Within days, former Sydney teacher Chris Dawson's wait will be over.
The 74-year-old's trial in the NSW Supreme Court this year was the culmination of years of questions and speculation about the whereabouts of his first wife, Lynette.
As his barrister pointed out during a closing address last month, by the time the case reached trial it had a 30-year history of investigation.
Even before the ex-Newtown Jets rugby league player was arrested in late 2018, a plethora of details about their marriage and Lynette Dawson's disappearance from the northern beaches had already been made public in a popular podcast, The Teacher's Pet.
Chris Dawson pleaded not guilty of murder and maintained Ms Dawson called him one weekend in January 1982, when they were to meet at the pool where he worked as a lifeguard, and told him she needed "time away".
But the Crown alleged he was a murderer, motivated by a desire to have an "unfettered relationship" with their teenage babysitter, known in court as JC, who came to view his wife as an impediment.
Lynette Dawson's body has never been found and the wholly circumstantial case played out during a judge-alone trial.
Crown Prosecutor Craig Everson SC told the court Mr Dawson engineered a "window of quiet seclusion" in which to dispose of Ms Dawson's body on the weekend they were to meet at the pool.
The court heard he was a man "infatuated" and "besotted" with JC, who was also a student at the high school where he taught.
In his closing submissions, Mr Everson argued Ms Dawson's disappearance followed the failure of four separate plans by Mr Dawson to leave her, including searching for a flat in Manly and unsuccessfully attempting to get his wife to sign paperwork to sell their home.
Mr Dawson had also allegedly contemplated the recruitment of a hitman, Mr Everson said, as well as setting off for a move to Queensland with JC before they had to turn back.
This was the point, according to the prosecutor, where the then-teacher's "slide into moral turpitude" was becoming obvious to some.
But Mr Dawson's legal team painted him as a man who acknowledged his own failings as a husband and was attending marriage counselling.
Barrister Pauline David argued Ms Dawson's trust had been "breached horribly" and she perhaps "saw the writing on the wall that the relationship was not going to recover".
She said her client had no motive to kill and heavily criticised aspects of the police investigation, which she claimed were "coloured" by the belief that Mr Dawson must have murdered his wife.
"Whatever he has said has been cast as a lie," she said.
"He has not ever been afforded the presumption of innocence."
The court heard the "hitman" allegation was first made during a custody dispute with JC, who Mr Dawson went on to marry.
JC gave evidence that she was groomed by the then-teacher before she moved into the Dawson's house.
She thought it "odd" that all of Ms Dawson's belongings were still in the bedroom when she disappeared and claimed she was then treated like a "slave", learning to take care of two children, cook, clean and be a substitute housekeeper.
Under cross-examination, JC denied making up the hitman allegation and also denied she was unkind and argumentative towards Lynette Dawson because she wanted Mr Dawson to herself.
And she did not want to destroy Mr Dawson's character, JC insisted.
"I'm not going to destroy him, he will destroy himself for what he has done to people, to me and to Lyn.
"I'm telling the truth."
The hitman claim was a "complete and utter fabrication", Chris Dawson told police during an interview in 1991.
While he didn't give evidence during the trial, Mr Dawson was pressed during that interview on perceived gaps in stories he told to Ms Dawson's loved ones about contact with her.
Many of the witnesses who gave evidence — former neighbours, colleagues, school friends of the Dawsons — were quizzed on their observations of and interactions with Lynette Dawson.
One former colleague, Annette Leary, testified that Ms Dawson once told her Chris Dawson had gripped her throat in the lift as they went to counselling and threatened to "get rid" of her if it didn't work.
But others insisted Ms Dawson had never expressed any concern about physical violence and agreed they appeared to live a "happy life" together.
Mr Dawson's defence team relied on a number of factors to ultimately argue there was a reasonable possibility Lynette Dawson was alive after January 1982.
Among those factors were alleged sightings by five people in the two years after she was reported missing.
They came from witnesses who claimed to have seen Ms Dawson at Gladesville, at a Warners Bay pub, during a royal visit and working as a nurse.
The last claimed sighting was in 1984, the court heard.
But as to what happened to Ms Dawson, Pauline David submitted the "possibilities are endless" - she may have, at some point, "created a new life", passed away, or even met with misadventure.
The barrister even raised the possibility of suicide and invoked the disappearance at sea of prime minister Harold Holt as an example of why a body might not have been found.
But there was "absolutely no evidence" of how the former teacher may have killed his first wife, Ms David said.
On Tuesday morning, Chris Dawson will return to a courtroom of Sydney's Law Courts building to learn his fate from Justice Ian Harrison.
