Pensioner claims he shot dingo in baby death case

SYDNEY - "The dingo killed my baby" case has exploded back into the spotlight in Australia.

A Melbourne pensioner has claimed he retrieved baby Azaria Chamberlain's body from a dingo he shot at Ayers Rock, now known as Uluru, on August 17, 1980.

Frank Cole, 78, said he left Azaria's body with two friends and returned to Melbourne. He said they had become scared and disposed of the body.

He suspected one of them may have brought the body back to Melbourne and buried it on his property.

Mr Cole told Melbourne's Sunday Herald Sun newspaper he had originally not come forward because he had discharged a firearm in a national park and did not trust Northern Territory police.

His decision to make his revelations nearly 24 years later has shocked Australians, who were divided as a nation over whether to believe Azaria's mother Lindy Chamberlain's claim that a dingo killed her baby.

Mr Cole said he wanted to lose the burden of the secret he has maintained for so long, one which had given him "nightmares and many sleepless nights".

"'But I may have not long left, and if anything happened to me, nobody would know the truth."

Mr Cole said he had informed Azaria's mother, now Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton after remarrying, about a year ago and the producers of an A$8 million ($8.90 million) telemovie series Australian Channel Seven is making on the Azaria saga.

The producers said today they had decided not to interview Mr Cole for their movie, after being unable to verify his claims.

A jury didn't believe Ms Chamberlain's "a dingo killed my baby" claim in 1982 and she was convicted of Azaria's murder.

She was freed in 1986 and her conviction was quashed two years later.

Mr Cole told the Herald Sun he had felt "pretty lousy and guilty" when Ms Chamberlain had been jailed.

"How do you think I felt?" he said. "It was on my conscience, of course it was, but I couldn't do anything by then."

He said he had promised his mates, who have all since died, he would stay silent.

"It wasn't as simple as that. There were other people involved, other people to consider."

Under his version of events, Mr Cole and three friends had set off on a trip to inspect a tin mine one of them said he owned near Townsville before going to Alice Springs and camping near Uluru, about 4km from the main camp site.

Mr Cole said he had decided to track down a dead kangaroo he had seen a few miles back, because his mate's dog hadn't eaten for two days.

"I found the roo, then I saw what I thought were rabbits running around in the dark. I had a gun in the back of my ute with a spotlight on it.

"I fetched it to shoot one of the rabbits for the dog. I could see two red eyes, with a white front, looking at me from 100 yards. I thought the white was the rabbit's chest.

"I fired and hit it. Next thing a dingo came out of some rocks and ran across in front of me. I went over to where I'd shot the rabbit and I found it pretty quick. I realised it wasn't a rabbit, but a dingo, a second one, an old mangy male.

"I hit him in the back of the head. Then I saw that the white I had seen wasn't a rabbit's chest, but a baby.

"It was lying on the ground near the dingo, all covered in blood. One of its ears was missing and its whole head was bloody."

Mr Cole said he had retrieved the baby, placed it on the front seat of his ute and driven back to his mates at their rough campsite.

"We were crying, two of us were, when we saw the state the little bub was in, all covered in blood.

"We decided we'd try to clean it up. We got some water boiling and started to take off its clothes."

"One of my mates started cutting the clothing with a knife, but another one said to undo the buttons.

"We had trouble with the buttons on the jacket so I took a pair of small tinsnips out of my tool box and cut them off."

The original coroner's inquiry into Azaria's death found that a dingo took the child while it slept in the family tent and that a person or persons using a pair of scissors disposed of the body.

Mr Cole said he was going to go to police but one of his friends had been in jail and said "Don't do that, we'll all be in strife".

"He said I'd be in trouble for having a gun in a national park, and we shouldn't have had the dog there either."

Mr Cole said one of the men, Bob Farmer, and another of his mates had agreed to take responsibility for the baby, allowing him to return to Melbourne with the fourth member of the party.

"We decided they would say they had hit the dingo crossing the road and found the baby lying beside it," he said.

"So I went back and found the dingo I'd shot and brought it back to the campsite."

One of his friends cut the dingo's leg and rubbed it on their ute's bumper bar.

He said Azaria's body was wrapped in a towel and tartan blanket and placed in one of the men's duffel bags in the back of the ute.

"They were going to the campsite at the rock, but they got there and saw all the people and torches and panicked. They decided to clear off," Mr Cole said.

"Later on I asked Bob what he did with the little one.

"He said 'You don't want to know'. I said 'I bloody well do'.

"He told me he would tell me later, but he died of a heart attack and I never found out.

"I have always suspected he brought the baby back to Melbourne and buried it somewhere -- maybe in the yard of the house where he lived."

Northern Territory police today said they were aware of Mr Cole's claims and would investigate. They plan to contact Victoria police about the claims.

- NZPA