Family reacts to Teacher’s Pet podcast

Missing Sydney mother Lyn Dawson’s youngest daughter says her father is the victim of a ‘witch hunt’.

Chris Dawson. Photo: The Australian

Missing Sydney mother Lyn Dawson’s family say they are learning “things we’ve never known before” about her suspected murder, as her youngest daughter separately said her father was the victim of a “witch hunt”.

Lyn’s niece Renee Simms was interviewed on Nine’s Today Show this morning after the latest instalment of The Australian’s investigative podcast series The Teacher’s Pet revealed new information on the cold case.

A serving magistrate, Jeff Linden, has spoken on the podcast of a decades-old secret conversation in which he was told murder suspect Chris Dawson went back to his old property while the owners were renovating and asked: “Where are you digging”.

The podcast also revealed the view of Mr Dawson’s former schoolgirl lover, Joanne Curtis, that Lyn Dawson is buried on the property, at Bayview on Sydney’s northern beaches, and her urgings that police “look in the soft soil”.

The podcast, by national chief correspondent Hedley Thomas, is investigating Lyn’s 1982 disappearance and suspected murder.

Ms Simms said today: “The family, while the podcasts are coming out, we’re literally learning things that we’ve never known before. We’re all just absorbing it still.”

She added the family was “very much hoping” the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions “will have a more thorough look at it, open it up and ultimately charge whoever is responsible for murdering my aunt”.

It comes as Sherryn Dawson — Chris and Lyn’s youngest daughter, who was two when her mother went missing — publicly defended her father.

Two coroners found Mr Dawson murdered his wife, but he was not charged. He denies killing Lyn.

“It’s a witch hunt on my dad,” Sherryn told the Gold Coast Bulletin.

“My dad’s getting hounded because there’s all these people that have got it in for him.

“Rather than focusing on perhaps that, there could be someone else.”

Her older sister, Shanelle, who was four when Lyn went missing, has emphatically rejected the suggestion her mother simply walked out on them.

“I just don’t believe for a moment that she left us voluntarily and then stayed away all this time,” Shanelle told the podcast.

Sherryn said: “I know (Shanelle has spoken) and she was overseas when we were all getting harassed 10 years ago. She wasn’t the one getting harassed.

“It’s a witch hunt and I’m over it. I don’t want to be around all this negativity and all this falseness.

“I’ve got a family I want to focus on.”

She was scathing of Joanne Curtis, who was 16 when she started a sexual relationship with Mr Dawson, a teacher at her school, Cromer High.

Two days after Lyn went missing, Mr Dawson moved Ms Curtis into the family home and she became stepmother to his two young daughters.

Accusing Ms Curtis of trying to damage her father, Sherryn said: “Stepmother was a bitch... she can live with that.”

Ms Simms responded today: “We obviously have contact with the elder daughter (Shanelle). I haven’t seen Sherryn for probably 18 years and I guess that’s through her choice.

“I guess everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I have a different opinion.”

Reporter Hedley Thomas this morning told the program it was “a cold case I think of clear murder”.

“Lyn Dawson was a much-loved woman. She doted on two girls and she would never have left them,” he said.

“She had very close relationships with her mother, with her two brothers and sister and she just disappeared and no one has heard from her since, at a time when her husband was in a really intense sexual relationship with a schoolgirl who he taught at a northern beaches high school.”

He said he could “perfectly understand why Chris’s younger daughter Sherryn would be defending her father”.

“She was two when her mother disappeared. She hasn’t heard or seen from her mother since and that’s her view.

“Most other people including two coroners, who made findings that Chris Dawson murdered his wife, have a very different view.

“I believe that Chris Dawson should take the opportunity to tell his side of the story. He didn’t even go to his wife’s inquests, both of them. He’s always maintained his innocence. And he’s in this no-man’s land, because the two coroners have found that he did indeed murder his wife, but the DPP has refused to prosecute.

“So he’s been presumed guilty, but he also has to have a presumption of innocence. He should be allowed to either acquit himself or convict himself before a jury of his peers.”

The NSW DPP’s flaws in assessing the case would be detailed in later instalments of the podcast.

“I think the DPP has been mistaken a number of times in their assessment of this case,” he said.

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