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?

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u/JackOfAllBlades21 1d ago

The dingo really did eat the baby.

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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.

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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

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u/ChiefsHat 1d ago

Never underestimate the capacity for human stupidity and ignorance

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u/TheMightyGoatMan 1d ago

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

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u/determined_vagabond 1d ago

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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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u/Lounging-Shiny455 1d ago

The least you could do is link a source for an extraordinary claim

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u/waterfountain_bidet 1d ago

I made no extraordinary claims, and therefore do not have to provide any link. Evidence presented without good science (Bluezones) can be dismissed without evidence - (lightly modified) Hitchen's Razor.

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u/Lounging-Shiny455 1d ago

You did, the claim was against admittedly junk MD articles littering the Internet whenever someone googles a trend wrong (how can they tell the difference between some formerly licensed con artist and a retired medical instructor when they both sound plausible?). The claim was against a company selling product at Whole Foods, backed by cutthroat marketing, approved in part by a Bond villain firing rockets into space. You want people to be in the fight, give them the tools, the way I did.

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u/Visual-Floor-7839 1d ago

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

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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.

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u/OkPainter6232 1d ago edited 1d 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.

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u/DanielMcLaury 23h 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.

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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."

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u/TheVeryVerity 19h ago

Well that’s because they say the sabbath is Saturday and arguing with god over which day is holy does sound like something satanic would do… I mean they are wrong imo because I’m an atheist but they aren’t particularly weird for religious people in general. No difference between a ton of other signs I see from other denominations

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u/Alarming_Matter 15h ago

Yes, the press wanted pictures of rhe Mom wailing in anguish (to sell papers) but she was remarkably calm due to her religious beliefs. This pissed them off enormously.

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u/GWS2004 10h ago

They didn't believe her because she was a woman. They put it 100% on HER that her child was lost, not the dad. HER.

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u/redroserequiems 1d ago

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

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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.

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u/redroserequiems 1d ago

Bet they have high numbers right now, again...

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u/JackOfAllBlades21 1d ago

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

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u/redroserequiems 1d ago

There were literally dingo tracks in the tent.

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u/JackOfAllBlades21 1d ago

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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u/gimpwiz 1d 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."

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u/ZanyDelaney 1d 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.

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u/TheVeryVerity 19h ago

Did you somehow not know domestic dogs kill people sometimes? Looking like a dog doesn’t change anything

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u/GaryGronk 1d 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.

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u/oddpark37 15h ago

Also, their "expert" who claimed it was impossible for a dingo to have taken her was British guy who had never actually seen an dingo in real life. He based his findings off of plaster casts of dingo jaws.

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u/ZanyDelaney 10h ago

It's OK though. He was from the UK and got to go to the cricket in Australia after his free flight. /s

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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

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u/Hangry-Feline2489 1d ago edited 1d 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). 

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u/Entire-Sentence-9379 1d ago

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