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An Australian husband has been found guilty of killing his wife 40 years ago, after police restarted investigations into a murder case following broadcasts of a globally popular podcast series.
Christopher Dawson, 74, now faces a possible life sentence, after being convicted of killing his wife Lynette Dawson in January 1982.
At the time, Dawson was a high school teacher who was in a sexual relationship with a teenage former student and babysitter for his two daughters, identified in court as JC.
The judge found the husband killed his wife because he feared losing his lover.
His wife’s body has never been found but the judge, Ian Harrison, rejected the possibility that she had abandoned her husband and children to vanish from the family home in Bayview, Sydney, without a trace.
He also dismissed claims the wife had been seen alive after January 1982 or that she had contacted her husband.
“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,” the judge said.
The cold case came to court after attracting international attention with the launch of a podcast by The Australian newspaper, titled The Teacher’s Pet, which has attracted an audience of at least 60 million since 2018. The podcast set out a circumstantial case that Dawson had murdered his wife.
Because of the popularity of the podcast, Dawson opted for a trial by judge instead of appearing in front of a jury in the New South Wales state Supreme Court.
In his reasons for the guilty verdict, Mr Harrison found that Dawson had lied about phone calls he claimed to have received from his wife after her disappearance.
JC and Dawson subsequently married in 1984 but separated in 1990.
Outside court, Lynette’s brother, Greg Simms, appealed to his brother-in-law to reveal the location of her body.
“The journey is not complete. She is still missing. We still need to bring her home. We would ask Chris Dawson to find it in himself to finally do the decent thing and allow us to bring Lyn home to a peaceful rest,” Mr Simms said.
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