LYN DAWSON COLD CASE
As police excavated a multi-million Sydney home family and friends hoped it would finally solve a 36-year-old mystery
New details uncovered at last
The mounds of earth were carefully inspected by the bucket-load. Officers delved into the dark brown dirt with gloved hands, while drilling machinery, pick axes and shovels were used to ensure no stone was left unturned.
The police were on a mission to find remains – human remains – or any kind of clue that might finally lead to them solving a baffling 36-year mystery. On Jan. 9, 1982, Lynette Dawson, a 33-year-old wife and mother of two little girls, went missing and she has never been seen since.
Her family who were shocked by Lyn’s disappearance have since come to believe she was murdered, and suspicion about her final resting place has long hung over the $2.4 million home on Sydney’s northern beaches that she formerly shared with her husband – and suspect in the case – Chris Dawson. That house became a hive of activity on Sept. 12 as police moved in to commence a fresh search. The dig – the second at the property, which now has new owners – came after an Australian podcast, The Teacher’s Pet, sparked renewed public and media interest in the nearly four-decade-old case.
The podcast unearthed new evidence and witnesses in the cold case, which has left many wondering if Lyn’s former husband, now in his seventies, might have escaped justice and be comfortably living out his retirement in Queensland when he should instead be in a prison cell. Chris has steadfastly maintained
his innocence, saying that his wife and the mother of his children, Shanelle, then 4, and Sherryn, 2, simply ran away.
But the evidence increasingly seems to point to foul play and two inquests into Lyn’s disappearance have cited she was killed by a “known person” – most likely her husband. He has never been charged due to a lack of evidence and, most notably, the lack of a body. But according to Detective Superintendent Scott Cook, Commander of the NSW Homicide Squad, a possible conviction doesn’t depend on a body being found at the Bayview home.
“We’re here for approximately five days, we anticipate – perhaps more, depending on weather. We’re searching a number of areas around the property,” he told media as the forensic teams moved in. After six days of searching, five skips had been filled with excavated material from around Lyn’s former home and a tow truck was brought in to remove them.
All the while, the missing woman’s family remained cautious. “I think we’re not game to get too hopeful because we’ve been in a similar position before and nothing’s come of it. But you know, it is there under the surface,” Renee Simms, Lyn’s niece, told Today.
“I’m just hopeful there will be some resolve for the family,” Michelle Walsh a former student of Chris, who was a PE teacher at the local Cromer High School, told WHO.
It was at this school where the story of
The Teacher’s Pet begins. Chris, a former rugby league player who was described as a “rock star” by former students, had a fondness for 16-year-old Joanne Curtis. Singling her out, Chris changed the roll to ensure she would be in his year 11 class.
In turn, the teenager, who came from a troubled home, was happy to be taken under her older teacher’s wing and even started babysitting his two young girls. Their relationship quickly developed. The pair were soon having sex and other students remember how Joanne would often be found sitting on Dawson’s lap in his office.
It became common knowledge to everyone except Lyn, and friends say
“We’re not game to get too hopeful” —Renee Simms
she was blind to it even after Chris moved his schoolgirl lover into the family home.
There were other issues at play, too. Lyn’s colleagues at a childcare centre reported seeing bruises on her arms and another acquaintance, Lorraine Watson, remembers Lyn telling her, she was “married to a very violent man.”
It’s only in recent months that an eyewitness to some of this violence has come forward. “I actually saw him [Chris Dawson] hit her, once with a tea towel and once as a shove, on two separate occasions,” former student and babysitter Bev Mcnally revealed on The Teacher’s Pet podcast. “Basically, he was OCD and if there was anything out of place it would throw him, you know, from his wardrobe to the girls’ room. Everything had to be perfect, especially his clothes.”
It was information Mcnally had harboured for nearly 37 years not realising the significance. She claims that when she tried to make a report to police after Lyn’s disappearance, they never called her back.
It was around Christmas 1981 that things came to a head. Chris had become infatuated with Joanne and, in evidence she later gave to police, she says he had put down a deposit on a flat for them in nearby Manly. He was thinking about leaving his wife.
Far more shockingly, Joanne alleges that towards the end of 1981 Chris drove with her in the car to a pub or club, and tried to hire a hitman to kill Lyn.
That plan seemingly went by the wayside and instead Chris and Joanne left Sydney together in December to start a new life in Queensland. According to a police statement by Lyn’s mother, Helena Simms, Chris left Lyn a goodbye note on Dec. 22 asking her “not to paint too black a picture of him to the children.” Even this was not the end however and he returned on Boxing Day, supposedly to make a go of things again.
Weeks later, Lyn disappeared. Strangely, she didn’t take anything with her and, most important, say her family and friends, she left her two much-adored children behind. Within two days of his wife’s disappearance, Chris had moved Joanne Curtis into the family home and soon asked his daughters to start calling her mum. It was six weeks later, on Feb. 18, that Chris reported Lyn missing to police and he didn’t make a full statement until August 1982, seven months on.
“He makes out he was a distraught husband. He didn’t care,” Lyn’s sister Pat Jenkins said on The Teacher’s Pet. “He was living his life and that was the important thing to him … He had Joanne there. He was right, he was set. It was what he wanted and what he got.”
Chris and Joanne married in 1984. After selling the Bayview house, the couple moved to Queensland with his daughters in 1985 to start a new life. They also had a daughter together. Lyn’s disappearance remained a missing persons case and even when the evidence stacking up was sufficient for two coronial inquests to suggest Lyn had been killed, Chris was never charged.
Former NSW Director of Public Prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery, QC, told the ABC that the evidence simply wasn’t strong enough. “Without a body, without knowing first of all whether, in fact, she is dead, without knowing, secondly, if she is dead, how she died, it’s very hard to mount a case of a reasonable prospect of conviction just on motive and the undefined existence of means and opportunity. That makes it very weak,” he said.
However, with the raft of new evidence and witnesses coming forward in following the renewed media attention, the office of the director of public prosecutions (ODPP) is now reviewing the case.
“Without a body ... it’s very hard to mount a case” —Nicholas Cowdery QC
The dig at the Dawson’s former Bayview home was welcome news to Lyn’s longcampaigning family and friends and even to Chris and Lyn’s oldest daughter, Shanelle, who does not seem convinced of her father’s innocence. In a recent interview with 60 Minutes she admitted, “It’s not looking good” for her father. Shanelle was just 4 years old when her mother disappeared, to be replaced by her father’s teenage lover. Her mum was rarely spoken of again and, at 5, she told her grandmother that Lyn had been a “pretend mother”. Their real mother was now Joanne.
Unlike her sister, Sherryn, who has spoken of the case becoming a “witch hunt on my dad,” Shanelle is ready to ask questions and hopes the answers to her mother’s disappearance are within reach. “I feel really excited because I’d kind of given up hope,’’ she said.
Chris is less interested in talking about the case. In a fiery exchange with television reporters he and his twin brother, Paul, refused to comment other than saying simply that Lyn had “left” and he welcomed the ODPP’S decision to review the case once again.
Joanne has also remained silent in recent months. She and Chris split in the early 1990s and she returned to Sydney reportedly terrified and convinced of his guilt. “She genuinely believed he killed Lyn, there’s no doubt about it,” Michelle Walsh, a friend of Joanne, told A Current Affair.
While officers began packing up the excavation site on Monday Sept. 17, with police conceding no remains had been found during the dig, the latest developments at least give hope for Lyn’s family that the 36-year-old mystery is a step closer to being solved.
“Not the result we had hoped for – such a strange thing to hope you can find your aunt’s body,” Lyn’s nephew, David Jenkins posted on his Facebook page. Lyn’s brother, Greg Simms said the case did not hinge on finding Lyn’s remains. “It didn’t depend on this. If they had found Lyn, that was the bonus,” Simms told The Australian. “It’s up to the DPP to make their decision now.”