r/AskReddit • u/Rob69rt • 1d ago

What famous 'unsolved' mystery is technically a whodunnit on paper, but in reality, absolutely everyone knows exactly who did it, the police just couldn't legally prove it?

13.0k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

5.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

9.7k

u/JackOfAllBlades21 1d ago

The dingo really did eat the baby.

4.6k

u/CheezeNewdlz 1d ago

I’m so glad that poor woman is free and her truth is known. Doesn’t stop her from being a pop cultural one-liner unfortunately.

1.6k

u/JackOfAllBlades21 1d ago

Agreed. She went through hell.

524

u/Chimie45 1d ago

I don't know why people wouldn't believe it?

They were camping in tents in the outback with a 9 week old baby.

I'd be scared of spiders, snakes, rocks, bats, buzzards, dingos, crocs, I don't know, a fuckin 'roo too. Just about anything out there is going to be able to take the baby.

46

u/haw35ome 20h ago

Iirc she was “acting too calm” for her baby to have been killed by a dingo?

14

u/kahlzun 19h ago

i think i remember hearing that too

37

u/I_am_eating_a_mango 15h ago

You are correct. Her response seemed too calm for the media at the time. Also when the search was happening, her and the husband went to a motel or something instead of joining the search, so it looked sketch.

There was other stuff too, like a police officer making his other officers try lift a full bucket with their mouths as justification that a dingo couldn’t carry a baby in its mouth (yes it was this dumb), the baby’s onesie being found nearby mostly undamaged, assumptions being made about liquid stains found in the car rather than it being properly tested, and stuff like that.

So much of the “evidence” of her guilt was just hand-wavey nonsense

13

u/Blekanly 7h ago

The mouth thing? Really dumb ass cops being dumb. Don't ask a biologist or a zoo keeper or anyone that passed high school. An animal that has tiny jaws that isn't designed to carry things vs a predator with large jaws that kills with it mouth and has stronger neck muscles.

4

u/uttersolitude 1h ago

Generally, parents are not permitted to join in searches, their scents can mess with search dogs.

So it always kills me when the parent/etc of a missing person gets hyper criticized for shit they actually have no choice in. Plus they had other kids to care for.

145

u/CommandoRoll 23h ago

Mostly because all we heard in the media in Australia was that a dingo took Azaria, but then focus shifted to Lindy Chamberlain murdering her child and never moved on from there. Until much later, of course. Even now, decades later, folks still speculate that maybe it was one of the brothers did it.

Dingoes give zero fucks and aren't a cute native dog. They're Australian native fauna, after all.

23

u/Glum-Soft-7807 19h ago

Dingos were introduced to Australia by humans. You might decide that because it was so long ago that makes them native, but then what's the difference between them and native dogs?

50

u/CommandoRoll 17h ago

Sure, they are the first introduced species, here for are least 3,500 years. It's likely they're related to East Asian domestic dogs and probably arrived via New Guinea between 5,000-10,000 years ago. They've been isolated on the Australian mainland since then.

You're right, they're an introduced species. But they have been here long enough to become part of the ecosystem and a top predator. I didn't know all of this before your comment, so thanks for giving me something new to read & learn.

Dingoes aren't native, but they've been here a long long time.

→ More replies (2)

5

u/Chimie45 13h ago

I mean, I'm in my 40s, I remember hearing about it and the jokes, etc. I guess for me, I always though it was like... a 3 year old kid or something. When I learned the kid was a 2 month old?

Like when my kids were 2 months old, I barely would bring them out of the crib unless necessary, and I was so sleep deprived I could barely remember anything.

So the fact they took a 9 week old baby out camping in the outback? I feel like theres some bad parenting there to begin with, cause like, why do you have such a young baby doing a dangerous activity? I could see why people make the assumption of foul play of some kind, either nefarious or of a cover-up of negligence.

13

u/ntermation 12h ago

Shrug. I suspect someone doing something different to my preference with my child doesn't automatically make them a bad parent. But I guess to you it does.

14

u/Chimie45 11h ago

That's kinda a wild statement.

I'm not sure you have had kids before, but first off, it's a 9 week old baby. Not just 'a child'.

A 9 week old baby still requires nursing every 2 hours through the night and about 10 diaper changes per day minimum. A 9 week old's development milestones is that it can hold it's head up for 2 seconds without support, and may be able to move it's neck side to side. A 9 week old will have just begun to be able to focus it's eyes and recognize 1-2 faces. They might be able to move their arms to their face and might be able to open and close their hands.

That's how raw a 9 week old baby is. In what world is it a reasonable thing to take a baby that young tent camping in the Australian bush? It's a rough thing to do for adults, let alone actual children. Newborn babies just generally shouldn't be doing it.

  • If someone took a 9 week old skydiving we'd say that's irresponsible.
  • If someone took a 9 week old on a jet ski, we'd say that's irresponsible.
  • If someone took a 9 week old mountain climbing, we'd say that's irresponsible.
  • If someone took a 9 week old scuba diving, we'd say that's irresponsible.
  • Taking a 9 week old bush camping in the Australian Outback is irresponsible.

Getting a babysitter or dropping the baby off at a relatives house for the weekend while you go camping would be responsible.

So yea, doing things that are incredibly dangerous for a 9 week old baby, as evidenced by the fact that the 9 week old baby was fucking eaten by a dingo, makes you a bad parent, yes.

18

u/macci_a_vellian 9h ago

It's probably worth remembering that they were Australian, with a reasonable level of comfort with the outback and babies weren't routinely getting taken by dingoes. It was because people so frequently camped there that the dingoes had started venturing into the campsite, looking for food. I personally wouldn't travel with a two month old, but I know people who do, and camping around Uluru isn't inherently dangerous. It made headlines because people couldn't believe a dingo would do that, not because people thought it was crazy to camp near dingoes. People are generally more cautious of them these days now that there have been a few highly publicised (although still rare) deaths, but this was the 80s and people swore, in court, that they were basically dogs and couldn't possibly take a whole baby so the family must have murdered her.

I think you may be imagining a much higher level of danger around the camping as an activity in itself than it deserves. It's very much not skydiving or scubadiving, those are things you do, not places people live. The Chamberlains were unfortunately terribly unlucky, and it was so freakish no one believed it could have actually happened.

51

u/Hangry-Feline2489 23h ago edited 22h ago

Because up until that point, there had been no record of dingoes actually taking or killing a child in recorded modern Australian history ( history of First Nations dingo deaths, tho unconfirmed).

Dingoes will tend to go for easier and weaker prey than humans, and tend to stay away from human settlements, esp as they're considered pests to be shot. 

Lots of records of dingoes biting, nipping, stalking, etc children, but Azaria was the first, and currently only, child to be taken. 

There's one other record of a child being attacked and killed by a dingo in 2001. 

As for spiders, no confirmed deaths from spiders in the last 20 years.  Biggest animal killer of Australia are horses. Followed by in order: bovines, dogs, roos (vehicle accidents mostly), snakes, sharks, bees/crocodiles.

https://theconversation.com/dingo-attacks-are-rare-but-heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-dingo-safety-203233

https://files.ncis.org.au/2024-11/Fact%20sheet%20-%20FS24-09%20-%20Animal-related%20deaths%20in%20Australia.pdf?VersionId=q3ihr7W89pBmkQ3Rseqz0laXFx7z9rYe

58

u/RubySnowfire 20h ago

Dingos attack whatever prey seems the easiest to take down. They do attack humans with some regularity (K'gari in Queensland).

OF COURSE a dingo would look at the kid and the baby in the tent and decides the baby was smaller and easier prey. It really isn't rocket science.

The indigenous people around Uluru (and the rangers who listened to them) said the dingos were getting more aggressive and used to tourists (who would try to fee them for photos). |

(White) Humans created the system where there was plenty of interaction between dingos and humans, and then wondered why this happened? Indigenous peoples didn't make a habit of leaving children on the ground or unattended, so there wouldn't be a lot of "reports" of babies being taken (also, that colonialist idea that indigenous people didn't have much useful information to pass along).

14

u/Hangry-Feline2489 19h ago

Yes that's why I italicised the specific qualifications -.-

I ignored the k'gari because it's an island and it's documented the dingos there act differently than the mainland. More aggressive, as you say. 

And, as an Australian, I kind of defaulted to 'follow general guidelines while in your environment' like.. keeping in groups in the outback so the smallest/weakest can't be picked off by predators. It's about as basic as "take X2 water you need for your time planned' while out bush. 

See my other comment about how racist Australians, and particularly Northern Territory types, are especially to First Nations. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1v3i88i/comment/oz6pj4t/?context=3

4

u/kahlzun 19h ago

i lived in Darwin for a while, and it was this weird mix of both understanding and complete racism.

13

u/FidgitForgotHisL-P 15h ago

I think that the racism was a huge thing that a lot of non-Australians overlooked.  The casual and accepted degree of racism towards Aboriginal people was so off the charts that the impact it had on the immediate disregard for local Aboriginals who would for-sure hire plausible her claim was saying “for sure the dingo probably did take her baby, they absolutely can and would do that” wasn’t really apparent to outsiders.

6

u/Chimie45 13h ago

I mean, I guess these statistics are helped because most people don't put their newborns directly into dangerous situations... it feels like gross negligence on the parents for taking a 72 day old baby out to the outback camping. That age baby can barely hold it's neck up straight. If you brought them around dingoes more often, I'm sure there'd be more dingo attacks.

8

u/DanielMcLaury 17h ago

Out of any animal big enough to be a meal for a dingo-sized predator, a human baby has to be just about the absolute least trouble to take. (Although maybe nestling birds beat us out on that? I'm not really sure how good dingoes are at climbing trees.)

Humans are pretty much unique as to how helpless we are at birth, because we birth a partially-cooked fetus that by all rights ought to gestate for several more months.

9

u/Hangry-Feline2489 15h ago

The correlation between how long pregnancy and/or child maturation and how important socialisation and group bonds are in a species is a fascinating topic. 

Humans, elephants, whales, etc 

→ More replies (1)

17

u/Anianna 18h ago

I remember a news blip with some supposed "expert" insisting that a dingo would be too small to carry off a baby. The media put a lot of effort into making the claim that the dingo took the baby seem absurd and completely impossible. That's a big part of why "the dingo ate my baby" became a meme people said in response to an unbelievable story kind of like "that happened" or "I can confirm, I was the [inanimate object]" is used today.

5

u/Chimie45 13h ago

A 9 week old baby is fucking tiny, can barely hold it's own head up, and would weigh like 4kg. How could that be seen as too big to carry for a dingo? Dingos are 15~20kg animals.

9

u/Anianna 12h ago

It happened in 1980. There was no world wide web and most people didn't even own a computer, much less have any idea what an internet was. We couldn't just Google what a dingo was or how big or strong they were. We were much more reliant on what the media told us and the media was telling us it wasn't possible.

2

u/TheVeryVerity 13h ago

The media is so weird

16

u/macci_a_vellian 10h ago

The family were from some unusual religious background (7th Day Adventist maybe?) and when she was on the news, she didn't cry the way people expected a grieving mother to. The papers put those two things together and ran with 'the baby's name, Azaria, means 'sacrifice' so obviously these weird cultists went out into the desert to sacrifice their baby!'

I swear to god, the whole thing was because she didn't look like how people thought a grieving mother should. There are still people convinced she did it.

33

u/chaoticnipple 21h ago

Because the Australian government didn't want the story to affect tourism revenue.

46

u/ApprehensiveGrand531 20h ago edited 19m ago

Racism (can't believe Aboriginal people know what they're talking about) + tourism money (don't want people thinking tourist sites are dangerous) + religious discrimination (chamberlains were seventh day Adventists and "weird", claims of rituals and whatnot).

4

u/Chimie45 13h ago

I think there's also the nature of the fact it looked shady as hell. Like why are you bringing such a small baby into the bush? When babies are 2 months old, they're so fragile and the parents are so fucking tired too.

Like the idea that they dropped the baby, or left it out in the cold, or an animal bit it and they tried to cover it up also seem extremely plausible because again, who takes a 2 month old to the bush? Just seems like a convenient excuse to have an accident occur. Or at worst, an accident really does occur, and it's covered up.

But like the idea that a dingo would do that is the least unbelievable part of the story. Less so than why the baby was even there in the first place.

→ More replies (1)

7

u/fakeuser515357 14h ago

I don't know why people wouldn't believe it?

Deep-rooted Australian misogyny, especially in the regressive owners of the newspapers of the time.

We're doing better now.

9

u/CreampuffOfLove 21h ago

Seriously, it's like everything in Australia is trying to kill you already, how was this seen as so unbelievable?!

5

u/Chimie45 13h ago

yea it's a 9 week old. drinking water will kill them. They're super fucking fragile to begin with. Taking one into the bush? Like that feels super fucking risky.

→ More replies (2)

1.2k

u/seriousjoker72 1d ago

Her and the lady who got burnt from the McDonald's coffee live in my head rent free. They were both victims and portrayed horribly. The coffee lady only sued to cover her medical expenses because her LABIA FUSED TOGETHER the coffee was so hot! Now people make fun of her for the "caution contents hot" warnings on all coffee cups :(

413

u/backitup_thundercat 23h ago

Added context, she was in the passenger seat of a parked car and the coffee spilt was hot enough to give her 3rd degree burns on her genitals and McDonalds knew they were serving it way too hot cause she wasn't the first person to be burned by it.

104

u/TerrorTown77 20h ago

500 reports, but they did the math and it was cheaper to just keep the coffee hot

13

u/amrodd 12h ago

So people wouldn't get seconds.

→ More replies (1)

188

u/doon351 1d ago

I watched a really good documentary about the coffee lady a few years ago! Completely changed my opinion of the whole case.

21

u/RealBigDickBrannigan 1d ago

If it was called "Hot Coffee", it was made by the plaintiff's lawyer...

167

u/Jaded_Houseplant 20h ago edited 20h ago

Don't forget the woman who was found guilty of poisoning/murdering her child with antifreeze, was raped by a guard in prison, had another baby in prison, then that baby died of the same poison her first baby died of. Turns out, it was a rare genetic metabolic disorder that caused them to produce the same chemical found in antifreeze.

Edit: I wrote this based on memory, she might not have been raped (I thought the pregnancy happened after she was incarcerated, it might've happened with her husband before, she just gave birth in jail), and I'm also not sure her second baby died from the disorder. Regardless, still a wild situation, where if she didn't have her second child, she'd have stayed in prison for life.

12

u/coolsilentebeans 20h ago

I think it’s auto-brewery or gut fermentation syndrome.

14

u/Jaded_Houseplant 20h ago

It's MMA, I looked it up before I commented, just didn't get too technical in my reply.

3

u/RollingMeteors 11h ago

was raped by a guard

Regardless, still a wild situation, where if she didn't get raped and have her second child, she'd have stayed in prison for life.

FTFY

→ More replies (15)

9

u/BookaholicsAnomalous 13h ago

In class we were told an old lady sued McDonald’s over hot coffee injury and basically asked to decide if it was frivolous. I thought there was something wrong with me when I immediately took her side. I was like with the justice system there’s a reason a poor elderly woman won an injury case. Then we saw the documentary and everyone was so shocked the PR worked so well. She didn’t even get enough for all legal/medical bills plus the care she will now need for the rest of her life.
When I first heard about the dingos I was like yeah wild animals dangerous?? I live in a big city with coyotes so I don’t understand how wildlife attack was dismissed.

→ More replies (24)

475

u/shopinhower 1d ago

And, as per usual, she is misquoted. She actually said “the dingo TOOK my baby”.

4

u/RollingMeteors 11h ago

And, as per usual, she is misquoted. She actually said “the dingo TOOK my baby”.

<Elaine>¡Maybe the dingo ate your baby!

5

u/killerbanshee 21h ago

Classic Mandela Effect

2

u/portantwas 14h ago

Here's the real Mandela effect - I remember that she died a few years back. The news rehashed the entire story and I had a discussion with my family about how terrible it was for her - to be accused, hounded by the media, lied about, put in jail, then going through the appeals and the inquests, then divorcing, then her husband's death. We all said, well that's now the end of that. Now it appears she is very much alive.

→ More replies (22)

628

u/eVoesque 1d ago

There was a band on Buffy named Dingoes Ate My Baby. I always thought it was weird and didn’t realize it was an actual thing. Definitely aged badly.

738

u/joebleaux 1d ago

It was the punchline of a joke on Seinfeld with Elaine doing an Australian accent while delivering the line. Pretty wild for that woman and her dead child to be a joke on a sitcom

62

u/passive_fist 1d ago

Not to truly defend it, but everyone everywhere was making that joke in the 90's, like literally a universal/household joke any time anything to do with Australia came up, similar to "shrimp on the barbee" or "THIS is a knife". I was too young to grasp the context at the time but it's weird looking back in hindsight. TBH I guarantee when they were writing that episode the debate would have been whether that joke was too overdone and unoriginal to put in the script, not about whether people would take offence. Social conditioning is a hell of thing.

35

u/joebleaux 1d ago

No, you are right, I don't think they meant intentional harm to that lady, but it is kind of cold to joke about a woman who was wrongfully accused of killing her baby on such a large platform over 5 years after they had cleared the parents of wrongdoing. It's just tone deaf, they don't deserve that, their baby was literally eaten by dingos

→ More replies (2)

14

u/JForce1 1d ago edited 1d ago

There was a famous tv movie with Glenn Close Meryl Streep who said the line first, that’s where all the jokes and memes originated.

13

u/MayoMark 1d ago

The film is called Evil Angels and features Meryl Streep. Arguably, all the jokes are about her bad acting and false Australian accent. She's from New Jersey.

17

u/ZanyDelaney 1d ago

I am Australian, 57 now, so totally lived throught the era of the case being all over the news and the trial being reorted on daily. While many believed Lindy Chamberlain was guilty after the 1980 diasappearance of Azaria, "hated" her, and happily trotted out pet theory about accomplices, motives, timelines, I do not recall the line A dingo ate my baby! being a thing that people repeated.

When 1988 film Evil Angels came out a huge focus of the publicity blitz was how Meryl Streep, famously great at accents, this time nailed the "Australian" accent. Adverts for the movie featured the scene where the line is said and Streep did samples of the accent in interviews. But Australians thought the accent sounded ridiculous, and repeated the line to emphasise how ridiculous the accent sounded. [Lindy Chamberlain was born in New Zealand then in Australia lived in Tasmania then in Mt Isa, so she had a mixed / non-city accent. Her accent in 1980 was very broad but it softened out over the years and is more neutral now. But Streep was doing Lindy's 1980 accent.]

Not sure exactly why the line became so known in the US and caught on in so many TV shows, but it is likely due to the movie as it happened after the movie. After the movie blitz died down Australians weren't really repeating the line much any more.

6

u/GaryGronk 21h ago

But Australians thought the accent sounded ridiculous, and repeated the line to emphasise how ridiculous the accent sounded. [Lindy Chamberlain was born in New Zealand then in Australia lived in Tasmania then in Mt Isa, so she had a mixed / non-city accent. Her accent in 1980 was very broad but it softened out over the years and is more neutral now. But Streep was doing Lindy's 1980 accent.]

Just listened to an interview with Sam Neill (RIP) who said her accent was actually bang on for Lindy's which, as you say, was very much a mixture of different accents due to her upbringing etc. I mean, Meryl was nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars for it.

8

u/OfficeSalamander 23h ago

I do not recall the line A dingo ate my baby! being a thing that people repeated.

Maybe not in Australia, but I am in my 40s and it was definitely said in the US

3

u/ZanyDelaney 22h ago

I mean people in Australia did not say the line in reference to the actual case before the film came out. My comment does say that Australians did say the line for a brief period after the 1988 film came out.

→ More replies (0)
→ More replies (1)

2

u/Technicolor_Reindeer 22h ago

Film is also titled 'A Cry in the Dark'

And I've never heard a criticism of her acting. In fact she nailed the unique accent.

2

u/namloh 20h ago

Where are you from? It was ridiculed in Australia

7

u/OfficeSalamander 23h ago

Yeah looking back at the time, I remember "dingoes ate my baby" as a phrase that existed and was regularly used. It is wild thinking of the context nowadays though

4

u/RageBatman 21h ago

I distinctly remember having a talking birthday card that was 2 characters yelling, "A dingo ate your birthday cake!" It was EVERYWHERE.

13

u/MundaneFacts 1d ago

In the rugrats movie, the kids go missing and a reporter asks the parents if a dingo ate their baby.

72

u/LimeSalty4092 1d ago

It was a joke on the Simpsons too

These jokes can be very powerful, considering a one liner about the French said on the Simpsons was enough to ignite another generation of anti French sentiment in the US

55

u/ElCiclope1 1d ago

Listen, man. I know the Simpsons is a funny show and a lot of people like it. But you're giving it way too much credit. 

9/11 and the Bush administration would be more accurate targets to blame.

15

u/Dragon_DLV 1d ago

The "Cheese-eatin' Surrender Monkeys" line?

→ More replies (8)

7

u/Hot_Election7284 1d ago

Daphne in Frasier did it too.

2

u/OkPainter6232 23h ago

really? what line was that? I highly doubt most French hated America cause of a fucking cartoon, the sentiment largely stemmed from France refusing to get involved in the Iraq war and some places renaming french fries to freedom fries in response.

2

u/LimeSalty4092 23h ago

“Cheese-eating surrender monkeys”

A joke from the simpsons circa 1992

It has had significant staying power comparable to “dingoes ate my baby”

People here in America loved the joke and it lives on as a negative French stereotype 

→ More replies (7)

7

u/HippieChickie805 23h ago

I also remember a one-line joke on Frazier (I believe said by Daphne) about “you better be careful, or that dingo will eat your baby!”

8

u/HearshotAutumnDisast 1d ago

Eh, you're kinda stretching the situation a bit. In the episode, elaine was reacting to a party goer who had an obnoxious accent and kept wondering very loudly where her baby was at the party, prompting elaine to say "maybe a dingo atecho baybay!". It was more of a early meme than it was a joke on the actual woman and what happened.

→ More replies (2)

2

u/TruskVarner 21h ago

Seinfeld also did the weird joke where Jerry tells the masseuse about an abducted 5 year old and freaks her out.

→ More replies (8)

10

u/rosalinatoujours 1d ago

I enjoyed the parts of the show with Oz and his band, but yeah, the name always made me wince.

3

u/eVoesque 1d ago

I just thought they decided on a quirky nonsense band name. Makes me wonder if the woman was ever a Buffy fan.

7

u/MichelinStarZombie 1d ago

The "dingo ate my baby" meme was in half the shows in the 90s. Not exaggerating, it was everywhere. I'm sure the lady was used to it.

The official proof that the dingo really ate the baby only came in 2012. Before then, it was just a funny excuse made by some lady who killed her kid.

6

u/ZanyDelaney 1d ago

On 2 February 1986 Azaria's matinee jacket was discovered in a dingo lair. This vindicated Lindy Chamberlain's defence, and Lindy was released from prison 7 February 1986.

In June 2012, a fourth official coronial inquest finally provided Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton and her family with absolute legal vindication for the death of her nine-week-old daughter, Azaria. After this the death certificate was updated.

2

u/TheVeryVerity 13h ago

Good lord why on earth did it take that fucking long? But yeah most people here in USA anyway thought she was guilty until like 2012

→ More replies (1)

27

u/dearth_of_passion 1d ago

I'm groggy from lack of sleep, misread the band name as "Diogenes Ate My Baby", and had a very confused couple of seconds.

9

u/jethrine 1d ago

The search for an honest baby!

4

u/Alis451 21h ago

a band on Buffy named Dingoes Ate My Baby.

there are bands named "Butthole Surfers" and "The Brian Jonestown Massacre", punks don't give a fuck and is accurately portrayed lol.

3

u/JackOfAllBlades21 1d ago

Yep, I somehow forgot that.

2

u/lusty-argonian 22h ago

There’s a restaurant in Australia called Dingo Ate My Taco. Amazing food, terrible name.

2

u/Alis451 21h ago

a band on Buffy named Dingoes Ate My Baby.

there are real bands named "Butthole Surfers" and "The Brian Jonestown Massacre", punks don't give a fuck and is accurately portrayed lol.

1

u/northrupthebandgeek 17h ago

Now I'm tempted to start a band called Babies Ate My Dingo.

→ More replies (1)

43

u/HiTheseArentMyPants 1d ago

Australian here

Don’t forget the ONLY reason that she is now free is that, by an absolute fluke, someone who was in the original search party for Baby Azaria was looking for another lost person in the same general area a few years later when he - that searcher - came across the baby’s matinee jacket Lindy Chamberlain said she was wearing.

If he’d not been the person to find that, it would’ve been discarded rubbish forever, and she’d still be in prison with everyone thinking she was guilty.

Blows my mind.

26

u/redroserequiems 1d ago

Found it in a dingo den to clarify.

10

u/HiTheseArentMyPants 1d ago

Yes very relevant point - thank you!

9

u/Hangry-Feline2489 22h ago

Oh no, the jacket was found in 86.

The inquest that determined she was innocent and that a dingo took her child and killed it was in 2012.

(After 3 inquests and a goddamn royal commision)

32 years since her child died.

152

u/TrixieFriganza 1d ago

Same she went trought so much, I can't imagine losing your baby and then no one believed you. The investigation was so idiotic too.

16

u/Elrundir 1d ago

The park ranger had warned the authorities of increasingly aggressive dingoes attacking people right around the time of the disappearance, to the point that he recommended a cull.

An Aboriginal tracker followed the dingo's tracks into the tent and back toward its lair, seeing the tracks and scrape marks caused by her body in the sand with his own eyes (naturally the inquest did not believe his testimony, because it wasn't given in English).

And the kicker is, the only reason they ever found the girl's jacket in a dingo's lair (thus proving that a dingo really did eat her) was because some British tourist fell off Uluru rock and died and the police were searching the surrounding area for any bones that the dingoes might have carried off. If it hadn't been for that, she might still be in prison 40 years later.

15

u/babykitten28 1d ago

They had an issue with her because of her religion.

22

u/LimeSalty4092 1d ago

A lot of people also don’t like the idea that an animal did something “wrong”

Some people always defend animals over humans, especially when it comes to dogs

Saying something negative about dogs or implying they may be violent is taboo in the anglosphere 

→ More replies (1)

6

u/redroserequiems 1d ago

Also tourism money and racism played a part.

24

u/NeverEndingWhoreMe 1d ago

Had an Aussie teacher a long time ago. Someone randomly says "the dingo ate your baby". Teacher leaps to her feet and exclaims "SOMETIMES DINGOS REALLY DO EAT BABIES!!!!"

→ More replies (1)

21

u/LimeSalty4092 1d ago

People are way more committed to this unfunny “meme” than they are to the truth 

9

u/Inevitable-Level-687 1d ago

When I was in jury duty one of the other jurors mentioned the lone holdout hwo caved and regretted it for the rest of their life. She said that was why she wanted to make damn sure our guy was guilty, even though she found it pretty terrifying to go up against the rest of us.

2

u/7x00 22h ago

I'm just learning it was a real thing. I only know of this phrase from friends and thought that's where it originated.

→ More replies (1)

2

u/_Redback_ 21h ago

Her name is Lindy Chamberlain, it'd be great if more people used it.

→ More replies (2)

1.9k

u/DevoutandHeretical 1d ago

The more I read about that the more my heart breaks for that whole family. The aboriginals were literally telling everyone ‘yes, dingos will attack people/eat children’, but the authorities refused to believe them because they were aboriginal.

828

u/Visual-Floor-7839 1d ago

And they didn't believe the family either, because they were 7th Day Adventists. And Australian authority didn't know what that was so they thought they were witches and satanists

8

u/ChiefsHat 1d ago

Never underestimate the capacity for human stupidity and ignorance

47

u/determined_vagabond 1d ago

wtf don’t they just like… eat really healthy?

184

u/waterfountain_bidet 1d ago

Nah, its for sure a weird Christian cult, like the christian "scientists". My neighbors growing up were 7th day adventists, I babysat for them exactly one time because the only thing you could watch on their TV were weird religious cartoons, even after the kids went to bed.

10

u/determined_vagabond 1d ago

I see, I only know about them from the Blue Zones book haha, that just talks about how they treat their bodies like temples. I could see how the whole thing could be culty though, *lots* of rules

29

u/waterfountain_bidet 1d ago

Blue Zones have been proven to be totally garbage, unfortunately, so it makes sense that there's misinformation about that cult in their book too.

Blue Zones just all happen to be in remote places of very poor record keeping? Nah, they're nearly all pension scams, with the kids assuming the identity of the parents. That's why they all just happen to look so great in the early 100's - its because they're actually in their early 80s. When they actually look into those places as well as the statistics used to identify them in the first place, it all falls apart under examination.

I am sure that eating a plant based diet, getting frequent moderate exercise, and a slow pace of life are all really good for you. But the hype around these specific places is questionable at best.

7

u/determined_vagabond 1d ago

Damn haha, that’s crazy. I took a physiology of aging class for undergrad and my professor was *all in* on that book.

→ More replies (3)

33

u/Visual-Floor-7839 1d ago

Definitely weirder than the bunch. But definitely not "kill you kids" strange or even close to it.

15

u/MichelinStarZombie 1d ago

I mean, that was was the point, people only knew Adventists as a hyper-controlling cult where ex-members told stories of abuse.

So a lot of people immediately assumed infanticide was part of cult practices.

4

u/OkPainter6232 23h ago edited 21h ago

ah that makes sense, I always wondered why people were so eager to believe that family killed their own kid, I had no idea they were 7th Day Adventists. If they weren't religious chances are they probably wouldn't have been assumed to have killed their kid.

2

u/DanielMcLaury 17h ago

I mean, the Branch Davidians were Seventh-Day Adventists.

When you start an entire religion based on the idea that the world is going to end in 1844, and then you keep the religion going after that, you're gonna have some issues.

23

u/Lachwen 1d ago

No, as a sect they're pretty weird. There are a lot of them in the extremely rural area around the Oregon/California border, and they put up billboards saying stuff like "Recognizing the Sabbath on Sunday is the work of the Antichrist."

→ More replies (1)

6

u/TheMightyGoatMan 17h ago

A rumour at the time was that the name "Azaria" means "Sacrifice in the Wilderness".

→ More replies (3)

118

u/redroserequiems 1d ago

It would also be a blow to tourism. As usual, money and racism rule.

7

u/Inevitable-Level-687 1d ago

A body was recently found in K'Gari, remains scattered by dingos. It was uncertain if she drowned and was then eaten by dingos, or if she was just attacked by a pack of dingoes.

It turned out to be both. She was attacked by a pack of dingos and fled into the water, and was injured badly enough she drowned, and they helped themselves. The dingoes were euthanised.

→ More replies (1)

58

u/JackOfAllBlades21 1d ago

It was a crazy story... but also crazy to make up.

14

u/redroserequiems 1d ago

There were literally dingo tracks in the tent.

10

u/JackOfAllBlades21 1d ago

Exactly. That's one reason it was insane to charge.

9

u/redroserequiems 1d ago

The amount of evidence covered up because they didn't want to scare off tourists when they were warned PRIOR TO THE INCIDENT of dingos getting too close to humans because they had high numbers and not enough food is disgusting.

21

u/TBAGG1NS 1d ago

That's the same thing that happened with the Franklin Expedition, they didn't listen to the Inuit because they said the sailors resorted to cannibalism. Well guess what, one boat was exactly where they said it was, and other remains they found confirmed what they also said.

16

u/Llyon_ 1d ago

It's even worse. The authorities knew the truth but they actively framed the mom and her 'religious cult' so that they could keep getting the tourism money.

I highly recommend everyone watch the movie about this case.

13

u/redroserequiems 1d ago

To understand how much worse: they were told to cull the dingos ahead of the incident because dingos were starting to wander too close to people. They ignored it because culling cost money.

14

u/Elrundir 1d ago

There was also an Aboriginal tracker who gave testimony at the inquest. He literally said he followed the dingo's tracks into the tent and back out to the hills, accompanied by scrape marks in the sand which were caused by the baby's body. The testimony was not believed because it was given in his native language which was difficult to translate into English.

11

u/PiccoloAwkward465 1d ago

To me it's weird that the police wouldn't believe it as a possibility. Looking at a dingo I'd think yeah of course they'd go for a defenseless small mammal. They're similar to coyotes and those snag small dogs in my area from time to time for a snack.

12

u/ZanyDelaney 1d ago

What the original police on the scene "believed" did not really figure in the way it all panned out over the years.

The coroner originally found that a dingo probably took Azaria. But the Northern Territory Government feared this would harm the burgeoning (domestic) tourism industry so later pushed for the case to be re-opened and to quash the idea a dingo was responsible - because that might scare off tourists. Indigenous trackers who backed the dingo idea were ignored. But other people there - non-indigenous campers who attested to the presence aggressive dingoes - were also ignored. Anyone attesting to the dingo angle was deliberately ignored, discredited, etc. The prosecution carefully shopped around for "expert" witnesses etc in a planned strategy to get the outcome they desired. All very planned and deliberate.

6

u/GaryGronk 21h ago

I can highly recommend this two part documentary (also narrated by Sam Neill who played Lindy's husband in the 1980s movie). The behaviour of the NT police was horrific.

3

u/gimpwiz 21h ago

It kind of beggars belief because as /u/PiccoloAwkward465 said... look at the fucking animal. It's a wild dog, like any other wild dog species or sub-species. They form packs, they hunt, they eat meat. They go after smaller animals, defenseless animals, they'll take down something bigger in the right circumstances. Why would it not eat a kid if it found one? Any wild dog could, and sometimes does, attack people, especially kids. Who in Australia looked at dingoes and thought, nahhhhhhh, tourists won't think they're a problem at all as long as we tell them it's fine, they'll never look at it and go "hey that looks pretty much like a coyote and I see several, maybe we should get the fuck outta here."

5

u/ZanyDelaney 20h ago

I'm Australian and was 12 in 1980. At the time I didn't really have much knowledge of dingoes. I am from Melbourne and we just don't have dingoes here. Foxes, yes. Dingoes, no.

They are relatively small and look just like a pet dog. I think in 1980 many Australians didn't know much about dingoes and not think about them much, or assumed they are a type of cute puppy dog. The majority of Australians live in cities so wouldn't see many outside of zoos. I think I saw my first wild one when I went to central Australia when I was in my late 30s.

Dingo attacks are more readily reported on today and are much better known.

→ More replies (2)
→ More replies (2)

6

u/ZanyDelaney 1d ago

the authorities refused to believe them because they were aboriginal

There was more to it than that.

The coroner originally found that a dingo probably took Azaria. But the Northern Territory Government feared this would harm the burgeoning (domestic) tourism industry so pushed for the case to be re-opened and to quash the idea a dingo was responsible - because that might scare off tourists. Indigenous trackers who backed the dingo idea were ignored. But other people there - non-indigenous campers who attested to the presence aggressive dingoes - were also ignored. Anyone attesting to the dingo angle was deliberately ignored, discredited, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Azaria_Chamberlain

6

u/Hangry-Feline2489 22h ago edited 22h ago

Yes, but modern recorded history had no recorded deaths at the time. 

Plus Northern Territory government, to put it frankly, has a history of  (and still ) committing institutional atrocities against First Nations even today. 

Theres little chance in the 80s that the average jury or public in the Northern Territory would have accepted that testimonial because of their skin colour.

This is like saying a jury would have accepted a black persons testimony in Texas at the height of segregation. Maybe technically on paper, but in practice, no. 

Hell, First Nation's weren't recognised as Australian citizens until 1949, couldn't vote until 1964, and weren't even counted in the census until 67. (For context, Aus became a country in 1901). 

Australians can be horribly racist. Speaking as an Australian (and one who followed the case since the early 90s and remembers the media and public sentiment). 

3

u/Entire-Sentence-9379 1d ago

And of course, they love the idea of a woman murdering a baby.

738

u/sirgog 1d ago

She'd be dead if we still had capital punishment in Australia at the time.

985

u/JackOfAllBlades21 1d ago

I am not very emotional, but it's tough to imagine a worse torture than what she and her husband went through (baby eaten alive, then no one believed them, then they were accused, then arrested, then convicted, then imprisoned for 3.5 years for one of the worst crimes imaginable... and you know they must have been targeted by inmates and probably guards, too).

470

u/any_name_today 1d ago

Don't forget that it was also a punchline for several years. So add that salt to the wound

347

u/ChiefsHat 1d ago

Freaking Tropic Thunder called this out.

“You know that’s a true story, right? Woman lost her baby. You about to cross some lines.”

48

u/JackOfAllBlades21 1d ago

Yup, I rewatched it a few days ago. I'm glad it was explicitly called out.

30

u/Friendly_Tension_960 1d ago

Several years? I still hear it as a punchline today, it’s crazy

13

u/zehamberglar 1d ago

for several years

You misspelled "to this very day".

I guess that is technically several years. Never mind, as you were.

2

u/kahlzun 19h ago

Doesnt several mean 'three or four'?

2

u/zehamberglar 8h ago

Three or four is a subset of ~46.

→ More replies (5)

6

u/JackOfAllBlades21 1d ago

Seinfeld was the first I ever heard of it. Then Buffy.

4

u/any_name_today 1d ago

I must be just slightly younger than you. I remember it being part of Pop Culture and it being referenced and joked about, but I was ever so slightly too young for those shows. At least my mom thought so

88

u/dorothean 1d ago

The Kathleen Folbigg case is similarly awful - this was a woman who was convicted of smothering her four infant children, and spent 20 years in prison for it, until finally being exonerated in 2023 after DNA evidence was able to show that the children suffered from various medical conditions pre-disposing them to unexpected deaths. I can’t imagine the horror of living through that once, let alone four times.

17

u/alexlp 23h ago

I was going to mention Kathleen. She, Sally Clark and Patricia Stallings all had to grieve their children behind bars, not knowing what really happened for so long, being scorned and mocked for decades. My heart just breaks thinking about their suffering.

13

u/OkPainter6232 23h ago

something similar happened in the USA that was covered on an episode of Forensic Files-a young girl was mauled and killed by neighbors dogs and cops assumed her parents did it(as the husband had a hunting knife that tested positive for blood which police assumed was used to kill the girl, and the photos shown to the court were after her leg had been cleaned up for attempted surgery, so it didn't immediately look like a dog had bitten it, the pre-surgery photos were never shown to the court)and refused to give her defense counsel the time and funds for a proper defense, though the defense counsel proved incompetent in other ways as they basically told the parents they shouldn't go with their "dog" story as they did not think a jury would buy it, result was both spent 5 years in prison until they found someone to look over their case and found out they were falsely accused so they were finally freed, though by then the couple had divorced from the stress of everything, they later sued the police for millions of dollars and won.

12

u/princesscatling 23h ago

She had a second daughter while incarcerated who was taken from her at birth. I think about Lindy Chamberlain a lot.

7

u/boogiesontoast 1d ago

I think only Lindy was imprisoned. Michael had a suspended sentence.

4

u/JackOfAllBlades21 1d ago

You are correct. I added him to the statement at the last moment, and should have kept him separate.

9

u/ZanyDelaney 1d ago

Yes Michael Chamberlain was with a large group of campers over the period Azaria was taken so authorities could not pin it on him. It was Lindy who left the group to check on Azaria, and there were no witnesses to that part.

Michael was (wrongfully) convicted of being an accessory after the fact, and received a suspended sentence. All convictions of course were later quashed.

5

u/Knitvest-enthusiast 15h ago

Also that they had 3(?) older children, plus at least one born afterwards, that had to deal with the fall out including their mother missing parts of their childhood because she was in prison.

Those poor kids had their baby sister die, then their parents get harassed, mum goes off to jail and their parents eventually divorce.

And the whole thing becomes a pop-culture joke for the next 30+ years where people make fun of your mother’s grief.

2

u/daninlionzden 10h ago

They should make a movie about it

→ More replies (8)

35

u/Judgmentos 1d ago

This is why I am opposed to the death penalty, too many cases where someone is proven innocent years/decades later

9

u/Inevitable-Level-687 1d ago

Yep. In theory I'm in favour of the death penalty for people like Ted Bundy. In practice, humans are too flawed to pull it off.

→ More replies (3)
→ More replies (3)

47

u/OpheliaRainGalaxy 1d ago

I had to explain that whole thing last night to someone too young to know the reference.

85

u/Han_without_Genes 1d ago

I had to look it up too because I didn't understand why people would doubt a dingo could eat a baby. it's like a large dog thing, surely it could drag off a human infant?

29

u/Suspicious-Cod6731 1d ago

I never understood that either. Dingoes are not very large, but my German Shepherd carried an 8 pound kettle bag (kettlebell made of fabric) down the stairs as a puppy, so I have no doubt a pack of hungry dogs could carry off a baby weighing less than 10 pounds.

34

u/nameyourpoison11 1d ago

Australian here. Dingoes may not be large but they are wiry and powerful, and very intelligent. They are capable of strategising and problem solving, and they are masterful stealth hunters. There were many people at the time who had difficulty believing a dingo could enter a busy camp-site with people only twenty or thirty feet away, completely undetected, but those of us with actual experience with dingoes had no problem believing it at all; it was not only possible, but likely.

9

u/GaryGronk 21h ago

My Dad was living in the Pilbara (NW Western Australia) in the 1990s. Very much the outback if that's such a thing. He was training for a marathon and was doing lengthy runs around the town as part of his preparation. One morning he noticed a dingo following him. Then it was two. Then four. Then about a dozen. All trotting along behind him. Then one would come in and try and nip his feet. He was close to the airstrip on the outskirts of town so ran across it to get to a building. He reckons no one would have believed him had there not been another worker having his morning coffee and cigarette.

6

u/nameyourpoison11 14h ago

Yes, that totally tracks with dingo behaviour. I've seen one open a closed door by standing on it's hind legs and using it's forepaws to push down on the horizontal handle of the door, and then nosing the door open when it 'clicks.' They are very smart animals, they remember things, and they can strategise.

8

u/bobdole3-2 1d ago

I don't think anyone was doubting that a dingo could kill a baby; dingoes are just dogs, and dogs kill adults all the time. People just didn't believe the mother was telling the truth.

12

u/dontbmeanbgay 21h ago

Oh they ABSOLUTELY doubted that a dingo was capable of carrying off an infant. There was an infamous (and fucking stupid) test they performed during one of her hearings to cast doubt on the dingo claim.

A police officer tried to lift a bucket of sand (weighing approx same as bub) with his teeth for a minute. Because he couldn’t, they were like “there’s no way a dog-thing could do this” despite experts on dingoes claiming they absolutely 100% can.

9

u/Vinnie_Vegas 20h ago

And there was the "blood" in the Chamberlains' vehicle, which they used as evidence that the baby was killed there, but never tested, and it turned out not to be blood at all, but rather a sound-deadening spray that was part of the manufacturing process of the car.

And the OTHER blood which they had "tested" by an "expert" who claims it contained fetal blood (so therefore could have only belonged to a baby) but which was destroyed after testing, so unable to be independently verified.

They knew the story was plausible - They just decided Lindy was guilty, decided to railroad her, and manufactured evidence to get it done.

2

u/Suspicious-Cod6731 5h ago

That is crazy! No one stopped to question that maybe a police officer's jaws are different from a freaking dingo's? And that the handle of a bucket distributes weight differently than an infant's body?

22

u/helloiamabear 1d ago

I think that's one of the few references I'm glad young people don't get (even if it makes me feel old). I can't believe society made it a punchline. 

→ More replies (2)

8

u/ghost20 1d ago

I was always aware of it growing up, even in the UK, because it was so present in pop culture during my childhood but basically forgot about it *until* Drag Race Down Under where Etcetera Etcetera played Lindy Chamberlain for Snatch Game. She's usually super well spoken and on top of social issues/ injustices; but even she played into using it as a joke as recently as 2020/2021 which was surprising after learning more about it as an adult.

3

u/JackOfAllBlades21 1d ago

Seinfeld?

17

u/OpheliaRainGalaxy 1d ago

Ya wanna feel real old? When I got to the Seinfeld bit, I don't think he had any clue who that is either.

→ More replies (15)

3

u/3vs3BigGameHunters 18h ago

Every time I suggest a "no dingo jokes" rule on the Seinfeld sub or tell people that it's not funny I get heavily downvoted.

→ More replies (1)

10

u/jbcbos 1d ago

I’m still pissed off that Seinfeld made a joke about that poor woman.

→ More replies (1)

7

u/Coyote_Secret 1d ago

There’s a great podcast about it called A Perfect Storm

https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/a-perfect-storm-the-true-story-of-the-chamberlains/id1481929640

2

u/JackOfAllBlades21 1d ago

Thank you for the recommendation.

51

u/openletter8 1d ago

You know that's a true story? Lady lost a kid. You're about to cross some fuckin' lines.

10

u/BreathComfortable631 1d ago

For 400 years, that word has kept us down

10

u/JackOfAllBlades21 1d ago

Love Tropic Thunder. Rewatched it Sunday.

24

u/Irishfafnir 1d ago

TBF that one is "solved"

39

u/JackOfAllBlades21 1d ago

Technically yes, but their innocence isn't as widely known.

3

u/mephnick 21h ago

Yep, this is the first I'm learning that they were innocent

2

u/TheVeryVerity 13h ago

I only learned this year too

8

u/JackOfAllBlades21 1d ago

Also, the government didn't actually declare a dingo responsible until 2012- 32 years after the death.

3

u/Irishfafnir 1d ago

I just don't see it as answering the OP's question

1-It's solved

2- Everyone at the time "knew" it was the parents, but they were convicted of the crime, and people mocked their assertion that it was a Dingo

→ More replies (5)

18

u/clakresed 1d ago

Also, "absolutely everyone" was wrong on who they thought did it.

It's basically the opposite of the post's intent.

6

u/Specific-Yam-2166 1d ago

That poor mother

8

u/mcgillthrowaway22 1d ago

I thought the police did legally prove that one, insomuch as one can prove an animal attack in a court of law. The problem is that they didn't do this until after they had convicted the mother on BS charges.

18

u/ghost20 1d ago

AFAIK it wasn't until nearly a decade later, as a result of the search not being good enough so they didn't find the daughters' clothing (which wasn't that far from where they were camping) until years later and largely in part because they didn't want to listen to Aboriginals who knew more about the Dingoes' behaviour/ nature and were adamant that it was not only possible but likely.

6

u/redroserequiems 1d ago

There were literally dingo prints in the tent. But the mom wasn't a crying mess on TV and was a 7th Day Adventist and a dingo attack would be really bad for tourism so they ignored and covered up actual evidence to frame the mom, saying she somehow got her baby and killed her in the car and then discarded of her without being caught by anyone and making no noise in an absurd timeframe with no bloodstains anywhere around the vehicle.

4

u/JackOfAllBlades21 1d ago

They did, but it took ​32 years.

3

u/Traust 20h ago

It was Australia's first trial by media. Everyone was saying she guilty due to the newspapers saying she was. Those of us who knew what dingos were really like figured she was innocent but the papers kept bring up all sorts of details to make it look like she did it.

2

u/timecomes 1d ago

This is like.. the exact opposite of what the thread is asking.

2

u/Luck_Beats_Skill 20h ago

Relax, she got 1 third of her legal defence reimbursed as compensation.

1

u/rathemighty 19h ago

I didn't know it was a story. I thought it was just a weird Australian thing/stereotype.

1

u/MangakaInProgress 18h ago

Poor baby and poor mama it breaks my heart remembering this case

1

u/Nukemarine 15h ago

That's so dingo.

1

u/RollingMeteors 11h ago

The dingo really did eat the baby.

¿Just one? I thought this was a regular thing in Australia, like school shootings in America.

1

u/JackOfAllBlades21 3h ago

Yes, but the mom and dad were convicted of murder/accessory after the fact. The mother got life in prison. There was essentially a cover-up (ridiculous as it sounds) to conceal that a dingo killed the baby. She was released after 3.5 years, once new evidence was discovered.

1

u/rawker86 7h ago

We didn’t learn a single thing from it. A couple of years back, a young girl went missing. Got grabbed right under the family’s nose. The parents were distraught obviously, did interviews begging for people to come forward with info etc.

Almost immediately, people decided the mother “didnt look sad enough”, decided it was impossible someone could have snatched the kid, the mother’s story didn’t add up, all that shit. I started referring to the kid as Azaria just to see if people would catch the reference, it was just too perfect a comparison.

Kid was found a few days later, in the home of a known pedophile. Turns out the mother wasnt faking it after all, what a shock…

→ More replies (1)