Wednesday 18 May 2022 09:25 AM Accused wife killer Chris Dawson when he allegedly murdered wife takes stand trends now
A former student taught by Chris Dawson has claimed he left love notes in her schoolbag before he allegedly murdered his wife.
In the love notes, which were tendered on Wednesday during Dawson's trial for the alleged murder of his wife Lynette, he calls her 'Petal' and signs himself off as 'God'.
Now aged in her late 50s, the then Cromer High School student on Sydney's Northern Beaches told the court that Dawson, who was then a PE teacher twice her age, had eyed her up 'in the playground' from when she was 15.
'He told me he had seen me in the playground the year before when I was 15 and he'd like to get to know me because he was attracted to me,' the woman known as JC told the court.
'I believe he deliberately tried to take my class the following year.'
She said Dawson had put his hand on her leg at a school athletics carnival, had with his twin brother Paul both lied to their wives to to drink with schoolgirls at the local Time and Tide Hotel, and kissed her in the Dee Why car park while giving her driving lessons.
Dawson, 73, is standing trial in the NSW Supreme Court accused of murdering his wife, who disappeared in January 1982, aged 33.
The Crown claims that then-high school teacher Chris Dawson killed Lynette and disposed of her body because of his affair with one of his students, known as JC.
JC said this was Dawson's self-appointed nickname to disguise who he was because she was then 16.
A court has heard how Chris Dawson called a student at his former high school 'petal' and that he wooed her with secret love letters left in her schoolbag
Dawson's legal team has argued at the trial that he might have failed his wife as a husband, but he did not kill her.
JC told the court that in 1980, Dawson had bought the 16-year-old two different schoolbags, in which he left love notes.
'He used to leave notes of love and affection in may bag when I went to biology,' JC told the court.
'When I left the relationship in 1990, he said I should destroy all those notes. I destroyed most of them.'
But she said of 'the rest', 'I kept the originals for 40 years.'
The love letters tendered at the trial included a card Dawson gave JC on her 17th birthday, signed by him 'Happy Birthday XXX' and a Happy Valentine's Day 1981 card.
JC said Dawson called her 'Petal', himself 'God' and pledged they would be together forever at a time when his wife was still alive, but vanished soon afterward
On that card, it was written: 'To my lovely beautiful (JC). The happiness have given me will be with me forever'.
In a Christmas 1980 card, when JC was aged 16, Dawson allegedly called her by his pet name for her, 'Petal' and wrote, 'Love always, God' which JC said he often used to disguise his identity in love notes to her, because 'it was 1980 and I was 16'.
On a 1981 birthday card, under a proforma greeting 'Happy birthday my little chickadee!', the court heard Dawson wrote: 'To my lovely beautiful Bub. Happy birthday ... and hoping we will have all the birthdays to follow. All my love forever XXX'.
Asked how that made her feel at the time, JC said, 'I felt loved', which was 'quite different' to her home life, where her stepfather was physically attacking her mother.
JC told the court she would spend the night at Dawson's home while she was hired to babysit his children.
Asked what she thought the birthday card meant, JC said she thought it meant 'that he expected to share every birthday together - that we would be together forever'.
Chris Dawson and his wife Lynette married and had two children, but she vanished without trace aged 33 in early 1982 after he had begun an affair with schoolgirl JC
The court heard that Dawson moved the schoolgirl into the home and when his wife fell asleep after he mixed her cocktails, had sex with the teenager in the family home
When she was forced out of home after the stepfather hit her, Dawson had offered her a room at his house, and although Lynette 'was very welcoming' she soon noticed his cruel taunts to his wife, the court heard.
She said Dawson would 'sing songs to her that were cruel, put her down, songs with double meanings, maybe it was to impress me ... about her unattractiveness'.
She said in one of those songs he called her 'Fatso ... and laughed about it'.
The court heard Dawson made Lynette sleep by giving her alcohol so he could have sex with JC.
'Chris Dawson would want me to have sex with him ... in the bedroom I was designated.'
JC told the court about how she would swim in the family swimming pool of the Dawson house topless because that 'was the fashion' at the time.
She said the pool was immediately surrounded by brick tiling, but the rest of the land around it was 'just dirt', which after rain, turned muddy and cascaded dirty water down into the pool.
The swimming pool at the Dawson home where JC swam topless was surrounded by brick tiles and lots of dirt which became muddy after rain and emptied into the pool
Lynette Dawson (above in the yard of the family home with one of her daughters before she disappeared
