This exclamation (and its variant, "The dingo ate my baby!") became something of a pop culture catch-phrase for a short time in the 1990s, as evidenced by its appearance in the two most popular television shows of the decade, Seinfeld and The Simpsons. Audiences found it amusing for several reasons: the phrase is hilariously incongruous in almost all situations, the word "dingo" is kind of funny in and of itself, and the line is invariably delivered in an atrocious attempt at an Australian accent. Even as they laughed, many American viewers failed to realize that the phrase is a reference to the sensationalized Australian murder trial in which defendant Lindy Chamberlain claimed that her infant daughter had been mutilated and eaten by a wild dingo.
In August 1980, the Chamberlains, including Lindy and her husband Michael, their 6-year-old son Aidan, 4-year-old son Reagan, and 9-week-old daughter Azaria, took a family camping trip at Ayers Rock (also known as Uluru) in Central Australia. On the evening of August 17th, some time after putting the two younger children to bed, Michael Chamberlain thought he heard the baby cry out. When Lindy went to investigate, she says she witnessed a large dingo exiting the family's tent, shaking its head as if it was dragging something in its mouth. Lindy chased off the wild dog, hoping that it had merely absconded with one of the boots that had been tucked just inside the tent's entrance flap. When she frantically entered the tent to check on the children, she found Reagan sound asleep, but Azaria was missing. Lindy ran out of the tent screaming, "a dingo has my baby!" (The exact wording of her cry is still a matter of debate.) She and her husband attempted to chase down the dog, but the dingo had disappeared into the night.
Lindy's cries alerted fellow campers, who notified the authorities and tried to comfort the distraught Chamberlains. Eventually, the police arrived and discovered a large amount of blood within the tent, both pooled on the floor and splattered over the family's sleeping bags and clothing. Azaria's baby blanket was also torn and bloodied. After listening to Lindy Chamberlain's story, the officers organized an impromptu search party composed of tourists and trained police dogs. However, the police dogs were uncooperative, and the sheer number of animal tracks around the campground area made it difficult for the inexperienced rescuers to determine the direction in which the dingo had headed. The police brought in an Aboriginal tracker who discovered paw prints interspersed with a shallow furrow leading away from the Chamberlain's tent, indicating that a dingo had recently passed through the area, dragging some sort of bundle. The tracker was only able to follow the trail for a few hundred yards before losing sight of the prints, and the police decided to postpone the search until daylight.
The police loaded the Chamberlains and their camping gear into the family's car, and drove them to a nearby motel to spend the night. During the drive, one of the police officers noticed Michael Chamberlain's camera bag on the floor of the car and offered to move it someplace safer, but Michael refused (a seemingly small detail that would become important later on). The next morning, the police came to visit the Chamberlains and collect physical evidence from their camping gear. The Chamberlains willingly gave them Azaria's baby blanket and the bloodied sleeping bags, but asked if they could keep their blood-stained parkas, as it was the middle of winter in Australia and the coats were the only warm outerwear that the family had. The police agreed, saying that they had more than enough evidence for an inquest.
Meanwhile, the search at the campsite had resumed at dawn, this time with a group of five Aborigines. The trackers found the dingo's trail again, and followed it away from the campsite, across a dusty desert plain, and finally parallel to a road before the trail disappeared, erased by the breeze created by passing cars. The police also found more blood at the campsite and along the dingo's tracks. At no time were any photographs taken for evidence. The investigating officers re-interviewed the Chamberlains, focusing on Lindy, who stuck to her story of seeing the dingo leaving the tent. However, when pressed on the issue, Lindy admitted that it was too dark for her to see whether the dingo had Azaria in its mouth. The police found this slightly suspicious, especially when coupled with the fact that the young boy Reagan had apparently slept through the entire ordeal as the dingo killed his baby sister just a few feet away. Nevertheless, the copious amounts of blood and the dingo tracks seemed to provide enough evidence to support the Chamberlains' story. Convinced that a dingo had eaten their daughter, the Chamberlains returned to their home in Mt. Isa on August 21st.
On the morning of August 24th, a week after Azaria disappeared, a tourist and his daughter were visiting the desert near Ayers Rock, birdwatching. The young girl, who was walking slightly ahead, let loose with an ear-piercing shriek and screamed something barely coherent about a dead baby. Her father hurried to the scene and found Azaria's white jumpsuit, positioned on the sand in such a way that it did indeed appear as if part of the infant's legs might be inside it. Actually, the jumpsuit, which was extremely bloody and slightly ripped around the neckline, had been turned inside out with the baby's booties still inside, giving the appearance of dismembered feet. The tourist called the police, and was appalled to see that the first officer to arrive picked up the jumpsuit with his bare hands, conducted a cursory examination, and then neatly folded it, with no regard as to preserving evidence. Shortly thereafter, a reporter and camera crew arrived (by this time, Azaria Chamberlain's disappearance was big news in Australia) and filmed the scene, erroneously reporting the jumpsuit had originally been found in a neatly folded pile, and that a dingo could not possibly have removed the jumpsuit from the infant's body. The police discovered evidence of a dingo's den nearby, but did not investigate inside it.
After the discovery of the jumpsuit made headlines, an anonymous informer called the police and claimed that the name Azaria means "sacrifice in the desert." The tip was leaked to the press, who also found out that the Chamberlains were Seventh-Day Adventists. Based on this scanty evidence, some reporters theorized that Lindy and Michael Chamberlain had murdered their own baby as part of a mysterious religious ritual. Others suggested that Azaria had been secretly diagnosed with Down's Syndrome and that the Chamberlains had killed the baby because she was "defective." The Chamberlains, anxious to get the press off their backs and mourn their daughter's passing in peace, carefully went through all of the clothing, blankets, and other gear from the ill-fated camping trip. They discovered several bloodstains on their clothing that had previously been overlooked, but more importantly, one of the blankets had two distinct muddy paw prints on it and rips that appeared to be claw marks. The family called the police, who came by the house and picked up the soiled blanket. When Lindy asked the officer if he wanted to take the bloody clothing as well, he told her that it wasn't needed and that she could dry clean the items if she wished. The family did exactly that.
On August 29th, Michael Chamberlain went to the dry-cleaners to pick up the clothing. The cleaning process had not completely removed all of the bloodstains, and Michael complained to the proprietor. Another customer overhead the exchange, recognized Michael from the wild news stories, and called the authorities to report that the Chamberlains were trying to destroy evidence of a murder. The police ordered the Chamberlains to bring in the rest of the bloody clothing, including the articles that had been partially cleaned. When the family pointed out that they had received permission to clean the items, the police first denied it, then admitted that perhaps one of their officers had said something to that effect. Then, after the family had turned over all of the clothing, the police told reporters that the Chamberlains refused to cooperate with their request. When Lindy Chamberlain called them to protest this untruth, an unnamed officer apologized and explained that the items had been "temporarily lost" in an evidence locker.
Meanwhile, near Ayers Rock, the police and park rangers were attempting to substantiate the Chamberlains' story. A couple days after Azaria's jumpsuit was found, they began shooting wild dingos and examining the intestinal contents. A wildlife expert tried to tell the police that a meal passes through a dingo's system in less than 24 hours, and therefore, shooting animals more than a week after the child's disappearance would be fruitless. The expert also stated that it was quite possible that a dingo could have stripped the baby of her jumpsuit - dingos have been known to steal wrapped meat from campsites and craftily unwrap it while causing very little damage to the packaging. Finally, the expert suggested that shooting the wild animals was counter-productive - the police would do better to simply observe the area around the campground, as dingos are extremely territorial animals, so the particular dingo who had snatched Azaria, if such an animal existed, would be sure to return to the scene of the crime eventually. The authorities did not listen to the advice, and when they could not find a dingo with a partially digested human infant in its gut, they took it as yet another piece of evidence pointing to the Chamberlains' guilt. The police did not tape the conversation with the dingo expert.
On December 15th, the official inquest into Azaria's death commenced in Alice Springs, the town nearest Ayers Rock. Up until this point, although the press had been publicly proclaiming the death to be a murder, the authorities had not officially stated their opinion that the Chamberlains had killed their daughter. However, at the outset of the inquest, the solicitor for the Crown argued that there was not enough evidence to determine that Azaria had been attacked by a dingo, and therefore, the coroner should rule the death a homicide by default. The solicitor claimed that the Chamberlains had both the means and the opportunity to murder their daughter. As a motive, he suggested that Azaria had suffered some sort of brain damage during the birthing process, and that the Chamberlains had murdered their daughter to put her out of her misery and to avoid any stigma that Azaria's disability would bring to the family. This argument as to motive was undoubtedly influenced by the sensationalized news stories - the police had never even bothered to research Azaria Chamberlain's medical records.
The Chamberlains' lawyer pointed out that there was a dearth of direct evidence that indicated the cause of death one way or the other, and the little circumstantial evidence that existed did indeed point to a dingo attack. He exposed the vast ineptitude of the police investigation - namely, the utter lack of photographs, and the fact that much of the evidence had been improperly handled. The physician who had presided over Azaria's birth testified that the baby had been perfectly healthy, destroying the Crown's theory as to the Chamberlains' potential motive for killing their daughter. After hearing all of the arguments, the coroner found that, "Azaria Chantel Loren Chamberlain, a child of nine weeks of age and formerly of Mt. Isa, Queensland, met her death when attacked by a wild dingo whilst asleep in her family's tent." Relieved that they had been cleared of all blame, the Chamberlains returned home in February 1981. A month later, the police returned all of their possessions that had been collected as evidence, with the exception of Azaria's clothing and blanket.
Given the outcome of the coroner's inquest, it was a great surprise indeed when seven months later, on September 19, 1981, six policemen showed up on the Chamberlains' doorstep with a search warrant for the house. Detective Graeme Charlwood, who had been in charge of the investigation since September 1980, had been humiliated at the inquest by the public exposure of police incompetence. He still believed that the Chamberlains had murdered their daughter. After the inquest, Charlwood secretly assembled a police task force to reinvestigate Azaria Chamberlain's disappearance. Charlwood enlisted the aid of a platoon of forensic experts who had not originally been involved with the case. During the police search of the Chamberlain residence, they collected Michael's camera bag and impounded the family's car. On November 21, 1981, under the advisement of the police, a judge quashed the results of the first coroner's inquest and ordered a second inquest.
At the second inquest, the Crown again argued that the condition of Azaria's clothing was not consistent with a dingo attack, but this time, attempted to back up that argument with a great deal of forensic evidence. One of the experts claimed to find a very faint, small adult handprint on the underarm of Azaria's jumpsuit, indicating that a person, probably (but not definitely) a woman, had handled the baby's dead body. Charlwood believed that woman had been Lindy Chamberlain, neglecting the possibility that the handprint belonged to the police officer who had picked up the jumpsuit with his bare hands. An expert in odontology claimed that rips found in Azaria's clothing and blanket were consistent with a sharp instrument, possibly scissors, but not a canine tooth. During cross-examination, the odontologist admitted that his experience was with human teeth, and that he had never before conducted any examinations related to dingo bite marks. The police also presented the results of an informal experiment that they had conducted at the Adelaide Zoo, in which they had dressed the carcass of a goat kid in a baby's jumpsuit and thrown it into the zoo's dingo enclosure. In devouring the carcass, the dingos had torn the jumpsuit to shreds, inconsistent with the state of Azaria's clothing. When pressed by the Chamberlains' lawyer, however, the officer in charge of the experiment admitted that a baby goat has a very different shape than a baby human, and that it was possible that a dingo could strip a human infant without damaging the clothing much more easily than with a juvenile goat.
In preparation for this second inquest, the police had hired a forensic biologist to test Michael Chamberlain's camera bag and the interior of the family's car. The biologist presented evidence that there was blood in the Chamberlains' car, theorizing that the baby had been murdered in the front seat. However, this expert also admitted that the blood may have come from the Chamberlains' bloody clothing, which they were allowed to wear on the way to the motel after Azaria's disappearance. The biologist also presented test results that indicated that fetal blood was present inside Michael's camera bag, indicating that, at some point, Azaria's corpse had been transported in the bag. On cross-examination, the biologist stated that a baby's vomit could also produce positive test results. Despite the fact that every seemingly damning piece of evidence had a perfectly innocent explanation, as well as the lack of motive for Azaria's murder, the coroner overturned his previous conclusions and decided that Azaria Chamberlain had, in fact, died as the result of a homicide. After the inquest ended on February 2, 1981, Lindy Chamberlain was arrested and charged with murder. Michael Chamberlain was charged as an accessory after the fact.
Lindy's murder trial began on September 13, 1982. There were several points of questionable ethics on the part of the prosecution. First of all, the prosecution consisted of the same lawyers who had acted as the Crown's solicitors in the coroner's inquest. This was an unethical abnormality - traditionally, the prosecutorial team in an Australian murder trial is completely different from the solicitors in the coroner's inquest, to eliminate any accusations of bias on the part of the Crown. Because of the enormous amount of media coverage both before and during the coroner's inquests (during both inquests, reporters were not only allowed in the courtroom, but ironically, were seated in the jury box), jury selection for the murder trial was complicated. Out of a pool of 150 potential jurors, it was impossible to find a single person who had not heard of the case. Finally, in a murder trial, the prosecution usually tries to prove the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt by presenting direct evidence linking the defendant to the murder (e.g. through the testimony of eyewitnesses), circumstantial evidence that implies the defendant committed the murder, and if at all possible, a theory as to the defendant's motive. However, the prosecution stated that they would only be presenting circumstantial evidence against Lindy Chamberlain, the minimum required by Australian law.
In the prosecution's opening argument, the Crown's solicitors said they intended to prove that Lindy Chamberlain had killed her daughter in the front seat of the car by slashing Azaria's throat with a pair of scissors. Lindy then concealed the baby's body in her husband's camera bag, and raised a false alarm about a dingo attack. Later, she stripped the body, buried the corpse, and left Azaria's clothing in the desert. The prosecution presented the testimony of the same forensic experts who had appeared at the second inquest.
In addition to the findings that had been presented at the inquest, the prosecution also called an expert who testified that Azaria's jumpsuit had tested negative for dingo saliva. During cross-examination, this expert admitted that such saliva tests did not exist prior to the coroner's inquests, and had been developed specifically for the purpose of testing Azaria's clothing.
Lindy Chamberlain's defense attorney countered the prosecution by introducing an element of reasonable doubt. As mentioned before, the theories and evidence presented by the forensic experts were hardly foolproof - in each case, there was a reasonable, innocent explanation for the findings. The Chamberlains' attorney argued that the lack of saliva on the jumpsuit did not rule out the possibility of a dingo attack. Dingos often grab their prey by the head, first crushing the skull and then vigorously shaking their head to break the prey's neck. The defense also called several tourists who had been camping at Ayers Rock around the same time period as the Chamberlains. These witnesses testified that the Chamberlains seemed genuinely distraught after Azaria's disappearance, but more importantly, they also testified that there had been a rash of dingo attacks in the area. In the month of August 1980, two toddlers had been attacked by dingos in the area of Ayers Rock. On August 17th, just hours before Azaria disappeared, an adult tourist said that a wild dingo had entered her campsite and clamped onto her arm, refusing to let go. The woman bashed the animal on the skull several times before the dingo finally released her and ran off.
After hearing all of the evidence, the jury deliberated for several days before returning with a verdict - based on the forensic evidence, they decided that Lindy Chamberlain was guilty of the premeditated murder of her baby. She was sentenced to life in prison. Michael Chamberlain was found guilty of being an accessory after the fact, ostensibly because he had helped Lindy hide the body. He received an 18 month sentence and three years' probation. Michael's sentence was suspended because of the Court's compassion for the Chamberlain children, who would have had to enter foster care if both of their parents went to prison.
After Lindy Chamberlain's conviction, several tourists who had been camping at Ayers Rock during Azaria Chamberlain's disappearance started the "Free Lindy Campaign," the largest public rallying effort in Australia's history. The campaign had two goals: to maintain public awareness of the Chamberlain trial, and to further the cause of Lindy's appeal. The organizers attempted to accomplish these goals by distributing hundreds of thousands of pamphlets, collecting signatures for a petition, holding public meetings, and generally drumming up as much publicity as they possibly could. Although the Free Lindy Campaign gathered over 130,000 signatures on a petition asking the court to overturn the guilty verdict, in February 1984, the Australian High Court denied Lindy Chamberlain's appeal. Despite the grassroots campaign's best efforts, the Chamberlain case eventually faded from the news.
In 1986, a tourist fell off Ayers Rock and broke his neck. The next day, the police discovered his body, which had been partially eaten by dingos. While they were collecting evidence related to this accident, they unearthed a small bloodstained cardigan that was partially buried in the sand. As it turns out, the location of this discovery was just a few meters from where Azaria Chamberlain's jumpsuit had originally been found six years before. Lindy Chamberlain, still incarcerated in the Berrimah Prison, identified the sweater as Azaria's, and told the police that the baby had been wearing it the night that she disappeared. This new evidence led to the founding of a Royal Commission to reinvestigate Azaria Chamberlain's disappearance. The same year, Lindy was temporarily released from prison with the official explanation that, whether or not she had killed her baby, she had "suffered enough." She had served nearly four years.
The Royal Commission released their final report on the matter on June 9, 1987, which would have been Azaria Chamberlain's seventh birthday. The contents of the report were startling: the commission was of the opinion that Lindy Chamberlain had not, in fact, murdered her daughter. In their investigation, the commission hired several independent forensic experts who used new and improved testing techniques on the physical evidence collected from the crime scene. These experts universally came to the conclusion that Azaria had not been murdered in the family's car, and several fibers experts found that the rips in Azaria's clothing were consistent with rough tearing and not cutting, as previously put forth by the prosecution. However, the most compelling evidence of Lindy Chamberlain's innocence came from an eyewitness who had been camping at Ayers Rock the night of August 17th. This witness, who was not acquainted with the Chamberlains, said she heard a baby cry out a few minutes before Lindy started screaming. According to the prosecution's original murder theory, Azaria was already dead by the time of this cry. The Royal Commission decided that it would've been impossible for Lindy Chamberlain to murder her daughter and hide the body in the five minutes that elapsed between the baby's cry and Lindy's screams about a dingo snatching her baby. The report also accused the Northern Territory police department of conducting an unethical investigation. The commission felt that the police, represented by Detective Charlwood, had continued to pursue the murder investigation for personal reasons instead of relying on the evidence at hand, both because of the humiliation at the first coroner's inquest and the intense pressure applied by the Australian press.
Based on the Royal Commission's report, on September 13, 1988, the anniversary of the opening arguments of Lindy Chamberlain's original murder trial, the three judges of the Australian Court of Criminal Appeal overturned Lindy's and Michael's convictions in a unanimous decision. In 1992, the Chamberlains, who had since divorced, were awarded $1.3 million for their legal fees and Lindy's wrongful incarceration. To the Chamberlains' chagrin, the findings of the second coroner's inquest have not been overturned - officially, Azaria's death is still considered a homicide and not an accidental death as the result of a dingo attack. In a survey conducted by the Australian version of 60 Minutes on the twentieth anniversary of Azaria Chamberlain's disappearance, slightly more than half of Australian viewers still believed that Lindy is guilty of murder, no matter what the courts have decided.
Sources:
http://crimelibrary.com/fillicide/azaria/
http://law.anu.edu.au/highcourt_project/Chamberlain%20Case%20rtf.rtf
http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/60/stories/2000_08_27/story_224.asp