Third Party Culpability: The Dingo Really Did Take the Baby-Well Maybe

       

Lindy and Azaria
Chamberlain   

     It is generally permissible for a defendant to introduce evidence that someone other than the accused committed the offense that he or she is charged with. The evidence is admissible if it establishes a direct connection between the third party and the crime charged. 

       In the early 1980's Lindy Chamberlain was charged with murder in connection with the death of her nine-week-old daughter. Her husband, Michael, was also charged as an accessory after the fact. Their defense was that a third party was responsible for the death of their infant daughter, Azaria. The alleged perpetrator in her case was not another human being, but rather a dog-more specifically canis lupus dingo - a dingo, a wild dog native to Australia. The case drew national attention in Australia and international fame when it became the subject of a movie starring Merly Streep, A Cry in the Dark.

     The case has significant parallels to the matter of the West Memphis Three. The parallels are remarkable not because of the similarities, but rather, the dis-similarities. The facts of each case are diametrically opposed as the hemispheres where the incidents occurred. The defendants in the West Memphis Three were three youths; the Chamberlains were the parents of three young children. The prosecutor in the West Memphis case argued that the victims were killed as part of a satanic ritual. In the Chamberlain case, both were members the Seventh Day Adventists Church. It was speculated that they were fanatical in their beliefs and the child's death was motivated by some sacrificial rite. This was the unstated subtext of the police investigation and the prosecution's beliefs. 

     While science was to play a pivotal role in correcting each miscarriage, the Australians acted with relative swiftness, releasing Lindy three years into her prison term and quashing the convictions of each parent two years later (her husband had received a suspended sentence). On the northern side of the equator, the West Memphis Three waited over seventeen years before they were begrudgingly released - and only after pleading guilty under the Alford doctrine. While Lindy was financially compensated for her wrongful conviction, the West Memphis Three were rewarded with probationary terms following their release. 

     Since Lindy's conviction, two separate inquiries have been held in an attempt to determine the actual cause of Azaria's death. To date, the West Memphis prosecutors have done little more than pay lip service to the evidence of the evidence of third-party culpability existing in those cases. The common theme of each conviction, however, is that ignorance and prejudice were substantial factors that contributed to the verdicts of each trial.

     Azaria Chamberlain went missing on August 17, 1980, in the Australian Outback. Her parents, and two brothers, Aiden and Reagan, ages 6 and 4 were on a camping vacation in Uluru the name for Ayers Rock located in the Northern Territory of Australia. On the second night of their stay, several campers heard a low growl followed by a baby's cry. When Lindy returned to her tent, she saw a dingo running off.  Her daughter's bed was empty; there were dingo paw prints in the area, and blood on the bedding inside the tent. Despite an intensive search of the surrounding area, the body of Azaria was never found; a week later, bloody clothing worn by the infant was found near a boulder at the base of Ayers Rock. 

     Although the authorities had received reports of dingo attacks on children only weeks before Azaria's disappearance, they doubted that a dingo had the strength to carry off the child in the manner described and suspected that the child was murdered by her mother. At the first inquest, the coroner found that the child was probably killed by a dingo. 

      The authorities, media, and general public were not satisfied and continued to suspect the couple. The Seventh Day Adventists were believed by many Australians to be nothing more than a devil worshiping cult. The police searched the Chamberlain's home and auto in Cooranbong, New South Wales, some 1700 miles from scene of the crime. During the search, they found what was believed to be blood spatter on the front seat of the family car. 

     Further investigation of the child's clothing claimed that the tears were caused by scissors rather than an animal. Aided by inept investigation techniques, dubious scientific evidence and harsh public opinion, the Supreme Court for the Northwest Territories quashed the findings of the first inquest and ordered a second. At that hearing, Coroner Gerry Galvin committed Lindy Chamberlain for trial for the murder of Azaria. Her husband, Michael, was charged of being an accessory after the fact.

    The prosecution theorized that Lindy, in the space of five to ten minutes, had slashed her daughter's throat in the front seat of the car, stuffed it into a camera bag and returned to the barbeque area until an opportunity presented itself to blame a dingo for the baby's disappearance. They further claimed that Chamberlains later buried the body and planted the clothing in the area it was eventually found. The most damning evidence was a contentious forensic report claiming to have found fetal hemoglobin, typically present in infants six months or younger, in the Chamberlains' car - a fact later proved to be false.

      Evidence of Lindy's innocence fell on the jurors' deaf ears. The un-contradicted evidence of witnesses who observed Lindy to be a devoted and affectionate mother to the baby and her sons was overshadowed by the media created impression left by her apparent coldness in her pre-trial interviews with the press. Evidence that there were dingoes sighted in the vicinity of the campground, dingo paw prints leading from the tent, as well as their prior attacks on children was, likewise, ignored. On October 29, 1982, the jury convicted both parents of the offenses.

    Ironically, it was the unrelated death of a hiker that led to the exoneration of the Chamberlains. In February 1986, after the Federal Court and Austrian High Court had rejected their appeals, the police were investigating the disappearance of missing man last seen climbing Ayers Rock. During the course of their search, they found the matinee jacket worn by Azaria near a dingo den.

     Confronted with the reality that the criminal justice system had failed, the authorities released Lindy from prison within a week and announced that there would be a new inquiry into the child's death. In the lengthy report issued by Justice Trevor Morling, he discredited much of the original evidence and concluded that the case against the Chamberlains was insubstantial, and the verdicts were "unsafe". Several months later, the government of the Northern Territory enacted special legislation that allowed the Chamberlains to apply to the Criminal Appeals to have their convictions quashed. Finally, on September 15, 1988, the appellate court unanimously quashed the convictions.

     In a third inquest held in 1995, the coroner returned an open finding, meaning the baby’s death was registered as “cause unknown” - a finding that will likely be overturned by a fourth inquest now underway before Coroner Elizabeth Morris. In that hearing, an investigator testified that between 1990 and 2011 there have been over two hundred documented attacks by dingoes on humans including three fatal attacks on children and fourteen other significant attacks. The lawyer assisting the coroner, Rex Wild, a former director of public prosecutions in the Northern Territory, has asked the court to "accept on the balance of probabilities that the dingo theory is the correct one."

     Despite the evidence, there are still those who will continue to believe that Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton (now divorced and remarried) murdered her daughter. It is a sad commentary that the ignorance and prejudices of some allows them to afford a "presumption of innocence" to a wild dog but not to the devoted and loving mother of a newborn. 

    UPDATE June 12, 2012. The coroner has ruled that the cause of Azaria Chamberlain's death was "the result of being attacked and taken by a dingo." The death certificate will be changed to reflect this new finding.