Dawson ‘possibly knew’ police were tapping his phone

Police tapped the phones of Chris Dawson and his twin Paul, but the unfolding murder inquiry did not rate a mention in their calls.

Chris, right, and Paul Dawson.

Detectives tapped the phones of murder suspect Chris Dawson and his twin brother Paul during a time of intense and public investigations, but the unfolding police probe did not rate a mention during their calls.

Retired detective Paul Hulme said the phones were tapped before an inquest into the disappearance of Chris Dawson’s wife, Lyn, who had vanished without trace from Sydney’s northern beaches in 1982, leaving behind two young children.

Police had brought in ground-penetrating radar to the former Dawson family home at Gilwinga Drive in Bayview, on Sydney’s northern beaches, in a search for Lyn’s remains.

A cardigan, degraded but with highly suspicious cut marks, had been found buried next to the pool, and Lyn’s disappearance, initially treated as a non-suspicious missing person case by northern beaches police, was in the headlines.

“We listened intently and they did not even discuss the matter,” Mr Hulme told The Australian.

“Now is that normal behaviour of a husband who may not have loved his wife any more, but she went missing?

“He knew exactly what happened to her, in my book.”

Asked what he drew from the silence about the police investigations, Mr Hulme said: “Guilty as sin.” Chris Dawson “possibly” knew police were listening in, he said.

Two separate coroners found, in 2001 and 2003, that Mr Dawson killed his wife and should be prosecuted.

Police have wanted to charge him ever since, but the Office of the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions has repeatedly cited insufficient evidence. Mr Dawson denies killing his wife.

Mr Hulme was interviewed for The Australian’s investigative podcast series, The Teacher’s Pet.

He has said he was “disgusted” in the initial police failings after Lyn’s disappearance, blaming the high profile of her husband, a former star rugby league player with the Newtown Jets.

As a senior officer on the northern beaches, he had made a decision to put a seasoned investigator, Damian Loone, on Lyn’s case in 1998.

“I couldn’t have got a better bloke for the job,” he said.

“And certainly, no, there was no vendetta. He was just of the same opinion I was, that we knew who’d done it.”

Police Commissioner Mick Fuller has apologised to Lyn’s family over the handling of the case in the 1980s, saying police “dropped the ball”.

The NSW Police Force’s Unsolved Homicide Unit began reinvestigating in 2015, and earlier this year police again asked the DPP to consider if there was enough evidence to prosecute.

A decision is yet to be made, but DPP Lloyd Babb has ruled himself out of any involvement because the Dawson brothers were teachers and rugby league coaches at his school.

A new episode of The Teacher’s Pet is out tomorrow.

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