On the 7th of January 1982, Chris and Lynette Dawson walked hand in hand from their marriage counseling session in Sydney. A friend who saw them said Lynette looked hopeful, positive about the future.
That evening, Lynette rang her mother, sounding upbeat.
She told her, “Chris had made me a lovely drink and everything is going to be fine.”
Within 24 hours, Lynette Dawson was dead.
But Chris Dawson didn’t grieve.
Two days later, he drove four hours to collect his 18-year-old lover and moved her into the family home. She slept in Lynette’s bed, wore Lynette’s clothes, and raised Lynette’s daughters.
Six weeks passed before he even reported his wife missing, and for 40 years, he got away with murder.
Lynette Joyce Sims was born in 1948 in New South Wales. She trained as a nurse at Sydney Children’s Hospital and worked in child care on Sydney’s northern beaches. Everyone who knew her said the same thing: devoted, warm, family-oriented.
She married Chris Dawson in 1970. They built their dream home at Bayview in 1975 and had two daughters, Chanel and Sharon.
Lynette struggled to conceive, and the girls were deeply cherished. She was a woman who would never abandon her children.
On the 8th of January 1982, Lynette spoke with her mother, Helena, by telephone. Helena noted she sounded half-suzzled but upbeat.
“Everything is just going to be fine,” Lynette said. “Chris had made me a lovely drink.”
They arranged to meet the following day at Northbridge Baths. Helena wrote in her diary:
“Rang Lynn, sounded half-suzzled, said all was well.”
That was the last time anyone ever heard from Lynette Dawson.
Chris’s version of events went like this.
On the morning of the 9th of January, Lynette woke early, did laundry, prepared lunch for the girls, and apologized for her behavior. He dropped her at a Mona Vale bus stop so she could travel to Chatswood to return some clothing.
He then went to work a lifeguard shift at Northbridge Baths with his daughters, where they met Helena as planned.
While there, Chris claimed he received a telephone call from Lynette saying she needed time away. He said she called again on the 10th of January. He told police his last communication with her was on the 16th of January 1982.
But Lynette never called her mother. She never collected her daughters. She vanished without her purse, her clothing, or her car.
And the man who claimed to love her didn’t seem worried at all.
On the 10th of January 1982, just two days after Lynette vanished, Chris Dawson drove four hours south to the coastal town of South West Rocks.
He was there to collect someone: an 18-year-old girl named Joanne Curtis.
“Lynn’s gone,” he told her. “She’s not coming back.”
He asked Joanne to move permanently into the family home. Despite initial hesitation, she agreed.
Joanne Curtis moved into the Bayview house, slept in the marital bed, and wore Lynette’s clothing and jewelry. She assumed caregiving duties for four-year-old Chanel and two-year-old Sharon.
Chris instructed his daughters to call Joanne “Mommy.”
Neighbors described him as cheerful and carefree. There were no signs of distress, no frantic phone calls to Lynette’s family, no desperate searching.
He showed no grief whatsoever.
Six weeks passed.
It wasn’t until the 18th of February 1982 that Chris finally reported Lynette missing, and he only did so because Helena, Lynette’s mother, begged him to.
At Mona Vale Police Station, Chris told officers his wife had left voluntarily after marital problems over her bank card spending. He suggested she may have joined a religious organization or cult.
On the 27th of March 1982, one day after what would have been their 12th wedding anniversary, Chris placed a notice in the Daily Telegraph:
“Lynn, I love you. We all miss you. Please ring. We want you home.”
But there was no response.
Lynette Dawson had disappeared without a trace, and the man who claimed to love her had replaced her within 48 hours.
Who was Joanne Curtis, and why was a teenage girl playing mother to a murdered woman’s children?
To understand what happened to Lynette Dawson, you have to go back two years earlier.
Chris Dawson was a 32-year-old PE teacher at Cromer High School on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. But he wasn’t just any teacher. He was a former rugby league star who had played for the Newtown Jets between 1972 and 1976, appearing in 55 matches.
He and his identical twin brother, Paul, were local celebrities.
A former student, Shelley Oates-Wilding, said:
“They were like superstars.”
That year, Chris took a keen interest in a troubled 16-year-old student named Joanne Curtis. She came from a home with an abusive stepfather.
Chris moved her into his Year 11 PE class. He gave her driving lessons. He offered her a job as a babysitter for his two daughters.
And he convinced Lynette to allow the arrangement, telling her he was helping a vulnerable girl.
The sexual relationship began in late 1980 or early 1981.
Curtis later told a Coronial Inquest their first sexual encounter occurred at Chris’s parents’ house in Maroubra. They met regularly at the Time and Tide Hotel, 700 meters from Cromer High School.
“We sometimes went to a Manly park just to have sex every week,” Curtis testified.
Chris placed love letters in Joanne’s school bag asking her to marry him.
She was still his student.
During 1981, Chris would make Lynette a drink to ensure she went to bed early. Then he would have sex with Joanne Curtis in the family home.
They would also have sex while Lynette was in the shower or asleep.
In October 1981, Joanne moved into the Dawson home as a full-time live-in babysitter, supposedly to help with her HSC studies.
The following month, Lynette confronted her.
“You’ve been taking liberties with my husband,” Lynette said.
Curtis later recalled:
“I didn’t know what to say.”
It was the last conversation they ever had.
After the confrontation, Joanne moved out of the Bayview home. She stayed a few doors down with Chris’s twin brother, Paul, and his wife, Marilyn.
But Chris Dawson wasn’t giving up.
In December 1981, he put a deposit on a unit in Manly, intending to move in with Joanne. He called his brother Peter, who was a lawyer, for advice on divorce.
Peter told him he’d be financially penalized if he left the marriage.
Chris attempted to flee to Queensland with Joanne to start a new life, but she became ill during the drive and they turned back.
He had the Bayview house valued. He signed a sale agreement for the property.
Lynette’s signature was not on the document.
Curtis would later allege that Chris told her he had visited a building south of the Harbour Bridge to get a hitman to kill Lynn, but changed his mind because innocent people could be killed or hurt.
And then something else emerged.
Something that changed everything.
Former Newtown Jets teammate Robert Silkman testified that during a crowded flight back from the Gold Coast in 1975, seven years before Lynette disappeared, Chris knelt beside him and asked:
“Do you know anyone who could get rid of my wife?”
This wasn’t a crime of passion.
This was something he’d been thinking about for years.
The Crown would later identify three motives that converged in January 1982: deep animosity toward his wife, an overwhelming desire to be with Joanne Curtis, and a determination to avoid the financial consequences of divorce.
Marriage counseling was a last resort.
On the 7th of January 1982, Chris and Lynette attended a session together. A friend, Sue Strath, saw the couple walking hand in hand afterward.
She testified:
“Lynette was very positive, very hopeful for the future.”
The following evening, the 8th of January, Lynette spoke with her mother.
“Everything is just going to be fine,” she said. “Chris had made me a lovely drink.”
Less than 24 hours after that marriage counseling session, Lynette Dawson was dead.
Chris had tried everything to be with Joanne.
Everything except one thing.
In 1983, Chris Dawson filed for divorce on the grounds of abandonment. He was granted the divorce and received all marital assets, including the Bayview home and full custody of Chanel and Sharon.
On the 15th of January 1984, exactly two years and one week after Lynette vanished, Chris married Joanne Curtis at the Bayview home.
Lynette’s wedding ring was resized for Joanne to wear.
On their wedding night, Chris grabbed Joanne by the throat.
Late in 1984, the family moved to Queensland’s Gold Coast. Chris built a home that Joanne would later describe as “the compound.”
It was surrounded by a six-foot chain-wire fence.
He chose her clothing. He cut up her credit cards. He restricted her social contact. He was physically violent.
Years later, Joanne would describe what her life had been like from the moment she moved into that Bayview home at 18 years old.
“I was 18,” Joanne later said. “I was taking care of two children, having to learn to cook, having to learn to clean, having to learn to be the substitute housekeeper, sex slave, stepmother, babysitter, slave.”
Their daughter Kristen was born in January 1985.
The marriage lasted six years.
In January 1990, eight years after she first moved into the Bayview home as an 18-year-old, Joanne left Chris and returned to Sydney with Kristen.
She was 26 years old.
And then she did something extraordinary.
She went to the police and told them she believed Chris Dawson had murdered Lynette.
Police had been told by the woman who knew him best that he was a murderer, but the investigation was already dead.
The initial police investigation into Lynette Dawson’s disappearance was shocking in its negligence.
The entire file consisted of a one-page missing persons handout, a VCR tape, and three cassettes of a single interview with Chris Dawson.
That was it.
Police treated Lynette’s disappearance as voluntary.
Former detective Chris Illingsworth later explained the culture.
“Police culture in the 1980s was a very misogynistic environment,” he said. “Very chauvinist, sexist, and biased against women.”
“The worst thing a woman can do is leave her children. So Lynn is made to look like the villain.”
Chris Dawson’s status as a former rugby star earned him sympathy. Officers called him “Dorso” and believed every word he said.
Lynette’s aunt, Lee Fletcher, recalled:
“He was just so gorgeous. Of course, you believed him.”
Several people reported seeing Lynette alive after 1982. All of these sightings would later be dismissed by Justice Ian Harrison as wholly unreliable.
In 1992, homicide detectives briefly examined the case, but dropped it because of the alleged sightings.
The investigation was suspended.
The case was formally reopened in July 1998 under Detective Senior Constable Damian Loone. He was stunned that it had never been properly investigated in 16 years.
Police records had been poorly compiled and stored.
The investigation had to start from scratch.
In January 2000, police excavated the Bayview property near the pool. They found five pieces of a pink cardigan with cut marks and a popper container with a 1981 expiry date.
DNA analysis was inconclusive, and the dig was halted due to funding.
Proof-of-life checks were conducted through all government databases: bank accounts, Medicare, Social Security, tax, and passport records.
The results confirmed no trace of Lynette being alive after 1982.
She had accessed no public system in 18 years.
Two coronial inquests followed.
In February 2001, Deputy State Coroner Jan Stevenson determined Lynette had been murdered by someone she knew and recommended charges.
The Director of Public Prosecutions refused to prosecute, citing insufficient evidence.
In February 2003, State Coroner Carl Milovanovich specifically recommended Chris Dawson be charged with murder.
The DPP refused again.
The case was dead.
Lynette Dawson had been murdered. Everyone knew who did it, and nothing would ever happen.
Then came the podcast.
In May 2018, Hedley Thomas, a Walkley Award-winning journalist at The Australian, launched a podcast called The Teacher’s Pet.
The 14-episode series investigated the disappearance and suspected murder of Lynette Dawson.
It eventually garnered over 60 million downloads, topping charts in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand.
The podcast uncovered long-lost witness statements and new witnesses.
A former babysitter testified she had seen Dawson swing Lynette “like a rag doll” into a door frame.
Former students came forward with fresh testimony.
Corroborating diary entries were found.
The public pressure was unprecedented.
A Sydney Morning Herald police source stated that “100% of the reason” for the renewed investigation was public pressure from the podcast.
NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller publicly admitted police had “dropped the ball” in the 1980s.
In September 2018, police conducted a full-scale excavation of the Bayview property.
They searched for five days.
No remains were found.
Despite the absence of a body, on the 5th of December 2018 at 7:50 in the morning, Queensland police detectives arrested Chris Dawson at his Gold Coast home.
He was charged with one count of murder.
It had been 36 years, 10 months, and 27 days since Lynette vanished.
After nearly four decades of freedom, Chris Dawson would finally face trial for murder.
Due to the podcast’s unprecedented publicity, Justice Robert Beech-Jones granted a judge-alone trial. It was a practical solution, balancing fair-trial rights with the public interest.
The trial commenced on the 9th of May 2022 before Justice Ian Harrison in the New South Wales Supreme Court.
It ran for 10 weeks, concluding on the 11th of July.
The prosecution’s case was entirely circumstantial.
No body. No weapon. No forensic evidence.
The Crown built its case on what it characterized as 11 pillars of evidence.
Key prosecution witnesses included neighbors who testified about violence in the home, tennis partners who saw bruises on Lynette, and friends who described her hope after marriage counseling, contradicting any notion she was planning to leave.
Joanne Curtis did not testify in person. She found the process too traumatic.
Her recorded statements from earlier inquests and interviews were played in court.
Justice Harrison would later find her evidence truthful and reliable.
The defense argued Lynette left and abandoned the family voluntarily.
They pointed to alleged post-disappearance sightings and attacked Curtis as an aggrieved ex-wife motivated by anger.
Chris Dawson chose not to give evidence at his own trial.
On the 30th of August 2022, Justice Harrison delivered a five-hour judgment: guilty of murder.
Then, on the 2nd of December 2022, Justice Harrison sentenced 74-year-old Chris Dawson to 24 years imprisonment with a non-parole period of 18 years.
He said:
“Lynette Dawson was faultless and undeserving of her fate. She was also completely unsuspecting.”
“Lynette Dawson was treated by her husband as completely dispensable.”
He described the murder as premeditated, “a self-indulgent brutality committed for the selfish and cynical purpose of clearing the path to Joanne Curtis.”
Harrison acknowledged reality plainly.
“Mr. Dawson is not old by contemporary standards, but the reality is that he will not live to reach the end of his non-parole period.”
“The unavoidable prospect is that Mr. Dawson will probably die in jail.”
In May 2023, Chris Dawson was found guilty in a separate trial of unlawful carnal knowledge of another former student who was 16 when he abused her in 1980.
He was sentenced to three additional years.
His murder appeal was unanimously dismissed on the 13th of June 2024.
In June 2025, the High Court of Australia refused special leave to appeal, calling it futile.
All legal avenues were exhausted.
Chris Dawson would die in prison.
Lynette’s brother, Greg Sims, spoke outside court after sentencing.
“Chris Dawson has had 40 years of freedom,” he said. “Now it’s our turn.”
The family requested she be remembered as Lynette Joy Sims, not Dawson.
Daughter Chanel’s victim impact statement addressed her father directly.
“The night you removed our mother from our lives was the night you destroyed my sense of safety and belonging in this world for many decades to come.”
“Why didn’t you just divorce her? Because of money? For God’s sake.”
“Please tell us where she is.”
“I hope you will finally admit the truth to yourself and give us the last bit of closure we need.”
Lynette’s body has never been found.
Forty years from the night she vanished, justice was finally served.
But Lynette Joy Sims is still missing.
