The Teacher's Trial · The Australian

Episode 21: Shanelle

November 11, 2022·1 hr 37 min·5 clips
Chanel Dawson tells her father, 'The night you removed our mother was the night you destroyed my sense of safety.'
This episode covers the sentencing hearing for Chris Dawson, convicted of murdering his wife Lynette Dawson in 1982. It features emotional victim impact statements from Lynette's daughter Chanel and siblings Greg and Pat, who describe decades of trauma. The hosts analyze courtroom dynamics and legal arguments about sentencing severity.

As heard by us

A careful courtroom account of a disappearance that kept echoing through one family for 40 years.

Chris Dawson's trial is treated less like a puzzle box and more like a long record of what years of uncertainty can do to a family. It moves from Lynette Dawson's disappearance from Bayview in 1982 to the long stretch with little progress, then to Dawson's extradition from…

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Why you'd press play

For a sober look at a decades-long murder trial.

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