‘Grapefruit-sized bruise’ seen on Lynette Dawson’s leg,trial hears

Three weeks before she disappeared from her Bayview home,Lynette Dawson was seen at tennis with a “grapefruit-sized bruise” on her leg and bruising on her arms,a court has heard.

“She was really wanting me to go back to her place for coffee,” her friend Roslyn McLoughlin told the NSW Supreme Court on Thursday. “She was very adamant that she needed someone with her.”

Chris and Lynette Dawson.

Chris and Lynette Dawson.Supplied:NSW Supreme Court

McLoughlin was giving evidence at the trial of Chris Dawson,who has pleaded not guilty to murdering his wife Lynette,who vanished from Sydney’s northern beaches in January 1982.

It was the week of Christmas in 1981,and a smaller group than usual had gathered for neighbourhood tennis,McLoughlin said.

Lynette was wearing quite short shorts,and had a “large,probably grapefruit-sized bruise on her thigh”,she said. “I don’t know whether it was both upper arms or one,she had some bruises on her arms.”

She could not recall seeing bruising on Lynette before.

McLoughlin said the 33-year-old seemed distressed and “wasn’t her normal self”.

“That stuck with me because of the fact she disappeared.”

She did not go to Lynette’s house that day as she had her own family pressures that time of the year.

“I felt bad that I hadn’t gone back with her,especially in hindsight ... I found out she’d asked other people,” McLoughlin said.

Lynette Dawson’s friend has claimed the mother had bruises and was desperate for company before vanishing.

Under cross-examination,she said she did not ask Lynette how she had sustained the bruises,and could not remember being told. “Domestic violence back in those days was not discussed,” she said.

Dawson’s barrister Pauline David asked:“You have absolutely no idea whether it was caused through domestic violence or otherwise,do you?”

“Okay,no,” McLoughlin replied.

Asked by David when she had first learned that “Lynette Dawson had abandoned her home”,McLoughlin said she did not think she knew until tennis a couple of weeks into January.

“We certainly did discuss Lyn. She would not have left with leaving her children behind,” she said,describing them as the “pride in her life”. “If she was going to just go away,she would’ve taken those girls.”

McLoughlin said nobody contacted her after Lynette disappeared,and she came forward after seeing a police call for witnesses published in theManly Daily newspaper in 1999.

The Crown alleges Dawson murdered Lynette on or about January 8,1982,and was motivated by his desire to have an unfettered relationship with his former student and babysitter,JC.

The Dawsons’ former babysitter,before JC,gave evidence that she had looked up to them,and originally thought they had a “fantasy home”. She said Dawson was a hands-on father,whose shirts were always “pristine in neat rows”,and she considered Lynette a friend.

She said Dawson assured her it was a good relationship,“but over time and seeing more things happen in the house,I became very disillusioned with what he had been telling me.”

The former babysitter said she once witnessed Dawson get a glass out of the cupboard and say something about it being “dirty”,before he flicked a tea towel across Lynette’s back.

“She just made a sound,like of pain,a gasping ... I could see her flinch.”

Another time,she claimed Dawson “grabbed a whole heap of clothes and threw them on the bed”.

On a third occasion,the former babysitter said the couple were going out one night in 1980 but heard the children crying and went to the girls’ door.

“I saw Chris Dawson grabbing Lynette by the top of her arm and basically swinging her into the bedroom in an angry,forceful act,” the former babysitter said.

“Lynette was almost like a rag doll because he was a lot bigger. As he grabbed her and swung her,she actually collected the door frame with her shoulder.”

She said she spoke to a police hotline,possibly between 1983 and 1985,and was assured if they needed further information they would make contact but “they never,ever did”.

She said she had been ashamed by her reaction to the door incident and the first person she told,decades later,was journalist Hedley Thomas after listening to his podcast on Dawson calledThe Teacher’s Pet.

“The guilt that I had felt had been building up and ... the story wouldn’t go away,” she said.

She denied a suggestion from David that she was “taking every opportunity to demonise” Dawson.

“I had some great times with Mr Dawson,but I also saw some things that were ... terrible and have left scars on me.”

The judge-alone trial before Justice Ian Harrison continues.

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Sarah McPhee is a court reporter with The Sydney Morning Herald.

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