Cold case podcast led to arrest
An Australian whose life was laid bare in a popular crime mystery podcast about the disappearance of his wife nearly 40 years ago was charged with murder yesterday.
Chris Dawson, 70, a former first grade rugby league player, is accused of the murder of his wife Lynette, authorities said.
The body of the mother of two, who went missing in Sydney’s northern beaches in 1982, has never been found.
Dawson denies killing his wife and says she left home to have some time to herself.
The cold case is the subject of
a podcast which details a troubled marriage leading up to the disappearance and examines the shortcomings of the police response.
It was listened to by some 27 million people globally, and appears to have helped to spur the police into action.
Dawson was arrested before 8am on Wednesday at a small apartment attached to his daughter’s home in Queensland’s Gold Coast. Police said he was ‘‘calm and a little taken aback’’.
He was extradited to Sydney, where he was charged with the murder.
Lynette Dawson, who worked as a nurse, was aged 33 when she vanished.
Two days after her disappearance, Chris Dawson’s 16-year-old lover, Joanne Curtis, a former babysitter for the couple, moved into the house and apparently wore the missing woman’s jewellery and clothes.
Dawson did not report his wife missing for six weeks, and said that he thought she might have run away to join a religious cult.
Later, he told one of his daughters that her mother appeared to be in the audience of a 2006 episode of the BBC television show – a claim strongly disputed by her family.
Dawson and Curtis were married for six years and had a daughter before divorcing. She claimed he was violent and later assisted police with their inquiries and even suggested that they search around the home’s swimming pool for a body.
During a search in 2000, police found a cardigan of Dawson’s that had cuts consistent with a stabbing.
Despite these various clues, and a coroner’s finding that Dawson should be charged with murder, police made no move to arrest him.
The case was reopened in 2015 and was taken up by the podcast, produced by which then made almost daily headlines in Australia.