Officials: Not the dingo, but Lindy should be free
AUSTRALIA: Authorities did not believe Lindy Chamberlain’s story that a dingo stole her baby Azaria, but they did not believe she should have gone to jail for murder, newly released cabinet documents have revealed.
Former Northern Territory chief minister Steve Hatton said that following the 1986 discovery of baby Azaria Chamberlain’s matinee jacket at Uluru, or Ayers Rock, the release decision was made.
Chamberlain, who shouted ‘‘the dingo’s got my baby’’ after Azaria’s disappearance on a family camping trip at Uluru, was jailed for the murder of her nine-week-old daughter after a trial that gripped Australia.
At the time of the disappearance in August 1980, Azaria’s bloodied jumpsuit and nappy were found half buried near a dingo’s den, but a jury accepted prosecutors’ claims that Chamberlain killed her daughter with scissors in the family car, then staged a dingo attack.
But the discovery of Azaria’s jacket six years later changed Chamberlain’s fate. By then the New Zealand-born Australian mother had served three years of a life sentence. Her then husband Michael Chamberlain, who was found guilty of being an accessory, had been given an 18-month suspended sentence.
‘‘[It] opened up a whole can of worms . . . we had to find some way to get the whole case reviewed,’’ Hatton said. ’’We didn’t believe the dingo story, but we didn’t believe Lindy should be in jail for murder. We thought it was a harsh outcome
‘‘There was a natural fairness about that decision, whether you thought her guilty or not.’’
It was only owing to another
"We didn't believe the dingo story, but we didn't believe Lindy should be in jail for murder. We thought it was a harsh outcome.'' Former Northern Territory chief minister Steve Hatton
search, for English tourist David Brett who went missing on Uluru in 1986, that the jacket was discovered.
A review eventually led to both Lindy and Michael Chamberlain being pardoned in 1987. After a fourth inquest in 2012 the cause of death on Azaria’s death certificate was changed to ‘‘the result of being attacked and taken by a dingo’’.
The Chamberlain family – mother, father, and their three children – were camping at the base of Uluru. Lindy Chamberlain said she saw a dingo leave the tent and uttered those now famous words: ‘‘A dingo’s got my baby.’’
– AAP, Fairfax