Chris Dawson ‘had wife by the throat’

Lynette Dawson confided to a co-worker just before she vanished that her husband had grabbed her by the throat on the way to a counselling session, a court has heard.

Witness Barbara Cruise leaves the Supreme Court in Sydney with her husband on Monday. Picture: NCA Newswire / Gaye Gerard

Lynette Dawson confided to a co-worker just before she vanished that her husband had grabbed her by the throat on the way to a counselling session, a court has heard.

Annette Leary said she saw Lyn had bruises on her throat at the Warriewood childcare centre on Sydney’s northern beaches where they both worked.

“I just said, ‘what happened to your throat?’,” Ms Leary told the NSW Supreme Court in Sydney on Monday.

Lyn told her that when she got in the lift with husband Chris to go to marriage counselling, he had grabbed her by the throat and shook her, Ms Leary said.

Mr Dawson allegedly told his wife: “I’m only doing this once and if it doesn’t work I’m getting rid of you.”

Ms Leary said Lyn told her about the incident on a Friday, and “didn’t think he [Mr Dawson] was serious”.

She never saw Lyn again, with the mother of two little girls failing to turn up to work the following Monday.

The prosecution alleges that on or about that Friday, January 8, 1982, Mr Dawson murdered Lyn, 33, and disposed of her body.

Ms Leary gave evidence via ­videolink from her home with a police officer present.

She said she had stood at the doorway while Lyn changed nappies at the childcare centre when she noticed the bruises.

Barbara Cruise was manager of the Warriewood childcare centre, where Lyn worked part-time as a nurse until her disappearance.

The centre’s ­licence requires a nurse to be on duty for the babies in occasional care.

Lyn first came to work in the centre in 1980, the year it was set up, as a casual and moved to a permanent part-time position the same year.

Her employment records showed she was paid about $47 a day, and worked Mondays, Thursday and Fridays.

In one document tendered at the trial, Lyn had noted that having two small children of her own made her even more acutely aware of their feelings and needs especially when separated from their parents.

Having two young children and a husband who was studying had temporarily halted most of her hobbies, Lyn said in the document.

Ms Cruise said Lyn was a “very good employee”, “very professional” and a “very caring person with the children”.

Lyn’s own two daughters were “her world”, and she would speak about them often, Ms Cruise said. “What they were doing. Little achievements. Where they might have been.”

Ms Cruise told the court of ­receiving a phone call from Mr Dawson on Monday, January 11, 1982, saying Lyn had gone away and needed some time out and that he didn’t know when she would be back.

Asked if she had any contact with Lyn since, Ms Cruise said: “None whatsoever.”

Lyn was owed a pay packet when she went missing, and had spoken about having marital problems at home.

“I think she felt that her husband had lost interest in her,” Ms Cruise said.

Lyn had also spoken about her husband wanting to move the family’s babysitter into the house.

“I remember saying to her I didn’t think it was a very good idea,” Ms Cruise said.

Initially Lyn’s concern was for the babysitter, a “young lady” who apparently had a difficult home life, which was the reason Mr Dawson gave for moving her in.

“I thought she was fairly naive about it,” Ms Cruise said.

The court had earlier on Monday been told that Lyn had once found the teenage babysitter, “JC”, sitting on her husband’s lap.

JC said during cross-examination that the incident occurred during a game of “stacks on the mill”.

She explained that it was a game like musical chairs, but involved sitting on the nearest person when the music stopped.

“We were playing with the two children,” JC said.

Defence counsel Pauline David asked if it was the case that Lyn ­expressed she was upset.

“Yes,” JC said.

JC agreed it was the only time any issues had been raised about her relationship with Mr Dawson by Lyn – other than when Lyn later accused her of “taking liberties with my husband”.

Crown prosecutor Craig Everson SC asked JC about the rings on the fingers of her left hand in photographs from her wedding to Mr Dawson in January 1984, two years after Lyn vanished.

The wedding photos had been tendered to the court during cross-examination of JC by defence counsel Ms David.

JC said her wedding ring in the photo was made from scratch to match one Mr Dawson had left over from his first marriage, to Lyn.

However, the diamond ring on her finger was made using the diamonds from Lyn’s engagement ring and eternity ring that she left behind when she vanished, JC said.