Teacher’s pet: Lyn Dawson’s voice from the past speaks volumes

A video of murder victim Lyn Dawson has allowed family to see and hear her for the first time in 36 years.

It was like an apparition from the past. A long-forgotten video of suspected murder victim Lyn Dawson has allowed family to see her, and hear her voice, for the first time in 36 years.

It is bittersweet viewing. The footage features a young, vibrant Lyn alongside her husband, and suspected killer, Chris Dawson.

In the video — filmed in 1975, seven years before she vanished without trace — Lyn looks besotted with Chris, her eyes sparkling as she talks about the powerfully built footballer.

They were interviewed on the ABC’s weekly TV program Chequerboard for a story on twins, talking about Chris’s close bond with twin brother Paul.

Chris and Paul Dawson, first grade rugby league players, are seen working out.

During the interview, the brothers revealed that as young boys they developed a language only they could understand, eventually needing speech therapy to break the habit.

All their lives they ­remained intensely close; both played first grade rugby league in Sydney for Newtown Jets and became teachers and they lived a couple of hundred metres apart in Bayview on Sydney’s northern beaches. They stood in for each other at teachers’ college, in a ­basketball game and at part-time jobs.

The Dawsons’s star turn had been forgotten until it was unearthed in station archives during investigations for The Weekend Australian’s podcast series The Teacher’s Pet.

Amazed members of Lyn’s family — some of whom had never seen the broadcast — said it was a poignant reminder of a much-loved, and missed, woman. Relative David Jenkins, who was nine when Lyn went missing, said the video was a “gift”.

“If absolutely nothing else comes out of this whole thing, just to get that, we’ll be very grateful,” he said yesterday.

“It’s the only footage we’ve got of Lyn. There’s various photographs but no video and, as far as I know, no audio other than what’s on that footage.”

Memories of Lyn had faded. Many who knew her could not ­remember her voice. “She’s so full of life. It’s just ­really precious to see that,” Mr Jenkins said. “Her own girls were so young when she went missing. Shanelle (who was four when her mother vanished) would have very fuzzy memories and I can’t imagine Sherryn (who was two) will have anything at all.”

Lyn Dawson during the Chequerboard interview.

A crumpled newspaper clipping led The Australian’s national chief correspondent, Hedley Thomas, to the startling find.

“In the files of Lyn’s brother Greg Simms, I came across a newspaper clipping from 1975 and it previewed the episode on twins,” Thomas says in the podcast’s second episode, released this week.

“I asked Greg to contact the public broadcaster to see if the video had survived in the archives of the ABC.

“Greg called me a few weeks later and he sounded elated.”

The original video had been found. Greg Simms said: “The best thing ever. I haven’t heard her voice in 36 years.”

Yet it has also meant watching the man whom two coroners found murdered Lyn — her husband Chris.

“If I see a picture of him, I just see evil. I really see evil,” said Pat Jenkins, Lyn’s sister.

Mr Dawson, 69, has not been charged in connection to his wife’s disappearance and strenuously denies wrongdoing.

True crime podcast 'The Teacher’s Pet' has shone light on the 36-year unsolved murder of Lynette Dawson.

Hedley Thomas who investigated and wrote the podcast joins us, along with Lynettes niece, Rene Sims. pic.twitter.com/9T9gC7hYa1

— Sunrise (@sunriseon7) May 26, 2018