Teacher’s Pet podcast: Leveson family seek justice for Lynette Dawson

The parents of Matthew Leveson are calling on prosecutors to reopen the case of Lynette Dawson.

Faye and Mark Leveson.

Faye and Mark Leveson, parents of Matthew Leveson whose body was found 10 years after he went missing, are calling on the Director of Public Prosecutions to reopen the case of Lynette Dawson, who vanished in 1982, presumed murdered.

The Levesons, whose son disappeared in 2007, spoke out at an exclusive subscriber event last night detailing The Australian’s investigation into Lynette’s suspected murder at the hands of her husband, Chris Dawson, a former rugby league player. Mr Dawson has not been charged and he ­denies killing his wife.

The investigation is the subject of a podcast series, The Teacher’s Pet, that has now passed one million downloads.

Mrs Leveson said the “DPP has to be answerable” and its decision “not to take it to court was crap”.

Alison Jennings, a cousin of Lynette Dawson, called on the 135-member audience, including a number of former students of Cromer High, where Mr Dawson was a teacher, to mobilise support to pressure the DPP to reopen the case. Ms Jennings said in an emotional address to the audience that they had been “touched by the groundswell of support”.

“We need everyone to shout from the rooftops,” she said.

Radio 2GB talkback host Ben Fordham, who attended the event with the Levesons, said he had been updating his listeners weekly about the evidence ­uncovered in The Teacher’s Pet podcast and he would increase his coverage of the series to “make sure, (whether) it’s the DPP or the Premier or the ­Attorney-­General, that those questions are asked about what’s being done”.

Hedley Thomas, The Australian’s reporter behind the series, told the audience he had been amazed at the volume of information he had received since the podcast launched. Each week, he said, he was “leapfrogging from one lead to another” as new information came in.

He hoped the DPP would be investigating the evidence uncovered in the series.

“Sometimes it just takes the right amount of pressure to drive the right result and we have to just keep chipping away,” he said.