Relative hopes dingo traces will show

Press, 7 February 1986, Page 5

Relative hopes dingo traces will show

Lindy Chamberlain’s chances of release from her Darwin prison cell could depend on scientific analysis of a baby’s jacket found near Ayers Rock, said her father-in-law, Mr Ivan Chamberlain.

The jacket was found on Monday near the body of a man who fell to his death from Ayers Rock. It has been identified by Lindy Chamberlain as the one worn by her daughter, Azaria, in 1980. Mr Chamberlain said the jacket had probably lain in a dingo den since the disappearance. He hoped it would reveal dingo traces when analysed by Victorian forensic experts.

The jacket, as Azaria’s outer clothing, would show the strongest signs of dingo attack. Whether such signs were still present would be known only when forensic tests were completed in about two months, he said. Defence lawyers should have paid more attention to the missing jacket during the trials, he said.

Even dingo traces on the jacket would not automatically free his daugh-ter-in-law, he said. “There will be arguments for and against her because the dingos frequent the area so much,” he said.

That the climber’s body

was minus a hand and a leg should disprove those who said that dingos would not eat a human body, he asserted. Mr Chamberlain said that until the latest discovery he had assumed that the jacket had been eaten by a dingo. It was made of wool and he had known of farm dogs that attacked and eaten woollen garments. He was pleased that Victorian experts would examine the jacket as that state had better facilities than those in the Northern Territory. Mr Chamberlain said the entire affair had its unbelievable aspects, especially scientific disputes

over blood found in the Chamberlain’s car, and the way evidence had been handled by the police. “If you wrote a fiction story about it you would not sell a book, because it is too far-fetched,” he said.

Until the jacket’s discovery, hopes for Lindy Chamberlain’s release had centred on an Australian senator’s private member’s bill which sought a judicial inquiry into the case. Mr Chamberlain said most Australian senators he had approached still regarded the case as a matter for the Northern Territory authorities.