Loone handled the investigation for nearly two decades.
After taking the case in 1998, he read transcripts of an old police interview with Chris Dawson and immediately suspected that something serious had happened to Lynette, who had disappeared 16 years earlier.
Loone admitted today that he approached the case as a homicide from the start.
He admitted that he received no statements from Lynette’s mother Helena Simms and others from Northbridge Baths who remembered Dawson getting a phone call, which he claimed was his wife saying he needed a few days away.
Loone also acknowledged that nothing had been formalized after speaking with Bayview residents Peter and Jillian Breeze, who reported seeing the missing nurse at Rock Castle Hospital in 1984, two years after she disappeared.
In hindsight, the retired officer said he should have followed these leads, but denied that it was deliberate because it did not support his theory that the mother of two had been killed.
Dawson’s legal team again pointed the finger at his high school mistress as having a motive, which the seasoned detective disagreed with.
Dawson pleaded not guilty to murder, keeping his wife left willingly and never returned.