wife.

Chris Dawson on Monday. Picture: AAP

In virtually every workspace across Australia on Monday morning, the water cooler chat would have touched on Saturday night’s election result.

But not here in Supreme Court 9D at the opening of week three of Chris Dawson’s murder trial.

No red (save segments of Judge Harrison’s robe), blue or teal (unless surgical Covid masks can be considered teal). Just this room of blonde wood sailing deeper into the trial, untouched by world events that swirl about outside, its purpose unflinching, its destination inevitable.

On Monday, Dawson’s former babysitter and schoolgirl lover JC was back in the witness stand. She strode with purpose to her seat, just as she did on several occasions last week. And like last week, the narrative returned to the disintegration of her marriage to Dawson around 1990, to acrimonious moments over the custody of their daughter, to the meaning and interpretation of cards and letters exchanged between the two during this difficult period.

In these moments, the nature of a trial – as a forensic pursuit of truth – showed its teeth. Here was the tricky push-me-pull-you of human relationships, naked and on full display.

Defence barrister Pauline David went through a series of letters sent by Dawson to JC just as their marriage was fracturing in February and March 1990.

“There’s a lot of desperate letters here,” JC muttered to the court. And soon after: “All these letters suggest to me he was a desperate man who had lost something he’d fought so hard for … pulling out all the stops to entice me back with his lies again.”

David quoted a letter from Dawson where he wrote “I love you and always will”, and “if you ever want my support or help you know where I am, there’s a house full of love for you up here”.

JC didn’t recall if she’d ever called Dawson “the most wonderful husband in the world”. Nor “the most beautiful expectant ­father in the world”.

“No,” JC said. “This is absolute garbage. This has been written like an essay. It’s trying to convince me he’s the only one for me and I should come back.”

David: “Isn’t it also Mr Dawson expressing his love to you?”

JC: “He might have written these things but his behaviour was quite different.”

David: “I suggest to you he was always affectionate.”

JC: “Why would I leave if he was so loving and delightful?”

The mood shifted when witness Barbara Cruise (nee Goodway) was called. In the early 1980s, Cruise was manager of the Warriewood Children’s Centre, a daycare establishment on Sydney’s northern beaches. She employed Lyn Dawson as a nurse at the daycare centre, first on a casual basis from March 1980 and then permanent part-time from June 1981.

As has been the case in much of this trial, remarkable documents continued to surface. One was Lyn Dawson’s application for employment at the daycare centre, then under the auspices of the Warringah Shire Council.

In neat handwriting she lists under question 11, Hobbies and Sports: “The setting up of a new home and arrival of two children plus a husband studying by correspondence to complete a university degree have temporarily halted most of my hobbies + sports but I did enjoy: tennis, swimming, gardening, reading (espec. books related to child development etc.) handcrafts, knitting, crochet, current affairs programs on television + magazines.”

Cruise told the court that her office at the Warriewood centre became the proxy staff room where employees gathered for cups of tea and a chat. She recalled some discussions she had with Lyn towards the end of 1981. “There were some marital problems in the home,” she said. “I think she felt her husband had lost interest in her.”

When Lyn didn’t turn up for work on Monday, January 11, 1982, Cruise spoke with Chris Dawson – who has pleaded not guilty to murder – on the telephone.

“I got a phone call from Chris to say Lyn had gone away, she needed time out, and he didn’t know when she’d be back,” she told the court. “I imagine he rang me at work on that Monday.”

She agreed with David that the last time she saw Lyn was on Friday January 8, at the Warriewood Centre, walking hand-in-hand with her husband Chris Dawson. The pair had been to see a counsellor and staff agreed they looked “bright and bubbly” together.

From Cruise’s steel trap memory came a picture of Lyn as a ­devoted mother, a woman who idolised her husband, an excellent employee, and a person who put others before herself.

Then she disappeared.

Crown prosecutor Craig Everson SC indicated to the court that from this point in the trial there was an expectation that it would be moving at a “cracking pace”.

Monday’s array of witnesses was like setting up a row of long- range telescopes on tripods and, peering into each, getting a sharp picture of a moment in time.

There are many more of those telescopes to come – irrespective of the government of the day.