Friend to Lyn Dawson: Now you can rest

Lyn Dawson’s long-time friend Julie Andrew says she is elated and ‘walking on air’ after Chris Dawson was found guilty of his wife’s murder.

Lyn Dawson’s friend Julie Andrew. Picture: John Feder

Lyn Dawson’s long-time friend and former neighbour Julie Andrew says she is elated and “walking on air” after Chris Dawson was found guilty of his wife’s murder.

Julie and Lyn were both young mothers in the early 1980s and often shared their intimate thoughts and details of their lives over cups of coffee when the Dawsons lived at 2 Gilwinga Drive, Bayview Heights.

They would catch up in each other’s respective homes once or twice a week. Their yards backed on to each other.

In December 1981, just a month before Lyn’s murder, Julie witnessed, from her rear fence, Chris Dawson threatening and physically shaking Lyn near a child’s trampoline. She said she heard Lyn wailing.

The moment became known in Dawson’s murder trial as “the trampoline incident”.

Ms Andrew was the first witness in Dawson’s trial and gave evidence in early May this year. She told the court she had also seen the teenage babysitter JC many times wandering topless around the Dawson backyard pool near the end of 1981. (Lyn Dawson was murdered on or around January 8, 1982.)

Under brutal cross-examination from Dawson’s defence barrister, Pauline David, Ms Andrew denied she thought that Lyn had voluntarily left her home as a result of her deteriorating marriage to husband Chris.

“She would never have left her children,” Ms Andrew told the court. “She would never have left the home.”

Ms Andrew, now retired and living in Sydney’s inner-west, said the guilty verdict had left her feeling “overwhelmed, overwhelmed and ecstatic”.

“I watched the verdict all the way through on my computer and it was a rollercoaster of emotion,” she said. “(Justice) Ian Harrison was just so solid in fleshing out his findings.

“I didn’t go into the court. Whichever way the verdict went, it was a moment for the family, for (The Teacher’s Pet creator) Hedley Thomas. I might have been a distraction.

“After I heard the verdict I had a good cry, then I felt a real sense of calm.”

Ms Andrew got a mention in Justice Harrison’s lengthy verdict. At the trial, Ms Andrew said straight out that she believed Chris Dawson had murdered Lyn.

On Tuesday, Justice Harrison noted: “She (Ms Andrew) agreed that she was an advocate for Lynette Dawson. She did not agree that it was important to be careful about what she said about Mr Dawson.”

He further noted that Ms Andrew “had an agenda to fulfil and had already made up her mind about the outcome of a trial in which she was a witness” but concluded that her evidence was “entirely believable”.

Ms Andrew lamented that she did not come forward with concerns about Lyn and what she knew was going on at 2 Gilwinga Drive.

“I didn’t raise my voice at the time of her disappearance,” she said. “I did what everyone did, I waited for someone to say, where is she? Or for the police knock on the door. And nobody ever did.

“This was 40 years ago. Things were very different for women.

“Now that doesn’t happen. There was no electronic footprint. Lyn had nothing. That’s why I always knew from being in her life at the time, being part of her world at the time, two women with little kids, she could not have walked out of that house without her babies.”

She said for years she had been filled with “shame and guilt” about not helping her friend but had subsequently found her voice.

“For him (Chris Dawson) to bleat on about being persecuted – you’re alive, you’re 74, you’ve lived a long life, and she had hers taken at 33,” Ms Andrew said. “Everything she may have been able to give to her parents, siblings, community, she was never given the chance to do that.

“Chris’ life as he knew it is over. I feel really sorry for his children. It’s a great tragedy.”

She said that once she digested the guilty verdict on Tuesday she sat down and quietly communicated with Lyn. “‘It’s over, sweetheart’, I told her,” Ms Andrew said. “You can rest now.”