In the weeks leading up to his disappearance, Lynette told her sister, Patricia Jenkins, that Dawson was “always so mad at her” and described him as having “black blinking eyes”.

With Lynette’s fate still a mystery 40 years after she left her Bayview home, her brother, Greg Simms, said in his testimony: “I would like an answer to my sister’s disappearance.”

Lynette’s last contact

On her last day of work, as a nurse at the Warriewood Children’s Center on January 8, 1982, Lynette arrived hand-in-hand with Dawson after a marriage counseling. She hoped they could “move on and work together,” her colleagues said.

The Crown alleges that Dawson killed Lynette on or about this date, alone or with others, and disposed of her body, motivated by his desire to have an unfettered relationship with JC.

Dawson, now 73, says he dropped his wife off at a Mona Vale bus stop on January 9 and instead of meeting him as they had planned in Northbridge Baths, she called him to telling her “she wouldn’t be going home that day”. .

Dawson’s attorney, Pauline David, said subsequent phone calls were made by Lynette before reporting his wife missing on February 18, 1982.

A newspaper advertisement, published on March 27, the day after their wedding anniversary, read: “Lyn I love you, we all miss you. Please ring. We want you to come home, Chris.

Annette Leary, who worked with Lynette, said a few months after she disappeared, she saw Dawson with JC and the two little girls at a mall.

“He said he had a letter from Lyn, and she was in Queensland, and he didn’t know when she was coming back,” Leary said. She denied mistaking the letter and said he also received a call.

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Dawson told police that in Lynette’s calls she said she “needed some time”. He also mentioned that a man from a “religious sect” was in the house.

Her attorney says setbacks plagued the police investigation, including delays and lost records, and “vital evidence consistent with Lynette Dawson being alive after January 8 and 9” was not available.

The Crown is seeking to refute reported sightings of Lynette after January 9, including at Kulnura on the Central Coast, Curl Curl, Gladesville and Macquarie Street in the city.

The defense argues that Lynette had reason to disappear.

Chris Dawson and the babysitter

Dawson, who played rugby league for the Newtown Jets, met JC in 1980 when she was in 11th grade, and he was her PE teacher. She started babysitting around July of that year.

“He told me he had seen me in the playground the year before, when I was 15, and decided he would like to get to know me better because I was attractive to him,” said JC, now 57, during her four days in the pit. She said that whenever she had biology, Dawson left love notes in her schoolbag.

JC moved into his Bayview home in October 1981 amid what the court heard was “horrendous” family life while completing HSC. Lynette’s co-workers said she told them that Chris was “pressing her” and that being the “caring person that she was” she wanted to help.

“Lyn was upset because she felt they had some issues to work out between themselves before bringing someone else home,” her sister-in-law Merilyn Simms said.

Neighbor Julie Andrew said she saw the teenager walking around in a string bikini bottom, while Strath said Lynette told her once she got home and found JC naked in their swimming pool.

Nursery worker Anna Grantham said Lynette looked “very sad” one day after returning home to find Dawson’s bathing suit and JC’s bikini bottom on the line.

“I think she felt her husband had lost interest in her,” Lynette’s former boss Barbara Cruise said.

JC said she usually only wore bikini bottoms while swimming because “it was just the fashion at the time.”

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In November 1981, JC had moved out, after saying she had been confronted by Lynette, who told her, “You took liberties with my husband.

JC said that at some point during those two months, Dawson drove her somewhere west, possibly in the inner west, and parked in front of a building with a chain fence. , while she remained in the car in her uniform.

“He said, ‘I went and got a hitman to kill Lyn, but then I decided I couldn’t do it because innocent people might get hurt.’ ”

In the days leading up to Christmas 1981, JC, then 17, and Dawson left Sydney to start a new life together in Queensland. But JC said they didn’t survive and came back because she was sick and unhappy.

“Chris ‘crossed over’ left Lynette and her two daughters alone,” Lynette’s mother, Helena Simms, wrote in her diary. In a letter to Jenkins, his eldest daughter, Simms said it was “the saddest Christmas I’ve had”.

“Lyn wants Chris to go see the Doc…to see what makes him so mad at her,” she wrote.

Jenkins said she last spoke to her sister on January 1, 1982, when “Chris was away yachting” without his wife and children. “She said they had such a sad Christmas, could he drive them to the park, and so they could sit and watch the boats?” And he said “no”.

Asked by the Crown about her plan for her future with Dawson, JC said: “There was a lot of pressure to stay with him, and I was just a kid.”

In early January 1982, she traveled to South West Rocks for a vacation with her sisters and friends, calling Dawson’s home number daily on a payphone “because he asked me to,” said she declared.

“He said he missed me terribly, that he couldn’t live without me.”

She said Dawson told her, “Lyn is gone, she’s not coming back. Come help me babysit and be with me.

Moving to Bayview

JC said Dawson picked her up around January 10, 11 or 12 and brought her “straight to” her house, which was “overstuffed” with clothes and still had Lynette’s underwear in the drawers.

She was questioned by the defense about her first statement to police, in which she said it happened on January 15 and 16. JC said the dates had been “corrected” and denied misleading the court.

JC said the topic of Lynette’s whereabouts didn’t come up in conversation unless she got ‘so grumpy’ about taking care of the girls and learning to cook and to clean up, when she “wanted to be 18 with my friends doing what they were doing”.

“[I was] having to learn to be the substitute maid, the sex slave, the mother-in-law, the babysitter. Slave, just a slave,” she claimed.

JC and Dawson married in January 1984.

“The wedding ring was made from scratch to match the one he left from his first marriage,” JC said. “The diamond ring was made from the diamonds from Lyn’s engagement ring and eternity ring that she left behind.”

When she separated from Dawson in 1990, JC met with Lynette’s brother and his wife and told them about the “hitman” allegation.

When asked in his testimony if he believed Dawson was guilty, Greg Simms replied, “I believe so, yes.”

A school friend, who met JC after her marriage broke down, said JC told her that Dawson had once parked and “pulled something out of the glove box”, which she says , had been “money to pay someone to kill Lyn”.

“The substance of what she [JC] said she believed Lyn had been murdered,” the woman said.

Under cross-examination, JC denied being on a “mission to destroy” Dawson.

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“He will destroy himself for what he did to people, to me and to Lyn,” she said.

In addition to recalling decades-old memories, witnesses were peppered with questions from the defense about discussions shared over the years and their involvement in The Australianthe podcast of, The teacher’s pet.

David said it’s “completely understandable” that Lynette’s loved ones want an answer, but the answer doesn’t lie in Dawson’s lawsuit.

The judge-alone trial before Judge Ian Harrison began on May 9 and has an estimate of six weeks.

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