A COLD case murder has finally been solved after 40 years after a husband was found guilty of murdering his wife.
Chris Dawson, 73, was convicted of killing his wife Lynette to cover up a secret affair with his babysitter after a seven-week trial with new witnesses and evidence.
NSW Supreme Court Justice Ian Harrison said there was "no doubt" that housewife Lyn died some time around 8 January 1982 "as a result of a conscious or voluntary act committed by Christopher Dawson".
The 33-year-old disappeared from her home in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia, in 1982 and was recently the subject of the 2018 true-crime podcast The Teacher's Pet.
In December 2018, Dawson was arrested by Aussie police after the podcast and media interest helped build evidence against him in connection with his wife's murder.
Justice Harrison threw out claims Lyn had abandoned her husband and children to vanish without a trace or that she had been spotted alive and had tried to contact her husband.
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Dawson has denied the charges against him and pleaded not guilty in the two-month trial. His lawyers have vowed to launch an appeal.
In delivering his verdict, Justice Harrison said: "I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the phone call material and the sightings evidence do not establish that Lynette Dawson was alive in circumstances to which they separately relate.
"I’m satisfied that none of the alleged sightings was a genuine sighting of Lynette Dawson.
"My conclusions in that respect have in the first instance been based upon the incidents considered individually.
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"The whole of the evidence satisfies me that Lynette Dawson is dead, that she died on or about 8 January, 1982 and that she did not voluntarily abandon her home."
The 73-year-old former Sydney rugby league player and teacher was accused of murdering his wife and disposing of her body because he was "infatuated" with one of his teenage babysitter.
Opening his trial on Monday, crown prosecutor Craig Everson SC said Dawson had called his wife a "fat and ugly b****".
He told the judge that Dawson had entered a consensual relationship with his babysitter, known only as JC, and had repeatedly asked her to marry him.
JC moved into his home within days of her disappearance and they pair eventually married in 1984 and split six years later.
Dawson allegedly tried to sell his Bayview home without his wife's permission, briefly moving to Queensland to start a new life with JC before going back to Sydney.
Judge Ian Harrison was told Dawson considered hiring a hitman to get rid of his wife, but decided against it because "innocent people would be hurt".
Dawson, who now lives in Queensland with his third wife, bizarrely claimed he had spotted Lyn in the background of an episode of the BBC's Antiques Roadshow filmed in Padstow, Cornwall.
Much of the podcast The Teacher's Pet, produced by The Australian, focuses on Chris Dawson's relationship with his former pupil, known as JC, with whom he started a relationship when she was just 16.
Dawson moved the schoolgirl into the family home to look after his and Lyn's two children while she was still alive.
The husband announced that his student would be living with them, which reportedly sparked a fierce row.
In an interview with police from 1998 which appears on the podcast, JC describes how Dawson allegedly took advantage of her, and how she eventually agreed to marry him after he kept hassling her.
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JC started sharing Dawson's bed just two days after Lyn disappeared.
He took six weeks to report his wife was missing, explaining her absence by suggesting she had joined a religious cult.
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