Still Missing Australia - Lynette Dawson, 34, Sydney, Jan 1982 *Arrest* #3

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imamaze

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Originally posted by butwhatif? moved here for discussion...

I only heard about this case today, because Lynette is a relative to my nephews adopted mother. They are the most amazing family, and hopefully we can help them with some closure. It's trickier to sleuth people and criminal doocuments here in Oz, but I really want to give it our best shot.
I'll start with some links:


After years of waiting Lyn Dawson's family demands action
Quote:
The 34-year-old mother-of-two disappeared on January 9, 1982. Her body has never been found and her family have not heard from her since six days before her disappearance.
Among the claims the inquiries heard were that Mrs Dawson’s husband, Chris, who was a teacher at Cromer High School, had attempted to arrange a hit man to kill her and had previously physically assaulted her.
Quote:
Although the DPP has publicly said a lack of evidence was the reason charges were not laid, privately the family had been told the lack of a body and a belief that Lynette’s mother saw her after she went missing were factors, according to Mrs Jenkins.
But Lynette’s mother, Helena Simms, who died in 2001, never saw or heard from Lynette after January 3, 1982, Mrs Jenkins said. ``We don’t know where that came from. The last time my mother spoke to Lyn was on January 3, 1982,’’ she said.
Quote:
Mr Dawson’s solicitor, his brother Peter, maintained the Dawson family believed Lynette was not murdered but left of her own will.


Quote:
About 350 people have already signed the petition, which states: ``We, the undersigned, in the interest of justice for Lynette Dawson nee Simms, who disappeared Saturday 9/1/1982, request that the Department of Public Prosecutions re-examine their decision not to proceed with the prosecution against a known person who had committed an indictable offence as found by two State Coroners.’‘
The petition can be found at: gopetition.com.au/online/35813.html


My note: there are now 450 signatures. We need more.

The charming devil and his missing wife
Quote:
"He was just so gorgeous, of course you believed him," Lynette Dawson's aunt, Lee Fletcher, said last week.
"But behind closed doors," said another of Ms Dawson's relatives, "he was a monster, a domineering control freak."


Thread #1

Thread #2
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Lynette Dawson is the mother of two who went missing in January 1982.
Her husband, the former Newtown Jets football player Chris Dawson, is the man police believe killed her to make way for his burgeoning relationship with a schoolgirl.
Last week, as deputy NSW coroner Carl Milovanovich recommended a "known person" be charged with Mrs Dawson's murder, her family embraced that schoolgirl after she gave her adult testimony of her own tortured time as Dawson's second wife.
The following is a transcript from an Aussie program called Australian story:
http://www.abc.net.au/austory/content/2003/s920367.htm
Quote:
CAPTION: Just before Christmas, Chris Dawson left Lyn and headed for Queensland with Joanne Curtis. Along the way, according to Joanne, she changed her mind and broke off the relationship.
DET. SGT DAMIAN LOONE: Chris moved back to the family home and then, with Lyn, decided to seek counselling which they went to on Friday, 8 January 1982.
PAT JENKINS: That evening, Mum rang Lyn about 8:30.
GREG SIMMS: She got Chris on the phone and she had a talk with him. He said to Mum that everything was fine, they'd been to a marriage counsellor and everything was going to work out. And Mum said, "Can I speak to Lyn?" And he was reluctant to put Lyn on the phone. And finally, he relented and she came to the phone.
PAT JENKINS: So Mum rang Lyn. The first thing Mum said is, "You sound a bit sozzled."
GREG SIMMS: She said to Mum, "My husband's poured me a lovely drink "and everything is just going to be fine." And she said it with a slurred voice.
DET. SGT DAMIAN LOONE: Mrs Simms thought that unusual because Lyn and Chris weren't drinkers.

On Saturday January 9, 1982, Lynette Dawson of Bayview, devoted mother of 2 young children, disappeared.
Two State Coroners determined that Lyn is dead, and that a “known person has committed an indictable offence”. However, the Dept. of Public Prosecutions (DPP) chose not to prosecute the known person, against the advice of the two Coroners.
28 years later Lyn’s body has still not been found, and her family are still looking for justice for Lyn. Please sign the petition to show your support in the pursuit of justice for Lyn and her family. We are asking for the DPP to reverse their decision.
A direct link to the petition:
http://www.gopetition.com.au/petition/35813.html
 
A photo of Lyn:

LynetteDawsonphotocoloursizecropped.jpg
 
Chris Dawson has had a bad week, in anyone's estimation. Committed for trial of the vicious Murder of his long missing wife, the mother of his two infant daughters, ( and the subsequent cover up and illegal dealings with her body due to burial and hiding, and the fraudulent appropriation of her estate ) and the next day committed for trial for Carnal Knowledge, a particularly egregious and distasteful crime, one almost exclusively male and in this case, generally implying one of a crime done by one in power of one not having any power at all, by virtue of him being the teacher, and the victim being the student. An opportunists crime.

The kind of crime a person does with a lot of planning and grooming , as we would say now, but then he would have ''laid out the ground' so to speak, and he did it at one school after another. Not a single event. A lifetime habit. A double habit with his brother, and the two of them would have been formidable in their relentless chase to score with the girl students.

This charge, the Carnal Knowledge event , goes straight to the character of Chris Dawson, not to leave out Twin 2, who may well find himself in the same situation when this case is decided. It's only a matter of time. The domino's are falling, and it's like Ernest Hemingway wrote, about bankruptcy...


'How did it happen, this bankruptcy?'..... at first, slowly, then very quickly. '
 
The 'eye witnesses' who claim to have seen Lynn are , in my opinion, a pretty weak element of this defence so far, surprisingly so, considering the time that the defendant has had to store up and collect witnesses of this nature.

Each one seemed a bit less credible than the one before. The elderly lady doesn't have a whole lot to contribute , a glimpse, at a public event, , the brother in law seeing Lynn at a bus stop, etc. ..

None of this goes to why she wouldn't contact her own family. Why would she be standing round a bus stop ? Why would she stay in the Northern Suburbs, if she was running away?

The big moment for me will be if Dawson enters the Bankcard purchases made after Lynn's disappearance, because this is where the criminal conspiracy component hits it's stride , in spades.
 
Lynette Dawson hasn’t been seen for 38 years, but this week that all changed

Four witnesses this week claimed they saw Ms Dawson after she disappeared in 1982.

"The person I saw I recognised as Lyn Dawson," former neighbour Jill Breese said of a June 1984 sighting, when she claims she saw Ms Dawson working as a nurse in a private hospital.

"I don't believe I was mistaken, but it's a possibility isn't it."

Witness Elva McBay, 101, believed she saw Ms Dawson during a visit by Prince Charles and Princess Diana to Sydney in 1983.

The woman was "hurrying" and "running" to duck under a barricade, but those few seconds were enough to convince Ms McBay it was Ms Dawson.

The fourth witness to claim a sighting was Mr Dawson's brother-in-law Ross Hutcheon, who claimed Ms Dawson was waiting for a bus outside a Gladesville hospital when he drove past three to six months after her disappearance.

Mr Hutcheon said he reported this to two police officers who visited him in 1999, also expressing to court his regret over the "very, very big mistake" of not stopping to talk to her.
"I just didn't realise the implications of the whole issue," he said.

The trial is estimated to take place in late 2020 and last four weeks.

Before then, Mr Dawson will appear in the Supreme Court for an arraignment on April 3, where he has signalled he will plead not guilty.

He was on Thursday granted changes to his bail conditions, including reporting three times weekly to a Sunshine Coast police station.
 
NoCookies | The Australian
Lyn Dawson ‘crazy to leave Chris with teen’, says friend
A family friend of Chris and Lyn Dawson laid out in a handwritten letter her fears about a teenage babysitter with a “crush” who had moved into the couple’s home.

Elva McBay, now 101, wrote in the undated but signed letter that she had warned Lyn she was “crazy” to leave her husband alone with the babysitter, and had told her to “get the girl out of her home”.

Ms McBay was the first witness to give evidence at Mr Dawson’s committal hearing at Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court this week for the murder of his wife, Lyn

Her four-page letter, tendered to the court and released to The Weekend Australian, also tells of an alleged threat by the babysitter against Lyn’s life.

Her four-page letter, tendered to the court and released to The Weekend Australian, also tells of an alleged threat by the babysitter against Lyn’s life.

So we have people that saw Lyn but didn't speak to her. Now a letter that was written, not dated, but never sent.
 
The irony of the dear old lady being an audience for Chris, Paul and Marilyn.... even going so far as to act shocked and astounded at the very thought of such terribly naughty going's on. Chris and Paul must have rocked back with uncontrolled laughter at this letter thingy.

Of course, by this time, Paul had been given his birthday 'sexual event' with Joanne, compliments of Chris, and was also deep into his own extra curricular activities of a sexual and predatory nature at the high school, they both being the darling PE blokes, AND as a cosmic joke, the SexualEducation teachers! how handy was that?

Mrs McBay could have warned Marilyn , had she figured this out....
 
NoCookies | The Australian
Lyn Dawson ‘crazy to leave Chris with teen’, says friend


So we have people that saw Lyn but didn't speak to her. Now a letter that was written, not dated, but never sent.


Not very convincing witnesses, in my opinion. Had they had her round for dinner, or sat next to her on a long train ride.... sounds flimsy as all hell to me.

But not as flimsy as Chris's claim that he 'drove her to the bus stop' from where she left her entire life, her job, her 2 daughters she'd gone thru IVF for, her beautiful home her father had invested so much into it for her, her mother, her sisters and brothers...

You would think Chris would have noticed the wedding rings of Lynn not on her fingers on that life to the stop, ey??…

Next thing, that jewelry is on Joanne's young fingers!.... pretty astonishing, really, that Lynn would be so damn accommodating, leaving the rings behind, getting a lift to the bus stop.. why not the airport?.....
 
One other tiny little snark of mine. Lynn , in all the pics I have seen of her, she is exquisitely dressed.. I think her mother made her garments, and taught Lynn , and then she herself made her clothing. I am an amateur in comparison with the stuff Lynn turned out, and then she went on to make not only her own clothes , but her daughters dresses and sunsuits, shorts, coats, the whole collection of outfits 2 little girls would require.

My sister sews to professional standards, you could wear her stuff inside out, silk lined pure wool coats, fabulous suits, and so on, I bumble along in her slipstream, nothing near as first class...

Dressing for each occasion , in quite personally defined clothing seemed to be a hall mark of Lynns.. and I recall a neighbor who commented on the podcast, cant remember which episode, with tremendous admiration on Lynn's talent in this, and her output, which was commendable. And that she, and then her daughters were always, always perfectly outfitted, down to the smallest detail.

I don't think Lynn would leave home without a large suitcase of her particular clobber , an outfit for occasions not yet determined. I know I don't, and my sister would rather poke her own eyes out than leave home without a complete outfit in the back seat, just in case. Has always done so, and these outfits are of the same quality as the one she bungs on first.

But Chris would not think of this, at all. No clue as to Lynn's thinking patterns.
 
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Former Sydney teacher Chris Dawson pleads not guilty to murder of wife Lynette

By Jamie McKinnell
1 hour ago
BB1268QL.img

Former Sydney teacher Chris Dawson has pleaded not guilty to his wife Lynette's murder in the Supreme Court.
...
In February, the former Newtown Jets rugby league player faced a four-day committal hearing where four witnesses gave evidence in court that they saw Ms Dawson after she vanished.

One of the witnesses was Mr Dawson's brother-in-law, Ross Hutcheon, who said he saw Ms Dawson at a bus stop near a hospital in Gladesville about three-to-six months after she went missing.

Mr Dawson's trial has been estimated to take place late this year.
...
 

Former Sydney teacher Chris Dawson pleads not guilty to murder of wife Lynette

By Jamie McKinnell
1 hour ago
BB1268QL.img

Former Sydney teacher Chris Dawson has pleaded not guilty to his wife Lynette's murder in the Supreme Court.
...
In February, the former Newtown Jets rugby league player faced a four-day committal hearing where four witnesses gave evidence in court that they saw Ms Dawson after she vanished.

One of the witnesses was Mr Dawson's brother-in-law, Ross Hutcheon, who said he saw Ms Dawson at a bus stop near a hospital in Gladesville about three-to-six months after she went missing.

Mr Dawson's trial has been estimated to take place late this year.
...
From what I could see on the news report, he wasn't too careful with social distancing.
 
From the Australian
NoCookies | The Australian

Accused wife-killer Chris Dawson’s legal advisers have indicated they will use The Australian’s award-winning podcast The Teacher’s Pet in an attempt to prevent their client having to stand trial for murder.

Dawson, a former Sydney teacher who denies the 1982 murder of his wife Lynette, will put all transcripts of the podcast and some of the sound recordings before the NSW Supreme Court as part of his bid to have the case thrown out.
 
The matter will be mentioned in court next Wednesday and the application is likely to be the subject of a two-week hearing later in the year.

The court heard Dawson's push for a stay of proceedings will rely on several witnesses who appeared at a committal hearing in February.

During that hearing, four witnesses testified they had seen Ms Dawson in the months and years since she disappeared.

Dawson pushes to avoid wife murder trial
(Published 3 April 2020)
 
From the Australian
NoCookies | The Australian

Accused wife-killer Chris Dawson’s legal advisers have indicated they will use The Australian’s award-winning podcast The Teacher’s Pet in an attempt to prevent their client having to stand trial for murder.

Dawson, a former Sydney teacher who denies the 1982 murder of his wife Lynette, will put all transcripts of the podcast and some of the sound recordings before the NSW Supreme Court as part of his bid to have the case thrown out.

No surprise there.
 
Yes, looks like it may be the trial. With a two-week schedule.
Thanks for posting. This matter has been quiet for a long time - likely due to sub judice. imo
I was wondering that myself and checked the site. There is a trial that you can search on. I know with Claremont Serial Killer trial they had pre-trial hearings. For Claremont it was about evidence the judge would accept. With the profile of this case, there may be a decision if this is going to be a jury trial or judge only.
 
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