‘Self-indulgent brutality’: Chris Dawson jailed for 24 years for Lynette’s murder

Chris Dawson has been jailed for a maximum of 24 years for the murder of his wife Lynette Simms, who vanished from Sydney’s northern beaches in January 1982 and was killed in an act of “self-indulgent brutality”.

Justice Ian Harrison sentenced the 74-year-old in the NSW Supreme Court on Friday afternoon, in a judgment lasting only 26 minutes, setting a non-parole period of 18 years.

Chris Dawson during his trial. Inset: Chris and Lynette Dawson on their wedding day in 1970.Credit: Nick Moir, Supplied

“The reality is that he will not live to reach the non-parole period or will alternatively ... become seriously disabled well before then, even if he does,” he said.

Harrison said the “unavoidable prospect” is that Dawson “will probably die in jail”.

The judge said the murder of Lynette was an “objectively very serious crime” and Dawson must have appreciated the injury, emotional harm and loss that his actions were likely to cause their two daughters and the 33-year-old’s other relatives.

He said the precise way in which Lynette died “is not and cannot be known”, and no valid conclusions can be reached about the nature of the act that caused her death.

However, he found that she was killed at her home on Gilwinga Drive at Bayview, and considered it “to be the only rational inference that the facts permit me to draw”.

The judge said Dawson had intended to kill, rather than cause grievous bodily harm, and was motivated by his desire to be exclusively with his former student and his girls’ babysitter, known as JC, committing an act of “self-indulgement brutality”.

“Lynette Dawson was treated by her husband as completely dispensable,” the judge said.

Regarding the “undoubtedly intense” avalanche of publicity in the case, Harrison said Dawson’s crime was a matter of “intense public interest and the attention he has received is directly referable to that interest”.

“His major complaint, when properly understood, is that the publicity improperly made assumptions about his guilt at a time when he was entitled to the presumption of innocence,” the judge said.

“As harsh as it may sound to say so, Mr Dawson is now the author of his own misfortune.”

Harrison, who found Dawson guilty in August following a judge-alone trial over May and June, previously concluded on the wholly circumstantial Crown case that Lynette died on or about January 8, 1982, and “did not leave her home voluntarily”.

The NSW Director of Public Prosecutions had decided not to prosecute after two inquests into the missing mother of two in the early 2000s before the case was handed to the unsolved homicide squad in 2015.

Dawson, a former Newtown Jets rugby league player and high school teacher, was extradited from Queensland in December 2018 and charged with his first wife’s murder.

Investigative journalist Hedley Thomas, for The Australian, released a podcast that same year about the case called The Teacher’s Pet. Thomas gave evidence at trial the series had amassed 60 million downloads internationally.

Dawson has maintained his innocence. In his 1991 police interview, he claimed he dropped Lynette at a bus stop to go shopping on January 9, 1982, and instead of meeting him at Northbridge Baths said she had called to say she “needed time away”.

The judge was satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Dawson had a “possessive infatuation” with JC.

Harrison was further satisfied that Dawson had collected JC from her holiday at South West Rocks, 450 kilometres north of Sydney, before January 12, 1982, and moved her into the family home at Bayview. JC gave evidence at trial the wardrobe had been bursting with clothes.

Dawson and JC married in January 1984 before separating in 1990.

Shanelle Dawson, who was four-and-a-half years’ old when her mother disappeared, locked eyes with her father in court last month as she begged him to reveal the location of the body.

Dawson will be eligible for parole from 2040 when he is 92.

“Because of your selfish actions, we will never see her again, we will never hear her tell us she loves us, feel her hold us or hear her laugh,” Shanelle said in her victim impact statement.

New “no body, no parole” laws, introduced in NSW following Dawson’s conviction, require an offender to disclose the location of their victim’s remains for a chance of release on parole.

Our Breaking News Alert will notify you of significant breaking news when it happens. Get it here.