New probe into dingo-baby death certificate

Australian authorities are to revisit the 30-year-old dingo baby case after an emotional plea from the woman wrongly convicted of murdering her daughter.

Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton wants her daughter’s death certificate to now state that a dingo was responsible for taking nine-week-old Azaria in 1980.

She published an open letter on her website yesterday – the 30th anniversary of the child’s disappearance while the family camped near Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, the red monolith in the remote Outback.

“Our family will always remember today as the day truth was dragged in the dirt and trampled upon,” she wrote. “But more than that it is the day our family was torn apart forever because we lost our beautiful little Azaria.”

The case is one of Australia’s most enduring mysteries and became international with the 1988 film 'A Cry In The Dark' – for which Meryl Streep earned an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Mrs Chamberlain.

A coroner initially found that a dingo, a type of wild dog, had taken the baby, but that ruling was overturned and her mother was charged with her murder.

Mrs Chamberlain-Creighton was convicted in 1982 and sentenced to life imprisonment. Her husband Michael was convicted of being an accessory after the fact, with a deferred sentence.

But four years later Mrs Chamberlain-Creighton was released when a piece of Azaria’s clothing was found, supporting her claim that the baby was taken by a dingo.

A royal commission exonerated the Chamberlains in 1987, but another coroner’s inquest in 1995 was unable to make an official conclusion on what had happened to Azaria, leaving the cause of death open.

“She deserves justice,” Mrs Chamberlain-Creighton wrote. “In light of all the evidence before the commission, this should be reflected on her death certificate and not the open finding that is there now. ... It makes one wonder are they really after the truth, or just too stubborn or proud to admit that a mistake has been made?”

Meanwhile Michael Chamberlain began legal proceedings this week to quash the open verdict.

In response, Delia Lawrie, attorney-general of the Northern Territory said yesterday that she had asked the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages to look into whether the cause of death on the certificate was accurate, “taking into account the most reliable information that is available”.

Mrs Chamberlain always maintained she saw a dingo slinking from the tent into the dark before she discovered that Azaria was missing, but she could not see what was in its mouth.

In her lengthy letter, addressed to “open-minded Australians”, Chamberlain-Creighton said she had forgiven all of those involved in “creating the fiasco of the last 30 years and the public so willing to believe the worst and spread nasty rumours”.

Barbara Tjikatu, a traditional owner of Uluru, and the only surviving Aboriginal tracker who searched for Azaria the night she disappeared, told Ten Network television news yesterday that she had no doubt that a dingo took the baby.

Ms Tjikatu said she saw dingo tracks outside the family’s tent leading away over a sand dune and saw Mrs Chamberlain-Creighton crying for her missing daughter.