The dog it was that did it
Christine Verity
EVIL ANGELS by John Bryson Viking, £12.95
0 rwell described the typical English murder as 'the old domestic poisoning drama' ideally to be read about in the News of the World after roast beef and Yorkshire and a cup of mahogany-brown tea. The enormous interest generated by the dingo baby case in Australia has, I think, a similar provenance, for is it not the typical Australian murder? It happened in the scrubby landscape of the Australian out- back populated by aborigines with their strange superstitions and it was supposedly perpetrated by the archetypal Aussies: low-church, pioneering in spirit and lovers of the open air.
But this is presuming a lot, especially on the evidence of this absorbing book. For the author's contention is that there never was a murder and that Lindy Chamber- lain's four-year imprisonment for cutting the throat of her baby daughter, Azaria, was, if not a miscarriage, then certainly a distortion, of justice. Azaria, according to John Bryson, was taken by the dingo dog just as the mother claimed from the start. No other interpretation of the events stands up. In fact, at the end of the book, he describes the difficulties a film company had in re-enacting the supposed 'murder': `it just won't hang together' said the actress who was playing Lindy Chamberlain.
The facts of the case are now well- known, even to English readers, for whether it is the element of infanticide or the Saki-like involvement of the dingo in her death, there is something haunting about it. A young family, the father a devout Seventh-Day Adventist preacher and his wife, two young sons and nine- week-old baby went for a camping holiday at Ayers Rock in Australia's Northern Territory. As the young mother prepared to put her baby to bed, other campers were impressed by her 'new mum glow', as one later put it. No one who saw her thought she was harassed, depressed or homicidal.
Within minutes of putting the baby to bed Lindy Chamberlain heard a cry from the tent where she slept. As she approached, she saw a dingo emerging from the tent flap with its head down. Although she saw nothing in its mouth, the blood in the tent and the scattered bed- clothes led her to no other conclusion than that one of the dogs that scavenged around the camp site had taken the baby.. Despite intensive searching, the baby's body was never found although a pathetic bundle of clothes turned up a week later some six kilometres away. When they were examined they showed a considerable loss of blood and the theory of the dingo gained plausibility as it looked as though the child had been savaged around the neck and throat.
Suspicions about the Chamberlains grew slowly. A first inquest, although tense, supported the mother's story. But several things happened that led to another in- quest being held. The Chamberlains' car had been examined and blood stains appeared extensively on the upholstery and under the dashboard: this led to the theory that Lindy could have cut the baby's throat, perhaps holding her down under the front seat of the car. This was sup- ported by the views of a leading English forensic scientist, James Cameron. Azar- ia's clothes had been sent to him for examination; in his view the bloodstains could only have been caused by human hand — by someone cutting the baby's throat.
Undoubtedly, the Chamberlains had a raw deal at this second inquest where so much of the evidence relied on had not been released to the defence team. They could have kept quiet, but according to Bryson, they felt they had nothing to hide. They gave evidence and in the circumst- ances gave it rather badly. The outcome, by now almost inevitable, was that they were sent for trial in Darwin: she for murder, he for being an accessory after the fact.
John Bryson's legal training makes the passages in this book dealing with the court proceedings clear and convincing. When it came to the trial much depended on the scientific evidence and it seems that the defence managed to more than rebut the prosecution's expert witnesses. The evi- dence produced to show the presence of foetal blood in the car was obtained in a totally unscientific way and the contribu- tion from James Cameron was, by this stage, heavily overshadowed by his unpro- fessional conduct in the Maxwell Confait case. Nevertheless, the jury convicted even though the judge had summed up in a manner favourable to the defence. Despite the plethora of scientific evidence a mem- ber of the jury later made it known that none of his colleagues had been influenced by the scientific evidence. They just re- fused to believe that a dingo could have taken the baby.
In the last few weeks the case has flared up again with the discovery of the baby's matinee jacket and the release of Lindy Chamberlain herself. A new inquiry is afoot and the jacket will, no doubt, be central to it. Bryson's book has come out at the right time and it will add to the already pronounced clamour in Australia for the clearing of Mrs Chamberlain's name.
Psychologists who examined Lindy Chamberlain in prison could find no sign of a criminal disposition — in fact, her perso- nality was of the type least likely to commit any sort of crime. Certainly, she had no motive for killing her baby and precious little opportunity to do so. Nevertheless, the Chamberlains seem, to say the least, to be rather rum. A couple of days after their daughter was supposedly killed by a wild dog, they were buying souvenir mugs and T-shirts to take back home to their nephews. Although being odd may say no more than that one is just plain odd, this is the sort of behaviour that probably led the Darwin jury to convict.
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