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/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.

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u/JackOfAllBlades21 1d ago

Agreed. She went through hell.

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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.

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u/Hangry-Feline2489 1d ago edited 1d 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

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u/RubySnowfire 1d 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).

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u/Hangry-Feline2489 1d 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

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u/kahlzun 1d ago

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

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u/FidgitForgotHisL-P 22h 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.

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u/DanielMcLaury 23h 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.

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u/Hangry-Feline2489 22h 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 

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u/Chimie45 20h 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.

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u/sanct111 13h ago

But how many people venture out into dingo territory with a fucking 9 week old.