Teacher Chris Dawson, who has been found guilty of murdering his wife Lynette 40 years ago, wanted ‘unfettered’ access to his teenage lover, known as ‘JC’ for legal reasons.
Dawson, 74, was found guilty by Justice Ian Harrison in the NSW Supreme Court on Tuesday, finally answering a mystery that haunted Lynette’s family for four decades.
There were gasps in the courtroom when Dawson was found guilty, after Justice Ian Harrison spent 4.5 hours reading out his reasons before getting to the verdict.
In dramatic testimony during the judge-only trial, JC, who swam topless in Dawson’s pool, told the court she had been Dawson’s ‘sex slave’ in events that took place in Bayview, on Sydney‘s northern beaches.
Dawson gave JC secret love notes when she was a schoolgirl half his age, and he later violently ripped off her G-string and left her ‘fearing for her life’.
Speaking in a strident and at times angry voice, the onetime babysitter to Dawson’s children – who slept in his wife’s marital bed days after she was murdered – defiantly refused to accept she was anything other than a ‘groomed’ child.
The Crown claims Dawson killed his wife Lynette (pictured together) to pursue an affair with JC, who is half his age
Dawson’s lawyer Pauline David suggested to JC during cross examination her relationship with her teacher was romantic (Chris Dawson and JC on their wedding day)
The now middle-aged woman, who became Dawson’s second wife, rejected suggestions she wanted Lynette Dawson dead, or out of the picture, so she could pursue her romance with Chris Dawson, who sat just metres away as she gave testimony.
He listened as JC claimed Dawson had at one point treated her like a ‘prisoner’ and his ‘slave and sex slave’.
At times, JC just gave Dawson’s lawyer Pauline David’s pointed suggestions about her intentions toward Dawson in the early 80s a forceful ‘NO’.
At other times JC made scathing suggestions about Dawson’s pursuit of her as a schoolgirl.
Ms David claimed, and it was denied, that it may have been JC who had betrayed Lynette.
She described the romance between 32-year-old teacher Dawson and 16-year-old student JC as a ‘relationship’ and asked her if Dawson was like a boyfriend to her.
But JC countered: ‘It wasn’t a relationship. I object to that … I was a child!’
‘The grooming process started very early on in 1980 – I suppose he felt like a boyfriend even though he was twice my age – it wasn’t an equal partnership, it was a power imbalance.’
Ms David asked: ‘You wanted an exclusive relationship (with Dawson)?’
JC replied: ‘I wanted him to leave me alone.’
The babysitter, who later married Dawson and is known legally as JC, is pictured holding their daughter with his two children he had with Lynette
David asked: ‘Did you ever say to Lynette Dawson on any occasion you wanted to get rid of her, or convey to Lynette Dawson that you wanted to have her out of the way so you could have an exclusive relationship with Chris Dawson?’
‘Absolutely not,’ JC said.
Other suggestions, such as that JC may have made up a story about a hit man, were rubbished as ‘ridiculous’.
Ms David tried to shoot down every point JC had made in her evidence, including her assertion Dawson called his wife ‘Fatso’ and sang cruel songs about her unattractiveness behind her back.
Ms David said: ‘He referred to her as Fatso, rather than her name – I suggest that it is a lie.’
JC replied that ‘He did, often.’
Ms David said: ‘That is not a lie? It’s your mission to destroy Mr Dawson?’
JC said: ‘No.’
JC on the day she left Sydney with Chris Dawson to start a new life in December 1981
JC, who was brought into the family home as a babysitter, is pictured colouring in with Lynette’s two daughters
JC, pictured in recent years, told the court she was a ‘groomed child’ and refused suggestions she wanted Lynette out of the home
Asked by Ms David whether she had a ‘healthy and loving relationship’ with Dawson, she said she’d never had any previous relationship to compare it with.
‘I don’t think I was ever an adult in that relationship. I didn’t make any decisions. They were made for me under threat of violence every day,’ she said.
JC also denied she had gone ‘out of her way to find time’ to be with Chris Dawson as a schoolgirl or that he had initially had an ‘entirely appropriate teacher-student relationship’ with her.
‘I think his behaviour towards me was inappropriate for a teacher’.
Chris Dawson, 74, has been found guilty of murdering his ex-wife Lynette Dawson 40 years ago
Dawson told JC his wife Lyn (above with their daughter) had voluntarily left the marital home but JC found her diamond rings and a wardrobe full of her clothing, the court heard
Asked if she fell in love with Mr Dawson, she said it was ‘after he groomed me and abused me and insisted that I marry him.’
David: ‘He fell in love with you and you fell in love with him?’.
JC: ‘Not so much, I was a child.’
Asked if Dawson had ‘developed genuine affection towards you that was not of a sexual nature’, JC insisted it ‘absolutely was’.
Asked whether she was making up ‘lies’ to try to destroy Chris Dawson, JC replied, ‘I’m not going to destroy him.
‘He will destroy himself for what he has done to people, to me and to Lyn.’
Topless schoolgirl told murder trial how Chris Dawson ripped off her G-string and left her ‘fearing for her life’ – and reveals how accused murderer reacted when she said: ‘You got rid of first wife you could get rid of me’
The ex-schoolgirl who married Chris Dawson after he allegedly murdered his wife Lynette has described how she feared for her life after he violently ripped off a G-string she secretly bought.
The woman known as JC said Dawson sold his family home, disposed of his wife Lynette’s clothes and jewellery and moved her and his daughters in December 1984 to a remote property she came to call ‘the compound’.
She was heavily pregnant with her own child, but had married Dawson in January of that year, when JC said, he had first been violent towards her.
JC said that after all the guests had left, Dawson ‘turned to me and grabbed me about the neck with his two hands, I don’t know why’.
The remote property was on three hectares of bushland at Yawalpah near Coomera in Queensland which was then ‘in the middle of nowhere’, surrounded by a chain wire fence which was constantly banged into by kangaroos.
JC (above with her little girl and Lynette’s two daughters) said in court she was expected to treat them like ‘princesses’ but when she took her own daughter to play group, Chris Dawson forbade her to return and cut up her credit card
‘I felt like a prisoner there,’ JC told the court, saying she had moved up there heavily pregnant with her daughter and had no neighbours other than Chris Dawson’s twin Paul and his wife, Marilyn.
After giving birth to her own daughter Kristen in January 1985, JC said she felt differently towards Dawson’s daughters with Lynette, Shanelle and Sherryn.
‘I was only allowed to treat them like little princesses and if I did discipline them he would discipline me and they came to realise I had no authority.
‘(But) I was consumed by my own child and the love I had for her. Chris Dawson was not happy’ .
After two more years in the compound seeing virtually no-one, JC became worried her daughter ‘had no contact with children her age’ and took her to play group, although Dawson told her ‘not to go’.
When JC brought up the topic of the disappearance of Dawson’s first wife Lyn (above Lyn with Dawson) she said to him ‘you got rid of your first wife, you could easily get rid of me’, and he went very still, the court heard
After discussing married life with other mothers, and telling Dawson about women who ‘go out shopping by themselves and meet other people’, he ‘forbade me’ from going back and ‘cut up the credit card’.
She said by 1989 she’d made a friend, a woman called Toni Melrose who played Cooee the Gumnut Fairy at Dreamworld which was up the road from her house and the two women had gone to a lingerie party.
‘I purchased this G-string underwear. I probably used cash I’d squirrelled away,’ JC told the court.
‘I brought it home and put on for Chris Dawson and paraded around. He said ‘you are only going to wear it for me’ .
‘I said “I’ll just wear it as underwear as I see fit.” He got physically violent at me (saying) ‘you’re not going to wear that for anyone but me’, you don’t have any rights kind of thing, and he ripped it off me.’
The secret love notes a schoolgirl taught by Chris Dawson would leave in her bag signing himself off as ‘God’ – before allegedly murdering the wife he called ‘Fatso’
The court has released cards and notes Chris Dawson left in JC’s schoolbag in the year that the schoolgirl – who was half Dawson’s age – went to live at the family home and swim topless in front of his wife in the family pool.
The secret love messages, released by the NSW Supreme Court during the murder trial of former PE teacher and football star Dawson, had been kept for 40 years by JC.
This was despite the fact Dawson told the schoolgirl who became his second wife to destroy them.
The court heard Dawson gave the girl the romantic cards in the same year he drove her in her school uniform over the Sydney Harbour Bridge to a hotel and told her afterwards he had planned to hire a hitman to kill his wife.
Cards addressed to ‘Petal’ and ‘Bub’, Dawson’s nicknames for the woman now known as JC, and one is signed by him ‘Love Always God’, the name Dawson used for himself to disguise the fact he was romancing a 16-year-old
‘(When he came out) he said ‘I went inside to get a hit man to kill her but then I decided I couldn’t do it because innocent people would be hurt’,’ the former schoolgirl, known only as JC said in evidence.
The cards Dawson gave the teen on Valentines Day, her birthday and at Christmas, have greeting card images of romantic couples and proforma greetings like ‘All I need in all my my life is all your love’, ‘I wuv you’ and one is signed off by him with ‘Love always, God’.
They are addressed to ‘Petal’ and ‘Bub’, Dawson’s nicknames for the woman now known as JC, and ‘God’ is the name Dawson used for himself to disguise the fact he was romancing a 16-year-old.
Romantic cards to the teenage schoolgirl who told the court on Thursday that in the same year he drove her in her school uniform over the Sydney Harbour Bridge to a building site and told her afterwards he had planned to hire a hitman to kill his wife