Mother renews plea to state dingo as baby's killer

[August 17, 2010]  ADELAIDE, Australia (AP) -- The mother wrongly convicted of murdering her infant after the baby infamously disappeared in the Australian Outback 30 years ago pleaded Tuesday for her daughter's death certificate to state that a dingo was responsible.

Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton published an open letter on her website Tuesday -- the 30th anniversary of the disappearance of her daughter while the family camped near Uluru, 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 Academy Award nomination for her portrayal of Lindy Chamberlain.

A coroner initially found that a dingo, a type of wild canine, had taken the 9-week-old baby, but that ruling was overturned and her mother was charged with her murder.

Chamberlain-Creighton was convicted in 1982 and sentenced to life imprisonment, but was released after four years when a piece of Azaria's clothing was found, supporting the mother's claim that the baby was taken by a wild dog.

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 Chamberlain.

Chamberlain-Creighton, who has remarried, didn't disclose in the letter whether she had taken any formal steps to have the case reconsidered. Messages seeking further comment Tuesday weren't immediately returned.

"She deserves justice," she 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?"

Chamberlain always maintained she saw a dingo slinking from the tent into the dark before she discovered Azaria 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 rumors."

Barbara Tjikatu, a traditional owner of Uluru, which is also known as Ayers Rock, and the only surviving Aboriginal tracker who searched for Azaria the night she disappeared, told Ten Network television news on Tuesday that she had no doubt that a dingo took the baby.

Tjikatu said in her Aboriginal dialect that she saw dingo tracks outside the family's tent leading away over a sand dune and saw Chamberlain-Creighton crying for her missing daughter.

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Online:

Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton:
http://www.lindychamberlain.com/

[Associated Press; By TANALEE SMITH]

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