Teacher’s Pet: Long-lost document exposes Dawson lies

Chris Dawson’s lies about his missing wife, Lyn, are laid bare in a handwritten statement lost for more than 20 years | LISTEN

Chris Dawson, left, who is under renewed scrutiny over the disappearance of his wife, with his twin brother Paul.

Murder suspect Chris Dawson’s lies and omissions to police about his missing wife, Lyn, have been laid bare in a hand-written statement from a file that had been lost for more than 20 years.

In the two-page document, written and signed by Mr Dawson in August 1982, seven months after Lyn went missing, he portrayed himself as a forlorn, abandoned husband on a mission to find his wife. Yet he failed to make any mention of his sexual relationship with his former school student, Joanne Curtis, with whom he had been sleeping for 14 months before his wife’s ­disappearance.

The former Newtown rugby league player moved the teenager, who had been the family’s babysitter, into their house at Bayview on Sydney’s northern beaches two days after Lyn, a mother of two young girls, vanished.

The Australian has discovered his 1982 statement in which he blames his marriage problems on his wife’s spending.

He lied in the statement when he wrote that over Christmas 1981 — just weeks before Lyn went missing — he went away for three days “to be by myself”.

The reality was he had packed his bags and run off with his babysitter and teenage lover. They had a plan to start a new life in Queensland, but Joanne had second thoughts and they returned home.

The discovery of the old statement, which raises fresh prospects of a murder trial in the cold case, is focusing renewed interest on the connections of Chris Dawson and his twin brother, Paul, to influential police in the 1980s, who were involved with rugby league.

In his own words, Chris Dawson wrote in his statement that a senior detective from the Manly police station, the hub for criminal investigations on the northern beaches, was “advising me on procedure”. The police officer named, a rugby league fanatic, was close to the Dawson brothers through the Belrose rugby league club, where Chris and Paul were joint captains and coaches.

In their earlier days playing with Newtown, Chris and Paul Dawson associated with police and crime figures, including drugs trafficker and teammate Paul Hayward, who was the brother-in-law of contract killer Arthur “Neddy” Smith.

Chris Dawson provided the statement to police at the time, but it was lost when the police file on Lyn’s disappearance went missing itself in the 1990s.

A copy was discovered by The Australian only in the past fortnight, after lengthy inquiries for the investigative podcast series The Teacher’s Pet.

It is revealed in a new episode of the podcast, out today.

Damian Loone, who in 1998 picked up the investigation into Lyn Dawson’s suspected murder at the hands of her husband, had never seen the statement. It wasn’t known to the two coroners who looked at the case in 2001 and 2003.

Both delivered findings that Mr Dawson should be charged with his wife’s murder. Police too have for years wanted to charge Mr Dawson, but the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions has always maintained there was not enough evidence to prosecute.

Highly experienced criminal lawyers say Mr Dawson’s newly uncovered statement should be vitally important to prosecutors, who in a murder trial would call it evidence of consciousness of guilt.

Had the statement been provided to prosecutors earlier, it might have tipped the balance in favour of charging Mr Dawson, and still could.

1970-1979

Timeline: Lyn Dawson

Chris Dawson marries Lynette Simms, both aged 21. They have two children and Chris begins working as a PE teacher at Cromer High School.

1980

Timeline: Lyn Dawson

Chris begins a secret affair with Joanne Curtis, 16, his student, soon after introducing her to his family as the babysitter. He starts asking her to marry him.

1981

Timeline: Lyn Dawson

Lyn is persuaded by Chris to let Joanne move into their family home as the teenager's step father is violent. Lyn discovers the relationship.

December, 1981

Timeline: Lyn Dawson

With his marriage to Lyn in trouble, Chris flees Sydney with Joanne to start a new life in Queensland, but along the way Joanne changes her mind and wants to take a break. They return to Sydney.

January, 1982

Timeline: Lyn Dawson

Joanne goes camping with her sister and school friends to mark the end of year 12. Chris and Lyn attend marriage counselling together. On January 8, Lyn speaks with her mother on the phone. The next day, Lyn fails to meet her family at Northbridge Baths as planned.

January 10-11, 1982

Timeline: Lyn Dawson

One or two days after Lyn's no-show at the pool, Chris drives up the Central Cost to pick up Joanne and they return to Sydney. He asks Joanne to move in with him. He does not report Lyn missing until almost six weeks later.

1983-1985

Timeline: Lyn Dawson

Chris divorces the missing Lyn and marries Joanne. The couple move to Queensland and have a daughter together. They separate in 1990 and Joanne returns to Sydney. She contacts Lyn's family and police and provides information about Chris and Lyn.

1992-2000

Timeline: Lyn Dawson

Areas of the Dawsons' former Sydney home are excavated by police on different occasions, and a woman's cardigan is found, in pieces and bearing what appear to be slash marks. Forensic testing does not make a positive match with Lyn.

2001-2003

Timeline: Lyn Dawson

Two inquests are held into Lyn's disappearance. Two coroners find she was murdered by someone known to her. Chris does not appear at either inquest. The DPP does not support a prosecution for murder or the laying of charges, citing a lack of evidence.

2010-2014

Timeline: Lyn Dawson

Rewards of up to $200,000 are offered for information to help solve the case.

It comes after a Sydney homicide detective, Daniel Poole, visited former Dawson family babysitter Bev McNally to take a statement on Wednesday.

Ms McNally came forward during the podcast series and is the first person to report directly witnessing Mr Dawson’s rough treatment of his wife.

Mr Dawson strenuously denies killing his wife and defence lawyers would argue he had other reasons for misleading police in his statement, for instance embarrassment about his relationship with Ms Curtis. He had begun the intense affair in late 1980, when he was a physical education teacher at Cromer High and she was 16 and in Year 11 there.

Friends, relatives and neighbours all knew of the romance, but there is no mention of it in the statement written for police in his own hand.

Instead he put his marriage troubles down to concerns about money, blaming his missing wife.

“Lyn and I had been having marital problems for approx. 2 years, mainly over her Bankcard spending and financial matters in general,” he wrote.

“I left home for 3 days over Christmas & travelled north to be by myself.

“I returned home on Boxing Day, having missed my wife and daughters and hoping to resolve our difference.”

Concealing the truth about the relationship from police may have helped Mr Dawson avoid suspicion in the early years, when his wife was viewed as a runaway mother and there was no investigation. His story that she walked out on her family was initially accepted by police, despite her having no money or car and leaving behind her job, clothes, jewellery and the rest of her possessions.

Brian Jordan, a former barrister and retired judge, said the deceptions could be taken in different ways. The lies “could have been either to hide his killing of his wife” or “to hide the fact that he went to Queensland with a former student” with whom he had been in a lengthy sexual relationship, he said.

It wasn’t until 1990 that homicide detectives, acting on information provided by Ms Curtis, began investigating the dis­appearance as suspected murder.

 

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