‘Dingo baby’ case dad Michael Chamberlain, aged 72

Michael Chamberlain, who waged a decades-long battle to prove his baby daughter was killed by a dingo in Australia’s most notorious case of injustice, has died.

Mr Chamberlain, 72, died of complications from leukaemia, his friend and former lawyer Stuart Tipple said.

His ex-wife Lindy said: “I am on my way today to support and be with our children.

“Given Michael’s death was unexpected, I would ask that the media please consider that Michael’s wife and all of his children are deeply grieving and need some space.”

Lindy and Michael Chamberlain were wrongly convicted of the death of their nine-week-old daughter Azaria after the baby vanished from their tent during a 1980 camping trip to Uluru.

The “dingo baby” mystery surrounding Azaria’s disappearance was the most divisive and sensational legal drama in Australian history and gained a place in global pop culture after Meryl Streep portrayed Lindy Chamberlain in the film A Cry In The Dark.

The Chamberlains insisted a dingo snatched their daughter from the tent, but officials doubted the wild dogs were capable of carrying an infant.

Instead, prosecutors argued Lindy had slit her daughter’s throat and buried her in the desert.

There were no witnesses, no motive and no body – Azaria’s remains were never found.

But in 1982 Lindy Chamberlain was nonetheless convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison and Michael was convicted of being an accessory after the fact and given a suspended sentence.

Three years later Azaria’s jacket was found in the desert near a dingo den and Lindy Chamberlain was quickly released from prison.

A Royal Commission later debunked much of the forensic evidence used at the couple’s trial and the Chamberlains’ convictions were overturned.

In 2012, more than three decades after Azaria vanished, a coroner finally ruled that the baby had died as a result of a dingo attack.

The trial remains a source of shame for the many Australians who initially doubted the Chamberlains and cast Lindy as a villain largely due to her religious beliefs.

Michael Chamberlain was a pastor with the Seventh-day Adventist church and rumours abounded that Lindy had killed her daughter as part of a religious ritual.

Mr Chamberlain, who was born in New Zealand, is survived by his wife and four children.

Michael Chamberlain.