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Into The Dark
153. The Real Story Behind The Dingoes Ate My Baby - The Death of Azaria Chamberlain
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Mark is a Mochi member compensated for his story. You're listening to an Ono Media podcast. Hey everyone, and welcome back to the into the Dark podcast. I'm your host, Peyton Moreland. I'm so glad you are here listening. It's a new year and honestly, I hate it. I hate the new year, I hate Christmas, I hate Thanksgiving, and I love Halloween. But I hate the new year. Feels like so much pressure. Again, I don't believe in resolutions. I think I talked about that. But like, even if you're not doing resolutions, even if there's not a lot of change from the last year to the new year, it feels so overwhelming to me and I haven't wanted to get out of bed. But I'm here. I did it. I got up. And that is a win. I got in the shower despite the fact that I had to bend over to catch my breath. No, I just. If you're struggling through the new year, just know that I'm here. I'm with you. Nothing's different. It's just another day. We're just here, we're going. We're making the best out of life. We're living in the moment. And that's it. Not the past, not the future. Just here. Today, right now. Let's take a breath because I need it. Okay. 20, 26. I. Just kidding. I don't know what's going on. Okay. Um, I'm just in a weird. Okay, what else? 10 seconds. Oh, wait. I think that was kind of my 10 seconds. Do I have anything else? I can't sleep. No, really, it's because I, like, slept all day and then I couldn't sleep at night. But trying to get that fixed up a bit. Today I did my second pottery class. I think I talked to you guys about it. But you know what? If you relate to me in any way in the slightest, go take a pottery class, okay? I think it would really benefit you. There is something just so cathartic about doing pottery. I don't know, you know, actually, like, spinning it, even if you mess up. Like, for me, I just kept messing up and retrying and messing up and retrying, and it's so fun. I wish that I could do that at home. I'm sure I could figure it all out, but seems like quite a big investment. But honestly, if you're, like, looking for something new to do, pottery was fun. Look, if there's something local to you, I would just highly suggest it. It was just a fun little two hours, you know, I really enjoyed it. But, yeah, other than that, I really want to try knitting, not crochet. Excuse me, Ms. Dog, I'm filming here. Excuse me, I'm filming. You want to take all the attention. Yeah, but other than that. Yeah, I want to try knitting really bad. I just don't know where to start. I feel like. Like I'm going to try to do YouTube because here's the thing. I think I could knit everywhere, and that's so fun for my hands, like, to knit in the car at the hockey games. Just knit everywhere I go. So I am going to pick that up eventually. I just haven't done it yet. All right, I think that's enough. I'm rambling. I don't know what. I don't even know what year it is. We are jumping into a true crime case today, and honestly, I think it's a pretty infamous one. But it's also one maybe not everyone has heard of, even though it feels like it in the true crime space. I'm not sure. Let me know in the comments if you had heard of this beforehand. But it's also a doozy. So, that being said, let's jump into today's episode Trigger Warning. This episode includes discussions of violence against children and animals, so please listen with care. Now, if you are a child of the 90s, you may remember an old joke that appeared in a bunch of sitcoms at the time. In an episode of Seinfeld, one of the characters mocks another by saying, maybe a dingo ate your baby. Maybe the dingo ate your baby. And there are also references to dingoes eating babies. In the Simpsons, even Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And if you're streaming these 90s shows now, you might be confused. What is so funny about a dingo eating a baby? Well, these lines actually are all a reference to a real true crime case, and it's a tragic story that isn't comical at all. So I'm not sure how this joke became such a commonly used thing. But if you know the story behind this joke, it might help you understand this odd bit of 90s pop culture and also make you have the same question I do, which is, what the heck were they thinking? So back on August 16, 1980, the Chamberlain family arrived at a campsite in rural Australia. They were visiting a place that was called Ayers Rock at the time, but these days it's actually officially called Uluru. So it's a giant rock in central Australia that people could climb and hike on. And it was a big tourist attraction for campers and outdoorsy people. Again, we're in the 80s. Now, the Chamberlains were a family of five. The father, Michael, worked as a minister at a Seventh Day Adventist church, and his wife, Lindy had always held different odd jobs, but in a lot of ways she acted like a stereotypical dream wife. She was fit, active, cared a lot about appearances, dressing well, and Michael found her very pretty. The two of them had three children. The oldest two were both boys. Aiden was six years old and Reagan was four. And then the youngest was Azaria, who was just nine months old at the time of this camping trip. Now, all in all, the Chamberlains were a pretty typical happy family, and this was a big outing for them. It was one of their first family trips since Azaria's birth, so they wanted to make sure it was fun and memorable. They arrived and set up camp on the 16th, and then they spent the rest of that day and the next one hiking, exploring and taking lots of family photos. Now, around 8pm on the 17th, the chamberlains were at their campsite. They were staying near a bunch of other families and couples, including a couple, Greg and Sally Lowe. Now, Greg and Sally had a lot in common with Michael and Lindy on this camping trip because they were also camping with a baby. So there was a lot of chit chat about life with an infant, different parenting styles, and all of the sorts of similar topics. Now, all the while, the campers could see dingoes prowling not too far from the fire. Now, for those who don't know, dingoes are kind of a wild dog, but they're pretty small, a lot smaller than A wolf. And for the most part, the Australian people don't really see them as particularly threatening or dangerous. Except these dingoes were coming pretty close to this campsite, almost like they were not afraid of people. So Sally gathered some trash together and walked to a dumpster to throw it out. And the animals followed her all the way there and back. And while six year old Aiden, the boy, was sitting by the fire, he actually tossed a bit of bread off into the distance. A dingo ran up and ate it. Now, Lindy scolded him, saying he shouldn't feed wild animals, but otherwise, again, nobody was too worried. The Chamberlains and the Lows saw dingoes as more of a pest than an actual danger. And most everyone agreed that they weren't aggressive. They never hurt people. So for the most part, the adults ignored the animals. Quick, catch up. We have two families, it's the 80s, they both have babies. And Azaria is the nine month old. Now, Lindy put Reagan, the middle child, to bed in the tent. And then the adults all sat around the campfire chatting. And Lindy was holding baby Azaria in her arms, rocking her until she fell asleep. Now, the evening was a little chilly, so Azaria was wearing a tiny white jacket over her onesie, which will be important later, so keep this in mind. Now, eventually, the infant, Lindy's infant, closed her eyes and began to doze. And Lindy told everyone, the other three adults, that she was going to put her daughter to bed in the tent right beside Reagan, their middle child. So she walked off and then came back to the fire empty handed. Now, so far, everything seemed pretty normal and there was nothing to worry about. But just a few minutes later, everyone heard the sound of a baby crying. And it wasn't your typical fussiness. It was clear that something was wrong. So of course, Lindy got up and walked back to their family tent to check on Azaria. And while she was gone, the rest of the campers heard another sound. A dog or a dingo growling. Now, about six minutes go by, and then Lindy runs back up to the fire looking upset and scared, and she keeps screaming, the dingo's got my baby. And sure enough, when Michael, Sally and Greg ran over to her tent, they saw that Azaria was missing. There was blood splattered all over the ground in the blankets, and the dirt outside the tent was covered in dingo prints. Now, from there, the four adults don't waste any time. People began walking all around the campsite looking to see if Azaria might have been dragged off somewhere nearby. Keep in mind she only weighed about 10 pounds. And like I mentioned before, dingoes are small animals. So so the thinking was that the wild animal maybe couldn't have gotten very far with her. Maybe a dingo had taken her but then dropped her after getting a few feet away. Perhaps she was still safe and alive somewhere close by. But everyone marched all around the campsite and they saw no signs of her. A few people even tried following the dingo tracks, but they led to the edge of a nearby road and then disappeared. So there was no sign of where the dingo had gone after that. And I can only imagine at this point how sick and devastated Lindy and Michael Azaria's parents must have felt as each minute ticked by. Except, according to sources, Michael handled the situation in a way that just came off as a bit odd. He kept going up to other campers who were helping to search and just saying things like she's probably dead now. I am a minister of the gospel. And later he told a complete stranger, I am a man of God, a minister of religion. I know that nothing happens in the world unless the good Lord wills it should be so I know our baby has passed from us into heaven. Now maybe he's only saying this as a way to comfort himself trying to cope with reality. Maybe he just felt better when he thought about God looking over him and Azariah being in heaven. But most of the searchers at this point still weren't even convinced she was dead and they're not her dad. It just seems strange for Michael to jump to the worst possible explanation and to act so calm about it so soon, hitting you with an ad. And this new year, nothing hits like home cooking. Sometimes you really just need to make something, you know what I mean? And HelloFresh brings back the joy of the kitchen with recipes that feel good and taste delicious and night after night. But you also don't have to be an amazing cook to eat amazing with hellofresh I honestly love the nights that Garrett and I crack out hellofresh and make something together. But it's super simple and easy, always comes out good. It brings people together and There are over 100 mouthwatering recipes each week. From seasonal favorites to global dishes. Choose from 35 plus high protein weekly recipes including new Mediterranean and GLP1 friendly options. Eating healthy can be so hard these days, so let hellofresh come in and just give you an overall good experience. 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But the minutes kept ticking by and no one could find the missing baby. Now eventually someone did call the police to report what had happened. And once the officers arrived and surveyed the scene, they noticed some other odd details that didn't quite add up. Now obviously at first the police had never heard of dingoes attacking or killing human beings, not even small children or babies. So this is odd for them. From the get go, they're like a dingo ate a baby and now the baby's missing. Now when they talked to the witnesses from the campsite, everyone admitted that they hadn't actually seen a dingo take Azaria. They had just heard Lindy scream about it. And they had all spotted the blood in the dingo tracks around the tent. So it seemed like a safe assumption that a dingo was responsible for the nine month old's disappearance. But it struck the officers as strange that on a big campsite full of plenty of witnesses, nobody had actually noticed a dog going into a tent and pulling a baby out. The sad truth of the matter was nobody expected Azaria to still be alive once the police had responded and were working the crime. If she had really been taken by a dingo, they would have probably killed her by now. And if it turned out that wild animals weren't involved and there was more to the story, then that also doesn't look good for her. So the officers questioned Lindy to learn more. And during her initial interrogation, the mother told a story that sounded a little bit strange. She said the day before, on the 16th, she had gone on a hike that took her past a small cave. And Lindy went into the cave with baby Azaria in her arms. And when she was ready to leave, she claimed she couldn't. There was a dingo standing right at the entrance, blocking her way. And according to Lindy, it was staring at her baby like it wanted to snatch Azaria away. And she'd got this sense that the dingo was never gonna let them escape. She said that even after she managed to get out of the cave, she believed the dingo had followed her all the way back to the family campsite. Then it had waited a full day before it had the opportunity to steal Azaria. Now, the police found this a little hard to accept. They had never heard of a dingo coming up with an elaborate plan that involves waiting a full day to steal a baby they became obsessed with at a cave. It seemed more like Lindy was telling an outlandish story to try and explain away her daughter's disappearance. So when they wrapped up the investigation, one of the officers even told his partners that he didn't believe the dingo story. He was like, not a chance. This never happened before. So the problem was that the police thought Michael and Lindy were covering up the truth about their baby's disappearance that night. They think something else shady had gone on, but they didn't know why. The couple didn't have any motive to hurt or kill their own daughter. And there also wasn't any hard evidence that they had committed a crime. All the authorities had were suspicions. And gut feelings weren't enough to arrest the chamberlains or charge them with anything. So instead, the officers had to gather more evidence, they ordered teams of hunters to go to the rock and hunt the wild dingoes there. And each time they killed one, they would check the stomach to see if there was human traces in there. But they didn't find any traces of human remains or Azaria. Still, the police found a smoking gun just one week after the disappearance. That day, a nature photographer went out to get some pictures. And he was walking through a field of wildflowers at the base of the rock. And as the man was striding down the path, he came across something unexpected. There was a baby's onesie and a diaper. Both of them had been shredded, and there was no sign of where the child had gone. Now, the photographer obviously called the police. They collected the evidence, and in no time at all, they identified the outfit and the diaper as being Azaria's. But there was no sign of the white jacket she had been wearing. But like I said, otherwise, the clothes were clearly hers. So this just raised more questions. First of all, a forensic examiner looked at the tear marks and said they didn't match the damage they had seen from dingo attacks. In fact, this person did tests by putting pieces of meat in baby clothes and leaving them out at a nature preserve. And after dingo's ate the meat, the expert studied the rips in the clothes and compared them to Azaria's outfit. And they concluded that the test clothes didn't match. Instead, he thought it looked more like someone had cut the diaper and onesie up with a pair of scissors. Now, the other suspicious detail had to do with where the evidence was found. It was not close to the campsite where Azaria went missing. There was no good reason for a dingo to carry the clothing so far away. Instead, get this. It was actually near a trail where the Chamberlains had been hiking the day of the disappearance. What are the odds that Azaria's mother would carry her through this exact field of wildflowers and then her clothes would later turn up there? A week later, after she went missing, the police did not feel like this was a coincidence. Problem was that the evidence obviously is not a slam dunk. Yet it is still a mystery what happened. Police think that the mom or the mom and dad staged this disappearance. And according to the mom, she believes a dingo took her baby. Now, they obviously couldn't move forward until they heard the outcome of a coroner's inquest. For those who don't know, this is a legal process where a medical examiner looks at all of the evidence, including the Autopsy findings. They then get to decide if it makes sense to rule a death, a murder, an accident, natural causes, something else. Now, in Azaria's case, there was no autopsy because her body still hadn't been found. But the coroner considered the witness statements, the state of her clothes and the dingle prints and blood on the ground. During the time when he was reviewing the evidence, the police were gaining a lot of traction with the press because you have to understand, this story is spreading like wildfire because of the tagline that a dingo had taken Lindy's baby. And the police were kind of feeding the press that this was a lie. People all across Australia were forming opinions about baby Azaria's death, and a lot of people were agreeing with police. Rumors were flying that Michael and Lindy had murdered their own daughter on this camping trip, and they were making up accounts about killer dingoes as a cover story. Now, by the time the coroner contemplated his investigation, this case was huge. And everyone was at the edge of their seat waiting to see what the coroner would say. So the medical examiner actually agreed to publicly announce his findings during a live broadcast because Australia was waiting. The case was just a big deal. And ultimately, he ruled that he agreed with Michael and Lindy's testimony. He thinks baby Azaria died in a tragic dingo attack despite not having the body. And he told the grieving parents, you have not only suffered the loss of your child in the most tragic circumstances, but you've also been subjected to months of innuendos, suspicion, and the most malicious gossip issued in this country. You have this mother who is grieving, who is so confused. So despite the fact the coroner ruled in the parents favor, the police were not convinced. And honestly, neither was a lot of Australia. They decided that they needed to gather more evidence. They thought if they found enough proof, they could have the coroner's findings overturned and then they could charge the parents with murder. So that's why, on September 19, 1981, detectives actually raided Michael and Lindy's home. They spent four and a half hours searching and confiscated several pairs of scissors. The investigators plan was to test them to see if they matched the cuts on Azaria's clothing. But the real smoking gun was actually the couple's car. There was a red substance splashed all over the floor under the front passenger seat. It was dried up, but the police were sure it had been a liquid at one point. Specifically, it could be dried blood. Now, when the police asked the Chamberlains about the fluid, they said that during the camping trip before Azaria's disappearance, they had actually picked up a hitchhiker, and he was bleeding when he climbed into their family car. So maybe it was his blood. Now, the police gathered samples of the fluid, and they actually managed to identify the hitchhiker the family had picked up before. You're like, what the. Like, why would they pick up a hitchhiker on this family vacation? Sign of the times. Now, police ran tests which said the liquid was blood, but it wasn't a match for a man. Now, police immediately jumped to the assumption that that means it's baby Azaria's. And the story the parents had told wasn't true. Which meant she hadn't been killed by a dingo in a tent or dragged away by a dingo. She'd either died in the car or her killer had sat in that seat after murdering her. Now, as if that evidence wasn't enough, the police got in touch with a pediatrician who'd treated Azaria for the fateful camping trip. And the doctor said that Lindy's relationship with Azaria had always been a little odd, even from the beginning. Azaria was born completely healthy, but for some reason, Lindy insisted that her baby was seriously ill. She kept coming in for one doctor's appointment after the next, asking the nurses and physicians to help her baby. However, each time they examined her, there was nothing wrong with her. This actually went on for weeks. And finally one day, the constant needless visits just stopped. And when Lindy came in for a more typical checkup, she said Azaria had just gotten better on her own. But the weird thing was that during this visit, for the first time, Azaria actually didn't seem entirely well. She was hungry, and Lindy admitted to doctors she had been skipping feedings. She didn't seem especially worried about Azaria's well being, and she didn't have a good excuse. As for why she wasn't nursing her two doctors, it came across almost like Lindy was now neglecting Azaria. But the situation wasn't dire enough for the doctor to call the police yet. However, one other detail struck the doctor as a bit odd. See, he'd never heard the name Azaria before. It was unique. And because he was curious, he actually decided to look up what it meant, if it even had meaning. And apparently, the name book he owned said that it meant sacrifice in the wilderness. Now, at the time, this obviously doesn't mean a whole lot to the doctor, but after he learns about Azaria dying in a wilderness, he wondered if the name was literal. And all this had been planned. Maybe Lindy's strange behavior and apparent neglect had been because she knew Azaria was going to die, because she was planning to go on this camping trip with her family and offer her daughter as a sacrifice and then somehow cover it up, claiming that one of the dingoes took her baby. Now, obviously, I know that this probably sounds a bit outlandish, but when taken in context with all of the inconsistencies in the Chamberlain's testimony, it was hard to ignore. Now, naturally, tabloids ran wild with stories about Lindy and Michael sacrificing Azaria in some kind of religious ritual. And each time the police found another piece of evidence that made the Chamberlains look guilty, they would actually, immediately, immediately notify the press. They wanted the press on their side. This was a huge news story, and almost every person in Australia believed at this point that Michael and Lindy had murdered their own daughter and the dingo story was bogus. Now, of course, the parents tried to defend themselves. They went on press tours and gave interviews, insisting their baby really had been killed by a dingo. But it didn't matter what they did or said. Nobody was believing them. Now, when Lindy broke down crying during media appearances, people began accusing the mother of faking it. And when she and Michael were calm and composed, people said that they weren't grieving good enough. So they just. It was a lose, lose, honestly, in the press's eyes. And if you're wondering, well, there were other people around. People believe that they had somehow faked this baby that they were holding that night. And this is all to say that Lindy and Michael are looking more suspicious every day. It was bad enough for Australian officials to call for a second inquest, and this time around, it ended with a ruling that Azaria was a victim of homicide, which was enough for officials to officially charge Lindy with murder and Michael with being an accessory after the fact. See, this is what the prosecutors believed. They thought Lindy had killed Azaria and then Michael had helped his wife cover it up afterward. The theory was obviously, like I said, Azaria had died much earlier than the couple claimed. Lindy may have killed her during that hike in the field, which is where she even came up with the dingo being there first. And then she left Azaria's diaper and onesie behind, which is why the search teams found them so far from the campsite and more where the family had been hiking earlier. And based on the forensic evidence, police believed that Lindy had stabbed Azaria with scissors and allowed her to bleed to death. And then she was covered in blood afterward, some of which get smeared inside the family car. When she and Michael drove back to their tents in the evening, the prosecutors still weren't sure what they did with Azaria's body, but the theory was that everything they did that night afterward was a cover up. Supposedly, Lindy had just rolled up a bunch of blankets and pillows until they were the same size and shape as a baby. And that's what she was holding and rocking near the campfire in front of other people. She had to pretend her daughter was still alive to avoid uncomfortable questions from the other families that they had met. Now, at one point, she stepped away and said she was putting Azaria to sleep in the tent. But in reality, she was faking the dingo attack. Lindy laid out the blood stained blankets on the ground and then she yelled and screamed that the wild dog had taken her baby. Now, according to the prosecutors, this was the only version of events that fit with the evidence if Lindy and Michael were using the dingo story as a cover up. Now, the only problem is there is not a clear motive and there was evidence saying otherwise. There was no good reason for Lindy and Michael to kill their own infants. The lawyers didn't present a motive during the trial, but lots of gossip and speculation was flying outside of the courtroom. Some people believed Michael and Lindy were religious extremists. Remember, he worked in religion. They might have killed Azaria as part of a human sacrifice ritual like I mentioned before. Now, there's no evidence to support this speculation other than the claim that Azaria, the name meant sacrifice in the wilderness. Except that's actually misinformation. Apparently, depending on where you look, Azaria actually meant whom God, aids. Now, another theory suggested that Lindy might have killed Azaria due to mental illness or desperation. Like I mentioned before, when they interviewed doctors, she seemed convinced that Azaria was seriously sick after her birth when the doctors couldn't find anything wrong with her and it didn't necessarily matter if it was true or not. Maybe Lindy believed Azaria was too ill or too weak to survive. She stopped feeding her and then maybe in her head, mercy killed her baby. Or perhaps the stress of caring for a sick child that was in her head was too much for her and she snapped. It's really hard to say for sure what happened, but it seems almost no one believed that she had been killed by a dingo. In fact, vendors sold T shirts outside of the courthouse that read the dingo is innocent. So very early on the dingo story had not only kind of gone viral, but was also being taken as a joke.
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Go to quince.comdark for free shipping on your order and and 365 day returns. This is now available in Canada too. That is Q U I N C E dot com dark to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.comdark you guys, if you are needing staples, please go to Quint and please use my code. It helps support the show and also gives you free shipping. Now meanwhile, Michael and Lindy still were insisting they didn't do it. Their stories hadn't changed at all. They still said his area had been taken by a wild animal and the blood in the van was from a hitchhiker. They couldn't explain why the onesie had those cuts on it. But they still maintained that they hadn't done anything wrong. And all of the families that had been camping nearby actually said the same thing. So although the entire rest of Australia and even different parts of the world were saying this Dingo story was a lie, everyone at the campsite with Michael and Lindy were saying, no, this is actually what happened. They had no indication that when they met the family that they Were going to hurt their daughter. And all the witnesses believe that Azaria was alive that evening at the campfire, that it wasn't just a fake bundle of clothes. They claim they heard her babbling and crying and that they even saw the baby. Now, the chamberlains never had an opportunity to commit a murder, Stage a dingo attack. Everyone at the camp said there was just no way that during that time, this was staged. There was no way they could have disposed of her body. Except, by and large, it was hard for the jury to believe the witness testimony at trial. It was easier to just think that the chamberlains had managed to fool the other campers. Ultimately, Lindy and Michael were both found guilty, and Lindy was sentenced to life in prison, and her husband, Michael, was released after the trial without spending a single days behind bars. And just to complicate matters, it's worth mentioning that by the time she was sentenced, she was actually pregnant again. It was fall of 1982, two years after Azaria's death, and during that time, she and Michael had tried to just continue to grow their family. This meant Lindy was eight months pregnant when she was convicted of murder. She ended up giving birth a month into serving her sentence. And once she recovered, Lindy began filing for appeals. Her argument still was that she was innocent and that she still fully believed a dingo had killed her baby, and everyone else at the campsite believed it, and the public had actually given her this sentence, not the jury. Now, of course, each request got rejected or failed for one reason or another, and by early 1984, she ran out of appeals. It's pretty clear Lindy was never getting out of prison. Except just two years later, the case actually took an unexpected twist, and I say just. But she'd been serving her sentence during that time. Six years after Azaria's death, in January of 1986, a British man named David Brett Came to Australia for vacation. He loved hiking and mountain climbing, so he headed to the same spot where Lindy and Michael had camped the day Azaria died. Now, tragically, during this hike, he fell off the rock, and everyone who witnessed the accident Knew he was too high up to survive the fall. Still, the police scoured the area to try and find his remains, and when the search teams found his body, it had been dismembered. Apparently, the dingoes in the area had eaten parts of him, and some of his bones were missing. So the officers checked out the dingo layers to try and recover the rest of David's remains. And in one den, police found A white jacket, the same one Azaria had been wearing on the night of the disappearance. Sitting in a dingo den in the area where she disappeared. It's pretty strong evidence that she had probably been carried there by a dingo. Now, on top of that, you may remember how earlier I said that most people believed dingo attacks never happened in Australia. Nobody thought they were a threat to people, but this was just lore. This was just something people had said for years and years that wasn't actually true. In fact, in areas where human bodies, people were popular, aggressive dingoes were more common than people realized. In fact, before Azaria's disappearance, four different hikers had said that they had been attacked by the dingoes at the campsite. Now, so far, there hadn't been any deaths, but the issue is it wasn't a nine month old baby they had attacked. So a lot of people, including Lindy, Michael and the police didn't realize how dangerous dingoes could be. Not obviously, until it was too late. The investigators just assumed it wasn't possible for a dingo to kill a baby because there wasn't any recording of dingo death. But once officials started collecting data on the issue, the evidence told a different story. Dingoes had killed three more people between 1982 and 1988, so clearly they were pretty dangerous. And you may remember that a forensic examiner thought Azaria's onesie and diaper looked like they'd been cut with scissors, not ripped by animals. While later investigators proved that dingoes had sharp teeth, sharp enough to cut cloth like a scissor would and not like a tear, researchers even learned they could tear material in a way that looked identical to the rips found in Azaria's outfit. Now, besides all this, the real break came when an independent lab decided to run new tests on the blood that had been found in the Chamberlain's car. Turns out it wasn't even blood. It was a normal compound that helped cars run correctly. And the original test that had been used to convict Lindy and Michael at trial had been flawed. It had given a false positive, but it wasn't even blood. Now, by now, all the evidence really seemed to say that Lindy and Michael had probably been innocent all along. They hadn't even committed murder. There was no evidence of blood. There was now evidence proving that the clothes might have been cut by dingoes, dingoes who now were proven to be dangerous. But Lindy wasn't allowed to file any more appeals, so the Australian government decided to step in. Lindy's conviction was overturned in September of 1988. Now, the public response to this decision was basically the exact opposite of how it had been during the first trial. Polls said that about half the people of Australia now believed that Lindy had been wrongfully convicted, despite the fact that majority thought she was guilty early on. So opinions were split, of course, But a slight majority said her guilty verdict had been a miscarriage of justice, and it was a huge victory for her to be released now. Now, even though Lindy was vindicated, the ruling came after she had lost three years of her life to prison. She'd also lost her marriage because the stress of the legal proceedings and the prison sentence had driven her and Michael to divorce. She'd also lost years of bonding with her children. They'd grown and gone through all kinds of milestones while their mother sat in prison. And it's worth keeping in mind this all happened while she was grieving the loss of her infant daughter and being made fun of for stating what she believed to be the truth. So it may be no surprise that Lindy ended up suing the Australian government for wrongful imprisonment. And she won the suit and received a settlement of 1.3 million Australian dollars. Obviously, of course, money can't replace time, mental health, or a person who you're missing. It's worth noting that even though Azaria's death was eventually ruled an accident, her remains have never been found. This means her family still can't bury her, and it's just one more loss after everything else they've suffered. They lost freedom, they lost their reputations, they lost their daughter. They became international jokes. And to this day, many still believe Michael and Lindy got away with murder. And wherever you land, it probably comes down to which set of facts you've actually heard. On this case, the police and the press pushed pretty heavily that all of the evidence was pointing towards the fact that Lindy was a hysterical moment who had killed her baby and then claimed the dingoes had attacked the baby. But when you look at the actual evidence and the reason why the Australian government even overturned her conviction, a lot of it says that the dingoes might have actually taken her baby that night. And most of the evidence points toward Michael and Lindy telling the truth. Like I said, cases like this that have just been covered by the media becomes swayed so heavily, even the facts of the case become swayed. I'm sure there are people to this day that remember this case that are like, no, dingoes don't kill people. And she was just a hysterical mom in postpartum depression who killed her baby. And no one even saw the baby that night. And the clothes were cut and the baby's blood was found in the car. And because this is what was spread, this was the narrative. But when you look at the evidence, there was no blood in the car. Dingoes can be dangerous and did kill other people. They can cut clothing like that. The baby's jacket was found in a dingo den after police were looking for body parts that dingoes had torn apart. People at the campsite claimed to have seen the baby that night. There were dingo prints all around the camp. People heard the baby in trouble, they heard dingoes growling. I don't know. It's just one of those cases that has been twisted in the media. And I'm not saying for sure that I know what happened that night. I'm just saying that we probably should stop joking about dingoes taking a baby when that very likely could be the case. And that is a real nine month old baby that you're joking about that could have been taken by dingoes and killed. Like I said, this is a doozy of a case. It's always very interesting when the media gets involved in true crime and twist it. But I'll keep digging to lay out the facts of cases and I'll see you next time with another episode. Goodbye.
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