Chris Dawson trial: ‘Harold Holt defence’ for missing Lyn

Former PM Harold Holt’s disappearance at sea more than 50 years ago has been raised by Chris Dawson’s defence team as it tried to explain why his wife Lynette has never been found.

Chris Dawson leaves the Federal Court in Sydney on Wednesday. Picture: John Feder

Former prime minister Harold Holt’s disappearance at sea more than 50 years ago has been raised by Chris Dawson’s defence team as it tried to explain why his wife Lynette has never been found.

It came as NSW Supreme Court judge Ian Harrison SC has asked Mr Dawson’s legal team why no one has come forward about Lynette being alive following the “avalanche of publicity” associated with the case.

With the murder trial of Mr Dawson almost complete, defence barrister Pauline David raised in her closing submissions the disappearance at sea of Holt, who was presumed dead but his body was never found.

Ms David said Mr Dawson did not know what happened to Lyn, and that she may have met with “misadventure” after deciding to leave her family, or may have taken her own life. Justice Harrison said it was unusual for someone to end their own life and a body not be discovered.

“Depends on how you do it, Your Honour,” Ms David said.

“Harold Holt went missing. No one knows where he went.”

Holt, Australia’s 17th prime minister, disappeared while swimming in the sea near Portsea in Victoria on December 17, 1967. Justice Harrison said the defence had been very critical of the 2018 hit podcast The Teacher’s Pet, examining Lyn’s unsolved 1982 disappearance from Sydney’s nor­thern beaches.

But “counter-intuitively” for the defence, if Lyn was trying to remain under the radar there had not been a stream of people coming forward with information about her survival despite the associated publicity, the judge said.

“It depends on where she was, what life she had created, whether she had passed away at a much earlier point,” Ms David said.

Mr Dawson has pleaded not guilty to Lyn’s murder. The defence is seeking to rely on reported sightings of Lyn between 1982 and 1984. A couple, Peter and Jill Breese, said they believed they saw her working as a nurse at Sydney’s Rockcastle private hospital in 1984.

Justice Harrison said it was “a stone’s throw” away from Bayview. Why would someone “so intent on disappearing” supposedly work “in the very area where she’s most likely to be identified”, he asked. And that was putting aside issues around whether the witnesses were wearing glasses, had made a mistake, or weren’t looking long enough.

“We don’t know what capacity she was there,” Ms David replied.

It was 17km from the hospital to Lyn’s home, Ms David said.

Justice Harrison: “Seventeen kilometres is a small amount of distance, isn’t it? It’s in the heart of where things in this case appear to have been happening.”

Ms David said there was no evidence of how Mr Dawson may have killed Lyn, where he might have killed her, where her body may be, or how he disposed of her body. There was “not a skerrick of scientific or forensic evidence” to show Mr Dawson killed his wife, and it was “fanciful” to suggest he disposed of her body.

“There was nothing to suggest that he would have the first clue how to dispose of the body,” Ms David said. She added that it defied belief that Mr Dawson spent the day at Northbridge Baths on Saturday January 9, 1982, “with his wife’s dead body at home”.

Addressing an issue raised the previous day, on whether Lyn may have joined a cult, Ms David said Mr Dawson simply did not know what happened to Lyn.

“It certainly wasn’t his contention to put that out there that that’s where Lynette Dawson’s gone,” she said.