Closure, custody and cuffs for Chris Dawson

After 40 years of lies, finally the polite silence of Christopher Michael Dawson’s life came to an end.

After 40 years of lies, 10 weeks of trial, seven weeks of deliberation and four hours and 41 minutes of judge Ian Harrison reading out his reasons, finally the polite silence of Christopher Michael Dawson’s life came to an end: not with a bang, but with the jingling of handcuffs.

The old man, straight-backed, masked, heard the judge say “I find you guilty”, and turned to see two black-uniformed Corrective Services officers striding towards him through Court 13A. These friendly young men had until then been standing by the door, shepherding people in and out, glaring at the owners of buzzing mobile phones, relaxed, jovial.

And then suddenly they were standing by Dawson’s sides, taking his hands and – still in silence – cuffing him, leading him in front of the bar table, taking him over to the far side of the court, to the glass-fronted dock and through the padded door, down to the cells deep below Macquarie Street, to the back of a prison van, and then to jail.

“Mr Dawson, it will be necessary for you to be taken into custody,” Justice Harrison was saying, entirely impassively.

And he was gone.

Throughout the trial, Dawson had been afforded courtesies not usually allowed an accused murderer.

He didn’t have to sit in the dock where ordinary accused people have to sit, instead sitting behind his legal counsel on the left-hand side of the court.

He wasn’t held on remand like most others charged with murder.

He waited for this day at his lovely home in Mount Coolum, instead of in Silverwater or Long Bay, like any other accused.

He was allowed the company in court of his brother Peter, a solicitor, each day as the evidence proceeded.

It seemed to fit, for the man who had avoided any consequences for so many decades for the inexplicable disappearance of his lovely wife, the mother of his little daughters.

Chris Dawson gets special treatment. Chris Dawson is not an ordinary criminal.

Until, suddenly, that’s exactly what he was.

“I am left in no doubt,” the judge said.

“I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the only rational inference that the circumstances enable me to draw is that Lynette Dawson died on or about 8 January, 1982, as the result of a conscious and voluntary act committed by Mr Dawson, with the intention of causing her death.

“Christopher Michael Dawson, on the charge that on our about 8 January, 1982, at Bayview or elsewhere in the state of NSW, I find you guilty.”

Behind him, as the padded door closed, was his own shocked family, with twin brother Paul sitting stunned in the back row.

And, slowly standing to embrace and to cry in one another’s arms, the family of the woman he killed.

Lynette.