Thursday 10 November 2022 02:38 AM Chris Dawson: Inside courtroom as daughter Shanelle delivers powerful speech trends now
Convicted wife killer Chris Dawson kept his head bowed and refused to look at his daughter Shanelle as she tearfully told a court about having a father who had murdered her mother: 'You had no right. You are not God.'
Shanelle - the oldest of two girls Dawson had with wife Lynette before he murdered her in 1982 - delivered her emotional victim impact statement in the NSW Supreme Court on Thursday morning.
Addressing him directly from the witness box, just a few metres from where Dawson was in the dock in his prison greens, Shanelle asked her father a series of anguished questions.
'Once I came to realise it was you ... my whole world shattered,' Shanelle said.
'I had to tell my beautiful innocent daughter why her grandfather killed her grandmother.
'Why didn’t you just divorce her?
'Because of money? For God sake - the way you made her invisible.'
Wife killer Chris Dawson, depicted in a court sketch in prison greens after his conviction, will likely die in jail. He faced a sentencing hearing on Thursday
Lynette Dawson (above with Shanelle) had found it hard to conceive and doted on her two daughters to Chris Dawson, who were four and two when she vanished in 1982
Shanelle spoke of how her own father had 'silenced' and 'gaslighted' her and subjected her to years of 'emotional and psychological abuse'.
'The fact my father that I loved ... was capable of such a heartless act (and that) you can coldly dispose of her. I’ve lost my father too.
'How a father is capable of such an act of violence against a woman he supposedly loved.'
She questioned how her father could be 'capable of such a heart wrenching brutal selfish act' and concluded by begging her father, ‘Please tell us where she is’.
The court subsequently heard the reasons from prosecutor Craig Evereson SC why Dawson should be given a lengthy sentence which would men he would die in jail.
Dawson was led into the court just after midday, the 74-year-old inmate limping into the court room wearing prison greens to the dock where he spoke briefly with his lawyer Greg Walsh.
Lynette Dawson's brother Greg Simms, his wife Merilyn and one of the chief detectives who investigated Lyn's murder, Damian Loone, attended the hearing wearing pink ribbons in honour of the slain woman.
Dawson kept his head slightly bowed, refusing to look at the witness box as Mr Simm's victim witness statement was read out.
In his statement, Mr Simms called his former brother-in-law a 'conniving monster' who had cruelly lied to betrayed Lynette's family.
'You were accepted into our family unconditionally when you married Lyn, the statement said
'We trusted you. You repaid us by giving us the ultimate betrayal.
'You betrayed out trust , left a huge hole which cannot be replaced.'
Mr Simm's statement said that there had been 'constant heartache and tears' since 'you carried out your foul deed'.
Chris Dawson in his suit on verdict day in August before he was convicted of the 1982 murder of Lynette Dawson and taken away to prison
He said that members of his family have 'cursed and despised you for what you did' and 'your lies and deceit had a profound effect on my father, mother and brother.'
A statement by Lyn Dawson’s older sister Pat Jenkins, she described Dawson as ‘this man who must have what he wanted at all costs’.
‘How do you describe the impact of over 40 years without your sister? Lyn’s loss was a black cloud hanging over me.’
She said she had ‘jumped in the air’ when he was charged with murder in 2018, 36 years after she had lost her sister.
Dawson appeared in the same court on Thursday that he had for the verdict on August 30 when he was pronounced guilty of murder after a judge-alone trial.
He had spent months attending the Supreme Court building in Queens Square near Hyde Park earlier this year during his long murder trial.
Dawson had only spent two weeks in prison when his lawyer Greg Walsh revealed he had received death threats from several inmates in Silverwater jail.
The the one-time teacher and football star was then moved to another prison near Wellington in central western NSW.
At the time, Mr Walsh also said that Dawson was 'in shock and sad about his predicament, and worried about his children'.
Following his client's conviction, Mr Walsh said that Dawson maintained his innocence and would be appealing the guilty verdict.
Detectives who investigated the Lynette Dawson murder case have said the most likely spot where the murdered 33-year-old is buried is somewhere on the NSW Central Coast.
Dawson's lawyer Greg Walsh said Dawson has received serious death threats from a number of inmates at Silverwater jail before he was moved to a prison near Wellington in central western NSW
Investigators working the case have established two solid theories - the first was that Lynette was buried in the backyard of the family home the couple shared with their young daughters on Sydney's northern beaches.
Police excavations of the yard over the years and ground penetrating technology failed to provide any significant clues, except for a pink cardigan with what appeared to be knife marks that experts were unable to link to Lynette.
'There was the (other) theory that he travelled to the Central Coast on January 9,' a police source told The Daily Telegraph.
'The challenge with that is that there is no physical evidence to point in any direction... there is a lot of regional bush area... there is no possible way to search it, it's so vast.'
Prosecutors in the trial argued Dawson gave the couple's two daughters to a friend to look after on January 9 to give him the opportunity to hide the body.
Justice Harrison said no evidence had been presented at trial to show Dawson's whereabouts on that night.
The trial heard Chris Dawson's motive for murdering Lynette was the fact he was 'besotted' with JC, the schoolgirl babysitter who became his second wife and testified at his trial about his controlling behaviour
Chris Dawson was initially taken to Silverwater prison (above, arriving ten weeks ago) but was transferred to another jail after receiving death threats from inmates
In August, Justice Harrison found Dawson guilty after reading a four-and-a-half hour judgment, bringing to a close a mystery that has haunted Lynette's family and Sydney's northern beaches for four decades.
His Honour said Dawson was motivated by his obsessive infatuation with
