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Sister-in-law upset by Chris Dawson affair

Chris Dawson has denied charges that he murdered his wife and disposed of her body.

Chris Dawson has denied charges that he murdered his wife and disposed of her body. Photo: AAP

Chris Dawson upset his sister-in-law by asking if he could stay over at their place and share a bed with his babysitter JC while still married to his wife Lynette in December 1981.

Giving evidence on Dawson’s murder trial in Sydney on Wednesday, Marilyn Dawson said she was unhappy about allowing her brother-in-law and JC to stay at their place on Christmas Day but reluctantly gave them permission.

At the time, she said she knew the marriage between Chris and Lynette Dawson was on shaky ground, but felt an obligation to help her brother-in-law who had just returned from an aborted trip north with JC.

“I felt torn between helping Chris and trying to help Lyn and Chris’ family. His parents probably didn’t know where he was, and I just felt upset that I was in that situation,” she told the NSW Supreme Court.

Dawson and JC had left Sydney in December 1981 to start a new life in Queensland but had abruptly cancelled their plans after JC felt sick and wanted to return home, the court previously heard.

Dawson is accused of murdering his wife and disposing of her body in January 1982, so he could have an unfettered relationship with JC while retaining the family assets including their home in Bayview, Sydney. He has pleaded not guilty to the charge.

Marilyn Dawson, who married Paul Dawson in 1969, told the court she knew the couple’s marriage had not been going well in the final months of 1981, when her sister-in-law was spending more time outside of the family home at the couple’s holiday house in Nowra.

“I asked Lyn to be strong and stay in her own home if she wanted to show that she loved her children and her home and her husband,” she told Justice Ian Harrison.

However, she said Mrs Dawson would always take her children with her on these trips, and would never just leave them at home.

After Lynette Dawson disappeared in January 1982, Marilyn Dawson said the topic of an insurance policy came up in conversations with her brother-in-law.

In a statement to police in March 1999, Mrs Dawson said the money in the insurance policy had just “frittered away” and that the policy had been dissolved.

Mrs Dawson said that after the disappearance, Dawson said his wife had been spotted in Gosford and that she may have gone away to a retreat after “religious people” were spotted at their house in December 1981.

She said that she never had any religious types knock on the door of her home, which was just down the road from Chris and Lynette Dawson’s house.

After a family holiday to Lake Munmorah, NSW, in January 1982, Marilyn said she returned to Sydney to find Dawson and JC in the Bayview home. She said she never saw Mrs Dawson again after that.

The hearing continues.

– AAP

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