FIGHTING FOR LYNETTE

REBECCA HAZEL WAS INSTRUMENTAL IN GETTING LYNETTE DAWSON'S STORY INTO THE PUBLIC EYE

-  Emma Levett

It was a story that made no sense to Sydney lawyer Rebecca Hazel when she heard it over a coffee with a friend. There was a potential murder, family intrigue and a distinct lack of justice; and her immediate interest in the unbelievable tale set her on a journey which has shaped the last 16 years of her life.

When Hazel first heard the story of how a young mother, Lynette Dawson, went missing and her husband, Chris, was suspected of murdering her, it was 25 years after it happened. “It was 2007 and I was working on the Northern Beaches at a women’s refuge as a lawyer,” she tells WHO.

One of her colleagues was Chris Dawson’s second wife, known for legal reasons as “JC”.

“One day, we had coffee together and she told me her story – or part of it,” Hazel says. “JC said she’d moved into the [Dawson’s] house soon after his first wife went missing and they got married a few years later. She also said: ‘The police think that he killed her.’ She insinuated she also believed that and I was very interested. It didn’t make sense to me. Why had he not been charged?”

Her sense of justice piqued, Hazel set about investigating if what JC said was true, and she was incensed to discover information from the two inquests into Lynette’s case that were held in 2001 and 2003.