TEACHER’S PET: NEW EVIDENCE
NEARLY 40 YEARS AFTER LYNETTE DAWSON VANISHED, A PODCAST IS HELPING UNCOVER THE TRUTH
From the outside, Lynette Dawson appeared to be the perfect Australian housewife: a pretty blonde with a handsome husband and two adored little girls. But after she vanished without a trace in 1982, friends and family began questioning whether she’d been the victim of foul play – and if her husband Chris was the culprit.
Despite various police investigations over the years and coronial rulings that she was most likely murdered, it’s only now with the release of the podcast The Teacher’s Pet that pressure is building to bring Chris to justice.
Sydney’s Northern Beaches in the early 1980s – just like today – was an idyllic place to build a home and raise a young family. But 33-year-old Lynette’s Australian dream was cut short when she appeared to walk out on her life, for no apparent reason, in January 1982.
In the days and years that followed, Chris would claim that Lynette was with friends or had run off to join a religious group.
They had experienced problems in their marriage and he later told police that Lynette rang him days after her disappearance to say she needed some time away and would return when she felt happy.
But despite his claims, there are many people who were close to Lynette and who insist she would never have voluntarily left without her two beloved daughters, who were the centre of her world.
‘I just want justice for her and her family. And I’d love her little girls to know she didn’t leave them,’ Lynette’s neighbour and friend Julie Andrews says.
‘She never walked away from them. She was taken away from them. By the person who was supposed to protect her.’
Lynette’s eldest daughter, Shanelle, agrees, admitting in the podcast that after years of wondering why her mum left – and thinking she might still be alive – she now hopes to find some answers.
‘I just don’t believe for a moment that she left us voluntarily and then stayed away all of this time,’ she says.
Amazingly, Chris took six weeks to report Lynette missing in 1982. Police – who the podcast notes were quite possibly in awe of Chris, who was a locally famous rugby league player – took the charismatic father’s word that Lynette’s vanishing was a simple missing persons case.
As the years went on, her family and friends began to put pressure on the police to reopen the case and investigate further. In 2001 and 2003, two separate coroners found that Lynette was likely murdered by Chris.
Still, the Department of Public Prosecutions chose not to prosecute, saying there wasn’t enough evidence. The footy star turned high school sports teacher, who’s since moved to Queensland, has always strongly denied having anything to do with his first wife’s sudden disappearance.
However, bizarrely and hardly befitting a man whose wife had just left him, two days after Lynette vanished Chris moved his 16-year-old girlfriend – who had been his student at Cromer High School just months before – into the family home.
Previously a babysitter to Lynette and Chris’ daughters, four-year-old Shanelle and two-year-old Sherryn, Joanne Curtis became their new mum and a year later, married Chris.
Shockingly, the podcast reveals a disturbing culture of male Northern Beaches teachers grooming their young students into sexual relationships. Last week, it was announced that the NSW police had established a sex crimes taskforce to investigate multiple historical allegations against teachers at three high schools.
Lynette’s friends and family members have talked in detail about how they suspected Chris used coercive control and was violent towards his first wife. Friends of Joanne also confirm that, years later, his abusive behaviour towards the teenager was similar.
The compelling evidence presented by investigative journalist Hedley Thomas in the podcast certainly suggests that Chris had something to do with Lynette’s death. A whole range of witnesses are interviewed, from co-workers who saw bruises on Lynette’s body to friends who saw Joanne swimming naked in the family’s pool before Lynette’s disappearance. Builders reveal how they suspect certain parts of the Dawsons’ garden were freshly dug and hid a body.
While Police Commissioner Mick Fuller recently admitted the NSW force had ‘dropped the ball’ and issued a formal apology to Lynette’s family, the DPP still hasn’t commented on whether it will reopen the case. But Lynette’s family are still hopeful.
‘The momentum is really building and the public support is just overwhelming,’ Merilyn Simms, Lynette’s sister-in-law, said recently.
‘We feel this is our last chance to find Lyn and bring justice for her [two] girls.’