Aussie coroner: Mom's suspicious tale was true -- dingo took baby from Outback

CANBERRA, Australia— Australians have overwhelmingly welcomed the final chapter of a mystery that has captivated the nation for 32 years: Did a dingo really take a baby that vanished from an Outback campsite in 1980?

A nation that was once bitterly divided on whether baby Azaria Chamberlain had been dragged away by a wild dog or murdered by her mother now largely agrees that the parents deserve the vindication a coroner's court provided Tuesday.

A day after Azaria Chamberlain would have turned 32, a coroner found that a dingo had taken her as a 9-week-old baby from a tent near Ayers Rock, the red monolith in the Australian desert now known by its Aboriginal name Uluru. That is what her parents had maintained from the beginning.

The eyes of Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton and her ex-husband, Michael Chamberlain, welled with tears as the findings of the fourth inquest into their daughter's disappearance were broadcast from a courtroom in the northern city of Darwin to televisions around Australia.

The first inquest in 1981 had also blamed a dingo. But a second inquest a year later charged Chamberlain-Creighton with murder and her husband with being an accessory after the fact. She was convicted and served more than three years in prison before that decision was overturned.

A third inquest in 1995 left the cause of death open.

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. Public opinion swayed harshly against the couple; some even spat on Chamberlain-Creighton and howled like dingoes outside her house.

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