“A dingo took my baby” stands as one of the most famous lines from any criminal case in history — made so by the movie “A Cry in the Dark” starring Meryl Streep. Now, a coroner in Australia has reopened the case after a couple of proven dingo attacks on children.
Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton always insisted that her 9-week-old baby Azaria was taken from family’s tent during a trip to the Australian outback by dingos in 1980. The body was never found and Chamberlain-Creighton was convicted of murder. That conviction was later overturned when a piece of Azaria’s clothing was found near a dingo den.
The reconsideration follows a 2001 mauling death of a 9-year-old boy by two dingoes and a dingo attack on a 4-year-old girl in 2007.
Source: ABC
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blhlls,
Ahhh, the expert testimony in front of a jury . . . damned if you do, damned if you don’t. So true.
Gene H.-As I recall, one of the big issues for the jury was expert testimony that a cut in the child’s clothing had to have been made by scissors, as a dingo’s teeth could not have done it. Of course, a defense expert testified to the contrary. This set up one of the classic problems in trial practice–a jury must decide which expert to believe but often lacks the expertise to make that determination.
“A Cry in the Dark” is a good movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ35ZvqeO00
With a very memorable line.
Mike,
Your last statement does a difficult thing: it creates equal amounts of laughter and horror . . . plus you added the verb “Dingoing” to the lexicon.
Frankly,
A nice set up.
In re the case proper, I never understood why it was so unbelievable to Australian authorities that a form of wild dog might attack a human baby. They are by nature scavengers and opportunistic hunters and like all predators of that sort, they will go for a high value-low risk target like young offspring of almost any other creature, so why not humans? The original conviction seemed very cynical and ignorant of the nature of predators to me.
Frankly,
Hasn’t Nancy already done this story on the TentMom Dingoing her daughter and blaming it on man’s best friend. Oh wait…….Stupid of me, back then she was a prosecutor calling for life sentences for pot smokers. I’ve heard though that she’s thinking of throwing her hat in the ring for the Republican Presidential Candidacy. She has shown she has all the qualifications.
Frankly,
Somebody better get on that right now….You never know…She might have a different take on it…such as exposure to the sun….dripping honey on the baby…as well as rubbing putrid meats on the skin….before tossing the child out the window as they were driving….
Has anyone run this by Nancy Grace to make sure it is the correct result?
It is probable…. an Australian Dingo is a free-roaming wild dog unique to the continent of Australia, mainly found in the outback. Its original ancestors are thought to have arrived with humans from southeast Asia thousands of years ago, when dogs were still relatively undomesticated and closer to their wild Asian gray wolf parent species,
So it is more probable than not….Good for the inquest….