It’s true: The dingo really did steal her baby

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This article was published 13/06/2012 (4888 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CANBERRA, Australia — Australians have overwhelmingly welcomed the final chapter of a mystery that has captivated the country for 32 years: Did a dingo really take a baby that vanished from an Outback campsite in 1980?

A country that was once bitterly divided on whether baby Azaria Chamberlain had been dragged away by a wild dog or murdered by her mother now largely agrees the parents deserve the vindication a coroner’s court provided Tuesday.

A day after Azaria Chamberlain would have turned 32, a coroner found a dingo had taken her as a nine-week-old from a tent near Ayers Rock, the red monolith in the Australian desert now known by its aboriginal name Uluru. That is what her parents had maintained from the beginning.

The eyes of Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton and her ex-husband, Michael Chamberlain, welled with tears as the findings of the fourth inquest into their daughter’s disappearance were broadcast from a courtroom in the northern city of Darwin to televisions around Australia.

The first inquest in 1981 had also blamed a dingo. But a second inquest a year later charged Chamberlain-Creighton with murder and her husband with being an accessory after the fact. She was convicted and served more than three years in prison before that decision was overturned.

A third inquest in 1995 left the cause of death open.

The case became famous through the 1988 Meryl Streep movie A Cry in the Dark.

Many Australians initially did not believe a dingo was strong enough to take away the baby. Public opinion swayed harshly against the couple; some even spat on Chamberlain-Creighton and howled like dingoes outside her house.

No similar dingo attack had been documented at the time, but in recent years the wild dogs have been blamed for three fatal attacks on children. Few doubt the couple’s story today, but the latest inquest made it official Azaria was killed in a dingo attack.

The news was welcomed by many around the country.

Yvonne Cain, one of the 12 jurors in the 1982 trial that convicted a then-pregnant Lindy Chamberlain of murder, was thrilled a dingo is on the record as the culprit.

“The dingo has done it. I’m absolutely thrilled to bits,” Cain said. “I’d always had my doubts and have become certain she’s innocent.”

An expert on dingo behaviour, Brad Purcell, said he was not surprised a dingo would enter a tent and take a baby while older siblings slept.

Purcell suspects many people blamed Chamberlain-Creighton for leaving the baby in a tent where a dingo could have been attracted by her crying.

“She was almost being condemned because she wasn’t acting as a responsible parent,” Purcell told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Azaria’s parents and her three siblings, including 29-year-old sister Kahlia who was born in prison, on Tuesday collected her new death certificate.

“We’re relieved and delighted to come to the end of this saga,” a tearful but smiling Chamberlain-Creighton told reporters outside the court.

Coroner Elizabeth Morris said she was “satisfied that the evidence is sufficiently adequate, clear, cogent and exact and that the evidence excludes all other reasonable possibilities.”

— The Associated Press