Hutcheon,who died this year,claimed he saw Lynette Dawson at a bus stop across the road from Gladesville Hospital. He says he was driving along Victoria Road three-to-six months after her January 1982 disappearance.
“She looked just like the Lyn that I knew. Same colour hair,same hairstyle,no sunglasses,no obvious attempt to disguise herself or anything like that,” he told police at Midland in Perth in 2019.
In that interview,Detective Senior Constable Daniel Poole asked Hutcheon about a visit by two police officers in 1999 to his then family home in the Sydney suburb of Cromer.
The detective pointed out that no reference had been made of the Gladesville sighting to the police in 1999,according to the notes from the time.
Hutcheon remained adamant he had mentioned the incident,saying the statements taken by the police were “absolutely wrong”.
After seeing Lynette Dawson and driving past,he claims he later did a U-turn and returned to speak with her,only to find her gone.