Australian couple dogged by doubt over baby's death face new inquest - gulfnews.com

Sydney: A coroner on Friday opened Australia's fourth inquest into the most notorious and bitterly controversial legal drama in the nation's history: the 1980 death of a 9-week-old baby whose parents say she was taken by a dingo from her tent in the Australian Outback.

Azaria Chamberlain's mother, Lindy, was convicted and later cleared of murdering her and has always maintained that a wild dog took the baby.

She and her ex-husband, Michael Chamberlain, are hoping fresh evidence they have gathered about dingo attacks on children will convince Northern Territory coroner Elizabeth Morris and end relentless speculation that has followed them for 32 years.

Anne Lade, a former police officer hired by the court to investigate the case, told a packed courtroom that in the years since Azaria disappeared, there have been numerous dingo attacks on humans, some of them fatal.

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Rex Wild, a lawyer assisting the coroner, described several of the attacks and said he believed the evidence showed that a dingo could have been responsible for Azaria's death. "Although it [a dingo killing a child] may have been regarded as unlikely in 1980 ... it shouldn't be by 2011-12," he said. "With the additional evidence in my submission, your honour should accept on the balance of probabilities that the dingo theory is the correct one."

Morris adjourned the hearing without issuing a decision, and did not say when she would release her findings.

Death certificate

Azaria's death certificate still lists her cause of death as 'unknown'.

"I also hope that this will give a final finding which closes the inquest into my daughter's death, which so far has been standing open and unfinished," Lindy said outside the courthouse in the Northern Territory capital, Darwin.

Azaria vanished from her tent in the Outback on August 17, 1980, during a family vacation to Ayers Rock, the giant red monolith now known by its Aboriginal name Uluru.

Lindy said she saw a dingo run from the tent and disappear into the darkness. Azaria's body was never found. Officials, doubtful that a dingo was strong enough to drag away a baby, later charged Lindy with murder.

Still, three separate coroner's inquests, the last of them held in 1995, have failed to agree on a cause of death for Azaria.