An old friend of Lynette Dawson’s has claimed that her mother was bruised, distressed and was looking for desperate company just two weeks before she disappeared.
Roslyn McLoughlin told the NSW Supreme Court that Lynette begged her to come for a coffee in Bayview just before Christmas in 1981.
“She was so inflexible that she needed someone with her … who stayed with me because … she disappeared,” McLoughlin told the court Thursday in Chris Dawson’s murder trial.
Lynette Dawson’s friend Roslyn McLoughlin leaves court after taking Chris Dawson’s trial. (9 News)
The women had been playing tennis when McLoughlin said he noticed a “grapefruit-sized bruise” on Lynette’s thigh and “some bruises on her arms.”
McLoughlin regrets not asking about the bruises, but told the judge that family matters were not discussed at the time.
A former Dawson babysitter, who cannot be identified because she was a teenager at the time, has also taken the stand today.
He said Lynette was “a loving mother” and Dawson, who is on trial for her murder, was “kind and approachable, someone she loved.”
“I also saw horrible things that left me with some scars,” the woman told the court.
He alleges that Dawson “grabbed a kitchen towel and ran it through Lyn’s back” all because of a dirty glass and that his mother “had tears in her eyes.”
Chris Dawson leaves court on May 26. (9News)
The Supreme Court also learned of a time when the caregiver says Dawson ordered Lynette to iron an pile of clothes that did not live up to her standard.
The former nanny claimed the last drop was when she saw Dawson grab Lynette by the arm and make her enter a bedroom in a blunt and angry act that she said left her mother looking like a rag doll.
The next nanny in the family was JC, the woman for whom Dawson is accused of getting rid of Lynette.
Dawson claims that his wife fled and denies killing her.