“Dingo Took My Baby” Aussie Family Claim Cruel Rabbit Attack by Shadowy “Dingo Paw”

Famous “Dingo Took My Baby” Case Family Back in the News

Lindy Chamberlain and baby Zahra

The famous “Dingo Took My Baby” Case family is back in the news with the bludgeoning deaths of Michael Chamberlain’s daughter’s pet rabbits whom Michael claims was carried out after receiving an anonymous threatening letter from “Dingo Paw”.

Nearly thirty years after Michael and Lindy Chamberlain claimed their 9-wk-old daughter Azaria had been snatched by a dingo while on a camping trip in the Australian outback, Michael Chamberlain claims his family was the target of a cruel attack on his daughter’s rabbits by a shadowy figure who used the name, “Dingo Paw”.

According to the Daily Mail, five of the family’s pet rabbits were found bludgeoned to death just before Christmas.

Mr Chamberlain, his wife Ingrid and Zahra were on holiday just before Christmas when they received a phone call from a friend who had been feeding the pet rabbits.

‘We came back straight away and it was sickening,’ he told the Sun-Herald newspaper.

‘The cages had been ripped apart and the rabbits had been bashed in the head and badly beaten around the chest.

‘They had blood coming from their mouths and their eyes were popping out.’

He said Zahra was so upset she cried all through Christmas eve and the next morning.

The rabbits belonged to Chamberlain’s 13-yr-old daughter Zahra.

Chamberlain is divorced from his first wife Lindy, whose “A dingo took my baby” phrase set the stage for the infamous trial and prosecution of Michael and Lindy, Lindy’s sentence of life in prison for allegedly killing her baby, and Meryl Streep’s 1988 “Cry in the Dark” film.

Twenty-nine years ago Chamberlain and his first wife Lindy took their two sons and 9-wk-old Azaria camping in the outback near Ayers Rock, or Uluru, the traditional Aboriginal name for the world-renowned sandstone formation whose red color deepens with the sunset.

Uluru, or Ayers Rock

“My God, my God, the dingo’s got my baby!”
Lindy Chamberlain

From Douglas Linder, The Lindy 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.

In 1988, the film A Cry in The Dark was released starring Meryl Streep as Lindy. The screenplay was based on John Bryson’s 1985 book Evil Angels. The film was released less than two months after both the Chamberlain’s were exonerated of all charges filed against them.

From The Trial of Lindy Chamberlain and Michael Chamberlain, (The “Dingo Trial”):

“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 later, 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!”

According to Linder, the first investigator for the Australian police discovered “blood” in the tent as well as dingo “paw prints” that led away from the tent:

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.

More forensic evidence related to the baby was discovered:

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.

The police began to investigate whether a dingo could, in their minds, actually attack a human baby:

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, and 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.

Meanwhile, the case being built against the Chamberlains included rumors, fueled by newspaper reports, of the Chamberlains, religious human sacrifice, and the Chamberlain’s “fatalistic demeanor”:

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.”)

And,

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.

The prosecution opened its case alleging “somebody” had “cut” the baby’s throat based on forensic experts despite the lack of a body, the lack of a motive, or, any eyewitnesses. Even so, the first witness testified on what she observed when the baby disappeared:

The Crown’s first witness, Ayers Rock tourist Sally Lowe, offered as much support for the defense as for the prosecution. Lowe described Lindy as being away from the barbecue only “six to ten minutes,” a very short period in which to have committed the murder and temporarily disposed of the body, as the Crown claimed. Lowe also damaged the Crown’s case by insisting, “I heard the baby cry–quite a serious cry,” shortly before Lindy went to the tent and reportedly saw the dingo slinking off into the dark. On cross-examination, Lowe confirmed that she was “positive” she heard a baby cry–a cry that was suddenly cut off–and that the cry “definitely came from the tent.” She also described Lindy before the incident having “a new-mum glow about her.”

Even more amazing, Lowe testified that “earlier she had been forced to shoo off a dingo that had grabbed her twelve-year old daughter by the arm and pulled”.

A parade of forensic witnesses for the prosecution lined up to support the prosecution’s theory the baby had been killed by the Chamberlain’s.

Dr. Andrew Scott, a biologist from Adelaide, testified that his study suggested that the blood on Azaria’s singlet flowed downward, from what appeared to be from the cutting by a sharp instrument, in the area of the neck. Barry Cocks testified that the jumpsuit seemed cut, not torn by a dingo. Professor Malcolm Chaikin, Australia’s leading textile expert, demonstrated for the jury how cutting the jumpsuit produced small loops of toweling, much like those discovered by investigators in Michael Chamberlain’s camera bag, where police suspected Lindy might have temporarily hid her dead baby. On cross, the defense got Chaikin to admit that the loops might also have come from a new, unwashed suit. (The Chamberlains said that they sometimes used the camera bag as a place to stuff Azaria’s clothes.)

Another prosecution witness, an London ondontologist, testified that the dingo’s mouth wasn’t large enough to fit around a baby’s head:

Crown witness Bernard Sims had investigated about two dozen attacks by dogs on humans in his job as a London ondontologist. Sims saw nothing consistent with a dingo attack in Azaria’s clothing, claimed that a dingo attack would cause “copious” bleeding, and indicated that a baby’s head could not fit into the jaws of a dingo. On cross, Sims reaffirmed that a the opening of a dingo’s “mouth wouldn’t allow it to get [over a baby’s skull.” Kirkham then surprised Sims with a photo of a dingo with the head of a baby-sized doll taken, crown first, with the canine teeth reaching to the doll’s ears. Sims, staring at the photograph, could only concede that his earlier supposition might have been mistaken.

When Lindy took the stand in her own defense the Queen’s prosecutor asked her to explain how a dingo, “shaking a human baby” didn’t leave “copious amounts of blood” in the tent, or the “blood” found in the family’s car which the prosecution’s witness couldn’t absolutely state was the baby’s.

For a moment I’d like to pause the narrative of the story to add my own two cents in regards to dingo, or wild dog behavior. Even though I’ve never encountered a dingo, I have had experience living in the southwest with coyotes, our own form of “dingo”. I’ve encountered coyotes on numerous occasions, while some occurred when I lived in a city, and later, when I relocated to an area where the closest town (pop. 213) was ten miles away, and, where my property was surrounded by several national parks.

Like dingos, coyotes are both cunning and sneaky. They know how to blend in with scenery and wait and watch for their prey. On several occasions I’ve spied coyotes caging my animals, including my cats, dogs, and goats. My dog was attacked by a coyote who managed to grab the dog and inflict a near fatal jugular wound in a matter of seconds in broad daylight. I have had two cats “disappear”. For those who of us who live in an area teaming with wildlife, the suspects invariably fall on coyotes or owls. I have friends who witnessed a pack of coyotes run down and kill a large buck in their front pasture. Last spring, we discovered one of our goats dead, and, another missing. The goat had bite marks on her throat, her neck broken. Based on the paw prints and drag marks, the suspect was a mountain lion which several neighbors had recently seen in the area. Missing from the crime scene: a lack of “blood” evidence”. The killing was swift. In regards to the goat who disappeared, we didn’t find a drop of blood, nor, after a search of the nearby woods, the body of the goat.

Based on the Chamberlain’s claim, bolstered by other witnesses who were there when the baby disappeared, as a member of the jury, I would have found in favor of the Chamberlains.

The Verdict:

On October 29, at 8:37 pm, the foreman of the Chamberlain jury announced its verdict. The jury found Lindy guilty of murder, and Michael guilty of being an accessory after the fact. Across Australia, the jury’s verdict was greeted mostly with approval and, in places ranging from a speedway in Perth to a bar in Darwin to a convention of dentists in Newcastle, with sustained applause. Reports later indicated that the jury was initially considerably more divided that its verdict indicated, having first split four for conviction, four for acquittal, and four undecided. (One juror later told the press, “It came down to whether you believed it was a dingo or not.”)

Justice Muirhead sentenced Lindy to life in prison, but suspended Michael’s sentence. “I consider it not only appropriate, but in the interests of justice to do so,” he explained.

Three years later while investigating the death of a fallen climber on Ayers Rock, the police discovered Azaria’s matinee jacket near a dingo den.

For more details than those I’ve quoted from Linder’s account, which, by the way, are fascinating, plus the aftermath of the trial, here’s the link to The Trial of Lindy and Michael Chamberlain by Douglas O. Linder.

In 2005 a young woman named Erin Horsburgh surfaced claiming she was Azaria Chamberlain.

From AmazingAustralia.com:

In August 2005, 25 year old Alice Springs woman Erin Horsburgh contacted her local newspaper the Centralian Advocate with the message that she is Azaria Chamberlain!
She claims she was found by an Aboriginal man, passed to an Aboriginal woman and then handed on to a white woman. Also she says her skin bears dingo teeth scars, and she has frequent dingo nightmares and a family resemblance. Both police and the Alice Springs locals found her story a bit hard to believe but Erin insists on a DNA test to prove her claims. It was reported in the media that Erin wanted money for her story but she contacted us with a strongly worded email that this was not the case and she simply wanted people to know the truth. So we invited her to tell her story but have not heard from her again.

We were unable to find out more information as the stories on the web relating to Horsburgh seemed to have ended with her claim which gathered media interest for a few short weeks.

During the disappearance of baby Azaria in 1980 the Australia public was skeptical of the dingo snatched our baby claim. It wasn’t until the “late 1990′s” after a series of dingo attacks, the public’s opinion began to change:

After the Chamberlain case, a string of attacks by dingoes on Fraser Island, off the Queensland coast in the late 1990s, the last refuge in Australia for pure-breed wild dingoes helped to modify public opinion on the safety of the dingoes. All of these events have persuaded the Australian public to generally accept the idea that baby Azaria was killed by a dingo, and that her body could easily have been removed and eaten by a dingo, leaving little or no evidence.

There have now been reported at least 400 dingo attacks on Fraser Island. Most victims were , but there were at least two documented attacks on adults.

In a case similar to the story presented by Lindy Chamberlain, a 13-month old girl was taken by a dingo, being dragged from a picnic blanket at the Waddy Point camping area in April 1998. Fortunately, the child was rescued after being dropped by the dingo.

By LBG

Image – Lindy Chamberlain, Baby Zahra
Image - Ayers Rock, Uluru

Tags: Dingo took my baby