After 32 years, coroner rules dingo snatched baby

Australians have overwhelmingly welcomed the final chapter of a mystery that has captivated the nation for 32 years: Did a dingo really take a baby that vanished from an outback campsite in 1980?

A nation that was once bitterly divided on whether baby Azaria Chamberlain had been dragged away by a wild dog or murdered by her mother now largely agrees the parents deserve the vindication a coroner’s court has given them.

A day after Azaria Chamberlain would have turned 32, a coroner found a dingo had taken her as a nine-week-old baby from a tent near Ayers Rock, the red desert monolith now known by its Aboriginal name Uluru. That is what her parents had maintained from the beginning.