Azaria Chamberlain

Azaria Chamberlain was the nearly-ten-week-old daughter of Seventh Day Adventist pastor Michael Chamberlain and his wife Lindy Chamberlain who was taken and killed by a dingo at Ayers Rock in central Australia.

Missing

Azarian Chamberlain was asleep in the family tent at the Ayers Rock camping ground, with her older brother Reagan, 4, when a dingo entered the tent and took Azaria. Her parents and other brother, Aiden, 6, were around a campfire nearby, with other campers.

Lindy Chamberlain, hearing a cry from her baby, returned to the tent just in time to see what appeared in the dark to be a dingo leaving the tent, and, investigating, found her baby gone.

A search proved fruitless, and police became suspicious of the circumstances. However, a coronial inquest found that a dingo had, in fact, taken Azaria, and that her body had been disposed of by a person or persons unknown.

Parents charged and convicted

However, the Northern Territory government had the findings off the coronial inquest quashed, and a second inquest ordered. Whereas the first inquest had concentrated on the dingo, the second concentrated on allegations of blood in the Chamberlain car. As a result of the second inquest, Lindy Chamberlain was charged with the murder of Azaria, and Michael Chamberlain with being an accessory after the fact. The subsequent court case in front of a jury found both parents guilty as charged. Whilst Michael Chamberlain was given a suspended sentence to allow him to raise his remaining children, Lindy Chamberlain was sentenced to life with hard labour.

Freed

Five and a half years after her disappearance, a matinee jacket matching the description of the one that Lindy Chamberlain said her daughter was wearing when she disappeared, was found at the base of Ayers rock. This evidence showed that Lindy had been telling the truth, and she was released from prison pending further investigation. A further trial quashed all convictions against Michael and Lindy Chamberlain. Lindy Chamberlain subsequently received AU$1.3 million compensation for wrongful imprisonment.

Sources

• Linder, Douglas, The Lindy Chamberlain Trial, 2005.
• Steel, Fiona, A Cry in the Night
• Hogg, Russell, Chamberlain Case (1984)