Chris Dawson ‘lay awake crying his heart out’

Former teacher Chris Dawson told police he lay awake crying his heart out hoping for some contact with his missing wife, Lyn.

Chris Dawson on Monday. Picture: AAP

Former teacher Chris Dawson told police he lay awake crying his heart out hoping for some contact with his missing wife, Lyn.

Sitting down with two detectives and his lawyer nine years after Lyn vanished, Mr Dawson guessed she must have had a ­“nervous breakdown”.

He accepted the suggestion that it was strange the devoted mother of two little girls had never contacted anyone other than him since vanishing.

“Extremely strange,” Mr Dawson said. “Unless she has contacted other people and they’re not forthcoming. I find it extremely hard to accept as well.”

Seated beside Mr Dawson during the January 1991 police ­interview was his then-solicitor Pauline David. Ms David is now Mr Dawson’s barrister at his trial for the alleged murder of Lyn in January 1982.

The video was played at the Supreme Court trial in Sydney on Monday. Detective Sergeant Paul Mayger and Detective Senior Constable Stuart Wilkins questioned Mr Dawson at an L-shaped table in a police interview room in Queensland.

Mr Dawson was at that stage living and working as a schoolteacher on the Gold Coast.

It was put to Mr Dawson that his former babysitter, JC, who became his wife, said he had discussed getting a hitman to kill Lyn.

“Complete and utter fabrication,” Mr Dawson replied.

“The whole purpose of (JC) raising the allegations is to slur my character with an upcoming custody battle, which has turned extremely nasty and bitter,” he said.

JC would stop at nothing to win that battle, he said.

Mr Dawson was asked about going to a marriage guidance counsellor with Lyn on Friday, January 8, 1982. He is alleged to have murdered Lyn later that night or thereabouts.

Detective: “Do you recall, when you and Lyn were in the lift together that you grabbed her around the neck and, ah, said, ‘If this doesn’t work I’ll get rid of you’?”

Dawson: “No. Not at all … I strongly dispute that.”

He was asked if Lyn drank at all, and replied “only socially”, and “very, very rarely” at home.

Had he fixed her a drink that night, after they had been to the counsellor?

Yes, and she was drinking wine, from memory, he replied.

“We were going to have a honeymoon party, a celebration after coming from marriage guidance,” Mr Dawson said. They had walked out of counselling and held hands for the first time in six months, “so it was supposed to be a sexy celebration”, he said.

Lyn’s mother, Helena Simms, had noted in her diary that she had called Lyn that night and she “sounded half-sozzled”.

Asked what possessions of Lyn were missing, he said her wedding rings and the jewellery and clothes she was wearing.

“She did leave her diamonds and stuff at home,” he said.

The trial also for the first time heard directly from Mr Dawson’s family. Older brother Peter Dawson said between 1977 and 1998, he was a barrister specialising in crime, with some additional ­family law.

Asked by prosecutor Craig Everson SC what Chris Dawson had said about Lyn’s disappearance, he said: “The general conversation was that Lyn had left.”

He denied telling his brother he could lose 60 to 70 per cent of what he owned, and custody of his daughters, if he left Lyn.