‘Journey is not yet complete – we need to bring her home’

Now the verdict is in, her family hope to reach their most important goal – bringing Lyn home.

Greg Simms with Lyn’s grandaughter Kiahla in 2018. Lyn’s body has never been found. Picture: AAP

Lyn Dawson’s family has called on her husband and convicted killer to do the decent thing and reveal the location of her remains.

Greg Simms was flanked by his wife Merilyn and journalist Hedley Thomas as he spoke to a huge media contingent on the steps of the courthouse after Chris Dawson was found guilty of Lyn’s murder on Tuesday.

Mr Simms said Lyn, his beloved sister, deserved a proper burial.

“This is a milestone in our journey for advocating for Lyn,” Mr Simms said.

“However the journey is not complete. She is still missing. We still need to bring her home.

“We would ask Chris Dawson to find it in himself to finally do the decent thing and allow us to bring Lyn home to a peaceful rest. Finally showing her some dignity she deserves.”

Asked if he believed that would happen, he replied: “That’s entirely up to Mr Dawson.”

Dawson’s conviction after 40 years was a momentous occasion, he said.

“We can only thank everyone for all they’ve done and we can only sit back and hope one day we’ll be able to put Lyn to rest,” Mr Simms said.

“We’ve always said she wouldn’t have left those two children and the first person she would have contacted would have been my mother.

“There is no bones about that at all. It would have been mum first if she was in trouble. Mum would have said come home, come to Clovelly.”

Lyn’s family takes enormous comfort from the knowledge they have done everything possible to find her and bring her killer to justice.

Lyn Dawson in 1980. Picture: Justin Lloyd

Mr Simms had for decades wanted to see Dawson charged and brought to trial over her alleged murder.

With that mission accomplished, Mr Simms told The Australian the family would try to move on as Lyn would have wanted, while still holding out hope that her remains would one day be found.

The other part of the family’s mission has always been “to try and find where she is, to put her to rest properly”, he said.

Merilyn added: “The ultimate aim would be to know where Lyn was.”

With Dawson always maintaining Lyn walked out on her family, it appears unlikely he would cooperate.

So Lyn’s family want parole authorities to ensure Dawson is never considered for release until her remains are found.

“If he wants his parole lessened – then it‘s no body, no parole,” Ms Simms said.

“That‘s probably about the only hope that we would have.”

NSW authorities can refuse parole if an offender convicted of murder or manslaughter refuses to tell investigators the location of their victim’s remains.

However it is not mandatory, unlike in other states including Queensland, which brought in far stricter no body no parole laws five years ago.

Ms Simms revealed the family had thought Dawson would never be put on trial for Lyn’s murder before Thomas began investigating for The Teacher’s Pet.

They had been on the verge of giving up their public appeals for help to solve the disappearance, having previously been told at least four times by the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions that there was insufficient evidence to charge Dawson.

They credit Thomas, along with renewed investigations by the NSW unsolved homicide team, with turning everything around.

“Until Hedley came on the scene, we really didn’t think we were ever going to get there,” Ms Simms said.

“The family had talked about it and we thought, look, we just can’t keep doing this.

“The kids had spoken to us and said, `Lyn’s life was taken from her, but you’ve still got yours, and she wouldn’t want you not to have a life. She would want you to be trying to live yours.’”

NSW police submitted a new brief of evidence to the state’s Director of Public Prosecutions in April 2018 after renewed investigations by the unsolved homicide team.

Thomas’s podcast The Teacher’s Pet launched the following month, and the DPP agreed to prosecute Dawson for murder in December of that year.

“The Teacher’s Pet was just mind blowing. We learned so much that we didn’t know, which of course then came out in court,” Ms Simms said.

“So we were slightly prepared for some of the things we’ve heard in court.

“But that was an emotional roller coaster. That was a really difficult year, wasn’t it, listening to all that? But then to get that arrest at the end, and we thought, wow, we really didn’t think that would ever happen.”

Mr Simms said he did not know what a podcast was before The Teacher’s Pet.

“That was just mind blowing in relation to just emotional overload. We were crying. It emotionally affected us so much,” he said.

“We were seriously looking at discontinuing keeping her name out there until Hedley came along.”

.