Oz's great unsolved mystery

2004-10-06 08:26

Darwin - The disappearance of baby Azaria Chamberlain 24 years ago is expected to remain one of Australia's most celebrated mysteries after the coroner's office ruled on Wednesday that there was no new evidence to justify reopening the case.

The announcement followed an investigation by Northern Territory police into recent claims by Melbourne pensioner Frank Cole, 78, that he shot a dingo which had the nine-week-old baby in its jaws when she vanished from a tent during a family camping holiday at Uluru, in central Australia.

"The Coroner's Office has determined not to reopen the inquest into the death of Azaria Chamberlain," the coroner's office said.

"The information provided to it by Mr Cole through Northern Territory Police did not satisfy the Coroner's Office that there were new facts of evidence making it necessary or desirable to reopen the inquest."

Made into film

Police, forensic experts and virtually everyone associated with the case including Azaria's mother Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton rejected Cole's claims when they were made in July, but it did not stop the Australian media treating them as a major story that ran for days.

Azaria's disappearance on August 17 1980, created one of Australia's most celebrated mysteries and led to Lindy Chamberlain being jailed for life for murder in 1982, but she had insisted all along that a dingo took her baby.

Chamberlain, whose story was subsequently retold in a movie starring Meryl Streep, was later exonerated and freed after new evidence emerged backing her claims.

Now remarried and living in the United States, Chamberlain-Creighton called on Wednesday for the case to be closed once and for all.

She told ABC radio she had no faith in Cole's claims because of discrepancies in his story.

"He said 'I can prove what I say is true because I've kept yellow ribbons out of the matinee jacket'," Chamberlain-Creighton told ABC radio.

"That was immediately telling to me, because there were no ribbons and not even places for them to go, not anywhere on any of her garments let alone on the matinee jacket.

"He gave me a number of other things that he said ... which just, well they have already changed since." - AFP

- SAPA