Chamberlain Dingo Trial(英)

The Trial of Lindy and Michael Chamberlain("The Dingo Trial")

　　by Douglas O. Linder (2005)

　　"The scientist shouldn't become too adventurous, too competitive. The trouble is, we're all so human. I've never seen a case more governed by human frailties."——Dr. Tony Jones, government pathologist in the Chamberlain trial

　　On August 17, 1980, at a campsite near Australia's famous Ayer's Rock, a mother's cry came out of the dark: "My God, my God, the dingo's got my baby!" Soon the people of an entire continent would be choosing sides in a debate over whether the cry heard that night marked an astonishing and rare human fatality caused by Australia's wild dogs or was, rather, in the words of the man who would eventually prosecute her for murder, "a calculated, fanciful lie." A jury of nine men and three women came to believe the latter story and convicted Lindy Chamberlain for the murder of her ten-week-old daughter, Azaria.

　　Three years later, while Lindy dealt with daily life in a Darwin prison, police investigating the death of a fallen climber discovered Azaria's matinee jacket near a dingo den, and the Australian public confronted the reality that its justice system had failed. "A Cry in the Dark," a movie starring Meryl Streep, carried the story of Lindy's wrongful conviction across oceans. What went wrong? Convictions of the innocent usually result from inaccurate eyewitness testimony (generally the least reliable evidence in a trial because of biases and the tricks of memory), but Lindy Chamberlain was convicted by flawed forensic evidence and by investigators and prosecutors unwilling to reconsider their assumptions in the face of contradictory evidence. The trial of Lindy Chamberlain, and her husband Michael, is a cautionary tale that everyone who practices forensic science should carefully consider.

　　Azaria Disappears

　　Improbably shaped Ayers Rock rises 348 meters out of the dry Aboriginal heart of Australia. The monolith, called Uluru by natives, lures tourists drawn by its imposing shape and colors that migrate from gold to red in the changing sunlight. On August 13, 1980, the Chamberlain family left their home in the northern Queensland mining town of Mount Isa, heading west and then south to see central Australia's most famous natural feature. At the time of their trip, Michael Chamberlain served as minister at Mount Isa's Seventh Day Adventist Church, a denomination much misunderstood Down Under. He and his wife of ten years, Lindy, looked forward to several days of tenting and exploring with their three children, Aidan (age 6), Reagan (age 4), and Azaria (ten weeks).

　　The Chamberlains arrived late on the night of August 16 at the Ayers Rock campground. The next morning, Michael and the two boys climbed portions of the rock. Lindy, cradling Azaria in her arms, explored a formation called Fertility Cave. Just outside the cave, she looked up uneasily to see a dingo staring at her. She would later tell a detective that she had the feeling that the wild dog was "casing the baby."

　　After sunset, the Chamberlain family gathered with other campers around the barbecues near their tent site. Lindy held her Azaria in her arms as she and Michael chatted with Greg and Sally Lowe, another young couple also vacationing with an infant. Around 8:00, as Sally Lowe walked to a rubbish bin to dispose of items left from the evening meal, she turned to see a dingo following four or five paces behind her. Minutes later, Michael entertained his son Aiden by tossing a crust of bread to a dingo that appeared near their barbecue bench. Lindy remonstrated, "You shouldn't encourage them" about the same time as the dingo pounced on a mouse that young Aiden had been chasing.

　　Lindy announced "It's time I put Bubby down" and retreated to the Chamberlain's tent to make a suitable bed for Azaria. Ten minutes l

ater, having left Azaria with her sleeping brother, Reagan, in the tent, Lindy rejoined the rest of the campers by the barbecue bench. A baby's cry from the direction of the tent soon sent Lindy racing back to investigate. Then came her cry: "My God, My God, the dingo's got my baby!"

　　Frank Morris, the first investigator to arrive, shined a light across the floor of the Chamberlain tent, where he noticed blood on one of the rugs. Paw prints led away from the tent entrance, but faded as they hit a road. Meanwhile, six-year-old Aiden wailed to Sally Lowe, as he showed her the empty bassinet, "The dingo has our Bubby in its tummy."

　　Soon campers were locating flashlights ("torches," in Australian) and heading out into the dark scrub land. Nearly 300 men, women, and teenagers formed a human chain to look for tracks or pieces of clothing. Michael, who did not join the chain, had already assumed the worst, telling a fellow camper, "She's probably dead now." Then he added, incongruously, "I am a minister of the gospel."

　　The main search turned up dingo tracks, but nothing more. Away from the chain, tourist Murray Haby had better luck, following the tracks of a large dingo under a sand ridge, Haby noticed a depression in the sand where the wild dog seemed to have laid down something it had carried. Called by Haby to investigate, ranger Derek Hoff and native tracker Nuwe Minyintiri studied the depression. The imprint in the sand suggested a knitted weave of some sort. The men looked for dingo tracks leading on from the depression, but the task proved hopeless.

　　First Doubts

　　The four law men first assigned to the Chamberlain case talked over drinks at the Red sands Motel. Inspector Michael Gilroy accepted the Chamberlain's story, while Frank Morris kept his own counsel. John Lincoln, according to John Bryson's account in Evil Angels, doesn't buy the dingo story: "Not a chance. Never happened before. There's a fact you can't beat. Never ever happened." Gilroy noted that, even though none before had been fatal, there had been a series of recent dingo attacks in the park on children. Lincoln scoffs at the possibility that a dog could lug a ten pound baby over hundreds of yards. To prove his point, he leaves the room and returns with a pail filled with ten pounds of sand, which he succeeds in supporting by his mouth for less than a minute. He challenges the other officers to see if they can do better.

　　One week after Azaria's disappearance, Wally Goodwin set out for a gully at the base of Ayers Rock, with plans to photograph wild flowers along the way. While walking along a densely foliated animal path, Goodwin spotted shredded clothes resting near a boulder. Upon closer inspection, the proved to be a torn nappy and a jumpsuit. Goodwin reported his discovery and Constable Morris arrived to collect the evidence.

　　On August 28, Detective-Sergeant Graeme Charlwood took over the Chamberlain investigation. While subordinates checked vehicle registrations of August 17 campground visitors, Charlwood could ponder Inspector Gilroy's initial report on the case, which included suspicious tidbits of information. Gilroy reported that when Lindy had brought Azaria in for a medical check up, the baby was dressed in all black. The examining doctor is said to have been curious enough about the name "Azaria" to look it up in a Dictionary of Names and discover that it meant "Sacrifice in the Wilderness." (Actually, it means "Whom God Aids.") Gilroy also commented that Azaria's clothes were found close to where the family hiked earlier in the day. He noted that the people who observed her that evening "assumed she was holding a baby when they have seen her holding a white bundle to her breast."

　　In places around Australia, ranging from laboratories to wildlife parks, investigators conducted experiments to test the veracity of Lindy's account of Azaria's disappearance. Blood, vegetation, a

nd hair samples found on Azaria's clothing were examined. Dead dingoes shot in the Ayers Rock region following the disappearance were dissected by veterinarians looking for either human bone or human protein. Tears in the fibers of Azaria's clothing were studied——Did the tears appeared to be caused by a dingo's teeth or by some human instrument? At Cleland Park wildlife reserve in Adelaide, dingos were tossed meat wrapped in a baby's nappy, so that the nappy could be studied and compared to Azaria's. From these various efforts, investigators began to build a case for murder.

　　Newspapers fueled suspicions that the Chamberlains killed their baby, possibly as a religious sacrifice. Stories reported rumors that the Chamberlains were somehow linked to the Jonestown mass suicide two years earlier, or that Azaria might have been killed to atone for sins of the Seventh-day Adventist church. Reporters frequently observed that the many Australians concluded from televised interviews with the fatalistic Chamberlains that the couple's demeanor didn't match what they would expect from a couple that had just tragically lost a child.

　　On October 1, 1980 in Mount Isa, Charlwood conducted a several-hour long separate interviews with Lindy and Michael Chamberlain. His questions took her along the timeline from their departure for Ayers Rock to the days following Azaria's disappearance. The interview was relatively cordial, but Lindy expressed repeated frustration with leaks to the press of forensic tests that seemed to cast doubt on her account of events. Charlwood took particular interest in Lindy's unusual reaction to his suggestion that she be hypnotized in an effort to pull out additional details concerning her sighting of the dingo around the tent. Lindy immediately rejected the idea saying, "The church wouldn't allow it and I wouldn't do it.

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