Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton

Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton
Born	(1948-03-04) March 4, 1948 Whakatane, New Zealand
Known for	Azaria Chamberlain disappearance

Alice Lynne (Lindy) Chamberlain-Creighton (born 4 March 1948) was at the centre of one of Australia's most publicised murder trials, in which she was convicted of killing her baby daughter, Azaria. The conviction was later overturned.

Early life

Alice Lynne Murchison was born in Whakatane, New Zealand. She was known as Lindy from a young age. She moved to Australia with her family in 1949. She and her family were adherents to the Seventh-day Adventist Church and she married fellow Adventist and pastor Michael Chamberlain on November 18, 1969.

In the 1970s Michael and Lindy Chamberlain had two sons, Aidan (born October 2, 1973) and Reagan (born April 16, 1976). For the first five years after their marriage they lived in Tasmania, after which they moved to northern Queensland.

Azaria Chamberlain's disappearance

Main article: Azaria Chamberlain disappearance

Michael and Lindy Chamberlain's first daughter, Azaria, was born on June 11, 1980. When Azaria was two months old, Michael and Lindy Chamberlain took their three children on a camping trip to Uluru, arriving on August 16, 1980. On the night of August 17, Chamberlain reported that the child had been taken from her tent by a dingo. A massive search was organised, but all that was found were remains of some of the bloody clothes, which confirmed the death of baby Azaria. Her body has never been discovered.

Conviction, imprisonment and release

Although the initial coronal inquiry supported the Chamberlains' account of Azaria's disappearance, Lindy Chamberlain was later prosecuted for the murder of her child on the basis of the finding of the baby's jumpsuit and of tests that appeared to indicate the presence of blood found in the Chamberlains' car. This forensic gathering convicted her of murder on October 29, 1982, and sentenced her to life imprisonment; the theory was that she slit the child's throat and hid the body. Michael Chamberlain was convicted as an accessory to murder.

Shortly after her conviction, Lindy Chamberlain gave birth to her fourth child, Kahlia, on November 17, 1982, in prison. An appeal against her conviction was rejected by the High Court in February, 1984.

New evidence emerged on February 2, 1986 when a remaining item of Azaria's clothing was found partially buried near Uluru in an isolated location, adjacent to a dingo lair. This was the matinee jacket which the police had maintained for years did not exist. Five days later, Chamberlain was released. The Northern Territory Government publicly said it was because "she had suffered enough." In view of inconsistencies in the earlier blood testing which gave rise to potential reasonable doubts about the propriety of her conviction and as DNA testing was not as advanced in the early 1980s it emerged that the 'baby blood' found in her car could have been any substance, Lindy Chamberlain's life sentence was remitted by the Northern Territory Government and a Royal Commission began to investigate the matter in 1987. Chamberlain's conviction was overturned in September, 1988 and another inquest in 1995 returned an open verdict.

In recent years there have been fatal dingo attacks on children, one famous instance being at the holiday resort at Fraser Island.

Subsequent life

In 1990, Lindy Chamberlain published Through My Eyes: an autobiography (ISBN 0-85561-331-9). It has recently been reprinted. She and Michael Chamberlain divorced in 1991. On December 20, 1992, she married an American named John Creighton, nicknamed Rick, a publisher and fellow member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and she is now known as Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton. She and Creighton now live in Australia.

Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton recently came into the spotlight when she spoke publicly about the world famous May 2007 disappearance of Madeleine McCann and offered to comfort Madeleine's parents. She claimed that the world-famous case echoed hers and that she would speak to the McCanns if they wished but she added "words don't mean nothing, we all go through things in different ways".

In August 2010, on the 30th anniversary of the death of Azaria, Chamberlain-Creighton appealed on her website to have the cause of death amended on Azaria's death record.

The first of three coronial inquests into Azaria's death found in 1981 it was likely a dingo took the nine-week-old baby. But the second a year later resulted in the Chamberlains being committed to stand trial. Mrs Chamberlain then spent three years in jail for murder before the charges against her were quashed in 1988 after a royal commission found the conviction "unsafe". The third and final inquest in 1995 delivered an open finding.

Adaptations

In the 1983 Australian TV movie about the case, Who Killed Baby Azaria?, Lindy Chamberlain was played by Elaine Hudson. In the 1988 film A Cry in the Dark (also called Evil Angels), the role was played by Meryl Streep, whose performance won an Academy Award nomination for best actress at the 1989 Oscars, while Miranda Otto played her in the 2004 Australian TV mini-series, Through My Eyes: The Lindy Chamberlain Story. Australian composer Moya Henderson wrote the opera Lindy to a libretto by Judith Rodriguez.

References

Harry M. Miller Group. Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton

External links

• Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton's Official Website
• Michael Chamberlain's Official Website
• Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton Papers held by the National Library of Australia
• Papers of Chamberlain support groups, 1982-1986 held by the National Library of Australia
• The Chamberlain collection at the National Museum of Australia
• A conversation with Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton held at the National Museum of Australia, 14 October 2007 (audio + transcript)
• Who Killed Baby Azaria? (1983) (TV, Network Ten) at IMDb
• "Evil Angels" or "A Cry in the Dark" (1988) at IMDb
• Through My Eyes (2004) (TV, Seven Network) at IMDb
• Interview with Lindy Chamberlain