Convicted murderer Chris Dawson arrived at Silverwater Prison on Wednesday, as his lawyers flagged they would apply for bail later in the day.
Dawson, 74, spent the night behind bars at the Sydney Police Centre following his conviction for the 1982 of his wife Lynette on Tuesday.
He was transferred to the jail in Sydney’s west on Wednesday morning, even as his lawyers flagged the looming bail application – and a likely appeal of the conviction handed down in the NSW Supreme Court by Justice Ian Harrison in a marathon five-hour ruling.
“Mr Dawson has always asserted and he still does his absolute innocence of the crime of which he’s been convicted, and he will continue to assert that innocence and he’ll certainly appeal,” Dawson’s lawyer, Greg Walsh, said outside court on Tuesday.
Justice Harrison found Dawson murdered his wife and disposed of her body on January 8, 1982 because of an obsession he had with his then teenage lover, known as JC, and his fear of losing her.
The former Newtown Jets rugby league player maintained he was innocent. But Justice Harrison found Dawson had lied to police and family members to deflect attention away from himself and his crime.
These lies included that he had taken phone calls from Mrs Dawson after her disappearance.
He also claimed he was no longer romantically involved with JC and wanted his wife to return, despite moving his former student into his home days after the murder.
The case against Dawson succeeded despite his wife’s body never being found and the absence of a murder weapon.
Outside court on Tuesday, Mrs Dawson’s family said their journey was not over, even after the conviction in the 40-year-old case.
“This is a milestone in our journey. However, she is still missing,” her brother Greg Simms said.
“We would ask Chris Dawson to find it in himself to do the decent thing and allow us to put Lyn to rest.”
On Wednesday, Mrs Dawson’s niece, Renee Simms, said the family was braced for the convicted killer to appeal.
“I think, for now, we just take the guilty verdict and try to get that to sink in,” she told Newcastle’s Hit106.9.
“It’s not really a celebration, because I don’t think that any of us can enjoy in seeing Chris Dawson taken off in handcuffs.”
“There’s no real winners here.”
“It’s the end of the chapter but not the end of the book.”
Ms Simms, who was in court for Justice Harrison’s marathon judgment, said it was an “incredibly tense” five hours.
“It was like a roller-coaster, sometimes we thought it was going well, other times we thought he was definitely going to get off,” she said.
“It was really only in the last 15 minutes of the judgment that we realised how things were going to go.”
But, when the verdict was delivered, there was a collective sigh of relief in the courtroom.
“We wanted to find out what happened to Lyn,” Ms Simms said.
“We wanted the truth to come out.”
Dawson’s case has been listed for mention in court on Thursday morning.
Barring the result of any appeal, it is likely that – once sentenced – he will spend the rest of his life in jail for the murder of his wife.
-with AAP
