Former Sydney teacher Chris Dawson has launched an appeal against his murder conviction with his legal team arguing his first wife was in despair and chose to leave the family home.
www.abc.net.au
Dawson has come up with a whole new story, now.. Now, .. 40 years later, the 'running off to a religious cult' story has faded away, all the other stories, Lynn working at a hospital, lynn at a fruit market, Lynn at a bus stop,, etc. ...all this is now water under the bridge and lo and behold, this story is now , apparently, the operative one....
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During the judge-alone trial, Dawson's legal team said Ms Simms may have chosen to leave her family, having had her trust terribly broken because of Dawson's behaviour with the babysitter, who moved into their marital home.
Ms Rigg told the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal Ms Simms experienced a "high level of despair" in the six months leading up to her disappearance and was well aware of Dawson's capacity to care for their children
"There was significant evidence of Ms [Simms'] despair and loss of hope and self-esteem over the months in the second half of 1981, as she confided in a number of people in terms of what was happening," she said.
( whodathunk it??... Dawson's capacity to care for their children!!!!... an astonishing claim ) ...
One of the appeal judges, Justice Christine Adamson, said: "Nonetheless the applicant [Dawson], from his point of view, wanted to keep the children, wanted to keep the house and wanted to keep JC and one way of doing that would be to murder his wife."
Ms Rigg said only two weeks before Ms Simms vanished, Dawson had shown a preparedness to leave the children and the house — and had demonstrated he was not particularly concerned about financial consequences.