Lindy Chamberlain said a dingo had carried her baby daughter Azaria from the family’s tent near Ayers Rock in August 1980. Few believed her. The claim became a national punchline, pored over in tabloids and dinner table arguments alike, and police built a case on bloodstains in the family car and a mother’s supposedly too-calm demeanour.
She was convicted of murder on this day in 1982 and sentenced to life with hard labour, while her husband was convicted as an accessory. The trial turned almost entirely on forensic evidence that would later unravel.
More than three years after her conviction, searchers looking for the remains of a tourist who had fallen from Uluru discovered Azaria’s missing matinee jacket, partially buried near a dingo lair. Lindy Chamberlain had always insisted her daughter was wearing the jacket when she disappeared, a claim prosecutors had dismissed as a fabrication.
Her conviction was quashed in 1988, and she was formally exonerated, a dingo had taken her baby after all.
