Dingo left teeth marks on mother's reputation

Letter from Sydney: Nine-week-old Azaria Chamberlain's disappearance 25 years ago today still excites heated debate in Australia.

Non-Australians are often astonished that so many still believe that Azaria's mother Lindy killed her in what became infamous as the "dingo baby" case. At 8pm on August 17th, 1980, 32-year-old mother of three Lindy saw a mustard-coloured dog enter the family tent at Ayers Rock (now known by its Aboriginal name, Uluru) in Australia's Northern Territory. "A dingo's got my baby," she yelled.

The family holiday with Seventh Day Adventist pastor husband Michael, their sons Aidan (6) and Reagan (4), and new-born Azaria had turned to tragedy. About 200 people - park rangers and tourists - searched for the missing child that night, but it was too late. Baby Azaria's body was never found.

A week later, a tourist found Azaria's jumpsuit, booties, singlet and a nappy close to Uluru. The whispers had already started though. The child, born on June 11th, was given an Old Testament name meaning "God has helped", but rumours had it that Azaria meant "sacrifice in the desert".

Two months before Azaria's disappearance, a dingo had attacked a three-year-old girl near Uluru, but her parents did not disclose this incident until April 1984. By then, there had been two inquests and a trial, and Lindy had twice been jailed for murdering her daughter. The first inquest found, in February 1981, that a wild dog or dingo took Azaria, while a person or persons unknown disposed of the body.

Following new evidence - British pathologists said wounds, indicated by bloodstains on the baby's clothes, could not have been caused by a dingo - a second inquest a year later committed Lindy to trial for murder and her husband as an accessory.

International media flocked to Northern Territory's capital Darwin. On October 29th, 1982, Lindy, heavily pregnant with her fourth child, was sentenced to life in prison with hard labour. The prosecution said she had cut Azaria's throat in the front seat of their car. Her husband was found guilty as an accessory after the fact but was freed on a good behaviour bond.

Nineteen days after being sentenced, Lindy was taken to a hospital to give birth to daughter Kahlia. After an hour, her child was taken from her. Two days later she was released on bail pending an appeal to the Federal Court. On April 19th, 1983, the appeal was rejected and Lindy was back in prison.

In early December 1985, her sons Aidan and Reagan wrote to prime minister Bob Hawke, Prince Charles, Princess Diana and Northern Territory chief minister Ian Tuxworth, asking for their mother to be released for Christmas. It was in vain but, within two months, another death at the rock would help to change their mother's fate dramatically.

On February 2nd, 1986, the body of an English tourist, which a dingo had partly eaten, was found at Uluru. Territory rangers searching for the tourist also found a white-and-yellow baby's matinee jacket at Uluru's base. It was the vital piece of missing evidence.

In court appearances, Lindy had said Azaria was wearing a matinee jacket when she was dragged from the tent in 1980.

The authorities were initially cautious, with the Northern Territory's police commissioner, Peter McAulay, saying on February 4th that he was not ruling out the possibility a Chamberlain supporter had planted the jacket. But, a day later, Lindy identified the jacket as belonging to Azaria. On the morning of February 7th, a letter from German chemical company Behringwerke to the Northern Territory's solicitor general, Brian Martin, was released, which said improper methods had been used to determine the nature of red marks in the Chamberlains' car.

The pathologist's conclusion that the red stains were foetal blood, and therefore from Azaria, had stopped previous requests for a judicial inquiry into the case. But the red marks were actually sound-deadener sprayed on that model car in the 1970s.

That afternoon, attorney general Marshall Perron announced that Lindy was to be released and a judicial inquiry into the death of Azaria established. The Northern Territory Court of Criminal Appeal finally quashed all convictions against the Chamberlains on September 15th, 1988.

The family has never had an apology though. Lindy, who was divorced from Michael in 1991, told the Northern Territory News last weekend that Azaria had been "laid to rest" but "closure" was still needed for the second tragedy - her and Michael being charged with murder "and all that followed".

"An apology would accomplish that for me, the public and the NT," she said.

She seems unlikely to get one. Two months ago, Mr Perron, who released Lindy in 1986 but subsequently refused an apology when he became chief minister, said what many Australians still think, and expressed doubts about her innocence.

"I don't think the general populace really knows exactly what happened at Ayers Rock at that time," he told ABC Radio National.