Chris Dawson: All the lies and bizarre theories of the Teacher’s Pet murder trial

Of all the liars, tall stories and just plain bizarre theories spun out during the Chris Dawson murder trial before its stunning conclusion, the biggest liar was the murderer himself.

Christopher Michael Dawson had been at it for 40 years since murdering his wife Lynette and dumping her body on a warm January weekend before motoring up the coast to grab back his schoolgirl lover.

On judgment day, Justice Ian Harrison gave it to the 74-year-old with both barrels of his legal arsenal, listing all the lies to a court room packed with the people Dawson had told them to.

The family and supporters of Lynette Joy Dawson nee Simms – who also represented the most cruelly duped of all, the murdered woman’s late mother Helena – could finally hear uttered out loud what they had long known.

As Justice Harrison followed this up with a pronouncement of Dawson’s guilt for murder, up the back of the court, the killer’s relatives gasped, one wept and an identical twin swore and stormed from the room.

But in his spoken verdict and the 238 page written judgment now released, Judge Harrison did not only pick apart the murderer’s lies, he exposed the lack of truth, or improbability of stories from both sides of the case.

These are the bizarre stories, fabrications and conspiracy theories woven into the Lynette Dawson case over 40 years of deception by an unfaithful, duplicitous and controlling man.  

Lynette Dawson (above with Chris) had no reason to leave her home despite his infidelity and Dawson’s story of her running off to a cult was one of the more improbable tales to be spun

The cubby house man and the religious cult

Before she was murdered, Lynette Dawson was concerned about a cubby house she wanted for her daughters for Christmas Day. Lyn, who was subjected to financial control by her cheating husband Chris, who was planning to run off with schoolgirl JC, ‘wasn’t sure about how much money she had in order to pay for it. 

In his January, 1991 police interview it is unclear if Dawson is referring to a cubby house builder when he airs his favourite lie about Lyn, who was not all religious, about running off to join a sect after being lured in by a shed guy.    

Before she was murdered Lyn Dawson had tried to scrape together money to get a cubby house for her daughters at Bayview (above), but her lying husband later claimed a ‘shed guy’ had lured her away to a religious sect

Lyn was already dead when Chris was cruelly tricking her mother into believing that the devoted mother-of-two was still phoning him and had just abandoned her family

‘We … had some guy erecting a shed or something who was tied up to some religious sect who um, Lyn sought some um, comfort from him so far as he was asking her come along to the meetings and getting her literature and all,’ Dawson said in his first, and only, interview with detectives.

The story was bounced around  for years among hapless Dawson relatives, with Lyn  having run off with a cult, or a sect located, variously, in the Blue Mountains, on the Central Coast or at a hippy commune somewhere in Byron Bay.

Presumably, as lies tend to be, the fanciful story was hard to keep straight and Dawson varied it according to the latest reports about cults, or maybe it was the brain injury from playing football that his defence counsel has cited?

Phone calls from the dead

 The first indication a guilty verdict was coming was Justice Harrison pronouncing that Chris Dawson’s first phone call from Lyn after she had ‘gone away’ was a lie.

This call was received at the Northbridge Baths on the afternoon of Saturday, January 9.

Helena Simms recalled Chris looking upset and agitated as he told her ‘there was an STD phone call from Lyn’ who said ‘she needed time away … and she’d ring me in a few days’ time after she’d had time to sort things out’.

A bewildered Helena was subsequently fooled again and again in the most inhumane way by her charming, heartless son-in-law, promising her what she longed for most, a call from her daughter.

No person was more cruelly duped by the heartless charmer than his mother-in-law, Helena Simms (above, left, with Lyn on her wedding day) who was promising Lyn would call even as he was dumping her daughter’s body 

The charming psychopath (above with Lyn and Helena on Mother’s Day 1975) had everyone fooled, enabling him 40 years of freedom until his conviction for murder this week

Lyn had probably been dead for more than 12 hours when Dawson told her this first phone call lie, but there would be more in the weeks to come.

As Helena’s diary so poignantly records, possibly written on the same day Dawson was dumping her daughter’s body: ‘Sunday 10th: Lyn contacted Chris again saying to let Barbara at Warriewood Child Minding Centre know she would be off a week owing to illness. Chris reminded her to ring me + said she would contact Chris + myself on Wednesday 13th.

By her next diary entry on the subject, Chris Dawson had disposed off Lyn’s body, picked up schoolgirl JC, and installed her in Lyn’s marital bed in a room stuffed with the murdered women’s clothing, jewellery, wedding rings and personal items.

Helena wrote: ‘Friday 15th: I had a call from Chris around tea time saying he had heard from Lyn. He couldn’t recall if there had been ‘PIPS’ but she said she was NORTH and needed more time.’

Justice Harrison said he was satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Dawson’s reported telephone calls from Lynette after January 9, 1982, all ‘are lies’. 

Whether Dawson enjoyed persecuting his mother-in-law in a sadistic way as well as being desperate to keep Lyn’s murder a secret is unclear.

But his merciless manipulation of Helena Simms served to keep her searching like ‘a terrier’ for the daughter she called ‘my Lyn’, to the grave. 

The judge ruled that all Dawson’s tales of phone calls from Lyn were lies and that the first had been made at Northbridge Baths (pictured in a police photo) where he pretended the women he’d just murdered had called him

The hitman theories and the man in black 

 A self-confessed arsonist, thief fraudster and liar, Robert Silkman emerged as a star witness in the murder trial with a story about Chris Dawson and a hitman.

Silkman first appeared by video link from his home in a darkened room seated below an Andy Warhol print of Jacki Kennedy Onassis. 

A man with several aliases, Silkman had played rugby league for the Newtown Jets Chris and Paul Dawson and in 1975, flew to the Gold Coast for an end-of-season trip. 

He sensationally testified that during the return flight, Chris Dawson approached him and said, ‘Silky, do you know anyone who could get rid of my wife?’

Convicted fraudster Robert Silkman’s (above) story about a hitman was deemed to be untrue by the judge who believed that the petty crook had conflated the babysitter’s story

Silkman, who had briefly met gangster Neddy Smith through his brother-in-law, Jets player and later heroin smuggler Paul Hayward,  asked if Dawson meant ‘for good’.

Dawson’s response was that was the case, or so Silkman said.

But Justice Harrison did not believe him, finding that in 1975 it was ‘entirely improbable’ Chris Dawson was at that stage planning to murder Lyn and that Silkman’s ‘evidence cannot be believed’

‘Mr Silkman has a history of fraud. His version of what is said to have occurred does not reach the police until after the Teacher’s Pet podcast becomes public.

‘I am not prepared to accept that Mr Silkman’s references to a hitman were not inspired by a much later publication of JC’s version of events in a similar vein.’ 

His Honour did not believe the hitman story related by the babysitter JC  but he said her testimony which came under heavy attack by Dawson’s lawyer Pauline David was truthful

JC, the schoolgirl babysitter who became Chris Dawson’s second wife two years after he had murdered his first, also told police he had planned to hire a hitman to kill Lyn.

Her story was that while in her school uniform, they had driven to a location, possibly a hotel, and he had told her that he ‘went inside to get a hitman to kill Lyn, but then I decided I couldn’t do it because innocent people would be killed, would be hurt’.

Justice Harrison concluded he was ‘not able to be satisfied that any such conversation occurred’, but said that ‘JC’s evidence is otherwise truthful and reliable (despite) a sustained attack upon JC’s credibility … mounted on Mr Dawson’s behalf.’

The trial also heard that Chris Dawson, who was miserly with money not only in his first marriage, but also in his second to JC, would not have wanted to spend money on killing his wife, so did it himself. 

 The sightings 

Sightings of murdered persons are not uncommon and defence lawyers seeking to cast doubt and claim the alleged victim is merely missing seize upon them.

Most of the ‘sightings’ of Lynette Dawson which became part of the fabric of the case over decades are innocent enough.

Elva McBay was 101 years old when she testified at a pre-trial hearing about seeing  Lynette Dawson run across Macquarie Street, Sydney  in 1983 ahead of the royal motorcade ferrying Prince Charles and Princess Diana on tour.

Elva McBay (above aged 101 after testifying at a pre-trial hearing in 2020) was lucid but her sighitng of Lynetta during Princes Diana’s 1983 tour was fleeting and unreliable

Paul Cooper (above) claimed he had met Lynette, a woman he had never seen before or since,  having a drink at the Warner’s Bay Hotel in 1982 but did not come forward until 2018 

A lifelong Newtown Jets supporter, Mrs McBay knew the Dawson twins and their families well, and despite her age was ‘lucid’, but His Honour ruled the glimpse was fleeting, ‘the evidence was frail’ and by his judgment Lyn was already dead.

The accused’s only defence witness was Paul Cooper, a man who had both taken drugs and been to jail who contacted Chris Dawson’s lawyer in 2018 with news of a ‘sighting’ 36 years earlier.

Mr Cooper’s story was in he saw Lynette Dawson sitting alone at a table in the Warner’s Bay Hotel, near Lake Macquarie, ‘sometime in 1982’. 

‘After a few drinks … she told me she had left her husband. The fact she was also leaving her kids was nothing compared to the hate she had for her husband.

‘If I thought this man (Chris Dawson) did this I would not waste my time. My father killed my mother and I hate pricks that beat there [sic] wife’s [sic].’

Justice Harrison concluded that ‘Mr Cooper’s evidence is completely unreliable’. 

A family lie

But one of the sightings took on a more sinister air, when His Honour concluded that it had been a lie fabricated by one of the accused’s relatives. 

Ross Hutcheon was married to the sister of the accused, Lynette Hutcheon, and claimed he had seen Lynette Dawson just months after she vanished, near Gladesville Hospital in Sydney.

Ross Hutcheon did not come forward with this information until 2018, after Chris Dawson’s arrest, when he sent an email to Paul Dawson and his wife, Marilyn, and the accused’s elder solicitor brother, Peter.

Ross Hutcheon (above, centre, being interviewed by police) was Chris Dawson’s brother-in-law who came forward in 2018 after the arrest to say he’d seen Lyn montsh after she vanished, a claim the judge found was a ‘fabrication’

After Chris Dawson (depicted above this week after his incarceration) had been charged with murder in 2018, his brother-in-law Ross Hutcheon came forward with a fabricated sighting on Lyn

 Mr Hutcheon was dead by the time Chris Dawson went to trial, but claimed in an earlier interview that he had told police back in 1999, although there was no record of it and his wife Lynette Hutcheon supported that claim at trial.

Justice Harrison found this week that ‘I do not accept Mr Hutcheon … knew his sister-in-law, a mother of two young children, had left the home and that he refrained from telling Mr Dawson that he had seen her because he thought she wanted to be left alone in peace and quiet and that he did not want … to “upset the boat”.

‘I appreciate and am mindful of the fact that Mr Hutcheon is dead, and so is unable to defend himself.

‘However, the judicial process is not always gentle or polite. I am satisfied that Mr Hutcheon’s version of sighting Lynette Dawson at Gladesville is a fabrication.’

 ‘His police interview was entirely favourable to Mr Dawson. He gave evidence on 13 February 2020 at the committal hearing as well. He remained adamant that he saw Lynette Dawson in Gladesville. That evidence is unlikely to have been the subject of challenge by Mr Dawson in these proceedings. ‘

 The women and the bruises

Several women testified at the trial they had seen bruises on Lynette Dawson’s arms, legs and around her neck.

The judge concluded that there was no evidence that Chris Dawson left those bruises there, and he also discounted two purported tales of violence.

Work colleagues Anna Grantham and Annette Leary had accounts of different tales told to them by Lyn, which His Honour found could not be the case because Lyn Dawson was not a woman who lifted the lid on the husband she put on a pedestal.

Anna Grantham said Lyn had revealed to her that Chris had pushed her face into the mud by the swimming pool and held it down as she gasped long enough to have possibly killed her.

Anna Grantham said Lyn had revealed to her that Chris had pushed her face into the mud by the swimming pool and held it down as she gasped long enough to have possibly killed her.

Her story was ‘unreliabale’. Co-worker Annette Leary said on her last day alive Lyn had related how she and Chris had been in a lift en route to marriage counselling when he grasped her throat.

Ms Leary said Chris had told Lyn ‘I am only doing this once. If it doesn’t work, I’m getting rid of you’, and that Lyn had bruises on her neck.

Justice Harrison didn’t believe bruises could have formed that quickly, and that Ms Leary had been influenced by the Teacher’s Pet podcast and deemed her story ‘unlikely’.

 He did believe the account of neighbour Julie Andrew who described seeing Lyn ‘backed up against the trampoline by Chris’ who was ‘towering over her and he had at least one hand on her shoulder … screaming at her and she was crying’.

 The judge found that despite Dawson’s defence barrister’s  ‘thorough and comprehensive attack upon her, I believe that Ms Andrew’s evidence concerning what she saw and heard of the trampoline incident is true. 

‘I reject Mr Dawson’s challenge to her evidence upon the basis that it is either untruthful or unreliable.’ 

Chris Dawson pretended he missed his wife after he murdered her and cried himself to sleep, but in reality he had disposed of her to pursue the schoolgirl he had groomed, JC

Chris Dawson ‘missed his wife’ and hoped she would return

Chris Dawson told the police in 1991 that there were ‘nights that [he] lay awake crying [his] heart out hoping for some contact from Lyn’.

On 27 March 1982 he paid for a newspaper advertisement which said, ‘Lyn I love you, we all miss you. Please ring. We want you home. Chris’.

 The Crown submitted that this advertisement was part of Mr Dawson’s ongoing deceptive attempts to portray himself as a deserted husband who was longing to find his wife and welcome her back.

In fact, the judge found, this was another ruse to fool everyone and maintain the lie that Lyn had voluntarily left her home, and left everything behind she held dear. 

Chris Dawson told the police in 1991 that there were ‘nights that [he] lay awake crying [his] heart out hoping for some contact from Lyn’. It was a lie

Lynette would not have left her husband, her children and everything behind the judge said because despite tensions over JC, Lynette Dawson ‘was at least physically and materially secure’

 Lyn left home of her own free will

Justice Harrison could find no reason for Lynette Dawson to have wanted to leave her home at the time she vanished, even notwithstanding her husband’s unfaithfulness with the schoolgirl, JC.

‘Despite the tensions that were in play in the Dawson household in the weeks leading up to 8 January 1982, Lynette Dawson was at least physically and materially secure,’ he said.

‘Apart from her emotional burden, in the sense of her avowed distress and concern at the state of her marriage, she had all of the so-called necessities of life. 

‘The contention that Lynette Dawson would rationally decide in those circumstances to propel herself into a life of anonymity in a figurative state of nakedness, without it seems even a change of underwear, is … so unlikely and so improbable as to be capable of rejection out of hand.’  

The judge said that desperate to unburden himself of the impediment of a wife he no longer loved, Chris murdered her to make way for JC who he married (above) two years later

 Lyn was in New Zealand

Dawson told the police in 1991 that he had been told that Lyn Dawson was in New Zealand, and that the person who said that was also a policeman.

Asked if he ‘ever had any further contact with her or have you located her’, Dawson replied  that ‘Ian Kennedy disclosed to me several years ago at ah, old school reunion that um, he had heard a whisper that she was in New Zealand’.

The legendary former detective, Ian ‘Speed’ Kennedy, whose cases included locking up the five killers of nurse Anita Cobby, appeared at trial to testify.

Ian ‘Speed ‘ Kennedy (above with Anita Cobby killer Michael Murdoch at the scene of the nurse’s murder) testified that he hadn’t told Dawson Lyn was in New Zealand and the judge entirely accepted his evidence

Despite Chris Dawson’s barrister Pauline David suggesting to him he didn’t remember telling the New Zealand story because he had been drunk at the reunion, Mr Kennedy remained firm.

The unspoken suggestion was that Chris Dawson would remember because he is a lifelong teetotaller, who drank coca cola while he mixed Lynette stupefying drinks.

The drinks made by the since-convicted wife murderer served to knock Lynette out, so that Chris could have sex with their babysitter while his wife snored on the sofa.

 Justice Harrison said of Speed’s evidence, ‘I accept without reservation the evidence given by Mr Kennedy. It follows that what Mr Dawson told the police in 1991 is a lie.’