Ghosts emerge … and witnesses swear it was Lyn Dawson

It was a day that began and ended with ghosts, with evidence emerging of sightings of Lyn Dawson after she had supposedly vanished in January 1982.

Peter Breese was a neighbour of Chris and Lyn Dawson’s at Bayview Heights on Sydney’s northern beaches. Picture: AAP

It was a day that began and ended with ghosts.

As the fifth week of the murder trial of former teacher and rugby league footballer Christopher Dawson drew to a close in the NSW Supreme Court, evidence emerged of sightings of Lyn Dawson after she had supposedly vanished in January 1982.

The first happened in the corridors of a Sydney hospital in the winter of 1984, more than two years after the qualified nurse and mother of two disappeared. That evidence came courtesy of Friday’s first witness, Peter Breese.

Mr Breese, in his 70s, presented as a man of the utmost meticulousness, of neat angles (the knife-like sharpness of his suit jacket) and lines (the tight criss-cross patterns of his perfectly ironed shirt) and of superior grooming (a scrupulously trimmed beard that framed his face).

In the early 1980s Mr Breese’s backyard adjoined that of Chris and Lyn Dawson’s at Bayview Heights on Sydney’s northern beaches.

At one point Mr Breese, a chartered accountant, was invited over by Lyn to inspect a faulty chimney in the Dawson home. The chimney was suffering backdraught, and Mr Breese diagnosed that it had been incorrectly built.

Then in June 1984, Mr Breese underwent a rhinoplasty operation in the since defunct Rock Castle Private Hospital in Curl Curl and it was there he saw his old neighbour.

“It was late afternoon, early evening … she came to the door and that’s when I saw her,” Mr Breese said. “I hadn’t eaten. Someone came to the door. It could have been dinner.”

He believed this person was Lyn. Prosecutor Craig Everson SC asked Mr Breese whether the person he saw looked like Lyn as opposed to being Lyn.

Mr Breese: I believe it was Lyn Dawson but, you know … there are a couple of true things in life … simple math and first past the post.”

To which judge Ian Harrison offered an opinion: “There is no such thing as simple math.”

The court also heard that Mr Breese’s wife, Jill Breese, visited him in hospital and also saw a person she believed to be Lyn.

Then a gravel-voiced man named Ray Butlin entered the witness stand.

Mr Boltin had been a player and committee member for the Gosford Rugby League Club on the NSW central coast in the 1970s and was team manager when Chris Dawson and brother Paul coached the Gosford first grade team for the 1979 season. Mr Butlin and his wife Sue befriended Chris and Lyn. The closeness between the two men was underlined when Mr Butlin told the court he was aware of the babysitter JC in the early 1980s, when Chris informed him of their relationship. From what he was told, he believed it was “a sexual relationship”.

It was Sue, however, who also saw Lyn after she had disappeared in 1982.

Mr Butlin told the court that Sue had been working at a fruit barn off the Pacific Highway in the area when she spotted Lyn.

Mr Butlin said: “She (Sue) saw a woman she believed was Lyn Dawson, she called her (Lyn’s) name … the woman proceeded towards (a) car and got in.”

In a week of evidence that careened from Gumnut Fairy performers at Gold Coast theme parks to allegations of domestic violence, a couple of ghosts barely raised an eyebrow.