LOVE CHOOSE LOVE,
LET YOUR LOVE BECOME A POWERFUL FORCE FOR CHANGE.


Spotlight on desert mystery
By Errol Simper
July 10, 2004
DO you believe the filming of an expensive four-hour drama about the disappearance and death of Azaria Chamberlain for the Seven Network is in any way connected with sensational Azaria-related claims over the past week by a frail Melbourne pensioner, Frank Cole?

Do you suspect the two events can't be totally divorced, one from the other?

On the other hand, truth is always stranger than fiction. Could it just be that Cole, 78, has placed one of the last pieces in the jigsaw of one of the world's most enduring, compelling mysteries? Just what did happen to nine-week-old Azaria after a dingo snatched her from an Uluru campsite on August 17, 1980? The body was never found. Did the dingo eat it? Or - and this is a persistent but unproven theory - did someone find her and take matters into their own hands?

Cole has told Melbourne's Sunday Herald Sun newspaper and the Nine Network's A Current Affair he illegally shot a dingo near Uluru on the evening of August 17, 1980. He discovered, to his horror, it had a baby in its mouth. He says the baby was dead, one of the ears was missing and it had four distinct puncture marks in its skull.

He and four companions had undressed the child, using a scissor-like instrument to cut some of the clothing free. They'd determined the baby was female, had tried to clean up the body and intended to inform the authorities. But, scared that police would prosecute them for illegal activities in a national park, they never did hand over the body.

The men subsequently took a vow of silence. Two years later a Northern Territory Supreme Court jury found Lindy Chamberlain guilty of murdering her daughter. She spent three years in prison before being cleared. Cole says: "Over the past [close to] 25 years I've had nightmares and many sleepless nights over the whole affair. But I may not have long left and if anything happened to me nobody would know the truth."

Lindy, now Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton, expressed profound scepticism over Cole's story during an ACA interview with Ray Martin on Wednesday. Yet she also managed to encapsulate the ambiguity and bewilderment many feel about Cole's revelations. Lindy, 56, told Martin: "It [Cole's version of events] sounded plausible and, definitely, this man sounds genuine. He sounded [during an ACA interview] like anybody's grandfather. He sounded definitely, to me, like he'd had an attack of conscience. And we know this has happened many times before with people. He doesn't sound like a nutcase. Although I don't believe there was human intervention [in the disposal of Azaria's body] I'm open to somebody actually proving it, open and shut, that there was [human intervention]."

Northern Territory police are investigating Cole's claims, including his suggestion one of his companions then - all now dead - may have taken Azaria to Melbourne before burying her in a suburban backyard. For what it's worth, Nine subjected Cole to a lie-detector test. It strongly suggested he's telling the truth.

Lindy's solicitor, Stuart Tipple - by her side through her trial and unsuccessful appeals and who is probably as familiar with the case as anyone still living - told Inquirer last night: "These kinds of claims [about human intervention in disposal of the body] have been around a long time. Many of them have been anonymous. This claim, like any other, obviously has to be properly investigated. I was impressed by the clear-cut result of the lie-detector test and I think he [Cole] believes, 100 per cent, what he's saying."

Asked if anything in Cole's testimony had struck him as obviously wrong or false, Tipple eventually answered: "No."

But the rumour, myth, sensation and misinformation that has always encircled the Chamberlain case means Cole's story remains a long way from anything approaching wide acceptance.

The first thing to strike many sceptics was that Liberty and Beyond Productions is shooting Seven's $6million drama, based on the disappearance. A publicity stunt? Seven, emphatically, says no. And it's difficult to believe Kerry Packer's rival Nine Network would have assisted such a stunt.

Has Cole simply been hunting television appearance money? Well, according to Nine, Cole wasn't paid for his ACA appearance. And Alan Howe, editor of the Sunday Herald Sun, maintains Cole became close to angry when a reporter half-jokingly told him his story might be worth a small fortune. Cole snapped that he didn't want to profit from revealing what happened. He simply wanted to get it off his chest.

Thus it's difficult to discern a motive for Cole to break his silence. That is, other than his explanation of having a desire to purge his conscience. An inveterate sensation-seeker, desperate for attention, surely would not have waited 24 years.

Should Cole's version of events ultimately be shown as correct, then the ending to this mystery will become saturated in irony. Irony will abound and flow.

Cole would have vindicated the findings of the much-criticised magistrate who conducted the first coronial inquest into Azaria's death. The Alice Springs-based Denis Barritt, who died in 1997, earned ridicule when he agreed with Lindy that a dingo had snatched the baby from the family tent. But he went on: "I find that, after her death, the body of Azaria was taken from the possession of the dingo and disposed of by an unknown method, by a person or persons unknown."

Perhaps it's in the light of forensic evidence surrounding the child's clothes, found about 4km from the campsite a week after Azaria disappeared, that Cole's testimony may gather some strength.

It could also reveal a further dose of intense irony. Because the trial prosecution team took pains to bring forward scientific evidence to try to prove rips and tears in the fabric of Azaria's singlet and jumpsuit had been inflicted not by canine teeth but with scissors or a sharp knife.

The prosecution's case was that Lindy cut Azaria's throat in the family Toyota, possibly with scissors found in the vehicle's glove-box. The clothes had been cut with scissors and laid near a dingo lair to simulate dingo involvement.

Lindy's lawyers spent hours cross-examining alternative scientists who maintained damage to the fabric could just as easily have been inflicted by a canine jaw. Now Cole says, yes, the cuts were made with scissors. But not the pair found in the Toyota. He'd carried powerful scissors, or tinsnips, in his ute and had snipped the clothing free of the body.

How credible is it? First, those scissors. Justice Trevor Morling's meticulous 1986-87 royal commission into Lindy's conviction - which was destined to clear her - heard the scissors discovered in the Toyota were old, tiny and blunt.

Morling heard from a microscopy specialist, Vivian Robinson, that fabric similar to the child's clothing had been given to dingoes to chew. The pattern of damage had been totally different to that on the jumpsuit. Robinson sounded quite certain as he testified: "As a result of what I saw [after the dingo experiments] in November 1986 I see no reason to change my conclusion that the damage [to Azaria's clothing] was inconsistent with having been caused by a dingo."

Gordon Sanson, a mammalian teeth specialist, told Morling it was "inconceivable" an indentation in the jumpsuit collar had been made by a canine. It had to have been sharp scissors or a knife.

It was the disposition of Azaria's clothing when it was accidentally discovered on August 24, 1980, that spawned much of this debate. The prosecution suggested the clothes had been left too neatly and in too good a condition to have been the work of a dingo. It was this, in part, that suggested to Barritt that human intervention had occurred.

Morling, too, dwelt on the issue in his 1987 finding: "It would have been very difficult for a dingo to have removed Azaria from her clothing without causing more damage than was observed on it ... [Some] dingo experts disagree [but] I think it is likely a dingo would have left the clothing more scattered. But it might not have done so."

In her 1990 book, Through My Eyes, Lindy writes: "The jumpsuit was sitting on its back - slightly concertinaed - with the feet rounded and pointing upwards, as if the lower part of the baby's legs were still inside."

Cole says: "They [his companions] put the clothing down on the ground in a heap and got the shovel and went to start digging a hole. They saw some lights coming along the road so they got back in the car."

Martin: "And left the clothes where they were?"

Cole: "Yes. They left the clothes there on the ground."

There's a long way to go. Lindy says Cole's claim that scissors had to be used on the buttons of the child's clothes is sheer nonsense. She says the jumpsuit didn't have buttons but press-studs and that these are still intact on the garment. The child's matinee jacket had only one button, the hole was extremely loose and it was easy to undo.

The first policeman at the site, Frank Morris, is also sceptical. He told Inquirer yesterday: "I distinctly remember having to undo the bottom three press-studs myself because I had to ensure nothing of the body remained inside [the jumpsuit]."

Then there's Cole's rifle shot. Lindy says no one at the campsite heard a shot. Yet - more irony - her former husband, Michael Chamberlain, told Seven's Today Tonight program on Tuesday he thought he recalled a sound resembling a shot.

This isn't the first time Cole has tried to tell this story. It's understood he approached Martin four years ago and agreed to an interview. He later withdrew, saying his wife was ill and "the publicity might kill her".

I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE THE OUTCOME.