Baby Azaria mystery refuses to die

By GREG ANSLEY

CANBERRA - Twenty years on, the picture still sears the Australian psyche.

Lindy Chamberlain, in a flower print dress, holds tip-toeing baby Azaria on the steep sloping rock of Uluru, against the deep blue sky of central Australia.

Two decades of investigation by countless professional and amateur detectives, journalists, psychics and others has still not solved the mystery of what happened to 9-week-old Azaria on August 17, 1980.

Was she taken by a dingo, by persons unknown, or killed by Lindy?

Although the convictions against Lindy and husband Michael were quashed and the Chamberlains declared innocent by the Supreme Court in Darwin in 1988, and further absolution given by a third inquest in 1995, many refuse to believe.

On the Australian website Public Debate, Azaria's death has, since April, leaped from 48th to 11th most debated subject, with opinion split 44 per cent to 40 per cent in favour of Lindy's innocence.

Recently, scientists proposed testing Azaria's matinaacée jacket, the evidence that finally cleared the Chamberlains, for dingo DNA to determine once and for all if a native dog really did kill the infant.

The case is used regularly by international opponents of the death penalty to warn of the risks of executing the innocent.

Last year the New South Wales Law Society, in a submission on a plan to establish a national criminal DNA data base, referred to the Chamberlains in its admonition to take into account the fallibility of forensic evidence and the shifting claims of forensic experts.

Such is the notoriety of the case that it is listed in the official Sydney Olympic Games websites chronological history of Australia.

Australian composer Moyra Hendy retold the story in the opera Lindy.

The Fred Scepisi film Evil Angels, starring Meryl Streep and Sam Neill, remains a jab to the stature of Australian journalism, so badly tainted in the early hysteria that followed Azaria's disappearance.

And the social and legal importance of the Chamberlains' trial prompted the Canberra-based National Library to acquire Lindy's personal papers for its archives as a collection of national significance.

The extraordinary 70 boxes of papers includes more than 20,000 letters and cards from an extremely broad cross-section of Australian society - most of them supportive of the Chamberlains.

They reveal the depth of emotional involvement in the Chamberlain case experienced by countless thousands of ordinary Australians, the National Library's Adrian Cunningham told a conference of fellow archivists.

They include many who changed their view from guilty to innocent, and wanted to say sorry.

As the 20th anniversary of Azaria's disappearance neared, the mystery has regained its currency: new analyses, retrospectives, interviews and specials demonstrate that Australia's fascination has not faded.

There is an almost mystic quality: Uluru, the giant, brooding rock from which Azaria vanished, is among the most ancient of the continent's sacred places, with its own secrets locked in Tjukurpa, the time when Anangu people believe their ancestral beings created the land.

The closest translation of Uluru, according to The Cambridge Dictionary of Australian Names, probably is howling.

In the cool of late winter 20 years ago the Chamberlains, Azaria and sons Aidan and Reagan camped at Uluru - then still known only as Ayers Rock - one of a number of family groups and couples visiting the rock.

The young couple, New Zealanders who had joined the great transtasman exodus of the late 1970s, had spent the day exploring parts of Uluru before settling the children and joining other campers at a barbecue.

According to the Chamberlains and their camping companions, who maintained their belief in the Chamberlains' innocence, a faint cry was heard about 8.15 pm and Lindy went to check Azaria in her tent.

As she approached Lindy yelled: "That dog's got my baby!" ducked inside the tent for a few seconds, then rushed back out to join a panicked hunt for Azaria.

She was never found, despite intensive searches of the area.

Prosecutors presented an even more gruesome scenario: Lindy had killed Azaria and, with the assistance of Michael, concocted the dingo story.

The nature of the case guaranteed sensational coverage, much of it discreditable and including, for example, suggestions that the Seventh Day Adventist Chamberlains were members of a dark cult.

Initially, they were cleared by Alice Springs coroner Denis Barritt, who found that a dingo did take Azaria but added the enigmatic observation that an unknown person helped dispose of the body, possibly to prevent widespread slaughter of Uluru's dingoes.

But disbelief was already mounting, recorded in Barritt's observation that the Chamberlains had been subjected to probably the most malicious gossip ever witnessed in Australia.

Far worse was to come.

In February 1982, after a second inquest, Lindy was committed to trial for first-degree murder, with Michael charged as an accessory after the fact.

Eight months later Michael and Lindy, then pregnant with daughter Kahlia, were found guilty.

Lindy was sentenced to life imprisonment, Michael to an 18-month suspended sentence. Kahlia was taken from Lindy at birth.

Over the following 13 years the case was subjected to two appeals, an 11-month royal commission and a final inquest in 1995 which left open the cause of Azaria's death but found that neither Lindy nor Michael were involved in any way in her disappearance.

Lindy spent three years in jail before being released and finally having her conviction quashed.

It was a process flawed both by emotion - Lindy's iron self-control and lack of public tears turned many against her - and by legal and forensic failings.

There was no motive, the opportunity for Lindy to slip away and kill her child was narrowed to the almost impossible and, according to recent revelations by former Detective Sergeant John Lincoln, who first investigated the disappearance, key evidence - including photographs of dingo paw prints - was ignored, lost or disposed of.

Prosecutors dismissed evidence of aggressive dingo behaviour from park rangers, disbelieved the evidence of witnesses who were with the Chamberlains at the barbecue, and claimed the Chamberlains lied about Azaria's missing matinee jacket.

Five days after the jacket was found in February, 1986, Lindy was released from jail.

But the worst failings were those of the forensic scientists who evidence convinced the jury of Lindy's guilt.

The experts said there was no way a dingo could have been responsible for the cuts found in Azaria's discarded clothing, that only a knife could have made them: later evidence proved them wrong.

They said a handprint on the clothing had been made by Lindy's bloodstained hand: the blood was red sand.

They said dark marks found in the Chamberlain's car were foetal haemoglobin, sprayed when Lindy killed Azaria: it was bituminous sound deadener.

Twenty years on, the Chamberlains have survived.

Lindy, remarried to an American book publisher, is now developing a tourist business in New South Wales; Michael, also remarried with a 3-year-old daughter, works for a local newspaper in Newcastle, north of Sydney.

But the scars remain, for both the Chamberlains and the nation.