I was reading about the Lindy and Azaria Chamberlain case recently. It's a freakish tragedy turned exercise in the monstering of an innocent woman. I read and read and read, with mounting horror at the diabolical actions of so many people, allegedly concerned about the murder of a baby, who claimed to be 'just following evidence', but were in fact all, knowingly or not, colluding in the nightmare miscarriage of justice Lindy endured.
The incident occurred before I was born, and I knew little about it except for having heard 'a dingo took my baby!' used in humourous terms countless times.
It's a terrible, terrifying story of one of the most virulently demonised women of our time.
Lindy Chamberlain's baby, Azaria, was nine weeks old when she took her camping to Ayer's rock (Uluru), with her preacher husband and two sons.
They settled in for a few days, met other families, had barbecues and explored. On their second day, after wandering into a cave with Azaria in her arms, Lindy turned to see a large dingo stood at the entrance, staring at her. It was an ominous sign, and she said later it felt like the wild dog was 'casing the baby'.
This was regarded as ludicrous.
Which brings us to one very salient point, ignored by seemingly everyone - the convergence of background happenings which presented an unusual and very relevant context.
A several month's long drought had pushed dingoes to the point of starvation. In addition, they were ruthlessly persecuted.
This might sound like a good thing, when they're attacking children - as was the case. Several kids in the area had been chased or bitten. But for some reason (presumably based on their general character and history), the dingo was regarded as close to harmless, while quietly they were facing a cataclysmic threat.
Dingoes instinctively want to exist away from humans. It's desperation that leads them to steal from or attack people or domestic animals.
When they're allowed to exist alongside humans without harassment, they stay out of sight. They forge strong bonds with each other, and develop local knowledge on water and food; the best prey at any given time of year, hunting locations away from people. They hunt in packs, which has a higher success rate.
It's when they're attacked that things go wrong. The formerly shy and elusive dingo is a different animal with nothing to lose.
Individuals lose their pack in the chaos of being hunted and scatter off into the distance. They run into rivals, are killed or run further still. They become desperate and starve or die of thirst. It's a disaster for them.
There were numerous, up close sightings of dingoes that evening and when the families finished eating and took their leftovers to the bins, as you're supposed to do to avoid enticing them, one got very close, following a woman from an estimated four paces behind.
Lindy sat chatting with another woman, Mrs. Lowe, as the sun went down, before taking her small boy and baby to the tent. They were shattered and fell asleep quickly. In about six to ten minutes, she was back at the campfire, near to the tents.
A short time later, one of the campers socialising with the Chamberlain's heard a deep, low growl, and suddenly a baby cried out from the direction of the Chamberlain's tent.
It wasn't a normal cry, it was angry, shrill, visceral. Lindy jumped up and ran towards the tent. It was dark, but there was just enough ambient light from the fire to see a dingo stood at the tent entrance, momentarily still, with something large in its mouth.
In a horrifying split second, the dingo shook its head and abruptly the cry broke, leaving a horrible silence. The animal had seen her, she was running towards it but had no chance of catching up as it slinked off into the darkness.
The tent's entrance fully open, Lindy saw the baby basket was empty, and screamed 'My God! My God! A dingo got my baby!'
There was some blood, but not much, on the floor. Azaria's brother, Aiden, who was six and had been outside the tent, said to Mrs. Lowe: "The dingo has our Bubby in its tummy."
They called the police.
The campsite was large, near an aboriginal settlement and a small hotel and shop. A frantic search party of around 300 people was formed, but the Chamberlains were not among them.
Their absence was seen as suspicious by many, and initially I'd discounted that, assuming they would be consoling each other, especially the boys, the youngest of whom, Reagan, had woken to the dingo standing on him. I thought they'd be searching by the tent, crying, stunned, working out who had seen or heard what.
But I was wrong.
In fact, the police had told them to stay there, but that information wasn't released to the public for decades.
No baby was ever found. To this day, there are no remains.
All there was to show Azaria had been there was a few spots of blood, the testimony of two small boys and their mum, and various snippets from others camping there.
Later, a member of the search party found light dingo tracks some distance away. Next to marks where the animal had stopped and layed down was a small indentation in the sandy ground, as if the dingo had rested something there. This showed a pattern consistent with a knitted item of clothing.
On arrival, the first police officer had taken the couple at their word but others joining them were more sceptical.
One police officer, John Lincoln, was immediately suspicious, stating no dingo had ever taken a baby, and that this was a fact. It was too outlandish, and many agreed - this despite numerous dingo attacks on children across the northern territory, and the witnesses corroborating what the Chamberlain's had said.
He just didn't like the look of Lindy. Lots of Australians were, apparently, also very wary of Seventh Day Adventists, their church.
He mocked the idea a dingo could carry a baby and in crude, frat boy style, filled a pail with ten pounds of sand to demonstrate he couldn't hold it in his teeth for a minute, let alone carry it off across the vast landscape, at a pace. There were no drag marks, they said - not even a trail of blood.
The Guilty Lindy Hypothesis
It was all too unlikely for some, principally detectective John Lincoln, who soon came to the belief that Lindy had sloped off, murdered her baby, called her husband, and they had somehow snuck off in the remaining moments to dispose of her body.
Or, maybe she'd returned and then orchestrated this drama, capitalising on the chaos and hiding the baby.
What Lindy had said, anyway, it didn't really make any sense. If a dingo has gone in the tent, grabbed Azaria and ran, there should have been more blood. How does a dingo drag a baby away without significant biting?
Not to mention, Lindy should have cried more. And then when she did cry, it was all so obviously fake.
Press Leaks
As the horror became a story and hit the papers and TV, troubling stories began to to spread about the family, and the press were given numerous quotes from unnamed sources. A theme was gathering pace. There were few representations of the family as grieving, it was intrusive and salacious.
The Chamberlain's Did Seem Odd...
"A dingo has taken our baby, and she is probably dead by now" is apparently what Michael Chamberlain said in the immediate aftermath, as he wandered up to the tent of other campers, followed with the somewhat nutty and grandiose "I am a minister of the gospel".
That comment could be those of a devastated father, just absorbing the news. But if you think of him as a party to the concealment of a murdered baby, it looks entirely different.
According to the same witness, Lindy had said "Whatever happens, it is God's will".
This was soon regarded as proof of her nefarious nature. Why wasn't she crying for Azaria more? What is this rationalizing, minimising, treating the matter as if already done and dusted?
After the search was abandoned, and hope of Azaria's safe return lost, her baby grow and nappy was discovered on the rock itself. It was a week since her disappearance, and the baby grow had significant blood staining around the neck.
What was still missing was Azaria's matinee jacket.
Opinions began to set.
There was just so much blood on her baby grow, but only a few drops in the tent. It was, by this stage, blindingly obvious to many that Lindy did this, and cleaned up before alerting others in her sham act of a panicking, loving mother.
Poor, poor baby Azaria. Of course. Everyone could pay platitudinous lip-service to the dead baby, but mainly it was the hook, the excuse to never let Lindy go. This was not just about justice, seeking punishment for a heinous crime, it was about defending the northern territory, tourism, selling papers, moralistic posturing and being tough on child abuse. And, well, being right.
Rapidly an economy of insinuation erupted, quibbling every element, highlighting perceived inconsistencies. It didn't take long until a narrative was built, and it dragged a whole continent along.
The First Inquest
Lindy turned up looking groomed and glamorous. That's odd, isn't it? Would you? And would you be without a tear stained face as you head into the coroner's court? Would you be getting your hair done? Wearing a different outfit every day?
Personally, they said, I'd be out my mind with grief. I would be far too distressed to be dressing up like that.
The imagination of the country was lit. It caught like wildfire: consuming and drawing more inwards, ultimately becoming a melodrama dedicated to studying the family, casting aspersions and increasingly suggestive that Lindy was a dark, manipulative and untrustworthy character.
Rumours
It was reported by some that Azaria had a congenital deformity or disability that made her too much of a bother for her parents.
This was, if it's even worth saying, categorically untrue. But it fit the feeling, the narrative reaching consciousnesses across the nation, and maybe the urge for an inside view of a proxy satanic panic. The sensationalism and multifaceted appeal of the cunning, sexy anti-mother.
It was claimed that the name Azaria meant "Sacrifice in the Wilderness" (In reality, Azaria means "Whom God Aids") and some surmised she was a human sacrifice, all of which was compounded by their being Seventh Day Adventists, considered with disproportionate fear and suspicion.
One dubious report that Azaria had been seen at an appointment dressed all in black, quickly became the 'fact' she was always dressed in black. Does it matter her recovered clothes were in light, bright colours? Of course not.
A Is For Azaria, Abducted In Australia
At the initial coroner's hearing, where television news channels were permitted to film, Lindy and her husband were put under significant duress and questioning on the stand. Still, the finding was that little Azaria had been taken by a dingo.
But only at the start.
It's a genuinely strange, no less troubling hypothesis that emerged - Azaria had been carried off some way before being dropped by the dingo, whereby a person had found her, buried her, and then later on dug her up and removed her clothes.
The poppers on the baby grow had definitely been opened by a human hand, said one expert. The marks on her clothes were inconsistent with dingo attack. There was some convoluted and seemingly inconsequential discussion about types of sand found in the clothes and what that did or did not mean about where the baby grow had been. In addition, where the baby grow and nappy was found was very close to where the Chamberlain's had been climbing the day before her disappearance. It seemed fairly obvious that they may have gone back and planted the clothes after initially trying to bury her.
Obviously, the inquest did nothing to allay the suspicion, it just made an elaborate plot look more likely, with Lindy seen as having been gifted some special treatment. She had essentially gotten away with murder.
I wonder if the suggestion was an aboriginal person had some part to play. Certainly, the news of a missing baby led to the Aboriginal camp being almost immediately raided by police, so I'm sure any unpopular persons or groups could have been scapegoated along the way. Primarily though, Lindy was prime suspect, and to a lesser extent her husband Michael. I suppose this was justified as he hadn't made the discovery, and possibly, being a man, was not seen as so sinister.
He was just a strong-armed assistant to her wickedness.
The media were too invested to let it go, the police, politicians were unhappy. With the biggest, most divisive story in Australian history still thrashing around in the surf, pressure began to mount on the authorities to do something about Lindy Chamberlain.
The policeman who doubted and ridiculed her story from the outset was angry and I very much doubt he was alone. He now felt obliged to clear the region from this woman's outrageous lies. It was something bigger than his own pride, he was defending the Northern Territory.
Reports in newspapers began to suggest links between the family and the Jim Jones suicide cult. No dark insinuation was too bizarre.
There were people - many, many people - honestly suggesting that the Chamberlain's, or, more specifically, Lindy, went away to the nation's most famous natural monument, chatted with other families, cooked and ate together, introduced themselves with their real names before Lindy murdered the baby, hid the body and concocted this charade to cover her tracks. There was never a motive.
The cry "a dingo took my baby" became a punchline the world over.
Lindy The Calculating Killer
Then a new theory emerged, courtesy of an investigator: it could have happened much earlier in the evening.
In this version, Lindy had murdered Azaria in the combi by slitting her throat - this did match the evidence, the blood on her baby grow was all around the neck. She may have even decapitated her.
When witnesses thought they'd seen her carrying Azaria, it was just a bundle of blankets and baby clothes.
Who knows that baby was alive? As for this matinee jacket Lindy had continually asserted was missing, that probably never existed in the first place.
Lindy fell pregnant again.
Maybe this was another stalling tactic, a sign of her devious, manipulative character.
Maybe, then, it was critical she be stopped from doing it again.
As if by magic, new evidence and expert witnesses were found, and a new inquest called.
To be fair to those doubting her, Lindy's behaviour was at times peculiar.
Her delivery when describing how a dingo eats a sheep was said to be the biggest moment in the public turn against her. I doubt that, or at least I think it was primed by the incessant flow of bullshit, but she was detached as she discussed the gruesome way dingoes pull with their teeth against paw to skin their prey.
I can understand how people felt repelled by it and decided she was not in possession of normal maternal instinct, because we judge people on this stuff. We are encouraged to do so, and even dismissed as stupid or brainwashed for not being swayed.
But, let me give you some background.
In that interview:
Lindy was trying to warn people that dingoes could be dangerous.
As they began filming, they had to stop and start again several times as Lindy would burst into tears. After the sixth, failed attempt to get a story unbroken with crying, Lindy was abruptly told to sort it out - if she wanted the real story out there, if she wanted to warn people and prevent other babies being killed, she had to do it properly.
They took her through the questions, told her where to slow down and where to speed up, gave her other aspects to focus on, to control the emotion. She was exhausted, so she had a break, washed her face, got some air. Finally, she managed to say what she wanted to be said, kept her emotions away, and it was this cut that made it out, where she was removed from the horror, matter of fact, purposefully cold.
It was take seven. Her hard work considered to be signs of apathy, disdain, deception and even sadism.
People refused to comprehend how battle weary she was, imagining each accusation of murder would send her into a wheeling descent of despair as the first presumably did.
The only people to see her and Michael's distress were their close friends, family and church.
The police raided the Chamberlain's house. The most notable find, after turning their home upside down, was a pair of scissors.
The Second Inquest
A second inquest was called, where the results of the first were struck out, recommending Lindy be charged with murder and Michael as accessory after the fact.
The coroner remarked with foreboding that a jury would be able to find the answer to this mystery well enough.
That case was heard further afield, a charade meant to assure that the authorities were keen to facilitate a fair trial, but press coverage and speculation had permeated every level of society.
One man celebrated being put on the jury because, he told his neighbours over the fence, now he could 'get the bitch'.
Journalists later recounted an interaction with a government minister's assistant while at a press gathering. He had been listening to them discuss the case. They thought it would go not guilty, but the politicians assistant was certain they'd get a conviction, saying the jury was without question going to give their local representatives what they wanted.
Headlines cried out 'most want Lindy behind bars'.
'Experts'
Sadly, by the time of the trial, any empathy for Lindy, a heavily pregnant, grieving mother with two kids to worry about, was a tiny crumb of mitigation, as capable of absorbing the immense groundswell of public fury as a dish sponge is at capturing the Atlantic. That's if it wasn't yet more reason to hate her.
As Lindy walked into court, she was spat on by women with banners reading 'the dingo is innocent!' Still, 43 years later, she is sometimes heckled and mocked with the first words she cried when realising her baby was gone.
Blood, Spit & Tears
The earlier dental expert who's testimony had essentially been discounted at the first inquest called in a supposed dingo expert, James Cameron, professor of forensic medicine at London Hospital Medical College.
He said that there was no saliva on Azaria's baby grow. In fact, analysis had proven there weren't even hairs. Now, explain that? There had been rain, but would that wash it entirely clean? Seems very convenient.
Also, another prosecution witness chimed in, the car had been 'awash' with blood before a hasty clean up left just a fraction behind, not to mention that the blood had been free-flowing. The expert had scientific evidence to prove this, and that it could not have been transferred there, without question it had fallen from the bleeding child directly.
Biologist Dr Andrew Scott was also sure the blood on the baby grow itself had travelled down directly from the neck. This is proof of a neck wound, a deep severing to the veins and arteries of the throat. The blood represents an injury of wide, circumferential origin.
How, Lindy, did the dingo do the characteristic head shake, or ragging, of Azaria, without splattering blood everywhere?
The Dry Cleaner's Dirt
Back at home in Mount Isa, a dry cleaner swore she'd had Lindy in soon after the tragedy, requesting that blood spots around the feet of her tracksuit be removed. It's true that she took her time coming forward, but that's damning, isn't it?
Now they 'knew' - Lindy had worn this tracksuit over her dress when she slit Azaria's throat, like a butcher's apron.
Baby grow
The jumpsuit that Azaria was wearing at the time of her disappearance was damaged by human hands, said yet another prosecution expert. The poppers had been opened by a human, there were no incision holes, scrapes or damage from teeth.
Malcom Chaikin was regarded as Australia's top authority on textiles. He submitted that tear marks were still entirely inconsistent with perforation made by any kind of dog's teeth. The cuts and tears had caused tiny loops of fabric to be severed from the main body of the baby grow.
This, he was absolute, is from stabbing with parallel blades. How, the prosecutor asked the court, you convict the dingo on this?
They threw meat wrapped in baby grows and nappies to packs of dingoes in zoos. "Proof" was inferred
So, if you thought Lindy was telling the truth, wake up. There's no evidence to support the dingo attack story.
Possibly the most damning testimony was from professor Bernard Sims - there is no way, he said, that a dingo is capable of closing its jaws over a baby's skull. It just wasn't possible.
This was a famous 'fact' given in court, and it remained so, even when the defence showed a picture of a dingo holding a large size doll by the head, comfortably.
In a stunning act of clear-headed reason and restraint, however, the prosecutor did the noble thing and said the Crown was not suggesting Aiden and Reagan, four and six at the time of the tragedy, were involved with the baby's murder.
As for the blood inside the family's combi, there was even more incriminating evidence - it was very high in foetal haemoglobin, ie it had come from a baby under the age of six months. Joy Kuhl asserted on the stand this was incontrovertible, against numerous defence witnesses who stated the tests she had run were next to useless.
So, had the dingo taken the bleeding baby in the combi? Was that the defences argument, taunted the prosecution?
The Chamberlain's went so far as tracking down a bleeding hitchhiker they'd picked up in the '70s, but there was no match.
Guess what this blood was finally found to be from?
It was spray paint. A sound deadening spray used in the production of the car. Joy Kuhl, the expert who claimed that this was human blood with a high count of foetal haemoglobin, slunk away, before much later apologising.
Under infrared lights, a hand print was discovered on the baby grow - that this hand print had a different number of digital segments, or 'phalanges', wasn't enough to slow down the race to implicate the woman. It was also extremely small, but it wasn't those details which mattered.
In the end, in was found to be iron oxide - not blood at all, but the ubiquitous red dust of the region.
The prosecution called many witnesses from the night of Azaria's disappearance, who, aside from one who was very uncomfortable with Michael's comment that Azaria was probably now dead, all backed up for the Chamberlain's. One said Lindy had 'a new mum glow about her'. Others fought back at claims they had been seen cleaning up blood; that the baby could have been a bundle of blankets; that no baby had cried at the time the dingo was alleged to attack; and that no dingoes were anywhere near the tents.
But, whatever. They were probably duped. Psychopaths are charming.
Lindy was found guilty of murder, sent to jail for life without the possibility of parole and hard labour. Seventeen days later, her tiny daughter was born, and taken away after one hour to be given over to foster care.
Michael was found guilty of helping conceal the murder, for whatever reason the charge of murder were never levelled at him. He got 18 months, as a suspended sentence since someone needed to look after the boys.
Once in jail, Lindy was deluged in letters, most of which called her a murderer and were gleeful at her predicament.
"Lindy, you have committed the greatest sin of all, CHILD MURDER.
May god commit your soul to Satin (the Devil), for torture in hell throughout eternity"
- Note the writer can't even spell 'Satan'.
Here is the letter Lindy soon received from her mum, Avis, on how she told her sons of Lindy's imprisonment:
“I took his hands in mine and explained that the naughty people still thought Mummy had hurt little Bubby and that they had put her in prison so she would not be able to come home.
“His face went pale. He dropped his head back against the bedhead and broke into dreadful groaning noises with dry eyes.
“I do not wish, such agony on my direst enemy.”
Women were more likely than men to think Lindy was guilty. It seems the scramble to cast out other women as unworthy of motherhood can be particularly tempting.
Her failure to be pictured looking suitably crushed may have left her in an un-categorisable status as a woman, leaving her particularly vulnerable to suspicion and outrage.
On the jury that sent Lindy to jail for life without the possibility of parole (and, it appears, with 'hard labour'), three jurors were women. They all were steadfast in their opinion: Lindy must be convicted.
One had even said she was going to find her guilty anyway, but still, she was really struggling with the idea she was capable of hurting her baby.
Of the nine men, four had to be won round to vote guilty. Whether that's chance, or men feeling more able to defy the consensus of women, is an interesting question.
Today, this case is regarded as one of the most egregious miscarriages of justice in Australia. It isn't surprising, when you look at what was put to the Australian public.
Maybe the worst thing is if the authorities had listened to rangers concerned about the increase in aggression and audacity of the area's dingoes, this may never have happened. Those working around Uluru had been warning of this for at least two years.
Some time into her incarceration, Lindy's little boy Reagan was badly injured by an exploding bottle which destroyed his eye. Lindy pleaded for clemency but this was denied. The letters to and from her family are heartbreaking.
Immediately following Reagan's accident, there was a TV phone-in poll on whether Lindy should be released on compassionate grounds.
Aidan, who was eleven, called it 178 times, so desperate to have his mother home. When the results showed just 40% were in agreement he collapsed, sobbing for hours. He wrote to politicians across the country, swearing of her innocence and that they all loved 'Bubby'.
They were all abused and mocked. Once we decide someone has done something unconscionable, everyone who loves them gets pilloried in the fallout, and we cease to value compassion. Compassion is condemnation in this context. We hate so hard because we care.
I dread to imagine how it might look today, with 'experts' on YouTube and TalkTV, in the press, with psychiatrists, coppers and reporters speculating on her internal processes.
We like to imagine we can predict how we'd react in situations far outside of our experiences, but these are guesses, uneducated at that. What we think we might present as are hemmed in by inevitably narrow, brittle and unimaginative parameters. We anticipate a particular performance from people, forgetting it's a deeply flawed basis for understanding other people's shock, grief and trauma. You could say any weird thing, start busying yourself with the washing: any odd, banal distraction as you throw everything you have at controlling the anxiety.
It's like trying to get into a locked cabinet, trying every key, seeing if something, anything, will fit.
We pick up little clues everywhere, from the opinions of those we respect, or swiftly discredited conjecture and suggestion that still continues to colour our opinion. Suddenly, we have a feeling something or other just isn't 'right'. The light and shadows turn and face other ways.
Now, while I know this, and I do try to bear it in mind, I'm sure I could come to dark conclusions of innocent people without justification.
And actually, I remember one occasion that I did just that.
Who remembers Christopher Jeffries?
Landscape architect Joanna Yates had been murdered by a neighbour, her body dumped a distance away. She had been renting Mr. Jefferies' flat.
I remember now, I thought I knew he was guilty. The little hints to downright outrageous accusation he was guilty, from a relentlessly irresponsible press - it got me. Hook, line, sinker.
"THE JURY HEARD ALL THE EVIDENCE, DID YOU?" asks this young woman's banner.
I wonder, if she ever thought of herself as the one being watched and judged.
In the minds of jurors, would her demeanour likely be seen as an appropriate reaction to a case as horrible as this? Is this the normal reaction to a baby's violent death?
It's a strange appeal to authority. Using the same logic you would think that juries haven't had a reputation for wrongly judging rape victims, or ever be known to be fallible.
It does strike me as problematic that the people most prone to subjective, snap judgments are also often the most resolute and dominant, overpowering those who question and withhold certainty.
In Lindy's case, the jury was subject to a long trial that sapped their energy, with 'experts' who were wrong, fellow jurors with minds already made up and no way of escaping the incessant background noise of supposition, slander and hysteria.
Dissociation, desperate bids to focus, to reassure our loved ones; disbelief, the fear people already see us as guilty - all of this can leave people acting in ways we don't anticipate. Worst is that we occasionally make a national sport out of it, often during the worst time of people's lives.
Ultimately, believing we personally possess especially insightful senses, intuition or nous is hugely reassuring. Who has never felt triumphant over a correct judgement on someone's bad character? Human instinct is powerful and worth listening to, but let's not forget what a huge range of factors are at play, especially when our perceptions are facilitated by editors and those with a game to win or product to sell.
We are highly suggestable and while the 'I told you so!' gene is far from the only cause, it certainly seems to me those in possession of it are among those hardest hit.
Lindy spent three years inside, presumably being inmate enemy number one, but over the years, as the evidence was proven to be fallacious and children were attacked by dingoes in numerous situations, public feeling began to lift.
In 1986, a British man was climbing Uluru when he fell, crashing down headfirst. When the crew went to recover his body they found themselves deep in the slopes and ravines of dingo lairs. Caught up in some vegetation was little Azaria's matinee jacket.
Within a week, Lindy was home and finally reunited with her family.
Except, of course, Azaria.
