Chris Dawson murder trial: Bitchiness, sledging and self-pity

After a day of stupefying legal debate, the final hour of hearings erupted into a carnival of wharfie-quality expletives, fury and self-pity.

Chris Dawson outside the Supreme Court in Sydney. Picture: NCA Newswire/ Gaye Gerard.

Good things come to those who wait. After a day of stupefying legal debate in the Supreme Court murder trial of Chris Dawson in Sydney on Wednesday, the final hour of hearings erupted into a carnival of wharfie-quality expletives, fury, bitchiness, sledging and self-pity.

In that final hour, defence barrister Pauline David decided to play a phalanx of police telephone intercepts between the Dawson twins – Chris and Paul – other family members, and even innocent tradies caught in a net of the phone taps.

The intent, presumedly, was to illustrate to judge Ian Harrison, and the court, how this family had been under siege for years courtesy of the media and select police prying into the disappearance of Chris’ first wife, Lyn Dawson, in January 1982.

The intercepts extended from 1999 through to 2018.

Most were between Chris and his identical twin brother Paul, and those recordings unspooled to the point where it was ­impossible to tell which brother was speaking, given the ­almost identical timbre of their voices.

It was an eddying audio of Dawsons, swirling through and about courtroom 9D.

In one call, Paul informs Chris about a newspaper article in 2013 that reported on the sketch artist who had been commissioned to draw the two young daughters of Chris and Lyn in late 1981 and into the early days on January 1982, just days before Lyn vanished.

The article said the artist, on completion of the drawings, had phoned the Dawson home at Bayview to say the job was done but was told Lyn was not there and the drawings were no longer wanted.

The story implied Lyn had been murdered because who would commission these pictures and just disappear?

“That’s bullshit. That is bullshit. That is totally bullshit,” the court heard Chris complain on the phone. “I can’t remember the sketches.”

In another intercept, the then officer investigating Lyn’s dis­appearance, Detective Damian Loone, is described by the brothers as “the big fat bloke” they have nicknamed “Loony”.

Scroll forward to 2018, with Hedley Thomas’s The Teacher’s Pet making waves around the world, and the brothers sharpen their pencils even more.

“Thomas is just out to basically get me,” Chris says.

After Thomas makes a TV appearance, it becomes a topic of heated discussion.

“How can a f..king journalist go on national TV and say you’re a murderer and should be charged and the DPP got it wrong?” says Chris.

“How can he say they’re wrong when they’ve got all the facts?”

He adds: “Hedley, you’re a f..king wanker; if police want to pass it on, he’s a wanker.”

This clearly indicates the Dawsons are aware their phones have been tapped.

One of Chris Dawson’s greatest intercept vents is to some hapless tradie known only as Justin, who was tasked with affixing rollers to the bottom of a door for the former rugby league star and schoolteacher.

“The hard thing is seeing the pain and hurt it’s causing the family,” Chris says. “They’ve got our phones tapped.”

“You keep your head up and good luck,” says a kindly Justin.

Court adjourned, with the promise of more calls to come.