Azaria Chamberlain

Dingo baby ruling ends 32 years of torment for Lindy Chamberlain

Azaria Chamberlain was killed by wild dingo at Uluru, coroner finally rules, after decades of legal and police obstruction

When coroner Elizabeth Morris ruled that a dingo had taken baby Azaria Chamberlain from her cot in the Australian outback 32 years ago, there were smiles, tears of relief and loud applause from the packed gallery at Darwin magistrates court. But there were no surprises.

There had always been a sense of unreality in the conviction of Lindy Chamberlain, a Seventh-day Adventist pastor’s wife and respected member of the community, for cutting the throat of her nine-week-old baby. To this day, nobody has ever advanced a plausible motive.

After Chamberlain’s conviction, there were other instances of dingo attacks on children – including the fatal mauling of nine-year-old Clinton Gage on Queensland’s Fraser Island in 2001 – and they provided the critical circumstantial evidence needed to end the Azaria mystery.

Chamberlain, though remarried, embraced her former husband Michael. They had both suffered the tragedy of Azaria’s death and knew they would probably still be together had it not occurred.

Lindy embraced her son, Aidan, who was six on the night of 17 August 1980 at the Uluru campsite when Lindy let out the chilling cry: “A dingo’s got my baby!” The two wept in each other’s arms. Even Morris could barely stifle a sob when she said: “Mr and Mrs Chamberlain, please accept my sincere sympathy for the death of your special and loved daughter and sister.”

It was the end of a case that had brought international attention over three decades and had been dramatised for television, film and stage. It had even been turned into an opera.

Morris announced that an amended death certificate had already been printed. Outside the court, Lindy Chamberlain said: “No longer will Australians be able to say dingoes are not dangerous and will only attack if provoked. We love this beautiful country but it is dangerous and we would ask all Australians to be aware of this and take appropriate steps and not wait for someone else to do it for them.”

How different it was in November 1982, when a supreme court jury in Darwin found that Chamberlain was guilty of murder and her husband was guilty of being an accessory after the fact. For the six weeks of the trial, the atmosphere had been at fever pitch. Young people were parading in front of the court with T-shirts reading: “The dingo is innocent!”

When the verdicts were handed down, there was seemingly universal approval. Lindy got mandatory life imprisonment, consigned for what was to be three years in Berrimah prison. Michael feared he would be jailed too, but Justice James Muirhead, who clearly disagreed with the verdict, gave him a suspended sentence and put him on a bond. Michael, for the first time in the trial, cried.

In the aftermath of the case brought introspection among Australians. There always was objective evidence of a dingo attack: a growl heard by other campers at Uluru shortly before Lindy Chamberlain raised the alarm; paw prints at the doorway of the tent; drag marks in the sand; canine hairs in the tent; and, of course, Lindy’s own evidence that she had seen a dingo leave the tent.

Yet immediately there was scepticism and scorn. It seemed an unlikely story and the Chamberlains displayed an outwardly calm demeanour. That set the atmosphere for the vicious rumours that began to circulate, including the false claim that the name Azaria meant “Sacrifice in the Wilderness”. The Chamberlains’ religion was poorly understood and ugly rumours started about the sort of things Seventh-day Adventists did.

Denis Barritt, the first coroner, did his best to scotch the rumours by agreeing to broadcast his belief that a dingo had taken the baby. But his strident criticisms of the police gave some of them a motive to press on and prove him wrong. After police found forensic experts such as James Cameron, from the UK, and the Australian forensic biologist Joy Kuhl, to suggest foul play, the findings of the first inquest were quashed.

The second inquest produced evidence that infant blood was found in the Chamberlains’ car, in a camera bag in the car, on a pair of scissors, and elsewhere. There was apparently evidence of the bloodied handprint of a small adult on Azaria’s jumpsuit. The evidence looked compelling but, from the perspective of this writer, reporting on the story in late 1981, it appeared that state resources were being used to put two powerless individuals in the dock for a crime which, at worst, was one of inexplicable infanticide – an offence for which some women do not even go to jail.

The Chamberlains were tried and convicted. But afterwards it emerged there was no blood in their car or on their possessions. Ms Kuhl had done a presumptive test and been misled by a positive reaction to the presence of copper oxide, a material prevalent where the Chamberlains lived in Mt Isa, Queensland.

Cameron conceded in the royal commission that was eventually ordered that he had only assumed the handprint was blood – he had not tested it.

The Chamberlains, exonerated by the royal commission in 1987, were pardoned and compensated. They then fought long and hard against an intransigent Northern Territory administration, which only quashed their convictions several years after the coroner’s verdict changed. A third inquest seven years ago succeeded only in returning an open verdict. On Tuesday, the tortuous saga ended, with Michael Chamberlain, standing on the courtroom steps in Darwin, declaring: “I am here to tell you that you can get justice even when you think that all is lost!”

Malcolm Brown in Darwin