The Dingo Really Did Take the Baby

In the case of a missing child in the Australian outback that achieved international notoriety, a coroner ruled thirty-two years after the apparent death of ten week old Azaria Chamberlain in August, 1980 that the cause of death was "taken by a dingo", a phrase which became a sarcastic watch word for suspect parental skills. Azaria was in the family's tent near Uluru when a child's cry was heard. Lindy Chamberlain went to check on her child only to find blood on the tent and dingo tracks nearby. Upon discovering the scene, Chamberlain spontaneously exclaimed, "A dingo's got my baby." The child's body was never found. The event was made into a movie and even an opera.

Lindy Chamberlain served three years of a life sentence for murder, but she was pardoned in 1986 after Azaria's jacket was found near a dingo's den. The first inquest held in 1980-81 was televised, and the case gripped the nation. The court found the cause of death to be likely due to a dingo attack. Up to that point dingos, wild dogs of the bush [photo: National Geographic], were generally considered incapable of initiating an attack on a human. The Northern Territories government, under pressure of public controversy, vacated the verdict and ordered a new inquest. A trial for murder followed. The prosecutor alleged that Azaria's throat had been cut in the front seat of the family's car and that father Michael Chamberlain was an accessory to murder. Controversial forensic evidence, since discredited, was used to obtain the murder conviction*. Yet a third inquest found the cause of death to be unknown.

The couple, now divorced, fought for a complete exoneration. It was a grueling,bitter slog for justice midst hostility and derision for Michael and Lindy Chamberlain. Subsequent documented dingo attacks in other parts of Australia proved to be a critical piece of circumstantial evidence needed to end the dispute. In 2001 a nine year old was fatally mauled by dingos in Queensland. The fourth and final verdict was handed down this week in Darwin magistrates' court. Chamberlain-Creighton said outside the court that, "no longer can Australia say that dingoes are not dangerous and only attack when provoked." She displayed her child's new death certificate, with the words, "attacked and taken by a dingo"

*until recently there were no reliable statistics in the United States for the number of persons wrongly convicted in the criminal justice system. Studies like the official review conducted in Virginia at the request of the state's governor, and a newly complied comprehensive database, give reasons to believe that the number of criminal prosecutions ending in wrongful convictions are in the range of 4-6% of the total.