All set for final Azaria chapter

Lindy and Azaria

Lindy and Azaria.

LINDY Chamberlain-Creighton has returned to Darwin for a court decision that could end a marathon battle to have a dingo blamed for her baby daughter Azaria’s death.

But there was a surreal element to Ms Chamberlain-Creighton’s arrival.

”Today was her [Azaria’s] birthday,” she told reporters at the airport yesterday. ”No other comments.”

Ms Chamberlain-Creighton’s first husband, Michael Chamberlain, is also expected to attend the court today when Coroner Elizabeth Morris is due to deliver her findings on the death of Azaria.

This follows the fourth inquest into the baby’s disappearance, held this year, which heard that several children had been attacked by dingoes since nine-week-old Azaria disappeared from the Uluru area in 1980.

If the inquest finds a dingo was most likely to have killed her, it could herald the end of a fight spanning three decades by the Chamberlains to have Azaria’s death certificate officially changed from ”unknown”.

Both the counsel assisting the coroner and the Chamberlains’ lawyer told the hearing in February that they now believed a dingo was the most likely cause of Azaria’s death.

Legal expert David Studdert, from Melbourne University, said he thought the coroner would probably back that theory, although it was not a certainty.

”The fact that there are two sides to the inquest asking for the same thing makes it more likely,” Professor Studdert said.

Ms Morris’ findings could be the final chapter in one of Australia’s most enduring sagas, which began when Azaria disappeared from a campsite in Uluru in 1980.

Court hearings in the 1980s resulted in Lindy Chamberlain being jailed for murder while her then husband, Michael Chamberlain, was given a suspended sentence for being an accessory after the fact.

But after Azaria’s matinee jacket was found in 1986, the case was reopened and a royal commission the next year exonerated both parents.

In 1988 the Northern Territory Court of Criminal Appeals overturned all convictions against the Chamberlains.

AAP

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