Christopher Michael Dawson said his wife lived in a commune west of Sydney more than 25 years after her disappearance, a judge said.
Testifying on Monday in Dawson’s murder trial, Kay Sinclair said she ran into twin brothers Chris and Paul Dawson as the wake of Phillip Day, who was ill with cancer and died in 2007.
He said Dawson told him that his wife Lynette had left home and was living in a cult or commune in the Blue Mountains at the time. The woman asked how a woman could get up and leave her children.
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“Paul said something like ‘I was a little crazy,'” he told Judge Ian Harrison.
Mrs Sinclair, whose husband attended Sydney Boys High School with the Dawsons, is a professional recruiter. He said he knew body language and described the behavior of the Dawson twins as “creepy” because of the way they sat so together.
“I think Chris was checking with his big twin that he was saying the right thing. That was the impression I had,” he said.
Dawson, now 73, is accused of murdering his wife and disposing of her body in January 1982 so that he could have an unrestricted relationship with a woman known as JC who was his nanny and a former high school student.
He pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Former police officer Ian Kennedy also went to Sydney Boys. He told the court he may have attended a school meeting with the Dawsons in 1985, but denied saying Mrs Dawson was seen living in New Zealand at the time.
“I was not involved in any investigation into Lynette’s disappearance,” she said.
Paul Dawson has previously told the court that Mr Kennedy set his brother aside at the meeting and explained his wife’s whereabouts.
Images of Elva McBay’s testimony in local court in 2020 were reproduced on Monday. Ms McBay, who has since died, said she saw Ms Dawson for a few seconds in March 1983 on Macquarie Street, Sydney during a visit by Prince Charles. and Princess Diana.
The woman appeared to be leaving Sydney Hospital, huddled under the barricade, crossed the road in front of the royal convoy and disappeared into the crowd on the other side.
While telling her husband, “I think it was Lynette Dawson,” at the parade, Ms. McBay said in 2020 that the woman was too fast and could not confirm that she had been properly identified.
He also said that someone who looked like Mrs. Dawson had been seen in an episode of The Antiques Roadshow.
Mrs. McBay worked at the same school as Paul Dawson and became a family friend, having been a lifelong supporter of the Newtown Jets rugby league club where the twins played.
Mrs. Dawson was crying and distressed at one of her daughters’ birthday parties in 1981 after having a fight with JC, according to the court.
At the party, Ms. McBay said JC threatened Ms. Dawson, saying she wanted to “get rid of it.”
“I thought [JC] I meant I wanted to get Lyn out of the house and I said, “You have to get her out of the house.”
Dawson’s former neighbor, Malcolm Downy, testified that he had seen Mrs. Dawson “crushed and nervous” when he knocked on the back laundry door shortly before her disappearance.
“She looked stressed and had no children with her. That was weird. That woman never went without her children,” he said.
Prosecutors are trying to provide evidence of another neighbor, now dead, who claimed Ms Dawson came to her crying that her husband had called her a “fat, ugly bitch”.
The alleged teasing was done because Mrs. Dawson could not lose the weight she had gained after the birth of one of her daughters.
The NSW Supreme Court trial continues on Tuesday.