SYDNEY: Police in Australia's Northern Territory are investigating claims by an elderly Melbourne man that he shot the dingo that took a nine-week old baby from an Uluru (Ayers Rock) campsite 24 years ago.
Azaria Chamberlain disappeared on August 17th, 1980, but her body was never discovered. The story captured worldwide headlines after her mother, Ms Lindy Chamberlain, told police that a dingo had taken her baby.
After two inquests and a trial Ms Chamberlain was given a life sentence in 1982 for her daughter's murder. She was freed in 1986 after the discovery of new evidence. It was not until September 1988, however, that her conviction was finally quashed.
Mr Frank Cole (78) told Melbourne's Herald Sun newspaper yesterday he found a baby in a dingo's mouth near Uluru but he did not report it to police at the time because he feared repercussions for using a firearm in a national park. "Over the past 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," Mr Cole told the newspaper.
He said he and three friends had been camping near Uluru when he went to find food for their dog. He shot what he thought was a rabbit, but discovered it was a male dingo. "As I approached it, I saw that it had a baby in its mouth," Mr Cole said.
He said he put the baby on the front seat of his pick-up truck and drove back to the campsite.
"The baby had four puncture holes in its head and one of its ears was missing... it had obviously been dead some time," Mr Cole told the paper.
He claimed that he and a friend were in tears as the baby was covered in blood, and that they decided to clean the child. He described how he had cut the buttons off the baby's jacket in order to remove it.
Mr Cole said that he and one friend fled back to Melbourne with the gun. "We left on the understanding the other blokes would go to the authorities and report finding the dingo and the baby, but they never did what they promised," Mr Cole said.
Both of those men are now dead, he said.
He claims the baby's body may have been buried in a Melbourne back yard by one of his friends.