Tragic ‘dingo baby trial’ gripped the entire world
SEP 13, 1982
The so-called “dingo baby trial” opened in Australia 35 years ago this week and went on to become one of the most famous trials in the country’s history.
Mother Lindy Chamberlain was accused of murdering her daughter Azaria at Ayers Rock, but Lindy maintained the child had been taken from her tent by a dingo.
Before the case even got to court, there was intense publicity around it, with much speculation about what had happened to the nine-week-old baby girl.
Baby Azaria’s jacket was found near a dingo’s lair
Her body has never been found, but that didn’t stop Lindy Chamberlain being found guilty of her daughter’s murder.
Husband Michael, a Seventh-day Adventist minister, was found guilty of being an accessory.
Lindy was sentenced to life in prison with hard labour, while her husband was given an 18-month sentence, suspended for three years.
The case sent shockwaves around the world. Even senior legal eagles in Australia questioned whether the verdict was correct.
Many believed Lindy had not been found guilty “beyond reasonable doubt” and no real motive about why this respected pillar of the community would commit such a heinous act was ever advanced, either.
After the case ended, two books
were written. One was made into a film, A Cry In The Dark, in 1988, starring Meryl Streep and Sam Neill.
Four years earlier, Australian courts rejected an appeal by Lindy against her sentence.
Then in 1986, a chance discovery changed the course of Lindy’s life.
A matinee jacket belonging to baby Azaria was found close to a dingo’s lair at Ayers Rock.
In the intervening years, there
had been instances of attacks by dingos on children, including a nine-year-old boy being mauled to death.
Five days after the jacket was found, Lindy was freed, on the grounds that “she has suffered enough”.
In 1987, both Michael and Lindy’s convictions were overturned and in 2012, coroner Elizabeth Morris ruled a dingo had taken little Azaria.
On the steps outside court after the coroner’s verdict, Lindy and Michael embraced.
The couple had eventually divorced, but each acknowledged the extent to which the other had suffered.
They stated they would probably have still been together, were it not for that fateful night.
Michael Chamberlain died in January. His ex-wife had said months earlier she did not hold any anger towards him, but could not forgive him for “private reasons”.