Alice Lynne "Lindy" Chamberlain-Creighton (née Murchison, born 4 March 1948) is a New Zealand-born Australian woman who was wrongly convicted in one of Australia's most publicised and notorious trials. Accused of killing her nine-week-old daughter, Azaria, while camping at Uluru (known then as Ayers Rock) in 1980, she maintained that she saw a dingo leave the tent where Azaria was sleeping. The prosecution case was circumstantial and depended upon forensic evidence that was eventually found to be deeply flawed.

Chamberlain was convicted on 29 October 1982, and High Court of Australia, were dismissed. On 7 February 1986, after the discovery of new evidence clothing the same as Azaria wore Chamberlain was released from prison on remission. She and her husband Michael Chamberlain, co-accused, were officially pardoned in 1987, In 1992, the Australian government paid Chamberlain $1.3 million in compensation. In 2012, a fourth coroner's inquest found (as did the first inquest) that Azaria died "as a result of being attacked and taken by a dingo". The family were members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, with her father working as a church pastor.

In 1949 (when Lindy was 20 months old), the family moved to Australia and based themselves in Victoria, with regular moves (usually once per year) as Lindy's father transferred to pastor new churches. She received her education in Victoria and gained her Matriculation in Benalla in 1965. During holiday times, she worked as a shop assistant, a clerk, and waitressing. In later times, she found work as a receptionist and as a bookkeeper.

On 18 November 1969, she married an Adventist pastor, the New Zealand-born Michael Chamberlain, and for the first five years after their marriage they lived in Tasmania with Michael pastoring to churches there. This is where Aiden, her first child, was born in 1973. During these 5 years, Lindy gained her certificate from Launceston Technical College in dressmaking, tailoring and drafting. The new family then moved to Queensland, with Lindy later giving birth to her second child (Regan) in Bowen in 1976 and, after living in Innisfail, they moved to Mount Isa in Northern Queensland.

Friends of Lindy's were aware that she had always wanted a girl (with one, Mrs. Ransom, later giving evidence about this) and on 11 June 1980 the Chamberlain's first daughter, Azaria, was born. At this time in 1980, and when their daughter Azaria went missing, Michael Chamberlain was serving as minister of Mount Isa's Seventh-day Adventist church with Lindy being highly involved in the church as well as doing the normal duties of a clergyman's wife. She was also using her dressmaking skills to specialise in making wedding dresses to order. A massive search was organised; Azaria was not found but the jumpsuit she had been wearing was discovered about a week later about from the tent, bloodstained about the neck, indicating the probable death of the missing child. A matinee jacket the child had been wearing was not found at the time. From the day Azaria went missing, Lindy and Michael Chamberlain maintained a dingo took their child. Early on in the case, the facts showed that for the two years before Azaria went missing, Uluru chief ranger Derek Roff had been writing to the government urging a dingo cull and warning of imminent human tragedy. Roff noted that dingoes in the area were becoming increasingly aggressive, approaching and sometimes biting people.

Conviction, imprisonment and release

The initial inquiry, held in Alice Springs, Northern Territory, by Alice Springs magistrate and coroner Dennis Barritt in December 1980 and January 1981, supported the Chamberlains' account of Azaria's disappearance, finding a dingo took the child.

and Michael Chamberlain suspended for three years as an accessory to murder.

In the second inquest, concerning the clothing evidence alone:

  1. The clothing of the deceased child had been buried prior to its finding and probably contained the body of the child when buried.
  2. Soil type of a pH found on the clothing is consistent with the pH of the soil at the camp and also with the consistency of the soil in clothing and at the site and is inconsistent with the type of soil and pH in the area in which the clothing was found.
  3. There is no evidence on the clothing of dragging or catching nor the presence of saliva. It was argued that the absence of saliva was not remarkable as a witness gave evidence of heavy rain in the area. The clothing was not subjected to heavy rain as there is evidence that heavy rain would have adversely affected the bloodstaining on the clothing and this is not the case. This lack of presence of saliva and dragging is inconsistent with a dingo carrying the body a distance of some four kilometres.
  4. The jumpsuit was completely done up by studs to the neck which remained closed while the child was bleeding.
  5. After the blood had dried the two top studs were undone prior to the clothing being buried whilst containing the body of the child.
  6. There is evidence provided by fluorescent examination to suggest the presence of a palm print of a small adult right hand and some evidence of the presence of a left hand caused by a person holding the child when that person's hands were contaminated with wet blood.
  7. Single holes or indentations which appear in the clothing could be consistent with teeth marks of an animal but the absence of tissue stains in conjunction with those holes make it inconsistent with an animal holding the body of the child. The evidence clearly establishes that the clothing has been cut and in places torn by a person or persons and in particular the cut on the collar was made after the bloodstaining had occurred, It was argued that one area of damage in the general area of the elbow may be consistent with an animal tearing, but the evidence is very strong that such a tearing by an animal would be inconsistent because of the lack of evidence of the presence of tissue staining which would inevitably be involved if an animal had caused the damage to the clothing.
  8. Vegetation contamination on the clothing is inconsistent with vegetation found at the scene and inconsistent with the likely contamination which would have occurred if the clothing with a body in it had been carried by an animal. This supports the view that the vegetation contamination was caused by human intervention.
  9. The clothes as found were not strewn around the area and this is inconsistent with an animal being responsible for their placement.
  10. The clothing was found adjacent to a path near the base of a rock and adjacent to a dingo's lair.
  11. Scissors were found in the Chamberlain's car on which there was present human fetal blood staining on the cutting edge and on the hinge areas. There is evidence to support that when comparable scissors are used to cut through blood that blood would be deposited on the cutting edge. An inference can be drawn that these scissors were used to cut the deceased's clothing. There is no weight to the argument that the subject scissors were unable to cut clothing as this was after the stud had been removed from the scissors to enable certain tests.

From this evidence it was concluded that both Chamberlains were implicated in covering their crime. He claimed to have been called by the head ranger to help him and the Aboriginal tracker to follow dingo paw prints and scrape marks in the sand in a westerly direction. He was informed that they were following the trail of a dingo carrying a heavy object believed to be Azaria's body. He later stated, "I now know that the Aboriginal's account of following these tracks west that night has been denied by rangers and the Aboriginal's account of this incident has not been accepted."

Morling Royal Commission

The purpose of the royal commission was to enquire into and report on the correctness of the Chamberlain convictions. In reaching the conclusion that there was a reasonable doubt as to the Chamberlains' guilt, Commissioner Trevor Morling concluded that the hypothesis that Chamberlain murdered Azaria had not been proven beyond reasonable doubt. Although the commission was of the opinion that the evidence afforded considerable support for the dingo hypothesis, it did not examine the evidence to see whether it had been proved that a dingo took the baby. To do so would, in the words of Morling, involve a "fundamental error of reversing the onus of proof and requiring Mrs Chamberlain to prove her innocence" (at p. 339 of the report).

Acquittal

In acquitting the Chamberlains in 1988, the Supreme Court found that the alleged "baby blood" found in the Chamberlains' car, upon which the prosecution so heavily relied, could have been any substance, but was likely that of a sound deadening compound from a manufacturing overspray (which contained no blood). A new inquest began in February 2012 and new figures on dingo attacks on Fraser Island were collated by the Queensland Government's Department of Environment and Resource Management and provided as evidence at the Azaria Chamberlain inquest. On 12 June 2012, an Australian coroner made a final ruling that a dingo took baby Azaria Chamberlain from a campsite in 1980 and caused her death. Morris apologised to the Chamberlain family while an amended death certificate was immediately made available to them.

Court cases

  • Chamberlain v R (Azaria Chamberlain case and Dingo case) High Court bail application, Brennan J, 2 May 1983.
  • Chamberlain v R Full Court of the Federal Court, Bowen CJ, Forster & Jenkinson JJ, 29 April 1983.

In August 2010, on the 30th anniversary of the death of Azaria, Chamberlain appealed on her website to have the cause of death amended on Azaria's death record. In 2012, the coroner's final report identified that a dingo was the cause of death.

Film and other adaptations

In the 1983 Australian television movie about the case, The Disappearance of Azaria Chamberlain, Chamberlain was played by Elaine Hudson; the movie aired on Network Ten. In the 1988 film Evil Angels (released as A Cry in the Dark outside Australia and New Zealand) the role was played by Meryl Streep, whose performance received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in 1989. Miranda Otto played Chamberlain in the 2004 Australian television mini-series Through My Eyes: The Lindy Chamberlain Story, which aired on the Seven Network.

Australian composer Moya Henderson wrote the opera Lindy to a libretto by Judith Rodriguez. In 1990, the Rank Strangers' recording of their song "Uluru", which supported the Chamberlains and called for compensation to be paid to them, finished in the final five of the Australian Country Music Awards in Tamworth, New South Wales.

The line "the dingo ate my baby" or "the dingo's got my baby" was in many comedic shows in the United States, like The Simpsons, Seinfeld, and Frasier. The joke was usually making fun of the Australian accent, gaining a life outside of the case for most Americans.

In 2021, Australian drag queen Etcetera Etcetera portrayed Chamberlain on the Snatch Game episode of the first series of RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under. The performance was roundly criticised in the media and by fellow contestants for being in poor taste.

See also

  • List of miscarriage of justice cases
  • Sally Clark, a British mother whose conviction for killing her two infant sons was overturned by medical evidence.
  • Kathleen Folbigg – another case where supposedly incorrect maternal displays of grief resulted in a miscarriage of justice
  • Maxine Robinson – UK serial killer mother convicted, in part due to the heavily criticized and discredited Meadow's law, around the same time as Clark and others were freed. The judge commented that the case was "a timely reminder that not all mothers in prison for killing their children are the victims of miscarriages of justice"
  • Patty Stallings, an American woman who was wrongfully convicted of murder after the death of her son.
  • Betty Tyson

References

  • Lindy Chamberlain's official website
  • Chamberlain-Creighton Papers held by the National Library of Australia
  • Papers of Chamberlain support groups, 1982-1986 held by the National Library of Australia
  • The Chamberlain collection at the National Museum of Australia
  • Conversation with Chamberlain held at the National Museum of Australia, 14 October 2007 (audio + transcript)

he:לינדי צ'מברליין