Australian Story: Sept 5

Australian Story returns to ABC on Monday with an episode that is bound to draw interest, “Lyn Dawson – Vanished.”

Australian Story first covered the story of Lyn Dawson nearly 20 years ago. The mother-of-two disappeared in mysterious circumstances in 1982.

By 2003, a second coroner’s inquest had recommended that her then husband be charged with murder but after each inquest the DPP declined to proceed.

Over the years, producer Wendy Page has kept in contact with Lyn’s family, sister Pat Jenkins, brother Greg Simms and his wife Merilyn. She interviewed them for a second program about the case in 2018.

Now Australian Story has been filming exclusively with Lyn’s family and friends in the lead up to last Tuesday’s momentous finding in Chris Dawson’s long-awaited murder trial.

And our cameras were there as they digested the guilty verdict.

For Greg Simms it was a bittersweet moment as he questioned why Chris Dawson couldn’t just have left a marriage he’d grown unhappy with.

“I was crying, I thought, well, holy cow he’s had 40 years of a life. He’s been found guilty of murdering my sister. Why couldn’t he just walk away? We’d still have a sister… he just wanted everything,” he says.

After a 40-year fight for justice the verdict has brought the family some comfort. But for Pat Jenkins, another important question remains unanswered.

“The most important thing to us is to find her, where she is, to lay her to rest. And we’ll never know,” she says.

8pm Monday on ABC.