The Teacher’s Pet: police quiz witness to Chris Dawson ‘violence’

Detectives will speak a woman who reported seeing murder suspect Chris Dawson’s physical abuse of his missing wife Lyn.

Bev McNally says she saw Chris Dawson mistreat his wife. Picture: James Croucher

Sydney homicide detectives are set to speak to a key new witness who has become the first person to report seeing murder suspect Chris Dawson’s rough physical treatment of his missing wife Lyn.

Bev McNally, nee Staniforth, told The Australian’s investigative podcast series “The Teacher’s Pet” she saw flashes of violence inside the family’s home at Bayview, on Sydney’s northern beaches, when she was the couple’s babysitter.

Other witnesses have spoken of the shocking bruises on Lyn’s neck, legs and arms and have told of her explanations that her husband was responsible.

But Ms McNally is a significant witness, the only person to talk of directly seeing what she believed was a pattern of domestic violence.

She was prompted to come forward by the podcast, which is examining Lyn’s 1982 disappearance and suspected murder at the hands of her husband.

“I actually saw him hit her, once with a tea towel and once as a shove, on two separate occasions,” Ms McNally said.

Mr Dawson “whipped” his wife in the back with the tea towel and the couple then tried to cover it up when they realised Ms McNally was there.

“It was just the fact he was so vicious towards her over a dirty glass,” she said.

It can now be revealed a detective from the NSW Police Force’s Unsolved Homicide Unit, Daniel Poole, contacted Ms McNally on Thursday and arranged to meet her this week to take a statement.

As reported in The Weekend Australian, child protection investigators have separately begun contacting former students of schools on Sydney’s northern beaches after the podcast uncovered sexual relationships between teachers and pupils in the early 1980s.

When Lyn went missing, police from Sydney’s northern beaches inexplicably filed away her disappearance as a missing persons case, treating her as a runaway mother. That was despite a host of suspicious circumstances including her husband’s sexual relationship with a schoolgirl he taught, Joanne Curtis, who moved into the family home two days after Lyn went missing.

There was no investigation until homicide detective Stuart Wilkins and a more senior officer, Paul Mayger, started working on the case in 1990.

Detective Sergeant Damian Loone renewed investigations in 1998, but in a major unexplained bungle the earlier investigation file had gone missing.

All that remained with police from the first probe was an interview between detectives and Mr Dawson in 1991.

Two coroners found, in 2001 and 2003, that Mr Dawson murdered his wife.

Then-director of public prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery QC said there was not enough evidence to prosecute. Mr Dawson strenuously denies killing his wife.

Repeated attempts by police in the years since the coronial inquests to have the case taken to a criminal court have failed.

As revealed in The Australian last month, new detectives from the Unsolved Homicide Unit began reviewing the case in about October 2015 and in recent months police asked DPP Lloyd Babb to again consider if there was enough evidence to prosecute.

The latest episode of the podcast, released last week, revealed Mr Dawson repeatedly returned to his old home at Bayview after selling the property, and that his former lover Ms Curtis insists Lyn is buried on the block.

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