Chris Dawson ‘swung Lyn like rag doll into doorframe’

Chris Dawson angrily swung his wife Lynette by the arm like a ‘rag doll’ into a doorframe in front of a teenage babysitter, a court has been told.

Lyn Dawson in 1977.

Chris Dawson angrily swung his wife Lynette by the arm like a “rag doll” into a doorframe in front of a teenage babysitter, a court has been told.

In other incidents, Mr Dawson allegedly lashed out at Lyn with a tea-towel over a dirty glass, and tossed a pile of his clothes on to the bed when an item wasn’t ironed perfectly.

Bev McNally, who was a student at Cromer High School where Mr Dawson was a physical education teacher, gave a statement to police for the first time following the launch of podcast series The Teacher’s Pet.

Ms McNally told Mr Dawson’s murder trial on Thursday that she was at the Dawsons’ home at Bayview on Sydney’s northern beaches when she heard one of their daughters crying.

Chris and Lyn were getting ready to go out and approached the girls’ bedroom door ahead of Ms McNally.

“I saw Chris Dawson grabbing Lynette by her arm … and basically swinging her into the bedroom in an angry, forceful act,” she said.

“Lynette was almost like a rag doll because he was a lot bigger.

“She actually collected the doorframe with her shoulder and possibly her head. Then she kind of slumped forward.”

Ms McNally was the family’s babysitter before another schoolgirl, JC, whom Mr Dawson later married.

It is alleged Mr Dawson’s ­obsession with JC was his motive for murdering Lynette in January 1982 and disposing of her body in a place she has never been found. Ms McNally said once in early 1980 when she was in year 12, she went into the kitchen. Lynette was at the sink doing some washing up, and Mr Dawson reached behind her to get a glass out of a cupboard.

He looked at the glass and said something about it being dirty. “And he basically got a tea towel, and I thought he was just going to clean the glass, but he actually flicked it across Lynette’s back,” Ms McNally said, giving evidence via audiovisual link.

Lyn made a sound “like a pain, like gasping” and kept washing up. “I could see her flinch,” Ms McNally said.

“Chris stormed off … I kind of put my arm over her shoulder and I realised she was crying.

“I didn’t know as a 16, 17-year-old how to comfort her.”

On another occasion, she was in the house when Chris and Lyn were again getting ready to go out.

“He went to pick up a piece of clothing and something wasn’t perfectly ironed,” she said.

“And he basically just grabbed a whole heap of clothes and threw them on the bed and told her to do it again. She didn’t flinch at that. It was just like par for the course.”

Mr Dawson’s clothes were kept in a walk-through wardrobe and were always “pristine” in neat rows and colour-coded. “Everything was ironed. Even his shorts,” she said.

Ms McNally said she contacted police within a few years of Lynette going missing, after seeing something on television. She spoke to a police officer at the time and was told someone would contact her if more information was needed.

“They never ever did,” she said.

She contacted podcast creator Hedley Thomas in late May 2018, and had subsequently made a statement to police.

“I thought the police didn’t want to know anything,” she said.

Mr Dawson’s counsel, Pauline David, suggested she was lying, exaggerating and trying to make herself “relevant”. Ms McNally denied it.

Another witness, Rosyln McLoughlin, gave evidence she saw “grapefruit-size” bruises on Lyn’s thigh and more bruises on her arms at a tennis match in the lead-up to Christmas 1981.