Lynette Dawson has been missing 40 years. This week, her husband was convicted of murder.

Lynette Dawson adored her two little girls. 

She and her PE teacher husband Chris had tried for years to conceive them to no avail, and were taking steps towards adoption when she finally fell pregnant after obstetric surgery.  

They raised their family on Sydney's Northern Beaches, where Lyn was a devoted nurse and childcare worker. 

In January 1982, while excitedly preparing to send her eldest off to school, Lyn, then 33, disappeared. Her children were just four and two. 

Lynette Dawson and her daughter. Image: NSW Police/AAP. 

Dawson claimed that the last time he saw her was on the morning of January 9, when he dropped Lyn off at a Mona Vale bus stop. He said she was supposed to meet him and their daughters that afternoon at Northbridge Baths, but she never turned up.

For 40 years, her family and friends have been looking for answers, with a podcast by The Australian's Hedley Thomas, The Teacher's Pet, catapulting her suspicious disappearance into the public zeitgeist in 2018. 

That same year, Dawson was charged with her murder and went to trial in 2022. 

He has today been found guilty and taken into custody at NSW Supreme Court. 

Justice Ian Harrison delivered a five-hour judgement on Tuesday, concluding that he was satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Dawson murdered Lyn to enable him to continue an unfettered relationship with teenager JC, a student from his school. 

This is Lynette Dawson's story. 

*****

Before she disappeared, Lyn was in great distress about the future of her marriage. 

A former neighbour told the court he saw Dawson push her up against a trampoline and scream at her shortly before she went missing.

"He was towering over her... he was roaring at her," the neighbour described.

While Justice Harrison did not accept witness accounts that Lyn was physically assaulted and bruised in the months before her death, he was confident Dawson became angry, agitated and aggressive towards his wife as their relationship fell apart. 

Lyn had been getting vocally upset about the presence of JC (as she is known to the court), a 16-year-old student from Dawson's work - Cromer High - who he'd hired to babysit their kids. The teenager started living at the home in late 1981, away from the domestic violence occurring at home. 

JC moved out when Lyn confronted her and told her, "You’ve been taking liberties with my husband." It was the last time she saw Lyn.

Chris and Lynette Dawson on their wedding day in 1970. Image: 9News. 

Two days after Lyn went missing in the new year, the teenager moved into the family home again. 

As we heard during his trial, Dawson first pursued JC through the final years of high school, leaving notes of love and affection in her schoolbag in 1980 and 1981. 

He called her "petal" and "beautiful bub" and signed off his love notes as "God." He had proposed marriage to her numerous times, while still with Lyn.

In December 1981, just a month before Lyn vanished, Dawson and JC left Sydney to start a life together in Queensland, the court heard, but that plan was abruptly cancelled. They arrived home on Christmas Day, and Dawson remained with JC away from his family home for the day of celebration.

The crown argued during the trial that Dawson pursued four separate plans to leave his wife in the months before she vanished, including searching for a flat in Manly and unsuccessfully attempting to get his wife to sign paperwork to sell their home. 

In January 1982, Dawson said Lyn had called the afternoon she vanished to let him know she was going away for a time to sort things out. He didn't know when she was coming back. 

He said he phoned her several times shortly after her disappearance - something Justice Harrison believes is a lie. 

It wasn't until six weeks after Lyn vanished that Dawson eventually reported his wife missing to police. 

JC told the murder trial Dawson called her while she was on holiday in South West Rocks that January and told her he "missed her terribly".

He told her, "Lyn’s gone, she’s not coming back. Come and help me look after the children and be with me."

He drove up and collected her.

When Lyn first went missing, there was little to no investigation. As The Daily Telegraph pointed out, "The police investigation consisted of only a one-page missing persons handout, a VCR tape and three cassettes of a sole interview with her husband Chris."

The court has since heard the investigation was one treated with indifference. There have been suggestions Lyn joined a religious group in northern NSW - a suggestion Justice Harrison says is based on no more than conjecture or speculation. 

Meanwhile, JC's relationship with Dawson continued, with the couple eventually marrying in 1984 with a ring made from Lyn's diamond engagement and eternity rings which had been left at the house.

The couple moved to Queensland together and had a daughter before divorcing in 1990.

JC told the court Dawson at one point treated her like a 'prisoner' and his "slave and sex slave," with an acquaintance of JC telling the judge that Dawson controlled the cash, giving her "housekeeping money". 

JC told a colleague after they separated, "I think he murdered his first wife." 

The judge did not accept the defence's inference that JC's evidence had been corrupted by her divorce from Dawson. 

In his lengthy verdict, Justice Harrison pointed out that the contention that Lyn would rationally decide to "propel herself into a life of anonymity, in a figurative state of nakedness without, it seems, even a change of underwear is so unlikely and so improbable, it has to be capable of rejection out of hand."

Lyn was not mentally unstable, she adored her children, and she was still hopeful of reconciling her marriage, despite Dawson's relationship with JC. 

Justice Harrison concluded, "I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Lynette did not abandon her home," referring to that suggestion as "ludicrous."

He was also satisfied that she died on or about January 8, 1982, at the hands of Dawson. 

He believes Dawson made the decision to kill Lyn, only after the failed relocation to Queensland in December saw him return to his marital home.

In terms of how Lyn died, JC told the court Dawson once 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. 

"[When he came out] he said, 'I went inside to get a hit man to kill him but then I decided I couldn't do it because innocent people would be hurt'," she said.

Justice Harrison, however, wasn't satisfied that conversation ever occurred, referencing the fact JC was young, impressionable and a "somewhat reluctant lover" and Dawson therefore wouldn't have risked bringing her in on a complex plan to murder Lyn.

All we know about the circumstances of Lynette Dawson's death is that Justice Harrison is confident Dawson's lies point to his guilt, thought up to create "an impression that was inconsistent with him having anything to do with the disappearance of his wife".

Lyn's body has never been found, and a police search under the family swimming pool (where many believed her remains may lay), returned only a pink cardigan that was unable to be linked to Lyn.

Her family gasped as the verdict was handed down, and Dawson was led away in handcuffs to await sentencing. 

Lyn’s family was a metre away from #Dawson in court as he learnt his fate, they are clutching each other’s hands & gasped as he was led away.
They never thought this day would come but their 40 year old suspicions have been confirmed. @9NewsSyd #TheTeachersPet

— Tiffiny Genders (@tiffgenders) August 30, 2022

Forty years later, they have an answer they have long suspected to be true. 

As Justice Harrison told the court, "The case against Mr Dawson is wholly circumstantial. It is therefore necessary that the crown persuade me beyond reasonable doubt not only that Mr Dawson's guilt is a rational inference, but that is the only rational inference that the circumstances would enable me to draw."

Considered as a whole, however, he noted that the circumstantial evidence was "persuasive and compelling."

"I'm satisfied beyond reasonable doubt the only rational inference that the circumstances enable me to draw is that Lynette Dawson died on about 8th January 1982 as the result of a conscious and voluntary act committed by Mr Dawson, with the intention of causing her death," he concluded. 

Feature Image: AAP/Dean Lewis/NSW Police/Mamamia.