The first ever police interview with Chris Dawson has been released as part of the accused wife killer's trial with allegations of violence and a hitman put to him in the hour-long grilling.
It was January 1991, nine years after Lynette Dawson vanished, when Dawson was asked to attend Beenleigh Police Station in Queensland.
In footage played to the court, Dawson can be seen leaning back into his chair with his barrister by his side, forthcoming with information about his marriage problems.
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"I came up to Queensland with a girl I was having an affair with at the time," he can be heard saying in the recording.
But the former footballer told detectives he returned home a short time later and went to marriage counselling.
"Do you recall that when you and Lyn were in the lift together that you grabbed her around the neck and said 'if this doesn't work, I'll get rid of you?'" an officer asks him.
"No, not at all," Dawson responded.
The next day Lynette disappeared, which Dawson claimed happened while he was working at Northbridge Baths.
"She said she needed time away like I'd had prior to that day and she'd ring me in a few days time after she had time to sort things out," Dawson said in the police interview.
There is another phone call of interest between the sports teacher and his teenage mistress, who can't be identified.
Detectives ask Dawson if he'd called his lover at South West Rocks to say Lynette was not coming back, before asking the teen to move in with him at his Bayview home.
"I brought (JC) back because I thought she was going to return to her family home, not to my home," he said.
"She ended up coming to live with me because she wasn't wanted anywhere else."
Dawson and the younger woman married two years later, and the new bride's rings were made from Lynette's diamonds.
She and Dawson went on to have a daughter before a bitter divorce in 1990.
Her explosive claims that Dawson drove them to a pub to get a hitman to kill his first wife prompted questioning from investigators.
"That you went to a hotel and that she remained in the car whilst you went inside and you came out a short time later and you drove back to Bayview," the cop put to Dawson.
"And that some weeks later you said to her: 'remember when we went out to that pub? I went to get a hitman to kill Lyn but I decided that I couldn't do it because innocent people would be killed'."
"What do you have to say about that allegation?" Dawson is asked.
"A complete and utter fabrication," he responded.
Dawson had an answer for every one of the 223 questions but not once was he asked if he killed Lynette.
He disputed telling his wife's colleagues she had sent a letter from Queensland to say she was OK and not to worry.
Dawson agreed with the officers that it was strange no one else but him had heard from Lynette.
The trial is ongoing.
