Chris Dawson accused of choking babysitter’s co-worker who asked her on a date

 A trolley boy who worked at Coles with the schoolgirl who replaced Chris Dawson’s missing wife has told how the accused choked and threatened him to ‘stay away from her’.

The Dawson murder trail heard how the then 16-year-old had asked JC out of several dates, to the movies and to Collaroy Plateau disco.

He said JC, who became the Dawsons’ babysitter and later Chris Dawson’s second wife after the disappearance of Lynette, was ‘very attractive’ and he was keen to go out with her.

Now 58, PS said he was a ‘very skinny, weedy’ teenager who had had talked and flirted with JC at Dee Why Coles.

But the court heard that he never asked her out again after a frightening encounter with Dawson in about 1980.

PS told the murder trial on Monday he was in the dimly lit car park beneath Coles collecting shopping trolleys when he heard a voice say something like ‘hey you’ and turned around to see a ‘a very large man coming towards me’.

He said he had been taught at school by Chris Dawson’s twin Paul Dawson, but that he knew the brothers through his rugby league football interests.   

He said both men were ‘very big … Chesty Bond type guys’ and that Chris Dawson had approached him and ‘got very close’ .

‘He shoved me against the concrete ramp, backed me into that … and held me against that structure.

 ‘(He said) “I just want you to stay away from her, don’t go near her” or words to that effect.

‘The next thing that occurred was me saying I don’t know what you are talking about. I was very scared, I was 16 and very small.  

A teenager who worked at Coles with schoolgirl JC who was ‘very attractive’ said he asked her out but was the threatened in the car park by Chris who along with his twin Paul Dawson (above in a jeans ad) were ‘very big …. Chesty Bond types’

 (I said) “I don’t know what you are talking about. He said (JC’s name).

‘He retreated back, I got the trolleys and went back up the ramp. I was probably in shock.’

Asked if he ever asked JC  out on a date after that, PS replied, ‘of course not, I was sensible, I was scared’.   

Also on Monday NSW Supreme Court Justice Ian Harrison released a 1991 police interview with Chris Dawson in which he made claims about receiving phone calls from his missing wife Lyn in the weeks after she was last seen, around January 9, 1982.

An old friend of Lynette Dawson told the trial she had run into her at a shopping centre and was introduced to Chris Dawson at a time when Lynette was hiding a ‘huge horrible black eye’ behind sunglasses. 

A previous babysitter has described how Chris Dawson would become enraged or violent if his clothes weren’t perfectly ironed, if a glass was dirty and once swung Lynette ‘like  a rag doll’ when their daughter cried

 The friend, Judith Solomon, said the bruise ‘was going green and across the bridge of her nose into the other eye, it was really, really bad’.  

Ms Solomon – who had worked with Lynette at a bank in the mid-1960s before either woman was married – the chance encounter happened years later, at Warringah Mall, at Brookvale on Sydney’s Northern beaches.

Ms Solomon said she didn’t at first recognise Lynette, who was wearing sunglasses and had her hair cut short, whereas previously it had been long.

‘She said “hello Judy” and I said “who are you”,’ Ms Solomon said.

‘She took took her sunglasses off and said “I’m Lyn Simms, remember me?” and introduced me to (Chris Dawson) as “my husband”.

‘ (I was) shocked by what I saw. I could see a a huge horrible black eye … I saw her husband pull her arm and look at her … dragged on her arm with a jerk.  

Coles worker PS said when he asked out fellow Coles worker JC to the movies or a disco, he was cornered and shoved against the trolley ramp and told to ‘stay away from her’

 ‘I tried to make it not so horrible, I said “I had a black eye once too” and we had a laugh about it. I said “I ran into a door” and she said she ran into a doorway.

‘We talked, we exchanged phone numbers. We cuddled. She did whisper something in my ear, but I did not know what it was.

‘I looked around. I was  feeling pretty scared at the time. I felt uneasy. I saw him pull her arm and say “what did you do that for?”   

 Ms Solomon said two weeks later she went to Lynette’s Bayview house for an hour long visit during which she got the impression Lynette was ‘scared of her husband’.

‘She actually said to me I’d like you to go soon because my husband won’t like it if there’s someone here, he won’t be very happy.’

Under cross-examination by Pauline David, for Chris Dawson, Ms Solomon described the shopping centre meeting with Lynette Dawson as ‘a sinister encounter’ and agreed she ‘got that feeling’ that Mrs Dawson was scared of her husband.

Ms David also questioned Ms Solomon about ‘a spiritual connection’ she felt with Lynette Dawson when they discussed doing ‘astral travelling … flying at night’. 

Chris Dawson (above with his twin Paul and their families on the beach in the 1970s had his clothes ‘always pristine in neat rows, colour-coded and typed’ but when he found an item ‘wasn’t perfectly ironed’ dumped clothes on the bed and told Lyn to do it again

A teacher who knew the Dawsons found it ‘very unusual’ in the 1970s how Lynette had an ‘absolute adoration for her husband’ as did his twin brother’s wife Marilyn

 Ms David: ‘You fly at night  in your sleep?’

Ms Solomon said she did and had done so at Waverley (in Sydney’s eastern suburbs) and that ‘when you are doing it you can actually see below you’ and had suggested to Lynette the person below her might have been her. 

 In a recording of a 1991 police interview between Chris Dawson and two detectives, he is repeatedly asked about claims he made about getting phone calls from Lynette weeks after she vanished. 

The interview was conducted after Dawson’s former schoolgirl babysitter and second wife, JC, had left their marriage and made allegations to police about Lyn. 

 Detective Sergeant Paul Magyar asked Dawson about a conversation he had with Lynette’s mother, Helena Simms, about a phone call in which  he said he’d become angry about her no coming home. 

Chris Dawson told police in 1991 that he received phone calls from his missing wife Lyn (above together before their 1970 marriage) in the weeks after she vanished, never to be seen again

A former teenage colleague of JC (above at the current trial) said when they worked together at Coles he had asked her out but then was threatened in the store’s Dee Why car park by Chris Dawson who told him to ‘stay away from her’

In the alleged phone call, Chris had told Mrs Simms her missing daughter had said she wouldn’t come home ‘until she had made up her mind’ and Dawson said ‘how much bloody time do you need’.

Dawson had told his mother-in-law that Lynette’s response to this was ‘she wouldn’t come home at all if  … (he) spoke to her like that’.

Asked if he had mentioned other phone calls from Lyn, Dawson said  ‘I thought I was being reasonably patient each phone call … when Lyn rang me to say she needed time away.

‘I was there with, looking after two girls, I was saying take time … I was very anxious for Lyn to come back to us to work things out.’

The detectives asked Dawson asked about a claim made by JC that she drove with Dawson to a hotel and he later claimed he’d gone ‘to get a hitman to kill Lyn but I decided that I couldn’t do it because innocent people would be killed’

 He described the allegations as ‘complete and utter fabrication’.

 ‘The whole purpose of (JC) raising the allegations is to slur my character with an upcoming custody battle which has turned extremely nasty and bitter,’ Dawson said.

 ‘There’s lots of things which, it’s so very convenient for Joanne to sort of raise … that I was supposed to be mysteriously involved with Lyn’s disappearance.

‘(JC) also doesn’t know of nights that I lay awake crying my heart out hoping for some contact from Lyn. 

Chris Dawson’s murder trial has heard how his schoolgirl wife claimed she had seen him take money in a brown paper bag from his car glovebox to ‘pay’ someone to ‘kill Lyn’

 ‘The nights that I had spent extremely concerned about Lyn’s whereabouts both for my sake with the, especially for my girl’s sake and her mother’s sake 

 ‘When you’re living with somebody and you’re trying to sort of work on a relationship with them.

‘And you sort of try and appease her by you know, sort of saying ….. get her clothing out of sight ‘cause (JC) got sort of hostile with any sort of thing to do with Lyn.’ 

The court heard that Lynette Dawson had struggled to conceive because she suffered from a condition called salpingitis isthmica nodosa, a ‘nearly complete blockage of fallopian tube as it enters wall of womb’.

Mrs Dawson’s obstetrician said he had operated on Mrs Dawson and afterwards she ws able to have her two daughters.

Chris Dawson, 73, is standing trial in the NSW Supreme Court accused of killing his wife Lyn, who disappeared at the age of 33. 

The Crown claims that then-high school teacher Chris Dawson killed Lynette and disposed of her body because of his affair with JC, who was one of his PE students.

Dawson’s legal team has argued that while he may have failed his wife as a husband, he did not kill her.

The trial continues. 

The Dawson twins, Chris and Paul, were both first grade  footballers, teachers and held part-time jobs together as garbage collectors, models and personal trainers, jogged side-by-side on road runs and each fathered three daughters