Dingo baby case that divided a nation could be closed at last

Fourth inquest launched into Lindy Chamberlain's missing daughter which will take in fresh evidence about dog attacks


An Australian coroner is to launch a new inquest into the death of baby Azaria Chamberlain in a move that could finally end a 31-year dispute over whether she was killed by a dingo.

Elizabeth Morris, the coroner for the Northern Territory, has said she will open a fourth inquiry into the world-famous case, which centred on the disappearance and presumed death of nine-week-old Azaria in 1980 as her family camped in the shadow of Uluru, formerly known as Ayers Rock.

The case divided Australia and was turned into a film, A Cry in the Dark, which earned an Oscar nomination for Meryl Streep in the role of the accused mother.

In October 1982 Lindy Chamberlain, who now goes by the name of Chamberlain-Creighton, was found guilty of murdering her daughter after a jury dismissed her claim that a dingo took the baby.

She was later freed and her conviction quashed after new evidence emerged supporting her story. However, the official coroner's record still states that the cause of death remains "unknown".

A legal team representing Chamberlain-Creighton and her former husband, Michael Chamberlain, have now cited 10 serious dingo attacks on people since 1980, two of them fatal, as new evidence which will be heard at the inquiry starting on 24 February.

Michael Chamberlain said he was surprised and grateful the coroner had announced a fresh investigation. "At long last there's a meaningful attempt … to determine the proper cause and truth about how my daughter died," he said.

"I don't think people open inquests without thinking there's good reason for it and that means there'd have to be a change from the status quo of the open finding in 1995. It's now looking at dingoes, not people, as to the cause of death."

Azaria's body has never been found but her bloodstained clothes were and formed the main basis of an investigation that split the country into those who believed Azaria had been killed by her mother, possibly in a warped religious ritual, and those who believed she was killed by a wild dog or dogs in a tragic accident.

Chamberlain-Creighton gave evidence that she had seen a dingo near the family's tent. Initial media coverage of the incident focused on whether dingoes were physically able to carry a baby off or even inclined to do so and quickly shifted onto the parents as suspects.

"Close shots of the Chamberlains in interviews came nearer and nearer," John Bryson, a barrister who has closely followed the incident has said.

"Then 'Seventh Day Adventists believe in child sacrifice' and 'Baby Azaria was always dressed in black to represent a devil's child'. And 'the Chamberlains' bible had a child-sacrifice passage underlined in red'. And 'the name Azaria means sacrifice in the wilderness'. And on and on."

At her trial in 1982 Lindy Chamberlain said in her defence that dingo saliva was not found on Azaria's jumpsuit because the baby was wearing a jacket on top. No jacket was found in the initial searches but in 1986, while Mrs Chamberlain was serving a life sentence, an Englishman, David Brett, fell to his death from Uluru, landing beside the jacket which was half-buried close to dingo lairs.

Within days Chamberlain was released and a Royal Commission later exonerated her and her husband who had also been convicted as an accessory to the murder. The three previous inquests resulted in mixed verdicts, the first stating that a dingo had taken the baby.

Then further investigations, involving a British pathologist, suggested the wounds could not have been caused by a dingo and indicated a cut throat. That inquiry concluded that Chamberlain-Creighton should be sent for trial for murdering Azaria. The third returned an open verdict.

John Lawrence, a lawyer involved in the Royal Commission, said the new inquest would be a final legal chapter that would conclude a dingo was responsible.

"I think that the void will be filled by the new evidence on the dingo," he told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio.

Last year, on the 30th anniversary of Azaria's disappearance, Chamberlain-Creighton pleaded in an open letter on her website for her daughter's death certificate to state that a dingo was to blame.

"She deserves justice," she wrote. "Come on Australia. Surely you cannot be proud of the fact that you can let yourself be duped again and again and come back for more of the same. We used to be a proud nation who saw through corruption and were willing to give a fair go. How many times do you have to be hoodwinked and led along by the nose before you demand something better from our courts, police force, politicians and media?"

Bryson said: "I think it is time really for it to be at an end. The people involved have been through enough. It has not been yet put to bed and so we hope that this coroner will."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/20/dingo-baby-lindy-chamberlain-inquest