Dingo Attack

A coroner has officially ruled that a dingo took and ate Azaria Chamberlain and that her mother had nothing to do with the infant’s death.

Azaria, a nine-week-old baby girl from Australia, lost her life in a dingo attack in August 1980, and her body never recovered. Just 20 years old at the time, I remember being horrified by the idea of a wild dog stealing a baby and making a meal of the infant.

Azaria’s parents, Lindy and Michael Chamberlain informed authorities that a dingo had taken their baby from their tent. However, investigators did not believe them because of the fallacy that “dingoes do not attack unless provoked.”

Despite the absence of evidence linking her to her daughter’s disappearance, Lindy found herself accused of cutting the throat of the infant. To this day, nobody has ever advanced a plausible motive.

A six-week trial resulted in a wrongful conviction that saw her imprisoned for over three years. Michael found guilty of being an accessory after the fact, was saved from prison by Justice James Muirhead, who disagreed with the verdict, gave him a suspended sentence, and put him on a bond.

In 1986, Lindy was released from prison after someone discovered Azaria’s jacket in an area frequented by dingoes. The revelation led to her being compensated $1.3 million for the wrongful imprisonment.

After Chamberlain’s conviction, there were other instances of dingo attacks on children, including the fatal mauling of nine-year-old Clinton Gage on Queensland’s Fraser Island in 2001. The attacks provided further evidence needed to end the nearly 32-year-old mystery.