The Teacher’s Pet: The unsolved murder of Lyn Dawson

Lyn Dawson was a devoted wife and mum. She adored her husband, but he betrayed her. Then she went missing, a likely victim of murder | LISTEN

Chris Dawson, left, the husband of Lyn Dawson, right, was in a sexual relationship with student Joanne Curtis, centre, and denies any involvement in Lyn’s murder.

The family of missing Sydney mother Lynette Dawson says a major new podcast series may be the best chance to solve her sudden disappearance 36 years ago — and bring an alleged killer to justice.

Today The Australian launches The Teacher’s Pet, a podcast by ­national chief correspondent Hedley Thomas, who has spent six months investigating Dawson’s probable murder.

Her family has thrown its support behind the series, saying Thomas’s independent examination of the cold case had left no stone unturned. “He’s been absolutely, incredibly thorough,” said Pat Jenkins, Dawson’s sister. “He’s gone beyond what anyone would have thought.”

Greg Simms, Dawson’s brother, said: “No one has looked at it as intensely as Hedley has. The best-case scenario is for us to convince the DPP and powers that be that there needs to be a court case.”

His wife, Merilyn Simms, added: “The ultimate thing would be to know where she is and be able to put her to rest properly. Her girls deserve that at least.”

Thomas was awarded a Gold Walkley for his reporting on the flawed police pursuit of Mohamed Haneef and has probed diverse topics ranging from Clive Palmer’s business affairs to Brisbane’s devastating 2011 floods.

He said The Teacher’s Pet was his longest investigation in more than 30 years as a journalist and involved more than 100 interviews, many with people who had never before ­spoken publicly about the case.

“I’ve discovered new evidence in this podcast investigation,” he says in the first episode. “It has helped me see clues that were missed by NSW police when they finally started suspecting a murder and began asking hard questions, years after Lyn vanished. Key witnesses who did not go to police at the first opportunity have divulged important facts. If these lead to the recovery of Lyn’s body from the ground at Bayview, where I think she lies, it is likely that murder charges would be levelled against the suspect police have circled for a quarter of a century.”

The Teacher’s Pet

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The 33-year-old mother of two, from Bayview on Sydney’s northern beaches, vanished in early January 1982.

Her husband, Chris Dawson, was a high school physical education teacher and a former star footballer who was in a secret sexual relationship with one of his students, Joanne Curtis.

In 2001 and again in 2003, separate coroners found Dawson was murdered by a “known person”, her husband, but Mr Dawson has never been charged and maintains his ­innocence.

The Australian’s editor-in-chief, Paul Whittaker, said the podcast ­series was one of the biggest journalistic undertakings by The Australian in recent years and followed the success of the Bowraville podcast in 2016 on the murders of three Aboriginal children.

That series won multiple awards and led to a suspect being brought before court.

“This podcast is part investi­gation, part storytelling, with powerful voices in each episode,” Whittaker said of the Dawson ­investigation.

The Australian’s Hedley Thomas.

“Hedley Thomas has spent six months tracking down all the key players in this case, and convinced many of them to speak for the first time about what they know, and in the process he has unearthed compelling new information unknown to investigating police at the time.”

Thomas, who first reported on the case 17 years ago, said it was a “travesty of justice” he had always wanted to revisit.

The podcast would be based on his own recorded interviews as well as audio and video recordings and documents that had never been made public.

Interviewees included Dawson’s eldest daughter, Shanelle, the retired coroner who ran the second inquest, Carl Milovano­vich, the original investigating police and numerous friends.

MORE: Listen to other podcasts by The Australian