A retired school teacher in Australia has been convicted of the murder of his wife four decades ago after the case was featured in a popular crime podcast.
Chris Dawson (73) was found guilty of murdering Lynette Dawson in 1982 on Sydney’s northern beaches. Her body has never been found and Dawson has always maintained he was not involved in her disappearance.
“None of the circumstances considered alone can establish Mr Dawson’s guilt,” New South Wales supreme court Justice Ian Harrison said on Tuesday, giving his verdict.
“But when regard is had to their combined force, I am left in no doubt. The only rational inference [is that] Lynette Dawson died on or about January 8th, 1982 as a result of a conscious or voluntary act committed by Christopher Dawson.”
Judge Harrison said he agreed with the prosecution that Dawson had become obsessed with his teenage lover and babysitter, identified only as JC, and murdered Lynette Dawson to ensure the new relationship could continue.
His findings had been “fortified”. he said, by the lies Dawson told after his wife was murdered, which the judge grouped into four categories: those Dawson told JC and others about their relationship; claims he wanted to continue his marriage with Lynette Dawson; lies he told which suggested she was still alive; and those which suggested she may have left their home of her own accord.
The lies were designed “to deflect all or any attention away” from Dawson’s involvement in the death.
Outside court, Lynette Dawson’s brother, Greg Simms, called on Dawson to reveal where her body was buried. “This verdict is for Lyn. Today her name has been cleared – she loved her family and would have never left them of her own accord. Instead, her trust was betrayed by a man she loved.”
Judge Harrison had rejected the possibility Lynette Dawson voluntarily abandoned her husband and daughters, then aged two and four, to vanish without a trace. He dismissed claims she had been seen alive after January 1982 or that she had contacted her husband.
“The whole of the circumstantial evidence satisfies me that Lynette Dawson is dead … and that she did not voluntarily abandon her home,” the judge said on Tuesday.
Judge Harrison had presided over the matter after Dawson successfully applied for a judge-only trial.
The main reason for Dawson’s application was the publicity generated in the case by the Australian newspaper’s Teacher’s Pet podcast. It was published in 2018, at the same time as New South Wales police were again investigating Lynette Dawson’s disappearance.
The podcast, created by investigative reporter Hedley Thomas, was listened to tens of millions of times. Thomas alleged he had uncovered new evidence that indicated Dawson may have killed his wife in order to continue an affair with JC, a former student.
He also homed in on what he suggested were serious errors in the police investigation of the case, and the failure of the NSW Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions to charge Dawson despite two separate inquest findings that he had been responsible for the death of Lynette Dawson.
Dawson was charged with murder in December 2018 and extradited to Sydney from his home on the Gold Coast.
He unsuccessfully argued all the way to the high court that there should be a permanent stay in the proceedings on the grounds that the alleged murder had occurred a substantial time ago, that there had been contamination of evidence and/or collusion between prosecution witnesses, and that the combination of these factors prejudiced his ability to defend the allegations.
The prosecution alleged there was a powerful circumstantial case that Dawson killed his wife to continue an unfettered relationship with JC, whom he had met as a teenager while working as a physical education teacher.
Lawyers for Dawson said Judge Harrison could not make this finding beyond reasonable doubt, in part because the police had failed to properly investigate reported sightings of Lynette Dawson, and also as the alleged motive for murder did not make sense because killing his wife would only create more problems for Dawson.
Dawson did not give evidence during the two-month trial, which finished on July 11th.
Judge Harrison accepted the timeframe of the case given by the prosecution: that around December 22nd1981, Dawson and JC travelled to Queensland, but the attempt at starting a new life failed after JC became unwell, and said she missed her family. After they arrived home, she told Dawson she wanted to end the relationship, which he did not want to happen, Judge Harrison found. The pair then spent Christmas day and new year’s eve together.
On new year’s day or January 1982, JC travelled north to South West Rocks, where she camped with her sisters and friends. She contacted Dawson every day via a reverse charge call from a payphone, as Dawson had told her to. It was alleged Dawson killed his wife on January 8th,1982.
Judge Harrison said that while it was often “immaterial” when a particular offence occurred, in this case it was “an indispensable link in the chain of reasoning” upon which the prosecution relied.
The judge agreed that Lynette Dawson died on this date, dismissing claims by Dawson that his wife had called him after this date as “lies”. He said it was “simply absurd” and defied “common sense” that the only person Lynette Dawson would remain in contact with after leaving the house would be the very person “who was the reason for her departure”.
Similarly, he said he could not accept Dawson’s description of what his wife said in the conversations, which included that she told him she needed more time, was working things out, and that he should not worry about her. “It is in my view fanciful to suggest that conversations as lacking in content and pregnant with cliches … ever occurred,” Judge Harrison said.
The judge dismissed several reported sightings of Lynette Dawson after January 8th, 1982. Between January 10th and 12th, 1982, Judge Harrison found Dawson picked up JC from South West Rocks and took her back to Sydney. He had told her “Lyn’s gone, she’s not coming back, come back to Sydney and help look after the kids and live with me”.
Judge Harrison accepted that Dawson had become infatuated with JC before she left Cromer high school. He found that although Lynette Dawson had confronted JC with the “paradoxically genteel observation” that JC had been “taking liberties with her husband”, she had remained hopeful of reconciling with Dawson. This was one of a series of reasons which Harrison gave to dismiss the possibility that Lynette Dawson left of her own accord.
Dawson’s lawyer, Greg Walsh, told the judge after the verdict that his client would likely apply for bail before his sentencing hearing. A date has not been set for that hearing.
Mr Walsh also suggested his client would appeal the verdict. “Mr Dawson has always asserted, and he still does, his absolute innocence of the crime of which he’s been convicted,” he told reporters outside court. “He’ll continue to assert that innocence and he’ll certainly appeal.”
Dawson would find custody difficult, Mr Walsh said, partly because he had been diagnosed with dementia that could be linked to his past rugby league career. Dawson’s twin brother, Paul, left court without speaking to reporters. – Guardian