Featured Image Credit: New South Wales Police / Jenny Evans via Getty Images
Topics: True Crime, Podcast, Australia, TV and Film, TV
Michael Slavin
Topics: True Crime, Podcast, Australia, TV and Film, TV
A new ITV documentary is outlining a shocking case in which a woman’s murder was solved by a true crime podcast 40 years on.
The documentary is a fascinating look at the case, which covers new evidence uncovered by the Australian podcast The Teacher’s Pet.
The case in question is the missing mother-of-two Lynette Dawson, who disappeared in 1982.
Her whereabouts were never ascertained by the police investigation.
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In 2018, however, a podcast hosted by journalist Hedley Thomas and produced by former Savage Garden guitarist Slade Gibson uncovered vital new evidence.
The podcast unveiled a secret affair her husband, teacher Chris Dawson, was having with a 16-year-old girl.
While the entire jury were dismissed from the trial, which went before a judge alone due to the podcast's popularity and other media coverage of the case, the podcast was credited with spurring police to reinvestigate.
Twisted Twins, which aired on ITV earlier this week, looks into Chris Dawson and his bond to identical twin Paul Dawson.
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Paul has been alleged of having sex with students, but has denied these claims.
Chris was arrested and found guilty in August 2022 of murdering his wife and disposing of her body in 1982.
It was discovered that he had an ‘infatuation’ with 16-year-old student Joanne Curtis, whom he moved classes to teach and began an affair with.
He was sentenced to 24 years in prison, and he remains imprisoned today at Long Bay Correctional Centre in Sydney.
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Dawson, who is now 76, maintains and insists to this day that Lynette walked out on him and their two children.
At the time of the trial, Hedley Thomas, the journalist who uncovered clues hinting towards her murder, spoke of how ‘unfair’ and ‘unjust’ he felt Lynette's portrayal was when he first looked into the cold case.
He told Australian broadcaster Seven: “A young mother who was devoted to her daughters [was] being written off as a woman who didn't care about them, who just ran off… while her husband was conducting this extraordinary relationship with a schoolgirl half his wife's age.”
Dawson was charged within months of the release of the podcast.
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After the verdict confirmed Dawson’s fate, Lynette’s brother Greg Simms thanked Thomas for ‘giving his sister a voice’.
He said: “She loved her family and never left them of her own accord. Instead, her trust was betrayed by a man she loved”.