A family broken by mum mystery
TEACHER’S PET SUBTERFUGE & SECRECY
JANET FIFE-YEOMANS, MARK MORRI & DERRICK KRUSCHE
THE haunting drawings of Shanelle and Sherryn show the sisters before their world and their beliefs were ripped apart.
The sketches were commissioned by their adoring mum Lyn Dawson just before Christmas 1981. Ms Dawson never got to pick them up.
When the artist went to the Dawsons’ Bayview home on Sydney’s northern beaches at the end of January 1982 to drop them off, she was told by Lyn’s husband, Chris Dawson, that his wife no longer lived there and she didn’t want them.
Drawn into one of the country’s most gripping murder mysteries, the sisters have since taken different sides.
The youngest Sherryn, two at the time of her mum’s disappearance, lives near her father on the Gold Coast and believes in his innocence, labelling the investigation a “witch hunt”. Shanelle, who was four, slowly came to the belief her mother would never have walked out on the family.
“I just don’t believe for a moment that she left us voluntarily and then stayed away all this time,” Shanelle has said.
It was revealed in 2013 that the sketch had become part of police evidence after it was discovered with the artist by Detective Sergeant Damian Loone.
Yesterday after their dad was charged with their mum’s murder, the girls’ uncle Greg Simms said he wanted to reach out to Sherryn and bring her back into the family. “We hope it might unite the sisters and we will get to know (Sherryn) again,” Mr Simms, Lyn Dawson’s brother, said.
While the sisters remain close despite their opposing views, Mr Simms said the family had had no communication with Sherryn since her grandmother’s funeral in 2001. “She said we had persecuted her father,” Mr Simms (pictured with his wife yesterday) said.
Lyn’s sister, Pat Jenkins, said the arrest will be hard on the girls but hopes the news will unite the family. “I’m sure for (Shanelle) it will be very mixed, for (Sherryn) – she will be devastated, (she) believes totally in her father,” Ms Jenkins said at her Seaforth home. “(Shanelle) wants the truth, she wants to honour her mother, she always talks about honouring her mother … the truth has to come out.”
But Ms Jenkins said she hoped the news would bring their family together as the case proceeds to the courts.
Their dad has been relentless in attempting to convince Shanelle her mother was alive. In 2011 he sent her a video he had recorded of Antiques Roadshow which he claimed showed Lyn in the background. He enclosed a long letter s h e promptly handed over to police investigating
Lyn’s disappearance and suspected murder. MARCH 26, 1970
Chris Dawson and Lynette Simms, both 21, marry after meeting as teens. 1979
Dawson begins working as a physical education teacher at Cromer High School on the northern beaches. 1980
Sixteen-year-old Joanne Curtis becomes Chris Dawson’s student after he alters the school roll and puts her in his class. She becomes babysitter to the Dawsons’ daughters at their Bayview home (right).
LATE 1980
Chris Dawson has sex with Joanne for the first time.
OCTOBER 1981
He invites Joanne to move into the family home.
JANUARY 8, 1982
Lyn’s mother says when she spoke to her daughter on the phone, she sounded “sozzled” and Lyn told her Dawson had made her “a lovely drink”. JANUARY 9, 1982
Dawson says he dropped Lyn at a bus stop at 7am. He later tells Lyn’s mum he received a call from his wife who told him she had gone away with friends and needed time to “sort things out”. He says Lyn (right) called him twice, and used her bank card. FEBRUARY 18, 1982 MID-1983