Chris Dawson said ‘the bitch has to go’, murder trial told

Chris Dawson called his wife Lynette a ‘bitch’ and said ‘if only she was gone’ during drives with his twin brother and two teenage girls, his murder trial was told.

Chris Dawson outside the Federal Court in Sydney. Picture: Nikki Short

Chris Dawson called his wife Lynette a “bitch” and said “if only she was gone” during drives with his twin brother and two teenage girls, his murder trial was told.

A woman who was the babysitter of Dawson’s twin brother Paul has given evidence that Lyn was referred to as “she” and “her” by her husband, instead of by her name. Also in the car during the drives was Chris Dawson’s own babysitter JC, who he is alleged to have been willing to kill for.

“They didn’t want her in the picture. They would speak of (Lyn) not being in the picture,” the woman said of Chris and JC.

The woman commenced babysitting for Paul Dawson when she was in around Year 9 at Forest High School on Sydney’s northern beaches.

She is not being named due to her age at the time.

Paul was a physical education teacher at the school. “I was infatuated with him. I thought he was fabulous. I thought he was everything I wanted in terms of he was a great PE teacher and I wanted to be a PE teacher,” she said via audiovisual link.

Paul was an athlete and she wanted to be an athlete. He had a wonderful family and she wanted a wonderful family.

She would see him “every weekend or second weekend” at the time. “He was very nice to me,” she said.

After school as a teenager, the woman would be in the car with Paul and Chris. The twin brothers would sit in the front, and she would sit in the back with JC, who they would pick up from school.

They would all go in the car together to a school in Lindfield on Sydney’s upper north shore.

While the twin brothers took fitness classes there, the two teenage girls would stay in the back storerooms.

During the drives Chris would denigrate his wife, saying she “was a bitch”, the woman said.

At times, Chris and JC would be talking about Lyn and “how if only she wasn’t around or if only she was gone”, she said. Once, going to Lindfield in the car, JC was “really upset”, the woman said. Chris turned around and said something like “she just has to go”, apparently meaning Lyn.

Then, around the time Lyn went missing, Paul sat his babysitter down and said “something terrible had happened”. It was early 1982, and Paul said he was getting out of Sydney and moving to Queensland. He “needed to leave as soon as possible”, she said.

Paul said he didn’t want to involve her, and it was at that time that they stopped “seeing each other”.

Chris Dawson is alleged to have murdered Lyn on or about Friday January 8 of that year.

The court has previously been told Paul Dawson, wife Marilyn and their children moved to Queensland at the end of 1984.

The woman, who gave her first statement to police in November 2018 following The Teacher’s Pet podcast, told the court Paul may have just decided to stay until then.

She gave evidence immediately after Paul finished testifying.

The court was earlier played an intercepted phone call from March 6, 1999, in which Paul told Chris that police had been asking stupid questions.

Detectives were at the time reinvestigating Lynette Dawson’s disappearance and had just interviewed Paul and Marilyn. Paul told Chris in the call that the detectives had implied something had happened to Lyn – and that Chris had the motive.

If anyone had the motive it was babysitter JC, Paul told his brother. Prosecutor Craig Everson SC asked Paul what he meant. Paul explained that five police had turned up at his home as he and Marilyn were getting ready to go out to dinner with friends.

The couple was asked to co-operate. They said they were happy to help, cancelled their plans and went with police to Surfers Paradise where they were questioned.

Halfway through the police interview, the tone change and the detectives started implying Chris was possibly involved in murdering Lyn or “doing away” with her.

“That was just so preposterous,” Paul said.

If Lyn had been murdered, JC had more to gain than Chris ever did, he said.

JC had allegedly threatened Lyn at the fourth birthday party of Chris and Lyn’s eldest daughter, he said.

This was a story shared with Paul by family friend Elva McBay.

Elva had been in the kitchen when Lyn came in “quite upset and shaky”, Paul said.

Lyn told Elva that JC had said “if she got in her way” she would get rid of her, he said.

Lyn was a “good mum” but “felt her children didn’t need her as much” as the children she cared for in her job at a daycare centre.

According to Paul, this was because Chris did a lot of the “mothering” of their two little girls.

Lyn’s family members, who have been sitting quietly in the courtroom, visibly recoiled at the evidence.