Guilty: Handcuffed Chris Dawson taken to cells

NSW Supreme Court judge Ian Harrison SC finds the former teacher killed his wife Lyn, disposed of her body and then lied for decades to conceal the crime.

Chris Dawson murdered his wife Lynette, disposed of her body and then lied for decades to conceal the crime, a judge has declared in a stunning vindication of her family’s decades-long fight for justice.

Dawson was on Tuesday convicted of Lyn’s murder by NSW Supreme Court judge Ian Harrison SC, who found the former teacher killed his wife because he feared losing a teenage girl he was “utterly obsessed” with.

“Lynette Dawson is dead. She died on or about 8 January 1982 and she did not voluntarily ­abandon her home,” Justice Harrison said.

Chris and Lyn Dawson on their wedding day in 1970.

The judge was fortified in his decision by Dawson’s lies, which he said were evidence of a consciousness of guilt. “Christopher Michael Dawson, on the charge that, on or about 8 January, 1982, at Bayview or elsewhere in the state of NSW, you did murder Lynette Dawson. I find you guilty,” he said.

Dawson had a “possessive ­infatuation” with his former babysitter JC, he said.

“That affected him very significantly,” Justice Harrison said, especially around the start of January 1982, when JC left to go to South West Rocks with friends.

She had by then commun­icated her desire to end her ­relationship with Dawson. It was clear Dawson did not want that to occur.

JC was “suddenly out of his physical reach and out of his control”, the judge said. “I am satisfied that distressed, frustrated and ultimately overwhelmed and tortured by her absence up north, Mr Dawson resolved to kill his wife,” he said.

Dawson shook his head and stood after the verdict, before being immediately handcuffed and led out of the court by armed security staff to gasps from the public gallery.

Lyn’s tearful family embraced after Justice Harrison left the room. Her brother Greg Simms hugged journalist Hedley Thomas, whose 2018 podcast The Teacher’s Pet for The Australian ignited global interest in the ­unsolved case.

Outside court, the family, called for Dawson to reveal the location of Lyn’s remains, and ­revealed that before the podcast they had doubted he would ever be charged.

Dawson’s 10-week trial was held without a jury at his request to ensure proceedings could not be tainted by publicity, and to minimise the potential effect of Covid delays. The prosecution presented a wholly circumstantial but powerful case, arguing Lyn would not have left her two young daughters, and were able to overcome the hurdle of her remains never being found. Lyn doted on the two little girls, aged four and two when she was murdered by their father.

Dawson’s lawyer Greg Walsh said his client would appeal against his conviction and apply for bail.

“He’s not well and he’s been suffering from cognitive problems,” Mr Walsh said. “He’s ­obviously shocked, he’s upset, he wanted me to ring his wife Sue.”

Dawson’s twin brother Paul and older brother Peter were ­involved in scuffles with the media outside the Sydney court before and after the verdict.

Peter was sitting next to Chris as Justice Harrison read out a summary of his judgment, placing an arm over his brother’s shoulder when it became clear the judge was about to declare him guilty of Lyn’s murder.

The judge said he was satisfied Dawson lied when he claimed Lyn had phoned him after her disappearance, and dismissed all ­alleged sightings of her.

Lyn was hopeful until the day of her disappearance that her marriage could be saved, the judge found. She “was not burdened by physical or mental health conditions” that would have compelled her to abandon her home and family. She packed no bags and no clothes, and even her contact lenses case was found when her belongings were ­returned to her family.

A former physical education teacher and rugby league player with the Newtown Jets, Dawson now faces spending the rest of his life in prison.

It took Justice Harrison seven weeks to deliver his verdict on Tuesday, with judges required to provide detailed written reasons when there is no jury.

NSW has a maximum sentence of life imprisonment for murder, but no minimum.

For 40 years, Dawson has claimed Lyn abandoned her home at Bayview on Sydney’s northern beaches, leaving behind all her possessions and her two girls. Just days later, he moved JC – his former student – into the home he had built with Lyn in Gilwinga Drive.

JC says she went straight into Lyn and Chris’s bed, and that she was told to take her pick of the missing mother’s clothes.

Justice Harrison said he accepted Dawson and JC immediately resumed their sexual relationship on her arrival at the home. She married Dawson in 1984, her wedding ring fashioned out of Lyn’s diamond rings, and they had a daughter. After they separated in 1990, JC went to police with her suspicions that Dawson had killed Lyn.

Lyn (centre) in 1966 in her nursing uniform at The Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children, Camperdown. Picture: Justin Lloyd

JC told the trial that Dawson had “groomed” her in class as her physical education teacher, before installing her as his “sex slave” and a substitute mother for his two daughters.

Prosecutors for many years insisted there was not enough evidence to charge Dawson, even after two highly experienced coroners recommended in 2001 and 2003 that he be put on trial for Lyn’s murder.

Then in April 2018, NSW police submitted a new brief of evidence to the state’s Director of Public Prosecutions, following renewed investigations by the unsolved homicide team.

The Teacher’s Pet launched the following month, bringing a global spotlight to the case and drawing out new witnesses and evidence. In December 2018, the DPP gave police the green light to charge Dawson, and he was arrested on Queensland’s Gold Coast and extradited to NSW.

No-one in Lyn’s tight-knit family has heard from her since the night of Friday, January 8, 1982, when she spoke on the phone to her mother Helena Simms. Ms Simms noted in her diary that Lyn sounded “half sozzled” in the call, saying all was well after going to marriage counselling with her husband earlier that day.

Dawson claimed that the following morning, he dropped Lyn at a Mona Vale bus stop to go shopping. He said she phoned him later in the day when he was working at Northbridge Baths to say she was on the central coast with friends and needed some time away.

Dawson is due to face trial next year for allegedly having sex with a teenage student.

Detectives from Strike Force Southwood charged him with carnal knowledge in 2019, on the same day he pleaded not guilty to murdering Lyn. The strike force was set up after allegations of sexual assaults and student-teacher relationships at northern beaches schools were raised in The Teacher’s Pet podcast.

Police allege he had sex with a female student, then 16, in the 1980s when he was a teacher at Cromer High School on Sydney’s northern beaches. NSW laws prohibit identification of the child alleged victim.