INTRO: Hi, I’m Ben Fordham.

It's not every day as a radio host, you encourage your listeners to switch off your show and listen to something else.

But when my friend Hedley Thomas dedicated the best part of a year to investigating a "cold case" murder.. I had to make an exception.

It's the mystery of what happened to missing mother of two LYNETTE DAWSON... and why her husband CHRIS hasn't been charged with her murder, despite two coroners recommending that happen.  

CHRIS DAWSON continues to maintain his innocence but Hedley’s recent podcast investigation has uncovered compelling new evidence .. and now, 36 years after Lynette vanished.... Hedley’s work has led to millions of people around the world wanting answers.

Australian Story first covered the case 15 years ago and tonight, the next chapter in a saga that has gripped audiences everywhere.

 OPENER

TOF SUPER: ‘Chequerboard,’ ABC TV, 1975,  around TC: 1: 38

BOF RIGHT Super: Lyn Dawson, TC: 2:17

Chequerboard sound ups:

Hello. Happy birthday. Come on. How does it feel to be a quarter of a century?

Hedley Thomas, Card 1, 1.03.32
I’d only ever seen photographs of Lyn Dawson. I’d never heard her voice. I’d never seen any footage of her.  1.04.08 (later in grab) and then I saw the Chequerboard program and I was blown away.

Sounds ups from Chequerboard, Lyn:
Maybe I would have touched him, I would have thought oh, that’s not mine…

Hedley, 01.05.32
She actually looks with her hairstyle, I think a little bit like a young Princess Diana

Sound up Lyn: 
I think the first question people ask about it you must have a lot of fun swapping and changing around and they’ve never done it. I think they have been accused of doing it on the football field

Hedley, 00.55.44 
Everybody who talks about Chris Dawson describes this very strange relationship with his twin brother Paul Dawson. It is as if they are inseparable.

Chequerboard: happy birthday to you (singing) 

Hedley 01.02.15
Lyn appears as very supportive of Chris – she speaks very carefully and lovingly about him

Sound up Lyn:
Somebody a couple of years ago said what’s it like sharing a husband and it just seems so silly – I hadn’t really thought of it, you just join in. Happy birthday boys. May you have many more

MERILYN SIMMS, 00.22.30
To see them in a very happy situation. // it was just such a gift. To hear her and to see her was wonderful. And it's just astounding to think that seven years later, that it had broken down and Lyn disappeared. And then, a number of years later, two coroners had, made the decision that Lyn had been murdered by a known person, by her husband, Chris Dawson.

TITLE OVER CHEQUERBOARD GFX

“The Teacher’s Wife.”

TOF SUPER: Sydney, Northern Beaches@ 3:04

BOF SUPER:
Hedley Thomas, journalist, ‘The Australian’, @ 3:14

BOF SUPER: MICK FULLER,
NSW Police Commissioner @ 4:06

FIRST PROLOGUE

Hedley, 2.05.45
I think you have to get a bit obsessed with a story as a journalist to do it justice and this case as a story has lacked justice.
00.19.45
Lyn Dawson’s story, it was tragic. It involved a loving mother painted as a runaway wife who would just wilfully abandon her daughters.
21.25
It was just absurd and yet that story that was accepted on the Northern beaches by police at that time.
27.45
I felt that if I could // go out and do further investigations it might be possible to find evidence, information, witnesses who hadn’t talked before who could help resolve this case finally.

Podcast audio: the reason why

Mick Fuller, NSW Police Commissioner, 19.15
Certainly from my perspective I believe she was killed. 00.09.50 It’s our job to get to the bottom of the truth and whilst we didn’t do that three decades ago. I’m adamant we will do that in 2018.

 TOF SUPER: Australian Story 2003 @ 4:22

BOF SUPER: PAT JENKINS, Lyn’s sister @4:28

MOTHER SEARCHING FOR LYN – family’s loss/missing person

PAT JENKINS, sister
It's very difficult to put into words the depth of grief you feel when a ... a loved member of the family just drops out of your life.

PAT JENKINS, sister
Mum didn't drive, so she'd take the train up to the Central Coast because that's where Chris had said that Lyn had rung from. My mother never stopped searching for Lyn. We all were searching for Lyn.

BOF SUPER: Det Sgt DAMIAN LOONE, NSW Police @ 5:05

Damian Loone, TAPE 14 AT ABOUT 09.25

she's never gone overseas. She's never applied for a passport. She's never applied for a Medicare card, a credit card. She doesn't bank with anybody. She's a registered nurse. She's not registered in any State or Territory in Australia.

She was a wife, a mother, a sister and a daughter and she has many friends out there who loved her. And she's just basically been taken off the planet, never to be seen again

TOF SUPER: Australian Story 2003 @ 6:40

BOF SUPER: Sue Strath, friend @ 7:24

BOF SUPER: Annette Leary, friend @ 7.47

LYN AND CHRIS BACKSTORY

PAT JENKINS
Lyn and Chris both went to Sydney Girls and Sydney Boys High and that's where they met. They were both prefects in their final year. They were a good-looking couple. They used to dress beautifully. And he didn't drink, he didn't smoke. He was very physically fit and he always looked good.

Archive football – Chris and Paul
Pringle playing it. Dawson.

Damian Loone
Chris Dawson and his twin brother Paul both played for the Newtown Jets in rugby league, and later both played in rugby union. Both good-looking men, both modelled on occasions.

Playing It to Dawson.  He's going straight down the middle. 

Do you ever resent that close relationship between them?

No. 

When are you going to get the landscaping started?

PAT JENKINS, sister
We were aware during the year 1981 that things didn't seem to be quite right. I just thought, "Oh, it's a bit of a rough patch," and things would sort themselves out. None of us knew how bad things were. I think Lyn covered up many of the problems.

I think she had this image that, you know, wonderful children, a happy family. And I just think that she just couldn't face the fact that perhaps this image wasn't the real thing.

Ladies chat: He's doing something. Julie's daughter

SUE STRATH, friend

Lyn Dawson and I worked together at Warriewood Children's Centre in the occasional care. She was the nurse and I was her childcare worker

She was a lovely girl. yes she was a lovely girl

Her workmates were her main friends and the people she spoke to. So we were very close to her.

They were having marriage difficulties i mean she used to talk to me about it because my office was the staff room as you girls know

ANNETTE LEARY, former colleague at 6.28:
Lyn kept her marriage problems close to her chest, I suppose. She didn't give specifics, but she would say that ... She had bruises on her arms and we'd ask about that, and she'd say, "Oh, Chris was just messing around." Just odd things like that.

Exteriors, Cromer High School

BOF SUPER: MICHELLE WALSH , former student, Cromer High School @ 8:37

CHRIS AT CROMER HIGH WITH JOANNE CURTIS

1.09.15
Lyn, she knew that her husband was In an Intense sexual relationship with a student.

DET. SGT DAMIAN LOONE tape 12, 5'45
Joanne Curtis was a student at Chris Dawson's high school. Chris was teaching Joanne PE. Through that they formed a relationship at school.

MICHELLE AT 01.43.05
She would have been in year 12.

01.42.38 There'd be times we'd go into his office , the door was open and she'd be sitting on his lap/ and everyone talked about it. I would find it very hard to believe that any teachers at the school wasn't aware.

01.43.37 We never thought twice about It and In fact we used to think Joanne was really special because she was Chris's girlfriend.

DET SGT DAMIAN LOONE
6'57
Joanne Curtis babysat for the Dawson family. After some upheaval at home she had with her stepfather and at the time approaching final exams It was decided that Joanne Curtis would move Into the Dawson residence on a full-time basis.

SUE STRATH, friend
We all knew that Chris was having an affair with Joanne and I wasn't going to tell her about Joanne, that, "Your husband's having an affair with a 16-year-old." And I remember saying to her, "Do you think this is a good idea, having a 16-year-old in your house? And she just said nothing. You know, "Chris, my Chris" - always 'my Chris' - "My Chris, I trust my Chris all the time."

ANNETTE LEARY, at 14.50

It happened that, she walked into the house and into the bedroom to put her things down, and Chris and the ... Joanne, were in bed together. In her bed, and it really upset her. I think that was one of the times when she said to us, she was worried about her marriage.

DAMIAN LOONE TAPE 12 AT 19.25:
Prior to Christmas 1981, Chris and Joanne decided to move to Qld together / Prior to reaching Murwillumbah, Joanne had said to Chris I want to return back to Sydney, I'm not sure about our relationship.

TOF SUPER: Australian Story 2003 @ 10:38

TOF SUPER: GREG SIMMS, Lyn’s brother @ 10:46

NIGHT OF DISAPPEARANCE

DET. SGT DAMIAN LOONE:
Chris moved back to the family home and then, with Lyn, decided to seek counselling which they went to on Friday, 8 January 1982.

ANNETTE

Lynette told us // they got in the lift to go up for the session, and they were the only two in the lift. Chris put his hands on her throat, and shook her, and pushed her back against the wall, and said, "I'm only doing this once. If it doesn't work, I'm getting rid of you."

PAT JENKINS:
That evening, Mum rang Lyn about 8:30.

GREG SIMMS:
She got Chris on the phone and she had a talk with him. He said to Mum that everything was fine, they'd been to a marriage counsellor and everything was going to work out. And Mum said, "Can I speak to Lyn?" And he was reluctant to put Lyn on the phone. And finally, he relented and she came to the phone.

PAT JENKINS:
The first thing Mum said is, "You sound a bit sozzled."

GREG SIMMS
Hhe said to Mum, "My husband's poured me a lovely drink "and everything is just going to be fine." And she said it with a slurred voice.

DET. SGT DAMIAN LOONE:
Mrs Simms thought that unusual because Lyn and Chris weren't drinkers.

DET. SGT DAMIAN LOONE:
Lyn had organised to meet her mother the following day at the Northbridge Baths at Northbridge.

BOF SUPER: PAT JENKINS, Lyn’s sister, @ 12.11

BOF SUPER: Sue Strath, friend @ 12.47

THE NEXT DAY

PAT JENKINS, sister
Chris was working, as a holiday job, as a lifesaver and Mum was going to meet Lyn and the children and they were going to have a picnic there.

DET. SGT DAMIAN LOONE:
Shortly after Mrs Simms arrived at the pool, Chris receives a phone call and comes back a short time later and tells Mrs Simms that that was Lyn on the telephone saying that she needed some time away to sort things out.

PAT JENKINS, sister
Well, Mum was absolutely devastated and shocked. I mean, she'd spoken to Lyn just the evening before. Lyn would've told her if she intended to go away for a few days. But I think the shock was that Lyn had left at all, because it was just so unexpected, so out of character, Lyn, who just loved her children, loved her whole family.

SUE STRATH, friend
Just the day before, I had seen her walking hand in hand with him, walking back into work. And she was very positive, very hopeful for the future. And she was looking forward to a positive outcome from seeing the marriage guidance counsellor. And then the next day, she went missing, never to be seen again? And I remember thinking, "No way. " I don't think so. There is no way she would ever, ever have left her daughters." She just loved them dearly. And I immediately thought ... I immediately thought Chris has got something to do with this. She was looking forward to seeing her daughter start school. It was a big event in her life. // And what mother would ever leave their daughter to see on the first day of school? You would never, ever do that.

BOF SUPER: Det Sgt DAMIAN LOONE, NSW Police @13.26

BOF SUPER: BARBARA CRUISE, friend @ 14:38

BOF SUPER: Mick Fuller, Commissioner, NSW Police @ 15:26

CHRIS’S ACCOUNT OF WHERE LYN WENT

Det Sgt Damian Loone
Within 24 hours of Chris allegedly receiving this telephone call from Lyn, saying that she's gone away and she needs some time to sort things out, Chris Dawson rings Joanne Curtis … and informs Joanne that, "My wife has gone away. "She's not coming back." And from that day, Joanne moved into the Bayview residence and became basically a de facto mother to the children and a partner of Chris.

PAT JENKINS:
Mum had jotted down things that the children used to say. One of the things she jotted down that the girls had told her was Lyn was their pretend mother, she wasn't their real mother. There's other things. ‘Mummy is lost. Daddy has Joanne now. Daddy shares everything with Joanne. Daddy will marry Joanne when she becomes a mother. We hope they don't find Mummy in the holidays. Joanne wants to marry Daddy.'

NEW BARBARA AT 00.10.40:
I often rang him to say we've got her pay packet here because In those days the pay packet came into the centre. I also remember asking him had he contacted the police you know it was unusual because it was week and weeks were going on. She just never turned up again.

GREG SIMMS:

All the information that we did receive in Lyn's disappearance was coming through Chris. He would ring up Mum and say, "Oh, Lyn's rung me. She needs more time to think'. Or he'd ring up and talk to Mum and say, "She's been seen at Gosford'. We had no reason whatsoever to doubt him because he was a part of the family.

Mick Fuller, NSW Police Commissioner, 00.30
Lynette was reported as a missing person and I think it was received that way by the police at the time. //
4.00 Today’s policing tactics is that there would have been a criminal investigation response very early in the piece and we would’ve been collecting vital pieces of evidence that were unfortunately lost in this case.

JOANNE LEAVES CHRIS, CONTACTS LYN’S FAMILY, CONTACTS POLICE

Gold Coast pretties

BOF SUPER: HEDLEY THOMAS, journalist, ‘The Australian,’ @ 16:07

BOF SUPER: MICHELLE WALSH, fmr Cromer High School student, @ 16:20

BOF SUPER: MERILYN SIMMS, Lyn’s sister-in-law @ 16:53

Damian, tape 13, 01.09
In January 1984 Chris and Joanne married and shortly after that, they both moved to Queensland where Joanne gave birth to a girl.

NEW HEDLEY, 1.50.45, sync
In 1990, Joanne fled the Gold Coast, she says In fear of her life. She believed Chris was going to harm her. He had been violent.

NEW MICHELLE WALSH
She was quite traumatised // she talked a lot about what happened. // she was really worried about her safety. // She wanted it to be known so she was safe.
2.06.37 All of a sudden she’s back giving the truth about what had really gone on // It was real.
1.59.32
She was talking about how // she’s moved into the house // nothing of Lyn’s had been touched // everything still there and Chris had told her that she was never coming back.

Merilyn, 00.33.30
Joanne made contact through a counsellor.
35.15 , sync
she told us about the way that he used to taunt Lyn with singing horrible songs with double meanings, putting her down about her physical appearance.

GREG SIMMS, brother
The information she told us and the suspicions I'd had in relation to not seeing my sister again had come to fruition, really. I knew then that I wouldn't see her again.

TOF: Australian Story, 2003 TC: 17:41

SUPER TOF:  POLICE INTERVIEW,  1998

@ 17:58

BOF SUPER: Pat Jenkins, Lyn’s sister @ 20:18

SUPER: NICHOLAS COWDERY QC,

Former NSW Director of Public Prosecutions ( 1994-2011)

@21:38

Mick Fuller, 00:1:30
It wasn’t until later until we commenced what I call a reasonable investigation into her disappearance.

20.00 It’s challenging for me to reflect back on 32 years ago. Was it a mistake,  was it incompetence? Was it corruption? I’ll never know the answer to that.

POLICE REOPEN CASE

It's detective sergeant Damien Loone.  How are you?

DET SGT DAMIAN LOONE:
Well, in 1997, when I opened the inquiry again, there were no physical records of what happened in those early days. They'd been destroyed. All I had was a piece of paper with Lyn Dawson's name on it and her missing-persons file number

SOUND UP OF POLICE IV WITH JOANNE FROM PODCAST:

DET. SGT DAMIAN LOONE: You felt frightened of violence upon you by Christopher?

JOANNE CURTIS: Yes, and I feared for my life at that point where I made the decision to leave, because I was scared. You know, I was desperately unhappy. That was just, just horrible.

DET SGT DAMIAN LOONE:
It wasn't until I interviewed Joanne Curtis that I realised then that, after her story, that there was something more in it than just a person who's left a family home and left her husband.

JOANNE CURTIS: I said well, you know, you can easily get rid of me like you did Lyn, type thing, perhaps implying that Lyn was gotten rid of, but which, of course, I didn't know. And that's when he stood stock still and said 'don't say things like that'. “which is something I hadn’t seen before”

DET SGT DAMIAN LOONE: Was that unusual for you?

JOANNE CURTIS: Yes.

 DET SGT DAMIAN LOONE: Did it frighten you?

JOANNE CURTIS: Yeah.

OLD DAMIAN LOONE FROM THE CUT

It's been very difficult to run this inquiry without having a body.

POLICE VIDEO:
We're at a pool area of these premises where we intend this morning to dig with the possibility of a body being buried in this area.

DAMIAN OLD TAPE 14 AT 02.50:
There was some concern after Lyn disappeared that there had been work done on the pool area at her home. And I had some ground penetrating radar scans done on the property.

PAT JENKINS, sister
There was a great sense of relief - the fact that finally it was being reinvestigated and reinvestigated thoroughly. It was very, very distressing because they were taking sniffer dogs, they were digging up areas near the pool, they were having a forensic scientist there.

POLICE VIDEO:
Our anthropologist on-site here today will commence a scraping of the surface. And we'll take it from there.

DAMIAN FROM OLD TAPE 14 AT 03.53:
On the second excavation I located a cardigan in the ground. From a juice container located about the same depth of the soil, we could determine that the jumper had been in there about the time that Lyn went missing. 

NEW PAT JENKINS,  1.01.42 
That was horrifying.   1.02.02  When the forensic anthropologist identified the cut marks as with a sharp Implement and some of them were defensive wounds like on the sleeves, that was very upsetting.

PAT JENKINS, sister
All of a sudden, it just seemed so real. And I think to that point, we hadn't let it be that real, the fact that she'd possibly been murdered.

POLICE VIDEO:
It's half past four on Thursday 7 December. And as you can see, we've excavated the possible burial site next to the pool. And nothing has been located.

DET. SGT DAMIAN LOONE:
In February 2001, I presented a case to the coroner. One of the hardest jobs you have to do as a police officer is accuse someone of murder. It's a decision I made as a result of all the evidence I collected.

OLD DET SGT DAMIAN :
The coroner read the brief of evidence and by the completion of that day, she had terminated the inquest. And her findings were that a known person had committed the offence of homicide.

NICK COWDERY: 00:06:25
I decided that there was not a reasonable prospect of conviction on the basis of the evidence that was supplied to us. There had not been examination of the witnesses in a live hearing before the first coroner, and so there were some possibilities that had not been tested.

TOF: ‘Chequerboard’ ABCTV, 1975 @ 21:51

*Is this Chris in the vision? Needs blurring.

BOF SUPER: ANNETTE LEARY, friend @ 22:48

OLD STORY CON'TD

The girls are too nice. Think of all the muscles I'm going to build for you for summer, so the girls chase you along the beach

SECOND CORONER’S INQUIRY, Feb 2003

NEWS REPORTER:
Police claim Chris, then a Cromer High phys. ed. teacher, murdered his wife so he could move in with a student, Joanne Curtis, who he later married. The murder allegation denied by his family.

NEW NICHOLAS COWDERY sync [00:08:04]
In 2003, There was a second inquest into the disappearance of Lyn Dawson by a different coroner.  On this occasion, he arranged for witnesses who had given statements in the course of the police investigation to be brought to the coroner's court and examined and tested as to the evidence that they gave.

NEWS REPORTER:
As Chris Dawson's ex-wife and one-time family babysitter, the evidence of Joanne Curtis was always going to be compelling.

NEW ANNETTE LEARY: 32.16
When Joanne took the chair to give evidence, I was amazed at what had been happening to her. To think that now she was feeling bad for Lyn, because she didn't ... she had been the cause of the trouble between Lyn and Chris

NEWS REPORTER:
She said the relationship reached a desperate point soon after, when Chris told her outside a hotel, "I went inside to get a hit man to kill Lyn, but I couldn't do it because innocent people would be killed."

Pat Jenkins, TAPE 25 AT 8.18
Our family was really shocked and disgusted to learn in the court that allegedly both Chris and his twin brother Paul, who were schoolteachers, had been having sexual relations with numerous students under their care. These were married men, they had young children, they were in a position of trust, and I just think they were really out of control and they were using the school as their playground.

GREG SIMMS: TAPE 6 AT 18.30
I would just like to grab him and shake him and say, "Tell me the truth." We all completely misread him. He was living a double life. It was just like a cloak-and-dagger thing. You just couldn't believe that he'd done this sort of thing.

BOF SUPER: GREG SIMMS, Lyn’s brother @ 24:24

BOF SUPER: Barbara Cruise, friend@25:26

NEW NICHOLAS COWDERY
At the end of that hearing, once all of that had been done, that second coroner was of the view that a known person [00:09:04] should be prosecuted for an indictable offence, and referred the papers again to the director of public prosecutions.

GREG SIMMS, brother, at 03.30
When the DPP decided for the second time not to proceed, it was like being, um, hit in the gut with a, you know, real big punch. It just knocked the wind out of our sails.

NEW NICHOLAS COWDERY:
Without a body, without knowing first of all whether in fact she is dead, without knowing secondly if she is dead, how she died, it's very hard [00:34:04] to mount a case of a reasonable prospect of conviction just on motive and the undefined existence of means and opportunity. That makes it very weak.

Q. What do you think [00:29:04] happened to Lyn Dawson?

Lyn Dawson disappeared, and that really is as far as I can take it in my own mind.

NEW Barbara: Damien Loone, over the years continued to investigate but really never ever led to any prosecution or charging of Chris Dawson.