Now, New Idea can exclusively reveal a shocking new twist in the shocking cold case.
Imagine having a tiny piece of information. Something you’ve held on to for 36 years. It doesn’t seem very significant but you’ve still remembered and wondered about it every so often.
Now imagine if there were lots of people with these tiny fragments.
And what if bringing them all together, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, could solve a mysterious disappearance, most likely a murder?
It’s the situation Sydney mother Michelle Walsh, and dozens like her, are facing with the resurgence of interest in the Lynette Dawson case.
Michelle was a 14-year-old girl at Cromer High School in Sydney’s northern beaches when Lyn, the wife of her much adored PE teacher, Chris Dawson, went missing in January 1982. ‘I met Lynette at a gym display at the end of 1981,’ Michelle tells New Idea. ‘She was lovely, gentle. I remember her smile.’
But it was to be a one-off meeting because soon after, 33-year-old Lyn mysteriously disappeared leaving behind her two daughters Shanelle, who was four, and Sherryn, two.
At the time she was passed off as a runaway wife and police seemed to ignore what has since become glaringly obvious.
Lyn, as two subsequent coronial inquests have found, was murdered by a ‘known person’. And despite never being charged due to insufficient evidence, this person is thought to be Lyn’s husband Chris.
See the full story in this weeks issue of New Idea, on sale tomorrow!
If you have any information call Crimestoppers on 1800 333 000.