Disappearance of Lynette Dawson

Lynette Simms and Chris Dawson, both aged 16, met at a high-school function in 1965. They were married in 1970 at St Jude's Church, Randwick in Sydney[3][4] and later had two children.[5] Between 1972 and 1976, Chris and his identical twin brother Paul played professional rugby league football for the Newtown Jets. In 1975, the Dawson brothers and their spouses appeared on the ABC documentary program Chequerboard to discuss how the twins' close bond affected their lives.[6]

After ending their rugby careers, the Dawson brothers found employment as physical education teachers, with Chris working at Cromer High School near Sydney. Both Chris and Paul are alleged to have regularly engaged in illicit sexual behavior with female students at their respective schools; Chris is further alleged to have been one of six male teachers who preyed on students at Cromer High School.[7] In 1981, Chris groomed and slept with Cromer student Joanne Curtis, who temporarily moved into the Dawson family residence in Bayview at Chris' invitation.[3] She permanently moved into the residence on 10 January 1982, two days after Lynette's disappearance.[3]

Lynette was phoned by her mother on 8 January 1982, the last time they would communicate with each other.[8] She planned to meet her mother and family at Northbridge Baths the following day, but she never arrived.[8] Chris didn't report his wife as missing until 18 February 1982, six weeks after she had vanished.[3] He claimed that she left after marital problems caused over her Bankcard spending. In a statement to police, Chris suggested that she had joined a religious organisation. He finalised divorce proceedings against Dawson in 1983; and the following year married Curtis.[3]

After investigations by the New South Wales Police proved inconclusive, the NSW State Coroner conducted two coronial inquiries into Lynette's disappearance. At the first inquest held in February 2001, the Deputy State Coroner Jan Stevenson determined that Lynette had been murdered and that her killer was someone she knew. The coroner recommended charges be laid; however Nicholas Cowdery QC, the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions, assessed that there was insufficient evidence for a criminal conviction. A second inquest, held in February 2003 by State Coroner Carl Milovanovich, recommended Chris be charged with Lynette's murder.[3][4][9][8] Cowdery again refused to prosecute Dawson, citing the lack of evidence.[3]

In April 2018, following extensive investigations, NSW Police requested the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions to review its brief of evidence.[3] Chris was arrested in Queensland in December 2018, extradited to New South Wales, and charged with the murder of his first wife.[10][11] He was granted bail;[12] and in June 2019 pleaded not guilty to her murder.[13] In February 2020, Chris was committed to stand trial for the murder of Dawson.[14] He is also facing a charge of carnal knowledge with a girl between the ages of 10 and 17, relating to his affair with Curtis (who he had divorced in 1993) while still at teacher at Cromer High School.[15]

A sixteen-part Australian crime podcast series, The Teacher's Pet, by Walkley Award-winning journalist Hedley Thomas of The Australian, was broadcast in 2018 with large amounts of evidence that was not collected by any of the police investigations.[16] The series has close to 30 million downloads[17] and created a large amount of public interest in the case,[16] but was made unavailable in Australia in consideration of the ongoing legal proceedings.

• List of people who disappeared

• "Lynette Joy DAWSON". Australian Missing Persons Register. – includes transcripts from various media reports and publications