[Pic: Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton arrives at Darwin Magistrates Court. Source: Jezebel]

30 years later the famous case of baby Azaria Chamberlain being eaten by a dingo while on holiday has finally been put to rest. Her mother, Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton, long maintained that a dingo took her baby, even as she was sentenced to life in jail for her daughter’s murder, a conviction that was later quashed.

During the trial, a witness recounted the then 32-year-old mother’s cries of a “dingo’s got my baby.” This phrase was made famous by the Meryl Streep film A Cry in the Dark, and has become part of 90’s pop-culture, appearing, perhaps most famously, on Seinfeld. Northern Territories coroner Elizabeth Morris said, “[t]he cause of her death was as the result of being attacked and taken by a dingo . . . Dingos can and do cause harm to humans.”

CNN sums up the previous case against Chamberlain-Creighton:

Despite this being unthinkable in 1980, and no other reports of dingos behaving like have ever been reported, the coroner said “it is clear that there is evidence that in particular circumstances, a dingo is capable of attacking, taking and causing the death of young children.”

The first inquest into Azaria’s death in 1981 found that the baby died as a result of being taken by a dingo. However, the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory quashed the finding later that year and ordered a second inquest into Azaria’s death.

At the second inquest Lindy Chamberlain was committed to trial for murder. Her husband Michael was charged with being an accessory after the fact.

Chamberlain served four years of her sentence before the Northern Territory government ordered her release in 1986 after the discovery of new evidence; a baby’s jacket, believed to be Azaria’s, found half-buried near a dingo lair at Uluru.

Outside the court on Tuesday, Chamberlain-Creighton said she and her family were, “relieved and delighted to come to the end of this saga.” It would have been terrible to think that such an important, and hilarious phrase had been based on a lie to cover up a murder. With the truth finally coming out, we can now happily laugh at Seinfeld, cry with Streep, and confidently say, a dingo ate her baby.

[Source: CNN, Jezebel]