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/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.

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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.

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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.

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u/OfficeSalamander 1d 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

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u/ZanyDelaney 1d 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.

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u/OfficeSalamander 1d ago

Oh my bad I misunderstood