The Teacher’s Pet: teens bullied by Chris Dawson’s rage

New witnesses have told of seeing murder suspect Chris Dawson’s explosive temper | NEW EPISODE

Murder suspect Chris Dawson.

New witnesses have told of seeing murder suspect Chris Dawson’s explosive temper, physically threatening behaviour and possessiv­eness of the teenage schoolgirl he was grooming, Joanne Curtis.

Peter Schubert worked part-time with Ms Curtis at a Coles supermarket on Sydney’s northern beaches in the early 1980s. He developed a crush on her, asking her out several times. He remembers being stunned when Mr Dawson — who was Ms Curtis’s high school sports teacher — ­approached him in the car park at work and pinned him to the wall.

He says Mr Dawson’s message was clear: “Stay away from her.”

Mr Dawson’s wife, Lyn, vanished in January 1982, leaving behin­d two young daughters, and was replaced almost immediately in her family home at Bayview by Ms Curtis.

Police want to charge Mr Dawson with Lyn’s murder, and since April this year NSW prosecutors have been assessing whether a new brief of evidence is strong enough. Mr Dawson ­denies killing his wife.

Mr Schubert is now married and living in the Sydney harbourside suburb of Kirribilli. “Joanne was a very attractive young girl. I was keen on her,” he told The Australi­an for a new episode of the investigative podcast series The Teacher’s Pet, released today.

“We were exactly the same age and I pretty much asked her out every second or third week — but in a lighthearted way.”

Mr Dawson and his twin brother, Paul, were both star footballers with the Newtown Jets. Paul Dawson taught Mr Schubert at Manly Boys’ High. “I was a weedy 16-year-old at the time. They were big guys, blonde hair and very muscly. I should imagine I was very scared,” he said.

He hasn’t seen Ms Curtis since that era, but says: “She’s a massive victim in all this. She might have made some poor decisions but I don’t think your decisions when you’re a 16-year-old girl count like they should for a grown man who should have known better. You look at your own daughters who are 16 years old now, they’re not making sensible decisions.”

He has told police he will “go to court if I have to”.

Information about Mr Dawson’s temperament could be admitt­ed in a trial as propensity or tendency evidence. A jury or judge could be asked to consider whether he was known to be mild-­mannered and easygoing, or did he tend to erupt and make threats.

Neil Buckeridge was a student at Cromer High School on the northern beaches when Mr ­Dawson worked there as a sports teacher. He vividly recalls one of Mr Dawson’s outbursts in 1982, the year Lyn vanished.

“One of the kids yelled out a smart-arse comment,” Mr Buckeridge said. “It was something like: ‘Are you still rooting Joanne sir?’ Or ‘rooting students or something sir?’, something like that.”

The reaction of Mr Dawson, who in the eyes of his young ­pupils was “absolutely enormous”, was swift. “He grabbed the kid who he thought had said it and lifted him off the ground and started slamming him against the wall. The kid was just screaming: ‘I didn’t say it! I didn’t say it! I didn’t say anything!’

“The kid Dawson had picked out hadn’t said it. He was screaming … Dawson just dropped him and stormed off.”

The reaction “left no doubt in my mind that he’s capable” of the murder of his wife, he said.

While the incident left a lasting impression on Mr Buckeridge, the student he remembered as being lifted up, Geoff Deegen, can’t recal­l it. “I don’t remember a lot from high school. My memory is pretty terrible,” he said.

Separately, as a 15-year-old, Philip Barclay made the mistake of “mouthing off” at Mr Dawson, sitting several rows in front of him at a school rugby game. Mr Barclay had left school by that point but had previously been one of Mr Dawson’s students at North Sydne­y Boys High.

“He got up out of his seat and sort of eyeballed me as he walked up the grandstand … and got right in my face,” Mr Barclay said.

“(He) told me I’d left school now, and if I said another word he’d ‘f..king kill me’, and went off and turned around and went back to his seat.”

Mr Barclay, now 59 and living on the NSW central coast, says he “did not say another word” to Mr Dawson afterwards.

“No one has ever said that to me, before or since,” he said.

“It was scary. It seemed very cold. It was definitely odd. I’ve never forgotten it.”