The Teacher’s Pet podcast, which has been inextricably linked to the Christopher Michael Dawson murder trial, won Australia’s top journalism award for Hedley Thomas and Slade Gibson and has been downloaded 60 million times internationally.
Judges who awarded the pair the 2018 Gold Walkley Award said the Australian newspaper’s 220,000-word podcast “unearthed long-lost statements and new witnesses, prompting police to once again search for Lyn’s body Dawson, who disappeared from her home in 1982.” .
On Tuesday, Dawson, 73, was found guilty of murdering his ex-wife Lynette four decades ago on Sydney’s northern beaches. Dawson has always maintained his innocence and after the verdict his lawyer confirmed he would appeal.
New South Wales Supreme Court Justice Ian Harrison referred several times to Thomas’ podcast, particularly the crossover between the evidence presented in court and the interviews those same witnesses had previously given to Thomas .
He said it was likely, if not certain, that The Teacher’s Pet podcast “may have wholly or partially deprived it of some evidence of its usefulness”.
Of a witness who was interviewed by Thomas, Shelley Oates-Wilding, Harrison said: “I cannot with any confidence, having listened to extracts from her long taped conversations with him, know what part of her evidence comes from what Hedley. Thomas told him, and how much of his evidence comes from what he remembered.”
But another witness who took part in the podcast, Julie Andrews, was found to be “reliable and credible”. Harrison said that listening to the unedited tapes of his interview “did not alter my opinion that his description of the trampoline incident was credible and reliable.”
Speaking outside court on Tuesday, Thomas said Dawson should have been charged 40 years ago, but the system at the time had failed Lynette.
“Lynette Dawson was missing for eight years and was only treated as a runaway mother at the time when the circumstances were so seriously suspicious,” Thomas said. “It wouldn’t happen today.”
When Dawson was charged in December 2018, then NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller emailed Thomas saying “you must be so happy mate?”, according to a earlier decision in the case by Judge Elizabeth Fullerton.
Thomas had already struck a deal for a Teacher’s Pet miniseries with Jason Blum’s US production company Blumhouse.
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In April 2019, on the advice of the NSW Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and in the interest of a fair trial, The Australian removed the podcast from all platforms. It had already reached #1 on the podcast charts in Australia, the UK, Canada and New Zealand.
First published between May and August 2018, the 14-part podcast was reported and narrated by Queensland-based Thomas, already an award-winning investigative reporter for the Murdoch paper. It was produced by Gibson, a former Savage Garden guitarist. After Dawson’s arrest, three more episodes were made.
Thomas began his newspaper career aged 17 as a copy boy at the Gold Coast Bulletin, was a foreign correspondent in London and spent six years at the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong before returning to Queensland in 1999. He has seven Walkley awards, including the 2007 Gold Walkley for a series in The Australian highlighting the flawed police pursuit of Mohamed Haneef, a doctor wrongly accused of being a terrorist.
Hedley Thomas outside the NSW Supreme Court in June 2022 during the trial of Chris Dawson. Photograph: Flavio Brancaleone/AAP
A podcast newbie, Thomas began his Teacher’s Pet series three years after the Unsolved Homicide Unit established Strikeforce Scriven to reinvestigate Lynette’s alleged murder. The popularity of the story put the case in the spotlight and put public pressure on the police. A few months after its broadcast, Dawson was indicted.
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But Thomas’ attitude toward Dawson as the likely suspect, and interviews with potential witnesses, threatened to derail a fair trial, Dawson’s legal team argued, and they argued for a permanent stay.
The high court disagreed, but Dawson was granted a judges-only trial when the NSW Supreme Court agreed that “the nature of the podcast and its extremely wide distribution raise real concerns about the fairness of a trial” before a jury.
Thomas testified at Dawson’s trial and told the court that he just wanted justice for Lynette and her family and that he believed she had been murdered by her husband in January 1982.
“And so justice for Lyn meant to you, didn’t it, the prosecution of Christopher Dawson,” defense barrister Pauline David asked.
“I think that’s a fair call, yeah,” Thomas replied.
Thomas told the court he believed Dawson was the only suspect, but denied he had been involved in a campaign to incite prejudice against him.
“If I had discovered or received information from someone that would have interrupted, changed the narrative … it would have become a very important part of the podcast,” he said.
Thomas rejected suggestions that he influenced potential witnesses by talking about possible movies or miniseries about the case and said he was only joking during the interviews.
“When you made these offers to them … did you appreciate that this would be attractive to them?” David asked.
Thomas said: “Possibly for some, but it might have been very unappealing for others who were introverted or didn’t want to be involved.”