Judge: Delayed Dawson prosecution `a mystery’

A retired judge has questioned why it took 40 years to prosecute Chris Dawson, as former NSW DPP Nicholas Cowdery remains silent.

A judge says it’s beyond his understanding why it took 40 years to prosecute Chris Dawson for the murder of his wife Lyn Dawson.

A retired Queensland Supreme Court judge has questioned why it took 40 years to prosecute Chris Dawson for the murder of his wife Lynette.

Geoffrey Davies said it was “very hard to understand” the delay, as former NSW director of public prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery refused to comment when contacted by The ­Australian.

“It’s certainly beyond my understanding,” Mr Davies told The Teacher’s Trial podcast.

Dawson was found guilty by NSW Supreme Court judge Ian Harrison last month in a wholly circumstantial case and despite there being no body.

Retired judge Geoffrey Davies.

Mr Davies is a former Queensland solicitor-general and president of both state and national bar associations.

The many pieces of evidence against Dawson “together made a very substantial case”, he said after reviewing Justice Harrison’s published judgment.

“She had no suicidal thoughts,” Mr Davies said. “She seemed to be a happy and caring mother of her children. She had a lot of friends.

“The circumstances in which she left seemed very odd, that she didn’t take any clothes or any money or seemed to have nowhere in particular to go.

“There are a huge number of facts, none of which on their own would have been sufficient to reach that conclusion, but which together the judge thought was sufficient.”

The handling of the case has similarities to the NSW DPP’s consistent refusal to prosecute two men over the 2011 death of Lynette Daley on a beach after a violent rape.

It was only after media exposure and a subsequent public outcry that the men were charged.

A Supreme Court jury in 2017 took just 32 minutes to convict them.

Two coroners recommended in 2001 and 2003 that Dawson be charged with murdering Lyn, who left behind two daughters aged four and two when she vanished in January 1982.

Mr Cowdery, now 76 and retired, was the NSW DPP from 1994 to 2011 and refused to prosecute on both occasions, citing insufficient evidence.

Lyn’s family was angered by an interview Mr Cowdery gave in 2018 with the ABC’s Australian Story program, and his suggestion that she could still be alive.

Former NSW DPP Nicholas Cowdery refused to prosecute Chris Dawson despite the recommendations of two coroners. Picture: James Croucher

The office Mr Cowdery formerly led was considering ­whether to charge Dawson at the time.

“Without a body, without knowing first of all if she is dead, without knowing secondly if she is dead how she died, it’s very hard to mount a case of a reasonable prospect of conviction just on motive and the undefined existence of means and opportunity,” Mr Cowdery told the program.

“That makes it very weak. In mounting the discussion, very little consideration has been given to Chris Dawson and his position.

“He is either somebody responsible for his wife’s death, or somebody who was deserted by his wife.

“We don’t know which it is. But I think we should have that in the back of our mind.”

Asked on the program what he thought had happened to Lyn, Mr Cowdery said: “Lyn Dawson disappeared. And that really is as far as I can take it in my own mind.”

Mr Cowdery declined to discuss Dawson’s conviction.

“I’m not making any public comments or statements about it,” he said. “Nothing at all. You’ve drawn a blank on that one.”

Dawson, 74, is due to face a sentencing hearing in November and is expected to appeal against his conviction.