The Dingo Really Did Take Her Baby: Lindy Chamberlain Cleared of Guilt
It looks like dingoes are no longer above the law. An Australian coroner has officially ruled that a wild dog really did eat Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton’s baby over 30 years ago.
When 9-week-old Azaria went missing from a campsite in Uluru, Australia in 1981, authorities suspected Lindy of murdering her newborn daughter.
She insisted that a dingo had snatched her child from the family’s camping tent, but at the time it was believed that a wild dingo would only attack humans if provoked, and that one would not have plucked the baby from a tent in the middle of an occupied campsite.
In a 1982 trial, it was concluded that Lindy had killed her daughter and hid her body, with the help of her husband, Michael. She was sentenced to life in prison for the crime, while Michael was given an abbreviated sentence. Throughout the case, Lindy maintained the story that a dingo had snatched her baby from the tent and carried her into the night.
The case gained so much attention that it became the basis of a movie, "Cry in the Dark," starring actress Meryl Streep, which included the often quoted line, "the dingo took my baby!"
The couple was officially acquitted of all charges in 1986, after new evidence, including the discovery of Azaria’s jacket buried next to a dingo’s lair in Uluru, was unearthed.
Tuesday marks the final closing of the case with the official statement that Azaria had indeed been taken and killed by a dingo. The results also highlighted the fact that dingoes can and will attack unprovoked, and are not the timid creatures that they have traditionally been portrayed as.
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