As Australians are investigating the details of the new wife to Chris Dawson, they are digging into one of the most shocking criminal stories occurring in the nation, a grooming, murder, and betrayal narrative that gripped the world through the podcast The Teacher’s Pet. The fact is terrifying: Chris Dawson has not merely remarried after his wife had gone missing. In 1982, he killed Lynette Dawson and substituted her with a teenage student whom he had been grooming, and brought the 16-year-old girl to the family home only days after Lynette had disappeared.
It is not a novel of a man who has fallen in love. It is about manipulation by calculation, child sexual abuse, and a crime that took 40 years of the process of justice.
Who was the New Wife of Chris Dawson, Joanne Curtis?
Joanne Curtis, who formally changed her name to JC during the court hearing, was not a typical new wife. When the relationship started in 19,81, she was a 16-year-old student of Cromer High School on the northern beaches of Sydney, with Chris Dawson. Dawson was a physical education Teacher and former rugby league player of the Newtown Jets, aged 33, and groomed the teenager when she babysat his two young daughters, Shanelle and Sherryn.
Section 73 of the NSW law then stated that it was unlawful for teachers to engage in sexual activities with students below 17 years of age- a crime known as carnal knowledge by a teacher with a maximum of 14 years in jail. In spite of this, Dawson encouraged Curtis to engage in a sexual relationship with her whilst she was still his pupil, taking advantage of his power and authority.
On the very day of the disappearance of Lynette Dawson, 8 January 1982, Curtis permanently relocated to the Dawson family house in Bayview. It was six weeks later that Chris reported his wife missing, excusing it by her leaving the family to join a religious commune- a fact later denied by Justice Ian Harrison as evidence of a guilty conscience.
Did Chris Dawson Remarry? The Marriage to Joanne Curtis.
Chris Dawson did marry Joanne Curtis in 1984, two years after Lynette was killed, one year after he divorced his lost wife. At this stage, Curtis was presented with the clothes of Lynette and went as far as to have her wedding ring around the house, an ugly scene Dawson’s daughter Shanelle later wrote about in her memoir My Mother Eyes.
The marriage was not a happy one in the beginning. Curtis would later inform friends that she thought Dawson had killed Lynette. During the 2022 trial, witnesses gave an account of how Curtis had on the day he left Dawson in 1990, after six years of marriage, when she told her friend Toni Melrose-Mikeska: I think he murdered his first wife.
Curtis further revealed some shocking news of Dawson purportedly contacting a hitman. She gave evidence that towards the close of 1981, Dawson took her to a place she had not been to before, where he spent 15-20 minutes and then said: “I went in to get a hitman to kill Lyn, and I did not do it because innocent people could be killed.
The marriage between the couple ended in 1993 with a divorce. Curtis, who is in her late 50s, is also said to have not been romantically involved with anyone since parting with Dawson. She has one adult daughter, but has kept things low after Dawson was arrested and convicted.
What Has Become of the Wife of Chris Dawso,n Lynette?
Lynette Joy Dawson (born as Lynette Joy Simms) was aged 33 years when she disappeared from the family residence at the Bayview home on or around 8 January 1982. She was a good mamma and had intended to see her own mamma at the Northbridge Baths the next day–plans that she never made good.
The body of Lynette is never found. Nonetheless, Justice Ian Harrison held beyond any reasonable doubt that she had died as a result of a deliberate and voluntary action of Chris Dawson, i.e., he killed her.
The case tried by the Crown made it clear that Dawson was obsessed with Joanne Curtis and was desiring her as a replacement wife. A clumsy divorce would have cost them in terms of finances, and Curtis had been threatening to break off their affair. Justice Harrison determined that Dawson got upset and frustrated by the prospect of losing Curtis and decided to murder Lynette.
Who is Shanelle Dawson? The Seeking Justice Daughter.
Shanelle Dawson was only four years old when her mother ran away. For several decades, she lived knowing that something awful had been done, and her father continued his own lies about Lynette leaving the family.
Shanelle explains that she feels unloved by her stepmother, Curti, who did not want to be her mother, and she was definitely not. Being raised in such an environment where her mother has died and a bitter teenage stepmother substituted for her harmed her deeply, and only recently has Shanelle started to publicly process this trauma.
Shanelle released her memoir My Mother Eyes in 2023 and reclaimed her mother as the subject of their sensational media attention. She pleaded emotionally in her victim impact statements made in the presence of her father as he was being sentenced: “Please tell us where she is”.
When Shanelle appeared before the court, rt she told her father: The night you took our mother out of our lives was the night you took away my sense of safety and belonging in this world that I will be experiencing in the next many decades. Why not just divorce her and leave her to those who loved and needed her?
Shanelle did not bring up the murder of their mother with Chris until September 2018, half a year after The Teacher Pet podcast was released. Her younger sister, Sherryn, who was just two years old when Lynette vanished, is devoted to their father, and the sisters are not close anymore.
What Was The Teacher’s Pet Podcast?
The Teacher’s Pet was an investigative podcast by Australian journalist Hedley Thomas, which premiered in 2018 and became a worldwide phenomenon by the end of 2018, being downloaded more than 28 million times. The podcast analyzed the disappearance of Lynette Dawson in 1982 and developed a strong case that Chris Dawson had killed her.
The influence of the podcast was phenomenal. It has triggered a fresh inquiry by the NSW Police to arrest Dawson in Queensland in December 2018. In April 2019, the podcast was forced to be taken off Australian media in order to allow Dawson to receive a fair trial.
The podcast earned Thomas a Gold Walkley Award, the most prestigious award in Australian journalism. His work was able to show how investigative journalism could do something decades of police work failed to do: get enough evidence together in one place to finally prosecute Dawson with murder.
Conviction and Current Status of Chris Dawson.
Chris Dawson was convicted of the murder of Lynette Dawson, following a trial before a judge alone in the NSW Supreme Court on 30 August 2022. Justice Harrison was five hours in delivering his verdict, which he did systematically in disproving the lies of Dawson, who wanted to reconcile with Lynette, the fact that she called him on the phone after she had disappeared, and her emotional state before she vanished.
Dawson was sentenced on 2 December 2022 to 24 years of prison and 18 years of non-parole. At that time, Justice Harrison was 74 and admitted he was not sure that Dawson was going to survive in jail.
On 13 June 2024, Dawson lost an appeal by a three-judge panel to appeal his conviction, which occurred three months after his appeal was heard. The judges considered that there was no chance that Lynette Simms could have left her children voluntarily based on the evidence of the desperation and obsession of Dawson with Curtis.
Chris Dawson is already serving life imprisonment and has never shown the location of the body of Lynette, even though NSW laws can do away with parole for convicted murderers who refuse to reveal the remains of their victims.
Getting the Facts: Strauss and Struss: Chris Dawson the Businessman.
It should be mentioned that when searching for the name Chris Dawson, one might get confused, as this term can result in the presence of a British billionaire called Chris Daws, who created The Range retail stores and is valued at PS2.5 billion. This is not the Chris Dawson of the Australian murderer, but a married Chris Dawson (born 1952 in Plymouth, UK).
By the time the Australians are seeking knowledge regarding the richness of Chris Dawson and his newly married wife or business ventures, they ought to know the kind of Chris Dawson they are investigating. The murderer in question is not very rich, and he is serving his time in a jail in NSW.
The Legacy of Lynette Dawson
Over four decades since her murder, Lynette Dawson has not been found yet, yet her legacy persists through the actions of her daughter, Shanelle, and the will of her family to achieve closure. After being sentenced, her brother Greg Simms said, “Now we just need to find Lyn and bury her.
The case is a bitter lesson of how domestic violence, grooming, and power abuse could grow up to murder- and how justice, decades delayed, can triumph in the end. To the Australians who want to know about the new wife of Chris Dawson, the answer is, it was not a human heart-touching tale of second chances, but a premeditated murder that took away a number of lives.
In case of domestic violence to you or to anybody that you know, then just call 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) or visit 1800respect.org.au to attain some confidential support.
