The moment Chris Dawson was found guilty of murdering his former wife Lynette brought "comfort" to her Hunter-based family, but also a sense of shock.
Justice Ian Harrison gave his verdict on Tuesday after an almost six-hour long judgement in the NSW Supreme Court, which Lynette's brother Greg Simms of Lake Macquarie described as a rollercoaster.
"It was a shock to the system because there were a few times where we actually thought the judge was going to give his verdict but he was only partially through his talking," Lynette's brother Greg Simms said.
"So we're going up and down quite a few times where we thought we'd won, and then we've lost and all that sort of thing.
"But when the verdict was given, it was more of a shock. Because we weren't really expecting it with how things were going."
The hours-long verdict came after a 40-year search for answers following Lynette's disappearance from her home in Bayview, on Sydney's northern beaches, in 1982.
The case was brought back into the spotlight by journalist Hedley Thomas in 2018 through his podcast, The Teacher's Pet.
Mr Simms said the family was almost at the point of stopping their search when Mr Thomas called.
"We were close to just saying, 'look, we've got our own lives to live, we need to just put this to bed, we've done our best, we can't do much more'," he said.
"That's when Hedley Thomas came through and spoke to my sister and then he came up to Newcastle and spoke to my wife and myself."
Dawson was charged with murder later in 2018, but Mr Simms said it was still surreal to see him be taken away in handcuffs this week.
"We were only sitting about a metre behind Chris Dawson and his brother Peter," Mr Simms said.
"There must have been some point where the judge's assistant was given the nod or knew when to go outside and she walked outside.
"But she came back in, and then a couple of minutes later just as the judge was saying 'Christopher Michael Dawson I find you guilty', these two Corrective Services officers walked in between us over to him and he stood up. You could actually see the handcuffs going on.
"And then the judge said, 'Mr Dawson it's time for you to go' and they just took him out and that was it.
"It was just a shock - 40 years of not knowing to know now. But I said to a few people 'why couldn't he just walk away? Why couldn't he just walk away?'
"We accepted Chris into our family. We are the type of family that if someone told us that they were wearing a blue t-shirt, and they were wearing a slightly different coloured t-shirt, we'd agree with them. We accepted him into our family and we were just led astray. He told us things that we believed but obviously they weren't true."
Mr Simms said the family hadn't really had time to process things amid the whirlwind of the past few days.
However he said what they would turn their attention towards was appealing for a law to deny parole to convicted murderers where the victim's body hasn't been found - something Hedley Thomas is already pushing for which has been coined 'Lyn's law'.
"We need closure," Mr Simms said. "We've been working on this for 30-plus years. Lyn's been gone for 40. It's good we've got closure that Mr Dawson has been found guilty, but we haven't got full closure, because we haven't found our sister. So we want we wanted to put her to rest. That's what she deserves."
Mr Simms described Lynette as the "family organiser" who steered the ship.
"When she went, we were rudderless," he said. "You would never get a nicer person. She was soft spoken, just absolutely beautiful and she loved kids."
Mr Simms' wife Merilyn hoped the case would help other women in abusive relationships. "This is a prime case of coercive control," Ms Simms said.
"When someone's involved in an abusive relationship, there are many places you can go now and speak out. When Lyn was killed, there was nothing like that available. And she was too proud. She wouldn't want other people to know what she was going through.
"Despite the tragedy, that we've lost a sister, a mother, a sister-in-law, a daughter, there has to be some good that comes from this as well. And if it means that Lyn's case is brought forward and has made people more aware of these sorts of things, it would be a great honour to her."
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