It seems there is about to be a fourth inquest into the death of Azaria Chamberlain, now 32 years since that fatal day. I’ve missed it on the local news but found the story covered by the American ABC. The seismic shifts in public opinion are, I think, nicely described by this story at the end of the article about one of the jurors in the Lindy Chamberlain trial.
Perhaps no one exemplifies the shifting opinions, uncertainty and nagging guilt of Australians more than Yvonne Cain, one of the jurors who voted to convict Lindy.
At first, she empathized with the woman on trial: Cain’s own son was bitten by a dingo when he was just a baby. But the prosecution’s forensics looked strong, and the defense looked weak. When the verdict was announced, Cain couldn’t look at Lindy, and wept as she was sentenced.
‘I’ll never forget the judge saying that Lindy would be put into jail for life with hard labor,’ says Cain, now 63 and living in the southern city of Adelaide. ‘I imagined her smashing rocks, like in the old days.’
After the trial, Cain was shattered. Had she gotten it wrong?
Her sleep was riddled with nightmares. She daydreamed about smuggling Lindy out of jail. She grew convinced she had made a horrible mistake.
Soon after Lindy’s release, the two women met, in a moment captured on video. Cain couldn’t stop crying as she hugged Lindy. ‘Are you all right, now that it’s all finished?’ she asked.
‘It’s not finished yet,’ Lindy replied. ‘We’ve got a fight to go.’
The two are now friends. But Cain still struggles with her conscience. The guilt will probably always plague her, she says. She believes it should plague all Australians who condemned Lindy.
Because if the dingo is guilty, then so is Australia.
‘I never, ever got over it,’ Cain says, her voice shaking. ‘I’m guilty for calling her guilty. … I keep thinking back to the time when we were deliberating. If only — if only — I’d have said no, I don’t think she’s guilty.’
‘That woman was as innocent as you and me.’
What this story really reminds me of is how bad it is to fall into the hands of the legal system which really can grind you up. Not quite Kafka, but here it is, still going on.
Yes, and the fact that the legal system can be so Kafkaesque and indeterminate, is the real reason why we cannot tolerate the death penalty.
There is also the small matter of State sanctioned murder, but most on Catallaxy swoon when they envisage the missiles massacreing millions in the Middle East.
MaryT
21 Feb 12 at 9:14 am
Lindy was condemned by the almost unanimous opinion by the women of Australia because her apparent emotional exhibition didn’t equate with what most women thought it should be in a mother who’d just lost a baby.
Men have always been sneered at in this country for not having the natural empathy that women “have”. I could never come to grips with the vitriol I got whenever I declared in mixed company that I thought Lindy was not guilty.
The “foetal blood” evidence that was instrumental in condemning her was the most egregious legal episode I can remember in my lifetime, yet the woman who perpetrated that is now forgotten, never having been brought to account. Altogether a blot on our national character.
whyisitso
21 Feb 12 at 9:28 am
Thats cool – Kevin 12 needs another national sorry day before the next election
RodClarke
21 Feb 12 at 9:29 am
RodClarke
21 Feb 12 at 9:31 am
Forensic science is dodgy science, then and still now. It started not so much from the scientific community but within the Police ranks and has largely remained there. Thanks to TV shows folks have vastly over-rated impressions of the accuracy and quality of forensic evidence but like today’s ‘climate science’ much of it can be made to mean anything.
Chris M
21 Feb 12 at 9:37 am
This is Derrida’s notion of “collective responsibility”.
It is key to left-wing political thought and a reason why so many of the arm-chair trendy leftists supported Rudd’s apology to the Aboriginals.
RodClarke
21 Feb 12 at 9:37 am
I have a strong opinion on this but I’ll leave it until the inquest is over.
Yes, and the fact that the legal system can be so Kafkaesque and indeterminate, is the real reason why we cannot tolerate the death penalty.
Bollocks.
Hang Bryant and Milat now. The idea that we can’t change the legal system is just ludicrous.
Jinmaro is silent about Hamas rockets raining down on Israel, however.
.
21 Feb 12 at 10:05 am
How dumb can you get.
To legally hang Bryant and Milat requires the death penalty. We do not have an infalllible justice system
If this applied lindy Chamberlain would be dead by now, as would a lot of DNA exonerated previously convicted souls.
Only dumb, murderous, right-wingers support the death penalty.
MaryT
21 Feb 12 at 10:31 am
Bullsh*t.
Rabz
21 Feb 12 at 10:41 am
Mary is playing the definition changing game. She is best ignored.
.
21 Feb 12 at 10:47 am
Oh, sorry fartles, you no doubt meant dumb, murderous, right-wingers like these ones?
Rabz
21 Feb 12 at 10:49 am
Is this lawyers feast being re-opened? God help us.
Token
21 Feb 12 at 10:50 am
…and only malignant, moronic left-wingers make inept generalisations like this.
Any evidence MarTy?
Token
21 Feb 12 at 10:51 am
What a great support the Chamberlains got from their church and the paid media interviews with women’s magazines!!
The only support Azaria got was from the police who are now discredited.
Everybody forgets that a baby was done to death. Why no justice for her?
None of the “experts” who were paid to defend
Chamberlain were from anywhere near dingo country.
In my 25 years in the Territory I met nobody outside the cities who believed her tale.
kevin
21 Feb 12 at 10:56 am
Please boss, can you get a keyboard cover for me?
The spray is also getting to my little mate, the Monitor. But I’m the one who’s getting the frothing dribble and it’s sticking the keys together.
Please. Even one of those joke XXL condoms that Steve gave you will do.
MaryTs Keyboard
21 Feb 12 at 10:59 am
‘In my 25 years in the Territory I met nobody outside the cities who believed her tale.’
Dead right. I don’t doubt that a dingo may have carried her away, but the forensic evidence as reported in the NT News last Thursday showed that something other than a dingoes teeth made incisions into the jump suit. Of course someone could have found the jump suit after the baby had been consumed and stabbed it a few times with something sharp, and then left it there to be found again, later. It is possible. But not probable.
Call me an old sceptic, but someone did away with that baby and it weren’t the dingo.
Helen Armstrong
21 Feb 12 at 11:06 am
Yea – check out dumb dot dash…
Or is it really Kevin Rudd?
MaryT
21 Feb 12 at 11:07 am
“Only dumb, murderous, right-wingers support the death penalty”
The countries that have the death penalty and kill the most citizens include US, Iran, Saudi Arabia and China and at least one could be described as left wing so it is not a right left thing. It is authoritarian regimes of both the left and right that like to kill their citizens.
kelly liddle
21 Feb 12 at 11:11 am
Of course Mary T, discriminating against cases like Chamberlain compared to Bryant and Milat and wanting to make the nuance part of law makes me a “stupid, murderous rightwinger”.
Actually it is precisely because I respect human life.
.
21 Feb 12 at 11:18 am
Is it mandatory to have not only a forensic degree, but a major in dingo behaviour to live in the Territory? No wonder fuck all people live there. Sounds rather onerous.
Infidel Tiger
21 Feb 12 at 11:19 am
You are also required to place some store in the reports of the NT News, which immediately rules most living organisms out.
badm0f0
21 Feb 12 at 11:36 am
‘In my 25 years in the Territory I met nobody outside the cities who believed her tale.’
Absolutely right. That includes all of the Aborigines who lived in the area around the rock at the time. A cousin working as a ranger at the time told me the Aborigines there believed Lindy was guilty. I think they were wrong.
henry
21 Feb 12 at 11:49 am
I spent a lot of time around Ayres Rock in the 70′s and although the dingos were brash I still don’t believe one entered a tent and took a baby. There is other evidence such as the jumpsuit, where it was found and cuts on it that indicate human intervention. I don’t know how Azaria dies but I doubt a dingo did it.
Stephen Williams
21 Feb 12 at 12:20 pm
In spite of the fact that plenty of kids had been taken before, and have been since.
wreckage
21 Feb 12 at 12:30 pm
I always thought the dingo in the tent was a bit iffy, then I had my tool/crib bag pinched by a dingo while i was digging a trench less than 15 m away.
Thing triotted off bold as brass, I yelled at it and it dropped the bag, tipped out its contents and pissed on it.
So without knowing anything about any of the other claims (blood, jumpsuit etc) I will state I definately believe a dingo could have taken a baby.
thefrollickingmole
21 Feb 12 at 12:32 pm
Pretty sure that’ll be investigated, since it is, you know, physical evidence.
wreckage
21 Feb 12 at 12:34 pm
It sure is. You only have to watch Australian Story to be painfully aware of that.
Viva
21 Feb 12 at 1:29 pm
My grandfather, who spent 20 years droving in western Qld & the Northern Territory always maintained a dingo wouldn’t take a baby. I took this to be definitive.
My only personal experience with a dingo came a couple of years ago at Hawksnest on the NSW north coast. To cut a long story short, on a long walk along the beach in the evening,a dingo followed us along the top of the sandbar, and then when we got seperated by about 20 metres, sprang down and bailed up my wife. It backed off snarling when I ran back yelling, and then followed us very closely for about 5 kms back to town. It backed off a little further when I found a big stick, but I’m convinced it was waiting for a chance to get one of us alone again.
I reckon it would have killed a fair sized child, let alone a baby. So now I don’t doubt a dingo could have been responsible for Azaria. I don’t have an opinion on what actually did happen. I’ll wait for the result of the inquest.
Bring Back Tillman
21 Feb 12 at 2:16 pm
I think anyone who has camped on Fraser Island would easily believe that a dingo would steal a baby. Those fuckers would steal anything.
Les Majesty
21 Feb 12 at 2:19 pm
Anyone who has camped on Fraser Island would believe dingos would steal a baby.
Went there years ago with a couple of yanks. One bloke left his fishing bait in a plastic bag hanging from a tree branch. He thought it was high enough the dingos wouldn’t get it. He was mistaken.
Spent the next several days saying (in the faux cockney accent Americans think Australians speak with) “a dingo took my pilchards”. He was ropable.
Les Majesty
21 Feb 12 at 2:33 pm
The conviction was a disgrace. The jury notes show that the women hated Lindy (grief not sufficently cinematic), the jacket’s discovery and the car-boot fetal hemoglobin codswallop all point to a massive bungle. The stuff about man-made cuts on the matinee jacket is just nonsense.
The police only found the jacket (in a hard to reach area around Ayers Rock riddled with DINGO LAIRS) by chance. How Lindy managed to bolt in there and bury the jacket after stabbing her baby is anyone’s guess.
Pure, unadulterated crap.
C.L.
21 Feb 12 at 2:39 pm
“But perhaps the dingo while running off with the child, stopped, undid the jacket, took it off, buttoned it up again, turned it inside out, buried it and then made off … with the child.”
bruce
21 Feb 12 at 2:50 pm
Dingoes are more trouble than they are worth. I suggest releasing King Charles spaniels into all dingo infested areas, and let genetics deal with the problem.
(Maybe spray them with something to make them taste bitter first.)
steve from brisbane
21 Feb 12 at 2:54 pm
I’ve read that buffoon’s analysis, Bruce.
The baby could easily have been eaten and/or wasted away over time in such a manner as would allow the jacket to be found buttoned.
He’s just a dumb plod who should shut his pie hole.
C.L.
21 Feb 12 at 2:58 pm
I wish a dingo would eat you, Steve.
Les Majesty
21 Feb 12 at 3:35 pm
They say that ‘Steve’ means “troll in the desert.”
C.L.
21 Feb 12 at 3:37 pm
It seems the consensus in these comments is still pointing to supporting the original jury verdict. C.L., of course, is an extreme rightie, so I think we can ignore his rants.
hammygar
21 Feb 12 at 3:42 pm
C.L.,
That isn’t very convincing, and by the looks of it the police buggered up the evidence so badly we may never know and can only let her go and conclude that she is innocent.
.
21 Feb 12 at 3:42 pm
Hardly. The evidence in this case is more tainted than your mind and more befouled than your undies.
Infidel Tiger
21 Feb 12 at 3:44 pm
I thought it was men rather than women who thought Lindy guilty because she showed insufficient maternal grief?
Bob
21 Feb 12 at 3:47 pm
LOL.
‘Hang the (exonerated) witch high!’ says hammygar.
C.L.
21 Feb 12 at 3:56 pm
the standard for a not guilty verdict is reasonable doubt, not proof of innocence.
Jim Rose
21 Feb 12 at 5:45 pm
“but perhaps the dingo…”
I have seen smaller predators (foxes, cats) literally eat a small rabbit inside-out. I haven’t actually witnessed a dog doing that, but I am willing to bet they could. Put simply, carnivores routinely eat their prey out of its skin. Eating it out of its jumpsuit would be easier, if anything.
wreckage
21 Feb 12 at 9:50 pm
There’s a heap of historical written evidence by old timers that dingos enter tents and take stuff, especially if it is not hung up high, as borne out by just the few experience related here. Even then, they have a go at jumping the stuff down. Also recent digno attacks on kids on Fraser Island show just how hungry mismanged dingo populations can get.
Sometimes there gets to be a collective craziness: Azaria’s death was one of these moments in the Australian psyche. No inquest can ever ‘solve’ this.
Let it be.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
21 Feb 12 at 10:35 pm
This reminds me of Comrade Beattie’s shopping around, and shopping some more, determined to secure the only verdict satisfactory to the baying mob on Chris Hurley at Palm Island.
Just one out of a dozen jurors, who not long ago was prepared to flog her notes from the trial, pulls the Polyanna string with “I imagined her smashing rocks, like in the old days.” What the devil was someone so childishly naive doing on a murder trial jury?
I see she said “I kept waiting for someone to come in and tell us that she wasn’t guilty but it didn’t happen. I wanted someone to come in and say here’s the dingo that did it.” (not sure how to link “Dingo dilemma for Yvonne Cain – an Azaria Chamberlain juror who believed” in the Tele on Dec 24 ’11).
It beggars belief.
Mick Gold Coast QLD
21 Feb 12 at 10:39 pm
This case is remarkable in that There is no real science or professionals to truely prove anything about any of the so called evidence. No one has the skills to strove how dirty a cloth is when dragged by a dingo, or what marks the teeth would do.
The real evidence, the original Eyewitness statements, got watered down as time went on. Even today the prosecutions timeline and story is remarkable in that it is devoid of any standalone evidence and does not align with any of the original witness statements about the baby crying. The government went back to the same people over and over and over until the mountain of statements they washed out anything of importance.
Mundi
21 Feb 12 at 10:46 pm
Given a couple of dingoes managed to coral and kill a 9 year old boy on Fraser Island I think we can safely assume the dingo is capable of killing a 9 week old child. Many animals adapt to urbanised or “touristised” habitats by turning to opportunistic foraging. In North America, the danger posed by “wild” animals such as bears that have adapted to regular contact with humans in tourist areas has been accepted & understood for decades without controversy. Perhaps the readiness to believe the speculative worst about the Chamberlains was (& still) is a combination of a lack of experience with predatory animals & preconceived ideas of the dingo as a skulking,”wild dog” (as well as a relative unworldiness in regard to sectish religious denominations).
badm0f0
21 Feb 12 at 10:48 pm
While camped at Mitchell Falls ten years ago dingos raided our campsite every bloody night to steal rubbish bags. More front than Myers.
Infidel Tiger
21 Feb 12 at 10:53 pm
You sure they weren’t squirrels?
badm0f0
21 Feb 12 at 10:55 pm
Good point. They could have been cows come to think of it.
Infidel Tiger
21 Feb 12 at 10:57 pm
The problem with the inquests is that they simply can’t bring themselves to say the thruth- there isnt enough evidence- largely because of human error.
Just like no one has ever said there is no motive. They have always invented a motive.
Hopefully this in-quest will just tell everyone to get over it. It’s another question that cannot be answered.
Mundi
21 Feb 12 at 10:58 pm
Cows are inveterate thieves & vagabonds, the only way to deal with them is to eat them frequently.
badm0f0
21 Feb 12 at 11:03 pm
Dingo took the Azaria.
If there had been a proper search of dingo lairs in the area they may have found teeth in scats, but that never happened.
The investigation was botched from the beginning.
Once dingos are familiarised with humans they become bold enough to enter campsites and steal – many years ago my father awoke in his swag (the 50s) in The Territory to realise that a dingo was sniffing his hand. When he got up in the morning there were dingo prints all over the camp site.
They proved a dingo could carry off a baby goat of approximately the same size as a 9 week old baby.
I’m with CL, mofo, IT et al who can see that the dingo took the baby. For pity’s sake, they’ve killed a nine year old boy on Frazer.
Google Ben Allen dingo and read about a dingo researcher. His PhD is in study of dingos.
kae
21 Feb 12 at 11:07 pm
I have heard that a lot of aboriginal children/babies were taken by dingoes. It was not unheard of.
The aboriginal ones may have been easier to peel.
kae
21 Feb 12 at 11:09 pm
but badmofo, what about cows with guns?
kae
21 Feb 12 at 11:10 pm
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/new-evidence-proves-dingo-took-azaria-says-lawyer-for-chamberlains/story-fn7x8me2-1226277456532
Gab
21 Feb 12 at 11:13 pm
If you lose a gunfight with an animal that has to pull a trigger with a hoof then you should have stuck to tofu.
badm0f0
21 Feb 12 at 11:14 pm
Well butter my butt and call me Biscuit. I actually agree with MaryBob on that one.
Oh well. It would’ve been asking too much to have expected her to have been right twice in a row.
spot
22 Feb 12 at 2:52 am
Bad cow pun.
kae
22 Feb 12 at 8:17 am
Amazing amount of interest in such an old story.
Tapdog
22 Feb 12 at 9:04 am
I had a cat once that regularly came home with rabbits* it had managed to catch. I think he ignored mice with distain. Having spent far too much time in the bush dealing with the mongrels, I have no doubt a dingo would have no trouble nicking off with a baby. The way dingoes were portrayed by many was the animal kingdom’s version of the noble savage.
The hysteria at the time was ludicrous. I remember being breathlessly told that seventh day adventists would sacrifice their children in satanic rituals. when I challenged her, she said it was restricted to the pastors’ families.
*for eating purposes you naughty children
entropy
22 Feb 12 at 9:06 am
All these people saying “A dingo wouldn’t or would do such and such” are just full of it. A dingo is just a dog like any other. Like any other dog they are mostly scavengers but will hunt if they get hungry enough. The behaviour of one observed dingo is no real predictor of the behaviour of another one.
Common street dogs found all throughout south east asia are Dingos. That is, they are canis lupus dingo, as opposed to domestic dogs canis lupus familiaris. They don’t behave any differently to other dogs except for lack of barking.
Yobbo
22 Feb 12 at 9:26 am
video of thai street dog
dingo
Yobbo
22 Feb 12 at 9:32 am
That’s in-principle support for the death penalty.
Excuse me while I giggle derisively.
wreckage
22 Feb 12 at 11:04 am
So Lawyer Tipple [unfortunate name!] tells us that there is new evidence??
Let me see, Lawyer Tipple is retained by the Chamberlains, right?
And of course, we all believe lawyers, don’t we?
and I assume it is the Woman’s Day, or some such mag, funding the new assault on the justice system?
kevin
22 Feb 12 at 1:21 pm