Dawson,73,has pleaded not guilty to murdering his first wife,Lynette,who vanished from the northern beaches in January 1982. The Crown alleges he killed her on or about January 8,and moved the then 17-year-old babysitter and his former student,known as JC,straight into his Bayview home.
Chris Dawson arrives at the NSW Supreme Court this week for his trial. He has pleaded not guilty to murdering Lynette Dawson.Peter Rae
Continuing her defence closing address,for a fourth day,Pauline David said a man “can love two women at the same time” and “sometimes you’re very torn” when you care about two people deeply.
“I’m not sure whether we need to work out whether that’s the French national sport,” Justice Ian Harrison said in the NSW Supreme Court on Friday,in response to the submission by David.
The judge raised that the Crown had contended it was “highly disrespectful to install one’s lover in the house during a period of existing marriage”.
David said it would be “extraordinary” that Dawson would have suddenly no longer cared for Lynette,and even those who go through a “terrible break-up” might worry about the other person.
She said Dawson would not have felt he could confide in JC if he felt sadness about his missing wife.
In a recorded interview with police in 1991,Dawson said JC did not know of nights he lay awake crying his heart out,hoping for some contact from Lynette.
He admitted that he had left his home shortly before Christmas 1981 to start a new life in Queensland with JC,whom he was “having an affair with”,before she wanted to return to Sydney.
Dawson told detectives that,after marriage counselling with Lynette in January 1982,they had walked out holding hands for the first time in six months.
Asked by Harrison when the “long and loving relationship” between Chris and Lynette ended,David said it was 18 months after her disappearance when he divorced her in 1983.
“It’s clear that there was a genuine attempt in January[1982] to reconcile the relationship,but that she[Lynette] abandoned the home,” David said.
The defence claims Lynette “didn’t just up and leave” but made several calls to Dawson.
David said Lynette’s first alleged call to Dawson at Northbridge Baths on January 9,when he claims she said she “needed time away”,had been corroborated by three reliable and accurate witnesses.
She said they included Lynette’s late mother Helena Simms,late family friend Phillip Day and a girl working at the kiosk. That woman gave evidence about receiving a call for Chris or his twin Paul in the summer of 1981-82,and could “fairly clearly” recall it featured “long-distance pips”.
“That phone call is not a lie ... not a fabrication,” David said.
She denied that Dawson had a “cunning plan”. She said there was no evidence to suggest Simms was at the pool because of any arrangement made by Dawson,and that it would be “entirely normal” for Day to be present,too.
Crown prosecutor Craig Everson,SC,said one of the dominoes in Dawson’s plan was to have Day witness his receipt of the alleged call,and as a solution for what to do with his children that night.
“This engineered window of quiet seclusion gave the accused the opportunity to dispose of a body before he started making his way north to collect JC[from South West Rocks],” he said.
David is expected to finish her submissions on Monday,as the judge-alone trial enters its 10th week.
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