Chris Dawson walks into the Supreme Court in Sydney in a large media scrum. Photo / Gaye Gerard, NCA Newswire, File
Chris Dawson's estranged daughter has sensationally revealed she believes that under hypnosis she uncovered memories of her father burying her mother Lynette underneath the family's pool.
Speaking publicly for the first time since her father was found guilty of killing her mother over 40 years ago, Shanelle Dawson told 60 Minutes of "toxic" and "manipulative" environment in which she grew up.
Shanelle was 4 when her mother Lynette Dawson disappeared without a trace from their Bayview home on Sydney's northern beaches more than 40 years ago.
Following a judge-alone trial before Justice Ian Harrison, Dawson was in August found guilty of murdering his wife and was recently moved to a jail in regional NSW amid concerns for his safety.
"I heard them say, 'Chris Dawson, I find you guilty' and was just in shock,'" Shanelle Dawson told 60 Minutes in an interview broadcast on Sunday night.
"I just couldn't fathom it really. It just felt so surreal."
Lynette Dawson disappeared from her Bayview home in January 1982, leaving behind Shanelle and her 2-year-old sister.
Dawson told officers during his only police interview in 1991 that he had dropped off his wife at a Mova Vale bus stop on the morning of January 9, 1982. However, she failed to meet up with them at the Northbridge Baths.
Shanelle said that for 40 years she was told by her father that her mother had run away.
However, Justice Harrison found that Dawson murdered his wife so he could be with a 17-year-old babysitter, who can only be known as JC.
Shanelle said that while living in America for nine years, she came to realise that he had fostered an "abusive" environment for her while growing up.
"I could see that he was manipulative and gas lighting us all the time."
Lynette's death created a schism through the family and Shanelle said she had been cut off by Chris' side and her sister, who has supported their father.
"My father definitely embodies the survival of the fittest, f*** everyone else. Just do what you need to do to get what you want," Shanelle said.
"And I feel a lot of anger and rage towards him for being that way, but I simultaneously feel compassion and sadness that he is that way."
In 2013, with the investigation at a dead end, the officers in charge of the case, Detective Damian Loone, put Shanelle under hypnosis.
She said during the session she uncovered memories of sitting in the family station wagon with her mother slumped in the front seat and of Chris burying her mother underneath the family pool.
"It was like I could feel myself as a four-and-a-half-year-old child again," Shanelle said.
"I could feel the feelings that she felt at the time. It was really pretty profound.
"I believe I saw my sister and I in the back of a car, of our station wagon, and my mother slumped in the front.
"I believe I saw him shining headlights on a spot near the pool and digging. I believe that he buried her in that spot for that night, and then the next day, when he didn't have us kids, moved her somewhere else."
Shanelle said she accepted that some people would question how much of the recollection was real.
When asked whether she believed they were true memories, she said: "I think they are, yes."
She last spoke to her father in 2018, three months before his arrest, when she sent him a text message confronting him.
"I won't live a life based on lies, nor will I keep subjecting myself to emotional manipulation and control," she said in the text message.
"You have dishonoured our mother so terribly, and also my sister and I, through all of this. No more. One day I will forgive you for removing her so selfishly from our lives."
She implored him to take responsibility for what he had done, but he instead blamed her.
Shanelle told 60 Minutes that her father replied: "You are clearly very lonely and depressed in the life you have chosen.
"You know very little about what was going on in my life, or your sister's. It is your adult life, now 41, with a child and without a partner. That has clearly caused this terrible depression.
"We all, unfortunately, have to live with the choices we make. I OWN my poor choices, and you never need to remind me of them."
Just days after Lynette was murdered, JC was moved into the family's home by Dawson and acted as Shanelle's replacement mother.
JC, during her testimony, told the Supreme Court that she was groomed by Dawson from a young age.
Shanelle said she didn't blame JC, but felt like she could have acted differently.
"I feel very sad for her. I feel sad that I don't know why she made the choices she did," Shanelle said.
"I know for myself having babysat and nannied in multiple, multiple homes ... And thankfully none of those dads ever hit on me.
"But I know as a 17-year-old, I still would've had the capacity, even with my background, to say, 'no, that's not okay. You're a married man'."
The police case stagnated for decades before journalist Hedley Thomas, through the Teacher's Pet podcast, shone a light on the case.
Dawson was arrested and extradited from Queensland in 2018 before he faced trial this year where Justice Harrison found he told decades of lies to cover up his crimes.
Dawson maintains he is not guilty and his lawyers have filed an intention to appeal the verdict.
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet has moved to introduce "no body, no parole" laws designed to entice people convicted of murder to reveal where victim's bodies are buried.
The bill has been dubbed "Lyn's law".
Dawson will face a sentence hearing in Sydney's Supreme Court next month before he learns his fate at a later date.
However, Shanelle said she doubted her father would ever admit to murdering her mother.
"That would be incredible.
"I don't think he's going to, personally. I just think he believes his own lies and he won't admit it.
"He might come to have to admit it to himself after sitting in prison for some time, but I don't think it will be anytime soon."