239
See also: The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping 178–85MURDER CASES
Tests run by the court’s forensic
scientist Joy Kuhl endorsed the
police view and, on 29 October
1982, Lindy was convicted of her
daughter’s murder and imprisoned.
Michael, the court found, had been
an accessory after the fact, helping
his wife to conceal her crime. He
was freed on bail.
Doubts were later cast on the
conviction by the chance discovery
of a baby’s jacket outside a nearby
dingo den in 1986. Consequently,
Lindy Chamberlain was released
on “compassionate” grounds. In
1988, the convictions against her
and her husband were overturned,
but even then an ugly question
mark remained. It was not lifted
by a fresh inquest in 1995, which
returned an inconclusive “open”
verdict on Azaria’s death.
Not until 2012 was a coroner
satisfied that the child had been
killed by a dingo – the crucial
evidence that Kuhl had identifiedas “foetal haemoglobin”, a young
baby’s blood, in the family car was
revealed through improved
scientific testing to actually be a
mixture of milk, copper oxide, and
other chemicals spilled in the
vehicle during manufacture.
Furthermore, a “bloody” handprint
on a scrap of baby clothing, which
had damned Lindy in 1982, turned
out not to be blood at all.Dingo in the dock
Australia’s native wild dog, the
dingo, has never been considered
harmless – dingo attacks on
livestock mean farmers label them
a pest. At the time of Azaria’s
disappearance, however, there were
no recorded cases of dingoes
hurting children. Perhaps the
Australian public preferred to
believe that a mother had killed
her baby rather than that a part of
Australia’s national identity – the
dingo – was something to fear.In the years following Azaria’s
disappearance, several serious
dingo attacks were reported, some
of which were fatal. In 1998, on
Fraser Island, off the coast of
Queensland, a father snatched his
infant daughter back as she was
being dragged away by dingoes;
three years later, nine-year-old
Clinton Gage did not survive his
mauling on Fraser Island.
Once the idea that Lindy had
killed her daughter had been
established, all facts related to
the case appeared to support
a guilty verdict. The seeming
impartiality of forensic analysis
was in fact skewed to suit the
preconceptions of the investigators.
Both police and the public judged
Lindy for the “unnatural” way she
reacted. These views were unjust
but deeply entrenched. It took
other dingo attacks and new
forensic evidence for the courts to
completely exonerate the couple. ■The Chamberlains hold a picture of
Azaria after the first coroner’s inquest
declares their innocence in 1981. State
police rejected the verdict, and pushed
for Lindy’s conviction.No longer will Australia be
able to say that dingoes are
not dangerous.
Lindy Chamberlain-
Creighton238-239_Dingo_Baby.indd 239 13/12/2016 10:09