A former high school teacher, the subject of the hit podcast "The Teacher's Pet", has been found guilty of murdering his wife 40 years ago, after public attention triggered renewed interest in the case.
The guilty verdict marks a dramatic conclusion to a cold case that has gripped Australia since the 2018 podcast put pressure on police to revisit their investigation.
A 2003 inquest had recommended charging Christopher Dawson with his wife's murder but prosecutors declined, citing a lack of evidence.
On Tuesday, New South Wales Supreme Court judge Ian Harrison found that Dawson deliberately killed his wife, Lynette Dawson, in January 1982 to pursue a relationship with JC, a teenage student he was having an affair with, and who had babysat and lived in his Sydney home.
Dawson, now 74, maintained his wife had left him and subsequently telephoned him to say she needed space, but the judge called his defence fanciful and riddled with lies.
Justice Harrison noted there was no record of Lynette contacting family or friends since her disappearance, nor of making credit card payments or working.
Dawson's lawyer, Greg Walsh, told reporters outside court that his client would appeal the conviction in the judge-only trial.
Police charged Dawson with Lynette's murder in 2018, four months after the final episode of "The Teacher's Pet", which criticised the law enforcement response to her disappearance and featured multiple witness interviews.
Harrison said the case against Dawson had been wholly circumstantial since Lynette's body had never been found and there was no known cause, location or exact time of death.
But the combination of small pieces of evidence, including inconsistencies in Dawson's defence, was persuasive and compelling, he said.
"I am left in no doubt, I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt, that the only inference is that Lynette Dawson died ... as a result of a conscious and voluntary act by Mr Dawson with the effect of causing her death."
When police reopened their investigation they said only that it was because new witnesses had come forward, but media reports said law enforcement sources confirmed they were motivated by publicity generated by "The Teacher's Pet", which has been downloaded 30 million times.
Dawson's defence argued that the podcast, produced by News Corp's The Australian newspaper, denied him a fair trial because of the way he was depicted.
Harrison agreed the podcast had cast Dawson in a negative light but said he did not factor that into his verdict.
Evidence by JC that Dawson had driven up to Southwest Rocks to pick her up from a holiday on January 11 in 1982 was accepted by the court.
"Lyn's gone. She's not coming back. Come back to Sydney and help me look after the children and be with me," Dawson said to JC over the phone before he drove up from Sydney to collect her.
JC's evidence was mostly truthful and reliable, Harrison said in rejecting allegations by Dawson that she had been corrupted by an acrimonious custody battle between them.
JC and the former Newtown Jets rugby league player married in 1984 and separated in 1990.
However, the judge dismissed claims by JC that Dawson had driven her somewhere in 1981 while she was still in high school to find a "hitman" to kill his wife.
It was improbable Dawson would have told a young impressionable JC of this alleged plan at the time, the judge said.
Dawson, who was on bail, was taken into custody.
- Reuters and AAP
