Lyn Dawson disappearance: police identify four key areas to search at former Sydney home
Police want to end the 36-year mystery of Lyn Dawson’s disappearance, as they comb the backyard of her former Sydney home for any trace of the mother of two.
NSW Police are examining “anomalies” in the grounds of the former Sydney home of missing woman Lynette Dawson, as they hunt for her remains.
Update: Chris Dawson arrested
Homicide Squad Commander Detective Superintendent Scott Cook says officers will conduct a “hand dig” and feed the resulting material into a sifter.
Police began digging at the property on Sydney’s northern beaches today and expect to be there for at least five days.
There has been no trace of the missing mother of two for 36 years.
“We will go until we hit rock,” Det Supt Cook said today. “Previously when we conducted examinations here, there was a number of anomalies in the ground. They were inspected previously. We’ll revisit them. It’s all about getting justice for Lyn.”
A special investigation by The Australian’s Hedley Thomas and David Murray has revived interest in the case.
A podcast series about Lyn Dawson's disappearance has been downloaded more than 18.4 million times.
Read more about the disappearance of Lyn Dawson here
Listen to The Teacher’s Pet podcast series here
Timeline of the Lyn Dawson mystery
Find out about the people involved in the case
Lynette Dawson, 33, had two girls and was last seen alive in January 1982. Mrs Dawson spoke to her mother on the evening of January 8, 1982, while she was at home in the Sydney suburb of Bayview with her husband, Christopher Dawson.
She made plans to lunch with her mother the following day at Northbridge Baths, but did not show up.
However, her husband, a former professional rugby league player, has long been a suspect.
Chris Dawson, who played for the Newtown Jets, has consistently denied any involvement in his wife’s disappearance.
She was reported missing on February 18, 1982 by her husband.
Police activity ‘a little unnerving’
Holly Bouveng has lived in the previously peaceful street for three years, and as the sounds of power tools rang out on Wednesday she said she hoped police finally find the missing mother.
“It’s the unknown at the moment, what did happen, is she still there and that’s a little unnerving,” she told AAP.
“It’s so close to home. It breaks your heart, it’s horrible, I just couldn’t imagine.”
Having been inside the home, Ms Bouveng said until recently she’d had no idea of its sinister past.
“It’s just a lovely family home, there was nothing any different about it,” she said.
Mr Dawson, a PE teacher at Cromer High at the time, was having an affair with a 16-year-old student when his 33-year-old wife disappeared.
The student, Joanne Curtis, moved in to the Dawson home within days of Ms Dawson’s disappearance.
How the search will be carried out
Det Supt Cook said police would search four particular areas around the Sydney property: an area at the back of the house between the rock and the building; in the backyard near the clothesline; another area in the backyard; and around the pool.
“What’s different about this dig is that it’s more extensive," he said. “We are using new technologies as part of this examination.
“We are building on the previous examinations that have been done here but it’s largely in the same areas.
“We’ve been here a number of times prior to today and we’ve used some laser technology and some other video recording technology, and other materials that our forensic people have to build a proper map of the landscape.
“This reinvestigation started in 2015, and since then we’ve obtained a lot more evidence. We’re going to continue investigating this no matter what happens today.
“We’ve done a full survey of the landscape and we just want to be sure. We’ll go to the bottom of the pool.”
View from neighbour's balcony of Lyn Dawson's backyard. Police are conducting a forensic dig over four sites. The sound you can hear is the concrete cutter. #theteacherspet@australian pic.twitter.com/UbOurjG4cI
— Nicholas Adams-Dzierzba (@NicholasAddams) September 12, 2018
Det Supt Cook said details of renovations to the house since 1982 had been factored into the new search.
“We know what’s been done, we have photographs,” he said. “We have a good understanding of this particular property.
“We have radar penetration looking at the ground. Ground-penetrating radar has been used previously to identify places where there are anomalies. We are revisiting that and expanding that.
“It is a complex block of land because it’s largely rock, and so digging is not easy. Digging about 300 to 400mm down is about as far as we’re going to get in most areas.”
The family of Lyn Dawson say they can only hope she is finally found, or that further evidence is discovered that could lead to an arrest, in a new forensic search at her former property.
Lyn’s brother Greg Simms said the family was “a bit stunned” by the new search at Bayview on the northern beaches, 36 years after Lyn vanished.
“We can only hope that they find something. If they find something it will vindicate everything we have been doing,” Mr Simms told The Australian.
“Anything that leads to more information that leads to an arrest. If they find Lyn that’s a double whammy for us — we’ve got him (Lyn’s killer) and we’ve also got her so we can put her to rest.”
Please spare a thought for the family of Lynnette Dawson today AND the forensic Police searching. Everything single push of a shovel, stroke of a mattock might reveal human remains. A harrowing time of knife edge emotions. Good luck to all. Thinking to you #teacherspet
— Mark Leveson (@MarkLeveson) September 12, 2018
Two coroners found, in 2001 and 2003, that Lyn was murdered by her husband Chris and should be prosecuted.
On both occasions Former NSW Director of Public Prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery QC — the DPP from 1994 until 2011 — refused to prosecute, citing insufficient evidence.
Greg Simms said police were not giving the family details of the search for operational reasons.
“I did ask and they said to protect the integrity of the whole situation they are not going to release anything,” he said.
“I can only assume they will be digging some time, whether today or in the future.
“If they have been there a couple of days to assess the whole block they might be digging today.
“Or if they started today they could be assessing where they need to look.”
The view from in front of the cameras. #theteacherspet pic.twitter.com/ya54jHAxA7
— Sam Buckingham-Jones (@SamEBJones) September 12, 2018
Mr Simms credited The Australian’s national chief correspondent Hedley Thomas for showing the search needed to be done in his investigative podcast, The Teacher’s Pet.
“This is the culmination of everything that Hedley’s been working on and all the shows the family has been doing,” he said.
“We just hope that a very extensive check is done on the whole block and we hope they find something.
“It needed to be done.”
Past searches ‘deficient’
The podcast showed a number of key deficiencies in past searches of the property, where Lyn and her husband Chris and their two daughters were living when she vanished without trace in January 1982.
Among these, there has never been a search of an area of “soft soil” at the back of the house, next to the children’s bedroom windows.
This area of ground — on a block that was otherwise described as being rock-hard - had been softened by water running off from a hill.
Subsequent owners Neville and Sue Johnston concreted over this area and then extended their home over this concrete, without doing major earthworks.
Chris Dawson’s former teenage lover, Joanne Curtis, has said she believes Lyn is still buried on block. The podcast revealed Ms Curtis’s urgings that police “look in the soft soil”.
A former police officer who oversaw forensic examinations during a dig at the property declared on the podcast: “I think she’s still there.”
Bob Gibbs, a former detective sergeant and crime scene examiner, said police “definitely” may have missed Lyn’s body in a partial dig around the swimming pool at the front of the home.
Mr Gibbs told of his frustration that police didn’t keep digging after discovering next to the pool buried cardigan that appeared to have been repeatedly pierced with a knife.
He said detectives didn’t have the budget to do more.
“I was spewing,” he told The Teacher’s Pet.
“It’s a bit of a coincidence that there is a cardigan in the hole with what looks like stab marks in it.
“I was very disappointed when they didn’t continue to dig.”
Body could be buried there — concreter
A concreter who did extensive work on the home at Bayview came forward for the first time during the podcast.
Joe Cimino revealed his concerns about disturbed ground where he believed her body could be buried.
Remarkably, he had kept diaries detailing his family company’s digging and concreting at the block 30 years ago.
Mr Cimino said he had never been contacted by police investigating Lyn’s disappearance and suspected murder at the hands of her husband, Chris Dawson.
He had dug footings and poured concrete on the areas of soft soil at the back of the house and near the swimming pool at the front.
“And I can remember this clear as today that the shovel was just going into dirt like I was cutting a cheesecake, it was so soft,” he said of an area of about half a metre wide that he excavated near the pool.
A larger area between the boundary and pool edge where he had not dug was “absolutely” large enough to fit a body.
“And the easiest place,” he said.
The podcast also revealed murder suspect Chris Dawson repeatedly returned to the property uninvited in the years after he sold it, and before he faced any major investigation into Lyn’s disappearance.
A serving magistrate, Jeff Linden, spoke of a decades-old secret conversation in which he was told that Mr Dawson went back to the property when new owners Neville and Sue Johnston were renovating and asked: “Where are you digging?”
Mr Linden was working on Sydney’s northern beaches as a solicitor when Mr Johnston came to see him in late 1987 or early 1988 about an unrelated legal matter.
Lyn had vanished from the home five years earlier, leaving behind her two young daughters, aged four and two at the time.
“He said: ‘We’re doing renovations there and he turned up completely out of the blue the other day … and he asked where we were digging.’
“That just sent shivers up my spine. That meeting in my mind was just chilling. Not only did he turn up, but the bloke made the point that he turned up uninvited and without making any contact with them at all.”
Search ‘36 years overdue’
The forensic investigation underway at Lyn Dawson’s former home at Bayview had to be done for the sake of “the family, the police investigation and for public confidence in the criminal justice system”, says The Australian’s national chief correspondent Hedley Thomas.
A comprehensive new search would be welcomed by all with an interest in solving the cold case, says Thomas, whose investigative podcast series The Teacher’s Pet has amassed more than 18 million downloads since its launch in May and prompted police to act.
“This is the search that is 36 years overdue and will help Lyn’s family and friends and many other people who never knew her deal with the uncertainty over the whereabouts of Lyn Dawson’s remains,” Thomas said.
“Police Commissioner Mick Fuller pledged in the last episode of The Teacher’s Pet podcast series that a search of this scale at the Bayview block would happen.
“It will be welcomed by everyone with an interest in this case.”
The swimming pool at the front of the property and an area known as the “soft soil” at the back were key parts of the block for police to search.
“It’s important to remember that in the past, ground-penetrating radar and some limited digging at the property resulted in the recovery of a cardigan identified by Lyn’s friend and neighbour Julie Andrew as one of Lyn’s favourites, and it had multiple cut marks consistent with stabbing, according to crime scenes forensics officers,” Thomas said.
“It has always been of the utmost importance to properly search particular areas of interest on the block, specifically around the swimming pool at the front of the house and in an area which was known as the `soft soil’ and is now covered by concrete and bedroom extensions at the back of the house.
“It may be that nothing of evidentiary value is recovered from this new and exhaustive dig, started today. But it is an unknown that has to clarified for the family’s sake, for the sake of the police investigation and for public confidence in the criminal justice system.”
‘I just hope they’ve got it right’
Lyn’s cousin Wendy Jennings, who has lobbied for a thorough investigation and a prosecution for years, struggled to contain her emotions at news of the new search.
“A bit anxious,” Ms Jennings told The Australian.
“It’s come as a bit of a shock. I understand why police retain information, that’s understandable, but then all of a sudden it hits.
“I can only hope. Just hope. I just hope they’ve got it right and that they will go to any lengths they need to go to.
“It’s a roller coaster. It’s been like that for 36 years. We get our hopes up only to get let down.”
Ms Jennings also spoke out against comments from former NSW Director of Public Prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery QC.
Mr Cowdery suggested in an interview with the ABC’s Australian Story this week that Lyn could be alive.
“I virtually had to sit on my hands to stop myself from throwing something through the TV at Cowdery.
“To basically be saying she could still be alive, he knows, you don’t have to be a brain surgeon to know, all the police checks have been done with all the authorities and nothing has showed up and he turns around and says something like that.
“It’s an insult to the family.”
Mr Cowdery refused to prosecute Lyn’s husband Chris, despite two separate coroners finding, in 2001 and 2003, that he killed his wife. Mr Dawson maintains he is innocent.
“Lyn Dawson disappeared. And that really is as far as I can take it in my own mind,” Mr Cowdery told the program.
“Without a body, without knowing first of all whether in fact she is dead, without knowing secondly, if she is dead how she died, it’s very hard to mount a case of a reasonable prospect of conviction just on motive and the undefined existence of means and opportunity. That makes it very weak.”
Police Commissioner wins praise
Allyson Jennings, the daughter of Lyn’s cousin Wendy Jennings, has praised NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller and homicide detectives for being open to conducting further investigations.
“I have faith that the police that are tasked with this right now are going to do everything they possibly can,” Allyson said.
“Commissioner Fuller has put his hand up and said we will keep pushing this until we get justice.
“I am confident in the police, I believe they are literally throwing everything they can at it.
“That’s reflective of the integrity of police Commissioner Mick Fuller. He apologised for the wrongdoings of police that weren’t even on his watch. That is incredible in itself.
“It means a lot to our family.
“It shows so much about what he does as a police commissioner, as the force he represents and the job he does and the people that work under him.”
She added: “Everybody at The Australian that has contributed to this, no matter how much, at what level, whether it was an image or writing an article or the podcast, it’s just been phenomenal, she said.
“The level of work that’s been done, it has in my opinion leveraged the police to go there is more.”
Reflecting the mixed emotions for relatives, she said: “Everyone’s nervous.
“It was inevitable, we just didn’t expect it now.
“We’d gotten used to being in this cycle of, well the DPP’s reading the brief, the police are just waiting and doing whatever they’re doing and time marches on as usual.
“The next minute this morning at 9 o’clock ... I’ll be honest, I’m a fence-sitter, I don’t know (if anything will be found).”
Additional reporting: AAP
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