The estranged daughter of convicted killer Chris Dawson has recalled his final text to her five years ago.
Shanelle Dawson grew up without knowing her mother Lynette, who was murdered in 1982 at her home on Sydney‘s northern beaches by her father amid an affair he was having with a 16-year-old student.
Shanelle, then four, and her younger sister were told by Dawson that their mother had simply walked out because she didn’t love them anymore.
Dawson will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars after a court last year found him guilty of murdering Lynette and disposing of her body four decades ago.
Now a mum herself, Shanelle spoke to the Australian Women’s Weekly about her life, the conflicted feelings she holds for her father and their final text exchanges in September 2018.
Shanelle Dawson (left) has opened up about her father Chris Dawson in a candid magazine interview
These are the final texts between Shanelle Dawson and her dad Chris Dawson in 2018
The Teacher’s Pet, a podcast about her mother’s then unsolved disappearance had launched several months earlier and made headlines across Australia.
Shanelle texted her father to tell him that she loved him but said: ‘I won’t live a life based on lies, nor will I keep subjecting myself to emotional manipulation and control.
‘You have dishonoured our mother so terribly.
‘One day, I will forgive you for removing her so selfishly from our lives.’
Dawson replied: ‘You’re clearly very lonely and depressed in the life you’ve chosen … It is your adult life, now 41 with a child and without a partner, that has clearly caused this terrible depression.’
A month later, Dawson sent what would be his final text to Shanelle.
‘Hi Shanelle, hope you and Kialah are both well. Thinking of you constantly xx.’
Shanelle candidly opened up about Dawson in the wide-ranging interview, telling the magazine: ‘My inner world [was] playing out for the masses. [I] couldn’t pretend anymore.’
Four decades on, Lynette Dawson’s body (pictured with husband Chris) has never been found
Lynette Dawson (left) disappeared when Shanelle (pictured as baby) was four-years-old
Shanelle recalled the harrowing moment she had to explain to her nine-year-old daughter Kialah that her grandfather killed her grandmother, whose body has never been found.
Her daughter’s response was heartbreaking.
‘She kept asking me, “But why did he do that?” The same question that’s tortured me over and over now for many years,’ Shanelle recalled.
Shanelle also opened up about the anguish of being ‘cut out’ by her sister Sherryn and other members of Dawson’s family who remain loyal to the convicted killer.
‘I feel like I’m the scapegoat,’ she said.
‘Why am I the one being cut out? I didn’t do anything wrong. But there is also a real freedom in it that I can embrace.’
More than four decades on, Shanelle struggles to trust people and suffers from PTSD after losing her mum so young.
‘There’s a part of me that’s broken, I haven’t really, fully trusted people again,’ Shanelle said.
‘I can be a bit prickly; my defence mechanisms are fairly well intact.’
Chris Dawson was convicted of the 1982 murder of Lynette and taken away to prison
Hearing the guilty verdict brought mixed feelings of despair and relief.
She described Dawson’s trial as the longest 10 weeks of her life.
‘I was trying to be at peace with whichever way it went, trying not to be too distraught and attached to a particular outcome because you can only have so much emotional turmoil in one lifetime,’ Shanelle recalled.
‘There was no rejoicing; it’s heartbreaking for me to know he will likely die behind bars.’
Her book My Mother’s Eyes is on sale from October 11.
‘I am not only reclaiming my mother’s story and my story as our own,’ Shanelle said.
‘I am moving these chapters into the past and writing new ones.’
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Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk
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