Could repressed childhood memories finally reveal what happened to Lynette Dawson?
But the long-awaited result was a stunning shock for daughter Shanelle Dawson, who has been tortured by her mother’s disappearance since she was just a little girl.
“I just couldn’t fathom it really. It just felt so surreal,” she told reporter Tom Steinfort.
“[I couldn’t believe] that this dad that I love actually did do it, and that’s now recognised by our justice system.”
As a young girl, Shanelle was convinced by her father that her mother had abandoned her family, so she spent many painful years trying to uncover the truth — and went to extraordinary lengths to do so.
In an exclusive interview with 60 Minutes, she revealed she underwent hypnosis in a bid to unlock childhood memories from the night her mother disappeared.
‘I wasn’t going to let this go because those little ones needed answers’
The unusual step was the brainchild of Detective Sergeant Damian Loone, who took charge of the cold case back in 1998.
“I smelled a rat straight away. And sometimes you have to go on a gut feeling,” Loone told reporter Tom Steinfort.
But after his investigations kept hitting dead ends, he decided to try the unorthodox approach of hypnosis on Shanelle, in the hopes of finding out what really happened to her mother.
“Some people frowned at what I did and I thought ‘No, bugger you, I’m going to do this’,” he said.
“I wasn’t going to let this go because those little ones needed answers.”
The revelations she made were extraordinary and could shed new light on what really happened on that fateful night in 1982.
“I believe I saw my sister and I in the back of a car — of our station wagon — and my mother slumped in the front,” Shanelle recalled.
“I believe I saw him shining headlights on a spot near the pool and digging.
“I believe that [Chris] buried her in that spot for that night, and then the next day when he didn’t have us kids, moved her somewhere else.”
And while she acknowledges some may question the authenticity of those memories given the circumstances, Shanelle is confident they are real.
“It was like I could feel myself as a four-and-a-half-year-old child again,” she said.
“I could feel the feelings that she felt at the time. It was really pretty profound.”
Shanelle has less faith her “narcissistic” father will ever unravel his web of lies and reveal the location of Lynette’s body.
“I just think he believes his own lies and he won’t admit it,” she said.
“He might come to have to admit it to himself after sitting in prison for some time, but I don’t think it will be anytime soon.”
Despite the verdict, the Dawson family remains divided. While Shanelle is now convinced of her father’s guilt, her younger sister has been an ardent supporter of her father.
Yet after already losing so much of her life to the pain and heartbreak caused by her father’s deceit, Shanelle, now a mother herself, is determined to focus on the joy in her and her daughter’s life.
“Most people maybe take it for granted that [at] Christmas time they have a family to go back to,” Shanelle said.
“I always thought ‘I wish I had one of those’.”
