The Teacher’s Pet trial: timeline of key events in the lives of Lyn and Chris Dawson
From Chris and Lyn’s first meeting at high school through to the present day | Here is a full timeline of key events in the case that has gripped the world.
THE VERDICT:
Guilty: Handcuffed Chris Dawson taken to cells
Read the live coverage of the judgement and verdict here
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TIMELINE:
1965: Lynette Simms and Chris Dawson meet at a high school function, both aged 16. Lyn is a student at Sydney Girls High, and Chris a student at Sydney Boys High. They are both prefects.
End of 1966: Lyn, Chris and Chris’s twin brother Paul finish school. Chris and Paul play rugby union for Eastern Suburbs, working their way through the grades. Paul is the more successful of the two, winning a spot in the NSW Waratahs side touring New Zealand in 1969.
March 26, 1970: Chris and Lyn marry at St Parish Church of St. Jude, Randwick. They are both aged 21. Chris’s friend Phil Day is a groomsman.
1972: Chris and Paul make the switch from rugby union to first grade rugby league.
Paul had received offers from many clubs, but the interest in Chris was limited. Eventually the twins decide to sign with the Newtown Jets because the club agrees to take both brothers. Lyn begins working as a nurse.
1975: Chris and Paul are interviewed for the popular ABC program, Chequerboard, in an episode looking at the special relationship between twins. This episode prominently features Chris and Paul, as well as Lyn and Paul’s wife Marilyn. During the interview, the brothers reveal that as young boys they developed a language only they could understand, eventually needing speech therapy to break the habit. Lyn, in her mid-twenties when the show was filmed, talks lovingly about Chris and recounts funny things that happened in their lives as a result of his being a twin.
Lyn laughs as she tells a story about Chris on the program.
1977: Lyn gives birth to her ‘miracle baby’ - first daughter, Shanelle. Lyn and Chris had been trying to conceive for six years, and they had signed adoption papers when Lyn discovered she was pregnant. After the birth, Lyn stops working as a nurse.
1978: Chris and Paul leave the Newtown Jets and start playing for Gosford on the central coast.
1979: After years of working in a number of different schools including North Sydney Boys High, Chris begins working as a PE teacher at Cromer High School. Lyn and Chris’s second daughter is born.
Early 1980s: Chris and Paul start playing league with the Belrose Eagles in Frenchs Forest, near Sydney’s northern beaches, where they are the co-captains/coaches of the team. It is at Belrose that the twins meet Brian ‘Smacka’ Gardiner who is a detective sergeant with Manly Detectives – an influential cop who would later advise Chris on procedure after Lyn’s disappearance.
1980: JC becomes Chris Dawson’s student in Year 11. JC is 16. He had noticed her in year 10 and altered the roll to ensure she would be in his class.
July 1980: JC’s home life is troubled. Chris becomes her friend and protector at school, and she turns to him for advice during this period. Chris asks JC to become the family babysitter.
Early 1981: Lyn begins part-time work at a childcare centre in Warriewood.
1981: Lyn tells her friend from work, Anna Grantham, that Chris has allegedly been violent towards her, including one occasion where her pulled her hair and shoved her face into the mud next to the pool, leaving her gasping for air.
October 1981: JC’s home life continues to be very difficult and Chris invites her to move into the Dawsons’ family home. Lyn feels concerned about JC moving in at a time when her marriage to Chris is unstable. She tells her sister-in-law Merilyn that Chris comes home from work angry all the time.
Around this time Lyn’s friend and neighbour Julie Andrew is in her yard one day and looks over to Lyn’s place. She claims to see Lyn and Chris arguing, with Chris allegedly shaking Lyn by the shoulders. Lyn is cowering and holding one of her children. Later that day Julie visits Lyn at home, and Lyn tells Julie she is upset about JC moving into the house.
Chris has a nose operation, and asks Lyn not to visit him in hospital. Lyn’s mother Helena visits her son-in-law and sees JC with him.
JC leaves the house and goes to stay with Paul and Marilyn down the road.
Late 1981: Chris Dawson puts a $500 deposit on a unit in Manly for himself JC. JC alleges that around this time Chris drove them to a pub or club.
JC also alleges that Chris phoned his lawyer brother Peter to ask for legal advice about whether he would lose more of his interest in the Bayview house in a divorce if he moved out with JC. It was Peter’s advice, according to JC, that Chris would have been financially penalised if he moved out. The plan for the Manly flat is abandoned.
Around this time there is a family gathering, and Chris says to Helena “all I want to do is look after my two little girls”. Helena asks “what about your big girl?” and Chris responds that she’s “in the kitchen where she belongs.”
About a week before Christmas, 1981: Roslyn McLoughlin, Lyn’s friend from tennis, recalls that Lyn had seemed unhappy when they last saw each other, and that Lyn had some bruising on her arm and thigh. Roslyn says Lyn pleaded with her and the other mothers in their tennis group to come back with her to Lyn’s home at Bayview, but the women were not able to because it was just before Christmas and they were very busy.
December 23, 1981: Chris and JC leave Sydney to start a new life in Queensland.
Lyn waits until 6pm for Chris to pick her up from work, but he doesn’t show. She takes a taxi home and finds a ‘goodbye’ note from Chris asking her “not to paint tooblack a picture of him to the children.” The note does not mention JC and does not say if he intends to return. Lyn’s siblings invite her and the girls to stay with them but she wants to stay at home in case Chris returns for Christmas.
December 24-25, 1981: Chris and JC make it as far as Murwillumbah, on the New South Wales border with Queensland, before the plan to move north falls apart. Along the way JC starts to feel unwell. She changes her mind about the move and wants to take a break. They return to Sydney, arriving Christmas morning. They go straight to Paul and Marilyn’s house and hide as Paul and Marilyn’s daughters open their Christmas presents. No-one tells Lyn that Chris has returned. Later that day Chris and JC go to Forest High where Paul taught, and they stay the night in the school gymnasium.
December 26, 1981: Chris returns to Bayview. JC goes to her mother’s place, but her violent stepfather is there and JC cannot take it. Chris picks her up and drives her to her sister’s place in Neutral Bay. She stays there about a week and Chris visits most days.
December 31, 1981: Chris tells Lyn that he plans to attend a New Year’s Eve yachting party on Pittwater. Lyn asks if she and the girls can go with him but he says no. JC’s recollection years later is that Chris did not attend a party that evening but instead spent the night with JC in his car.
January 1, 1982: Lyn and the girls go to Clovelly to stay with Lyn’s parents.
January 2, 1982: JC leaves Chris and travels with her sisters and a friend to South West Rocks on a camping trip to mark the end of year 12. Chris begs her to ring him reverse charge every day.
January 3, 1982: Lyn and her daughters return to Bayview from Clovelly.
January 4, 1982: Paul, Marilyn and their daughters leave Sydney and head to the central coast for a holiday.
Around this time, friends of Lyn’s from the childcare centre say they saw more bruising on Lyn. They remember Lyn telling them that she and Chris were going to attend a marriage counselling session.
Friday, January 8, 1982: Lyn and Chris attend marriage counselling together. After the session they go to the childcare centre and they are holding hands. Later that night, Helena rings and asks to speak with Lyn. Chris seems reluctant to put Lyn on the phone but eventually does. The mother and daughter chat and Helena remarks that Lyn sounds “sozzled” Lyn replies that Chris has made her “a lovely drink”, and that the counselling session went well and everything is going to work out. Lyn asks Helena to let Greg, Pat and Phil - Lyn’s siblings - know that everything is going to be okay.
Saturday, January 9, 1982: Chris’s evidence is that on this day Lyn woke early, did a load of washing, and cut lunches for her daughters. He says Lyn had been distressed the night before as she had some difficulty coping with their youngest daughter who had been disturbed in the night. Chris says that on Saturday morning Lyn was calm and apologised for her breakdown the night before, and asked Chris to drive her to the bus stop at 7am so she could return some clothes in Chatswood. Chris says he drove Lyn to the bus stop, with the two girls also in the car, and that he expected to see Lyn after 12pm at Northbridge Baths, as she had planned to meet her mother there that afternoon. Chris returns home. Chris, who is a life guard at Northbridge Baths, takes his two daughters with him to the popular swimming spot. At 2pm Helena Simms arrives and meets them. Helena remembers Chris being agitated when she arrived, asking if Lyn had contacted her.
At 3pm, Lyn still hasn’t arrived. Chris tells Helena that he has just received an STD phone call from Lyn and that she says she has gone away with some friends to the central coast and needs some time to sort things out. Chris has invited his friend Phil Day to the baths, and Phil is witness to the exchange. Chris asks Phil to drive Helena and his two daughters to Helena’s home in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
Sunday, January 10, 1982, or soon after: Chris arrives at South West Rocks where JC is on her camping holiday JC’s friend is there at the time, and she later recalls that Chris had seemed nervous and agitated. Chris and JC return to Sydney.
Chris asks JC to move in with him and she does. Around this time Chris claims that Lyn called him again, saying she needed more time to think things through. He also says Lyn has told him to contact the childcare centre and let them know she’d be off for a week due to illness.
January 12, 1982: Chris alleges that Lyn’s bankcard is used at this time. There is no documentation to substantiate this claim. It is alleged that Paul and Marilyn return from their holidays around this time.
January 15, 1982: Chris claims that Lyn called him a third time, again saying she needs more time to think.
January 26, 1982: A second bank transaction by Lyn is alleged to have occurred on this date. There is no documentation to back this up.
February 18, 1982: Chris reports his wife missing to Mona Vale police after Helena
pleaded with him to do so. Six weeks have passed since Lyn disappeared. Chris tells police Lyn had left of her own accord and there was no concern for her welfare. He says he last saw her on the morning of January 9 when he dropped her to Mona Vale, and that he heard from her several times by phone after that, but that he had not had any contact with her after January 15. Police made ‘patrols’ of the area at this time without success, and on February 20 Chris told police that he was making some inquires in the central coast area where he had heard his wife may be staying.
March 27, 1982: Chris places an ad in The Daily Telegraph asking Lyn to call.
April-May, 1982: Some sightings of Lyn are alleged, but there is no evidence to support these.
August 16, 1982: Chris submits an ‘antecedent report’ to police, portraying himself as a forlorn, abandoned husband on a mission to find his wife. He also says that the marital difficulties he and Lyn were experiencing were due to her excessive bankcard spending.
August 21, 1982: Helena submits a lengthy statement to police detailing her memories of the events surrounding Lyn’s disappearance.
October, 1982: Chris takes Lyn’s belongings in garbage bags to her mother’s house. Among her things is a sales inspection report for the Bayview house, indicating that Lyn had not agreed to the sale of the property. The report is dated December 21, 1981, with a $280,000 asking price.
Mid-1983: Chris turns to his solicitor friend and former Easts Rugby Club teammate, Jeff Linden, for legal advice to obtain a divorce, which is confirmed mid-1983.
September 1983: Chris makes a formal affidavit for application of property settlement, saying that Lyn had abandoned her family and home.
Late 1983: Chris family friends Lesley and John Cox visit Chris at Bayview. They meet JC and Lesley recognises Lyn’s rings on JC’s fingers.
January 1984: Chris marries JC at Bayview. Chris has Lyn’s rings reset for JC.
1984: Chris has all of Lyn’s assets including her share in the Bayview property transferred to his name. Chris sells the house at Bayview.
1985: Chris and JC move with his two girls to Queensland’s Gold Coast, where they build a home near to Paul and Marilyn, who have also moved to Queensland with their daughters. Chris and JC have a daughter together. Chris takes up a teaching post at Keebra Park High. He later moves to Coombabah High where his brother also teaches.
1985: Lyn’s friend Sue Strath is so disturbed by the inaction of police in Lyn’s case that she writes to the NSW Ombudsman’s office and asks the independent government watchdog to intervene. Senior police who are forwarded the complaint insist there was a satisfactory investigation when Lyn disappeared and there was nothing to indicate foul play or suspicious circumstances.
1985-1990: In Queensland, JC lives behind high gates in a house she calls ‘the compound’. Following the birth of their daughter, the couple’s relationship starts to deteriorate. Chris is very controlling and allows JC very little freedom. She doesn’t realise her situation is unusual until she takes her young daughter to playgroup and sees how other mothers and wives live.
Late 1987 or early 1988: The new owner of the Dawsons’ former home at Gilwinga Drive visits solicitor Jeff Linden regarding an unconnected matter, and the conversation turns to the Dawsons. It is revealed that Chris Dawson had recently visited the property and asked new owner Neville Johnston, who was doing renovations on the property, ‘where are you digging?’ Neither Neville nor Jeff report the exchange to police. Jeff Linden, now a Magistrate, said the conversation was chilling. He said Mr Johnston had also said to Jeff: ‘Whatever you do, don’t tell my wife. We’ve just moved in and she won’t want to live there.’
1990: JC leaves Chris and returns to Sydney with her daughter. She contacts Lyn’s family and police and provides information about Chris and Lyn. JC begins divorce proceedings and reports her suspicions about Chris to police.
That year, police conduct a survey of the Bayview property using ground-penetrating radar. No digging is done. They focus only on the swimming pool area at the front of the house. They do not find anything.
January 1991: Sydney police fly to Queensland and question Chris. He denies anyfoul play with regard to Lyn’s disappearance. JC and Chris’s divorce is finalised.
1998: Senior police officer Paul Hulme assigns Lyn Dawson’s file to Detective Sergeant Damian Loone for reinvestigation. Paul had been urged to look into the case by his wife’s friend Sue Strath, Lyn’s friend who had contacted the Ombudsman about the case in 1985. Detective Loone takes over the case but finds that Lyn’s case file is almost empty; all previous documents appear to have been lost.
1998-99: Detective Loone conducts extensive interviews with Lyn’s family and friends, JC, and JC’s family and friends.
Early 1999: Paul and Chris’s phones are tapped. The brothers do not talk about Lyn or the police investigation at all. No useful evidence is gained.
March 1999: Paul and Marilyn are questioned by police. In his interview, Paul says that he and his family were on holiday at the central coast at the time Lyn disappeared. He also mentions the idea that Lyn may have run off with a religious group. Paul says he was not aware that JC was with Chris when his twin left for Queensland just prior to Christmas in 1981, but in her interview, Marilyn remembers Chris and JC taking shelter in her home upon their return from the trip on Christmas Day, and that she did not tell Lyn about this. Marilyn says that Lyn kept providing opportunities for Chris and JC to be together, and that Lyn did not fight for her marriage to Chris.
Chris refuses to be interviewed at this time.
January 2000: Police conduct a very limited excavation in a small area around the pool at the Bayview house. A woman’s pink cardigan and a popper container with a 1981 expiry date are found. The cardigan is in pieces and bears what appears to be slash marks. Forensic testing does not make a positive match with Lyn.
February 2001: The first coronial inquest is held, lasting less than half a day. No witnesses give evidence but Sergeant Matt Fordham lays out the case for coroner Jan Stevenson. Chris’s lawyer brother Peter represents him. Ms Stevenson finds that a known person killed Lyn and recommends for charges to be laid. The DPP does not support a prosecution for murder or the laying of charges, citing a lack of evidence.
February 2003: The second coronial inquest is held, with coroner Carl Milovanovich, lasting five days. This time witnesses are heard, including JC and members of Lyn’s family. Again Chris’s lawyer brother Peter represents him. Like Ms Stevenson before him, Mr Milovanovich recommends the laying of charges against Chris Dawson.
August 2003: The DPP Nicholas Cowdery again refuses to prosecute, citing a lack of evidence.
2010: A $100,000 reward is issued by the NSW government for information to help solve the case.
2011: The Office of the DPP in Nicholas Cowdery’s last year there declines for a third time to prosecute the case, following a review of additional statements and evidence obtained by the detective Damian Loone.
July 2011: Lloyd Babb becomes the Director of Public Prosecutions. Mr Babb had known the Dawson brothers in 1983 when Chris Dawson was Mr Babb’s rugby league coach and a teacher at his school, Asquith Boys High. During The Teacher’s Pet podcast, Mr Babb issued a statement on the DPP’s website saying he had declared the conflict to his deputy directors in 2015. He later revised this to say he had first declared the conflict to the Attorney-General in 2011. Lyn’s family members were not told of the conflict of interest until it was revealed during the podcast.
January 2014: A $200,000 reward is issued for information to help solve the case.
2015: NSW Police Force Unsolved Homicide Unit begins re-investigating Lyn’s suspected murder.
April 2018: NSW police present the DPP with a new brief of evidence.
May 2018: The Teacher’s Pet podcast series begins. The episodes roll out weekly, with 14 episodes initially. The investigation by Hedley Thomas gathers new evidence and witnesses, prompting an apology from then NSW police commissioner Mick Fuller (since retired) regarding the mishandling of the case, and providing new statements for the DPP to consider. The podcast investigation also draws forth former students from Cromer High and other northern beaches schools who reveal that many teachers were preying on students for sex during the 1980s and around that time. As a result detectives from the Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Squad and the Northern Beaches Police Area Command establish Strike Force Southwood to investigate the allegations.
September 12, 2018: NSW Police reveal a new forensic search is being done at the former home of Lyn Dawson in the Sydney suburb of Bayview. Lyn’s brother Greg Simms said the family was “a bit stunned” by the development.
September 17, 2018: The forensic excavation at the Bayview house concludes. Police do not locate Lyn’s remains or any items of interest to the investigation.
December 5, 2018: Chris Dawson is arrested in Queensland and charged with the murder of his wife, Lyn.
December 24, 2018: Dawson walks from Silverwater Jail in western Sydney on bail, and is picked up by his older brother Peter in a Porsche. His bail conditions required him to live at his property at Coolum on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. Dawson mortgaged the property to help meet a $1.5m surety. Peter and his wife Sheryl also mortgaged their home to meet the surety.
June 20, 2019: Dawson is charged with the offence of carnal knowledge, for allegedly having sex with a girl under the age of 17 when she was a student of his at a school on Sydney’s northern beaches. On the same day, he formally pleads not guilty to murdering Lyn.
February 13, 2020: Dawson is ordered to stand trial by Magistrate Jacqueline Trad after a committal hearing in the Downing Centre Local Court.
September 11, 2020: NSW Supreme Court judge Elizabeth Fullerton dismisses Chris Dawson’s application for a permanent stay that would have prevented him ever facing trial. Dawson claimed a trial shouldn’t go ahead on the grounds of delay and extensive pre-trial publicity. Justice Fullerton orders that the trial not commence before June 2021 due to publicity.
June 11, 2021: The NSW Court of Criminal Appeal rejects Dawson’s further bid for a permanent stay. Chief Justice Tom Bathurst, Justice Christine Adamson and Justice Geoffrey Bellew find Justice Fullerton applied the correct legal test and took everything relevant into account.
April 8, 2022: High court judges Stephen Gageler and Michelle Gordon hear Dawson’s application for special leave to appeal. The judges adjourn for about eight minutes before refusing special leave, finally bringing to an end Dawson’s bid to gain a permanent stay on the murder trial.
May 2, 2022: Chris Dawson is granted a judge-alone trial by Justice Robert Beech-Jones, who says he’s concerned about pre-trial publicity as well as the likely length of the trial, with potential Covid disruptions.
May 9, 2022: The murder trial begins in the NSW Supreme Court in Sydney, with Justice Ian Harrison SC presiding. Crown prosecutor Craig Everson SC is up against Dawson’s barrister Pauline David and solicitor Greg Walsh.
July 11, 2022: After stretching into its 10th week, Chris Dawson’s murder trial ends.
July 15, 2022: With the murder trial verdict still pending, Dawson’s separate trial for allegedly having sex with a teenage student is delayed until at least May, 2023.
August 30, 2022: Seven weeks after the murder trial finished, Justice Ian Harrison delivers his verdict and finds Chris Dawson guilty of murdering his missing wife Lynette. Read the coverage of the judge’s findings and the verdict.
November 10, 2022: Justice Ian Harrison hears submissions from the Crown and defence on what sentence Chris Dawson should serve for the 1982 murder of his wife. Follow the proceedings as they happened.
December 2, 2022: Chris Dawson is sentenced to 24 years in prison, with a non-parole period of 18 years, by Justice Harrison. Read the judgement in full.
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