Dingo responsible for baby’s death

A CORONER in Australia today finally ruled that a dingo took a baby from a campsite in the Outback and killed it.

The baby’s mother Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton, who was once found guilty of murdering her nine-week-old daughter Azaria, was in court to hear the findings.

The verdict settles a 1980 case that had split Australia and confirms what Mrs Chamberlain-Creighton said from the beginning.

The mum served more than three years in prison for the baby’s death, but was later cleared and has always maintained that a wild dog took her.

“We’re relieved and delighted to come to the end of this saga,” a tearful but smiling Mrs Chamberlain-Creighton told reporters outside the court in the northern city of Darwin.

Azaria disappeared from a campsite near Ayers Rock, the red monolith in the Australian desert now known by its Aboriginal name Uluru.

The case became famous internationally through the 1988 Meryl Streep movie A Cry in the Dark.

Many Australians initially did not believe that a dingo was strong enough to take away the baby.

Few doubt the story today, but the latest inquest – which the family had fought to get – made it official that Azaria was killed in a dingo attack.

“No longer will Australia be able to say that dingoes are not dangerous and only attack if provoked,” Mrs Chamberlain-Creighton said before leaving the court with her ex-husband Michael Chamberlain and their three surviving children to collect Azaria’s death certificate.

Coroner Elizabeth Morris said she was “satisfied that the evidence is sufficiently adequate, clear, cogent and exact and that the evidence excludes all other reasonable possibilities”.