"Dingos Ate My Baby" Inquest Reopened

Dingo warning sign in Ayers Rock Airport

Aussie dad says dingo will be blamed for lost baby 

The father of a baby who infamously vanished in the Australian Outback more than 30 years said Monday that he was confident a new inquiry into the tragedy will officially rule that a dingo took his daughter.

The disappearance of 9-week-old Azaria Chamberlain on Aug. 17, 1980, from a campsite near Ayers Rock, the red monolith in the Australian desert now known by its Aboriginal name Uluru, divided Australians between those who believed a native dog known as a dingo killed her and those who believed she was murdered by her mother, Lindy Chamberlain.

Dingo warning sign posted at rest areas in Uluru Park

I was surprised, and a little amused by the dingo warning signs posted at the Ayers Rock (Uluru) airports when we visited there in 2009.  The only dingo we saw, however, was the one chained up below in a camel farm on the road between Uluru and Alice Springs.

The tragedy and the legal drama that ensued became the subject of the 1988 movie "A Cry in the Dark" for which Meryl Streep earned an Academy Award nomination for her portrayal of Lindy Chamberlain, who has since remarried and taken the name Chamberlain-Creighton.

Dingo napping at Camel Ride

If I recall correctly, most Australians seemed to assume that the mother was guilty.

Chamberlain-Creighton received a life sentence for her daughter's murder and spent four years in prison in the 1980s before the conviction was overturned.

Northern Territory Coroner Elizabeth Morris announced Sunday that a fourth inquest into the tragedy will begin in February to review the open finding of the third inquest that in 1995 failed to determine a cause of death.

Morris said in statement that she would examine new evidence provided by Azaria's parents that dingoes attack children.