Teacher’s Pet podcast: NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller apologises for police failings in Lyn Dawson case
NSW Police Commissioner apologises to Lyn Dawson’s family for police failings in the 36-year-old cold case | LISTEN
NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller has apologised to Lyn Dawson’s family for police failings in the 36-year-old cold case.
In a new interview yesterday about the case — being examined by The Australian’s ongoing investigative podcast series The Teacher’s Pet — Mr Fuller also said he was “100 per cent” open to digging at Lyn’s former home at Bayview on Sydney’s northern beaches.
And in a further revelation, he said the NSW DPP had assigned the case to a lawyer who was “systematically” going through the police evidence to consider if there was enough to lay charges over Lyn’s 1982 disappearance and suspected murder.
Two separate coroners found Lyn was murdered by her husband, former Newtown Jets rugby league star Chris Dawson, but he was not charged.
“Clearly police have taken a view very early in the piece that it was a missing persons case,” Mr Fuller told broadcaster Ben Fordham on 2GB.
“Clearly police, and there are lots of other people, who made an assumption, a pretty poor one, that Lyn had made a decision to leave the family home.”
It was now obvious there was “much, much more to this case”, he said.
After being read an email on air from Lyn’s cousin Wendy Jennings asking if the family would be given a public apology, Mr Fuller offered one.
“Of course I’m sorry,” he said.
“Do I wish I could take back time, and do I wish the police at the time had assessed it differently, and do I wish that the people out there who knew more came forward? There’s a whole range of things that I’m sorry for.
“At the end of the day it’s our job to protect the community and we can’t stop every crime from happening, but when they do it’s our responsibility to ethically and diligently investigate them and get to the bottom of the truth.”
He again backed recent police investigations, praising the job that had been done by detectives since the NSW Unsolved Homicide Unit began re-investigating in 2015.
Police took a new brief of evidence to the DPP in May, he said, although in a separate interview this week he said this had been done in April.
“We’re hoping for a positive outcome given the new evidence we have collected,” he said.
Significant work had been done by police at Lyn’s former home on Gilwinga Drive at Bayview as recently as 2016, he said.
“Do we have to do more at the site? If the answer to that is yes then we will absolutely do that.”
Asked if he was prepared to do more digging at the property, he said: “100 per cent. It goes without saying.”
There are suspicions Lyn’s husband buried her on the property. Mr Dawson denies killing his wife.
“A lawyer’s been allocated and is systematically working through the brief,” he said of the DPP.
“As you can imagine, because we haven’t found a body that is a complication but it is certainly one that has been overcome in many other prosecutions.
“There’s some aspects of the brief being circumstantial. In those cases the brief has to be double, triple checked.
“From our perspective we’ve spent two or nearly three years re-investigating this tirelessly. It is important to us.”
Do you know more about this story? Contact thomash@theaustralian.com.au.
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