Official cause of death: DINGO

[Stan]

On Aug. 17, 1980, a mother's shrill cry rang out in the dark around Australia's famous Ayers Rock: "My God, my God, the dingo's got my baby."

But authorities refused to believe Lindy Chamberlain. She was jailed for life for the murder of her nine-week-old daughter Azaria and was only exonerated years later because of a tragic accident.

Now, three decades after the child's disappearance, her death certificate -- which lists her cause of death as "unknown" -- may be changed to record she was killed by a dingo after Australia's Northern Territory government ordered a review of the case.

The development came on the day Ms. Chamberlain released an emotional letter to "open-minded Australians" calling on the government to have the courage to let Azaria rest in peace.

"Our family will always remember today as the day truth was dragged in the dirt and trampled upon," she wrote yesterday on the anniversary of her daughter's death.

"But more than that it is the day our family was torn apart forever because we lost our beautiful little Azaria. She deserves justice ... this should be reflected on her death certificate and not the open finding that is there now."

The mother said she had forgiven the press and authorities' actions over the child's disappearance, for which she spent three years in jail, but hit out at media errors and "lies" that led to her murder conviction, since quashed.

Ms. Chamberlain, her husband, Michael, and their three children, Aidan, six, Reagan, four, and Azaria, were camping at Ayers Rock, since renamed Uluru, when Azaria went missing.

The woman blamed a dingo, Australia's native wild dog. Prosecutors claimed that was a "fanciful lie" and said she had slit her baby's throat with scissors, although they offered no motive for the crime.

Meanwhile, media aired wild allegations that the Chamberlains, who were Seventh-Day Adventists, belonged to a strange cult that had killed babies and Azaria's name meant "sacrifice in the wilderness."

Ms. Chamberlain was eventually jailed for murder two years later, despite an initial inquest that backed her explanation the baby was snatched by a dingo. The body was never found.

The convictions ofMs. Chamberlain and her husband, who was given a suspended term for being an accessory, were overturned in 1988 after the chance find of a piece of Azaria's clothing near a dingo lair. A hiker fell to his death from Ayers Rock and the subsequent investigation found a once-white jacket of a baby: Azaria's missing matinee jacket.

A third inquest in 1995 recorded an open finding.

The case inspired a 1988 hit film A Cry in the Dark, starring Meryl Streep and Sam Neill, along with books, TV miniseries and even an opera.

Yesterday, Delia Lawrie, the Northern Territory Attorney-General, said she had asked the state's registrar of births, deaths and marriages to "determine if the cause of death is accurate," Australia's Herald Sun reported.

The registrar has the power to hold an inquiry, require people to answer questions and seek fresh information.

[img:right]http://www.nationalpost.com/3411844.bin?size=620x465

Ms. Chamberlain, now 62, said she would not allow the events to "fester and ruin my life," but added there were details of the case she was unable to reveal.

"I have taken back control of my own life and head space and moved forward. I am moving forward, not looking backward," she said.

"Unfortunately the way the law stands now I cannot tell you of any internal deals, deliberate lies, affairs or favours that I may know of that may make what happened in my case a lot clearer."

She refuted a rumour that she "hit on" policemen involved in the case ( "They wish!") and said media had muddled details of the length and location of her imprisonment in recent reports.

Others involved in the case, including an Aboriginal tracker who helped search for Azaria and Greg Cavanagh, the Northern Territory coroner, who was part of Ms. Chamberlain's defence team, continue to back her story.

"It seemed quite possible that a half-tame dingo would wander into the camp site," Mr. Cavanagh told AAP news agency, pointing out other dingo attacks on children, including one in 1998 in which a 13-month-old was dragged two metres.

"I remain convinced it was a dingo, but then I was convinced 30 years ago that it was a dingo."

Ms. Chamberlain, who is now married to Rick Creighton, an American, and lives north of Sydney, urged Australians to "give up the desire for gossip and sensationalism" and "grow a backbone."

"Come on Australia. Surely you cannot be proud of the fact that you can let yourself be duped again and again and come back for more of the same," she wrote.

"We used to be a proud nation who saw through corruption and were willing to give a fair go. How many times do you have to be hoodwinked and led along by the nose before you demand something better from our courts, police force, politicians and media?"

Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/Official+cause+death+DINGO/3411843/story.html#ixzz0wxsKm8Vz

Source

[Stan]

For our interview with Lindy

http://clubadventist.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/forums/175/1/Interview_with_Lindy_Chamberla.html

[Woody]

Is she still an SDA ?

[Woody]

Found this on her website:

[doug yowell]

Wow,that was a long time ago!

[John317]

Yes, I remember how shocked I was to hear about her case and what the government thought happened. I knew it was ridiculous. I hope it gets completely resolved soon.

Meryl Streep is great in the film,"A Cry In the Dark," and she said it's her favorite of all the films she's made.

[Amelia]

Best advice ever

Quote:

"give up the desire for gossip and sensationalism"

[aldona]

I remember the whole sorry saga unfolding in the news when I was at school.

I went to an SDA school and some of the teachers/parents knew the Chamberlains. We would pray for them at school assemblies in the chapel, for justice to be done.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of the media hysteria and sensational accusations were driven by the fact that the accused was a member of a little-known religion. Do you think the same media circus would have occurred if Lindy had been Catholic, Baptist or Presbyterian?

One good thing that seems to have come out of the whole unfortunate incident is that the SDA church here (Australia) is a bit more positive and pro-active in the way they present our religion to the public.

AJ