Hello and thank you for downloading Witness from the BBC World Service. Today we take you back 30 years to the so-called Dingo Baby case in Australia. Some of you may find parts of Chloe Hadamethaio's report disturbing. It's September the 13th, 1982, and in a courtroom in the Northern Australian town of Darwin, Lindy Chamberlain is being accused of murdering her nine-week-old baby.
The Crown said I had sat in the passenger seat of the car, cut as Arya's head off with a pair of little curved nail scissors, and then stuffed her body and my husband's camera bag. They had no motive, no body, no nothing. And there were people on that jury who had been so influenced by what was being said. They were prepared to believe anything.
Lindy Chamberlain's ordeal began in the summer of 1980, when she and her husband Michael, a Seventh-day Adventist preacher, their two boys, Aiden and Reagan, and their new baby girl, Azaria, went camping at Ayres Rock, an ancient Aboriginal site now known as Uluru. Michael, a keen photographer, wanted to take pictures of the Red Rock. We spent the day photographing the sunrise, and Michael and Aiden climbed the rock, Reagan only climbed halfway up, and I waited at the bottom with Azaria. We took some photos, one of which turned out to be the last one ever taken of her.
As the sunset, Lindy put her younger son, Reagan, and tiny baby Azaria to sleep in the tent. Then she and her husband, Michael, with their older son, Aiden, went to the campsite's cooking area to prepare their dinner. We could actually see the tent from there, it was very close, and I had just picked up the can opener, and my husband said, it wasn't that who crying. So I was just part way back to the tent and saw a dingo coming out.
Obviously had something in its mouth because it was shaking its head to sort of get through the tent flap. Within about two more steps, I yelled at it to get out of the tent, never thinking that what it had was Azaria. The following morning Lindy would tell the television cameras what had happened. I ran out of two, I stood in my door and said, I've got the baby.
Basically all hell broke loose. People came from all directions, police turned up and several hundred people searching along the Sanjunes. Many of them searched all night and found just absolutely nothing except for tracks in the sand. It was a devastating event, and Lindy turned to her faith for strength.
I always thought, as a Christian and as a minister's wife, God's good, but don't touch my children. And within seconds of it happening, I knew I had two choices only, suicide or trust in God to help me get through. For me, that was an O-brainer. You've got two children who depend on you, life goes on.
There was never any doubt in the Chamberlain's minds that a wild dog had taken their daughter, as Michael told the media the next day. When we saw the spots of blood in the tent, as we realised, it must have been a very quick event. And this morning, when we saw in the blanket, the sharp, ripped jagged marks in that very thickly woven blanket, we knew that that was a powerful beast. At the rock that night, all those involved with the search, there was no question it was a dingo.
The people in the tent next door had heard a dingo, gave a warning growl just seconds before a head ranger there. He saw the tracks both in the tent and off we saw it. There had been other attacks and the very ranger that was there that night had written asking permission to call the troubles and dingoes. A week later, a tourist found most of Azaria's clothes, four kilometres from the campsite.
Everything except her tiny jacket. An official inquest into the baby's disappearance was held, and the coroner agreed with the Chamberlain's story. It's consistent with the possibility of a dog having taken the baby. That should have been the end of it, but the police and government in the state doubted the dingo story and decided to hold a second inquest.
Lindy has her own personal theories as to why that was. The chief minister of the state was Minister for Police, Minister for Tourism, Minister for National Parks and Wildlife. He was on the Conservation Committee. He wanted to be known a little more.
Maybe this is the reason why he took it personally, I don't know. Maybe it was huge amounts of local money in a big new development, 15 or 16 miles from where we were. And they had 20 million in tourism, we're very afraid that this was going to ruin tourism. The second inquest concluded that Lindy should stand trial for murder.
The forensic evidence was shottly done by a scientist who'd mistaken copper dust for blood, and we lived in a copper mine town. So there was copper dust on absolutely everything. She just said it was all fetal blood, she was definitely right, and that was their evidence. What was going through your head as the trial was progressing, and you could see that it was going against you?
Well, actually, we thought the trial was going for us, and particularly when the judge summed up for acquittal. But the jury didn't acquit. Instead, they found Lindy guilty of murdering her baby. One of the reasons the verdict went against her may have been Lindy's detached demeanor.
She didn't come across like a grieving mother. What's a grieving mother act like? If you're English, you tend to be fairly stoic. If you're Indian, you may employ professional whalers.
People are seeing you for the first time, and to them, this is terrible, like just heard the evidence. Whereas you've spent hundreds of hours discussing this in minute detail, and people expect you to be crying like it happened that moment, and it's not possible. Lindy also lays the blame for her conviction with the media, which concocted a variety of headline-grabbing stories about the family. I'm a seven-day Adventist, and somewhere along, they mixed this up between Jehovah's Witnesses, who don't believe in blood transfusions, and a bit ahead of my time, I'd made a little black dress that matched mine.
She had worn that, and then there was rumours of child sacrifice. Lindy was sentenced to life in prison with hard labour, and she spent almost three years in jail before a remarkable series of unlikely coincidences helped to uncover the truth. Lindy Chamberlain, the Australian woman who was jailed for murdering her baby, after claiming it had been taken by a wild dog, has now been set free. New evidence on the cases come tonight.
It was an English tourist climbing around on the rock, and slipped and fell. And when he was known as missing and they searched for his body, they found that he'd already been mauled by dingoes, and that he had some body parts missing. In searching for those body parts, the one person from 1980 that was still at the rock picked up something, recognised the description, and said, I found the missing jacket. Azaria's little jacket had been found in a dingoes lair, and Lindy was released from prison, a fresh inquest clear to her of all charges, but it wasn't until this year that a fourth and final inquest concluded that Azaria had in fact been killed by a dingo.
Witness was written and presented by Chloe Hajimathayo. The details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use go to bbcworldservice.com.