Justice Ian Harrison has handed down his verdict in the murder trial of former teacher and rugby league player Chris Dawson, finding him guilty of murdering his first wife Lynette Dawson, 40 years after she vanished from Sydney’s northern beaches.

Dawson, 74, faced a judge-alone trial in the NSW Supreme Court, during which his lawyers argued it was possible Lynette abandoned her young daughters and the family’s Bayview home in January 1982. She was 33 at the time and her body has never been found.

The Crown had alleged Dawson killed his wife and disposed of her body, possibly with assistance, to have an unfettered relationship with a teenage babysitter and his former student, known as JC.

2GB Radio’s Josh Bryant spoke to Liam Bartlett on 6PR Mornings before the verdict was handed down.

The disappearance was the subject of a 2018 podcast by investigative journalist Hedley Thomas called The Teacher’s Pet, which attracted a global audience to the case.

She was 33 at the time and her body has never been found but the judge says that the whole of the circumstantial evidence “satisfies me that Lynette Dawson is dead”.