Chris Dawson verdict: How podcast The Teacher’s Pet helped put Aussie killer behind bars for murdering wife

After 40 years, two inquests — and close to 60 million downloads of a true crime podcast — former rugby league player Chris Dawson has been convicted of killing his wife Lynette, providing a startling end to one of Australia’s strangest and most enduring murder mysteries.

There were gasps inside the NSW Supreme Court as four decades after Lynette’s disappearance, which sparked years of speculation and weeks of evidence, Justice Ian Harrison finally returned a verdict after delivering a more than five-hour-long judgment.

“The whole of the circumstantial evidence satisfies me that Lynette Dawson is dead, that she died on or about January 8, 1982, and that she did not voluntarily abandon her home,” Justice Harrison said.

“The circumstantial evidence in this case, considered as a whole, is persuasive and compelling. None of the circumstances considered alone can establish Mr Dawson’s guilt.

“When regard is had to their combined force, I am left in no doubt.

“I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the only rational inference (is that) Lynette Dawson died on or about January 8, 1982, as a result of conscious or voluntary act committed by Christopher Dawson.”

That conclusion came after a long and lurid trial, where the intimate details of Dawson’s marriage — and his overlapping obsession with a 16-year-old former student who became the couple’s live-in babysitter and then his lover.

That trial was in part brought about by The Teacher’s Pet podcast, compiled by Gold Walkley-award-winning journalist Hedley Thomas, who dug for new evidence and found an audience so large that Mrs Dawson’s family felt police were compelled to have another look.

Yesterday, the family spoke of their relief and gratitude.

“This verdict is for Lyn. Today her name has been cleared. She loved her family and never left them of her own accord,” Mrs Dawson’s brother Greg Simms said.

“Lyn’s journey is not complete. She’s still missing. We need to bring her home.

“We would ask Chris also to find it in himself to allow us to bring her home for a peaceful rest. Finally show her the dignity she deserves.”

In his reasons, Justice Harrison found Dawson had lied about phone calls he allegedly received from his wife after her disappearance, and also rejected any sightings of Mrs Dawson since January 1982 as either fabrications, unreliable, frail or vague.

“None of the alleged sightings were genuine sightings of Lynette Dawson,” he said.

Rather, he agreed with prosecutors that her husband had become obsessed with his teenage lover — known by the pseudonym JC — and she was the reason the now 74-year-old murdered his wife and disposed of her body.

Prosecutors said he wanted “unfettered access” to the younger woman. So he callously removed the mother of his two children from his life, by ending hers.

Justice Harrison said his findings were “fortified” by the lies Dawson had told after his wife was murdered — lies he told JC and others, lies about wanting to continue his marriage, lies about her still being alive and lies about her leaving on her own.