MovieChat Forums > Evil Angels (1988) Discussion > Do you think she did it?

Do you think she did it?


While I was reading the news reports, I completely believed that she was innocent. And then I found this quote that she made about Meryl Streep.

"no other actress would have been able" to play her better than Meryl Streep."!!

I know that it's not much, but I mean COME ON!!! Your daughter is taken by dingos and eaten. You get charged with the murder, go to jail, finally released and all you can think about is the fact that Meryl Streep is the only person who can play you decently in the movie about what happened!

If I were Lindy, I: would move somewhere else, change my name and try to start a new life. I wouldn't want a movie being made. It's like a constant reminder of what happened. Unless you're guilty and you can't help but feel some accomplishment because you got away with it.

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"...all you can think about is the fact that Meryl Streep is the only person who can play you decently in the movie about what happened!"

How do you know that was all she was thinking about? Whats that the entire interview? What was the context? I know the movie was favorable to the parents, but it seems pretty clear that the evidence against them was extremely flawed and that a bias against the Chamberlin's religous beliefs coupled with the media spotlite gave them no shot at a fair trial (sound familiar??) Plus we all have preconceived notions on how one should react to a tragedy while most of us have not had the experience of our baby being eaten by a wild animal.

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Dude! You can't decide someone's guilt based on that! I am glad you are not a juror, because it is people like that that put her wrongfully in jail in the first place, as well as highly suspect and bogus evidence, and rabit public-opinion.

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Okay, first of all...Dude? What are you 12?

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If somebody say dude they are automatically 12 years old? That's very mature of you to assume that


ha ha ha ha ha ha he he ho ho he ho he ha ha he ha ho

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You have to remember that the homicide investigation happened years before DNA was discovered.

Joy Kuhl, the chemist who diagnosed the sound deadener as "foetal blood" was using what was thought to be the best material for the purpose. The British scientist who invented the chemical Kuhl used said later that it could confuse the two, but it was long after the investigation that he came to that conclusion.

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Well I'm sorry guys, but I do think she did it :(.
And by the way, I think Sam Neill did a wonderful job in this movie too, a pity no one mentions him.

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I haven't seen this movie yet, but I hate Sam Neil. Well, I hate his acting, not him because I don't know him. But seriously, he ruins everything he's ever been in for me. Jurassic Park, In the Mouth of Madness, Possession (ok, he was tolerable in Possession), Day Breakers, The Hunt for Red October, Event Horizon, etc... He's just one of those actors who bugs me. Can't really explain it, he just bugs me. Maybe it's his face... Yeah, it's definitely got something to do with his face. He looks like one of the elves from Lord of the Rings.

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Well science has proved that she didn't do it. Good thing you weren't a juror.

"Everything could've been anything else, and it would have just as much meaning."

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It's not the sought of thing you'd make up though is it? Imagine killing your child and then blaming a wild dog for it??

'You can have the *beeping* clock!!' - Rula Lenska in Losing Louis.

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Yes. I thought she did it 26 years ago when the death happened. Nothing has changed my mind since. (I was living in Australia at the time).

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I cannot believe anybody would be ignorant enough to think that the mother did it. Wow.

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very scary. but still, i will miss dingbats like that here on the boards.

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Nobody will miss you, though. Bye, Felicia.

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Its hard to know what to believe, I personally don't think she did it, the only thing I thought was that if it was me I wouldn't have taken a nine week old baby camping in a tent in the first place, not in the middle of the desert anyway, theres nothing wrong with camping infact I go every year at christmas to a place in The Grampians in Victoria, Australia of course I use a caravan (trailer so all from the USA) not a tent, but still I think a nine week old is a little young for camping in a tent at Ularu (Ayers Rock) in those conditions (the heat, the bugs and HELLO the Dingos).

God sent us an angel from the heavens above and called him Wentworth Miller

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I just found out about this case, after hearing "the dingo ate my baby" many years ago on seinfeld, and not knowing what the hell they were talking about. From my brief investigation into the matter, reading only a few articles on the subject, it seems fairly clear to me that she did not murder her baby.

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Those jokes, (as much as i love Seinfeld), are NOT funny. People forget that an actual, innocent baby lost her life. She would be 26 now if she had had a chance to live.

I firmly believe that Lindy Chamberlain DID NOT murder her child. Dingos are out of control in Australia (has anyone ever been to Fraser Island? Don't ever go to the toilets there alone unless you want to face some nasty native dogs or psychotic red kangaroos). The (guilty) evidence does not add up, her story never changed, she never wavered, and everything - time frames, witnesses, ect.. point to her innocence. Sensational media, a botched investigation by N.T Federal Police, and the fact that Lindy did not live up to the expectations of a 'grieving mother' when in the public eye or being thrown horrifyingly insensitive questions by the media, public, barristers, ect.. is what put her in gaol.

She was pardoned for reason - she was innocent.

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Here here!!!

Anyone who bases their opinion on things like "a newspaper article" or "we saw something on TV about her" is buying straight into the revolting game the media played in ensuring this poor woman and her family were "guilty" from the very begining.

Thank God some people on this forum werent in the jury process - poor Lindy would of been hung for something any intelligent, independently minded human being knows she didnt do...

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Listen...either get a sense of humor....or get eaten by a dingo yourself!!!

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Listen...either get a sense of humor....or get eaten by a dingo yourself!!!


LOLOL here here!

anyway...no i dont think she did it. i always thought she was innocent...now more then ever since that guy finally came out like 25 years later, wantign to clear his conscience before he dies. that he killed a dingo carrying the dead baby & never reported azaria to the police.

And this is the car that Jeremy had chosen....because he's an idiot.~Top Gear

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Frank Cole's story about shooting the dingo that had a child's remains in it's mouth, and burying the remains in Melboure is untrue. Investigators couldn't find any evidence to back up his claims, and he's been written off as a lonely old man looking for attention.

He is my neighbour, and is just an old man, with a few problems. He's had a few serious falls, one in particular around the time of this claim. It's more likely he dreamt it, or hallucinated it. It's definitely not true, he made another statement about being involved in another high profile murder case a couple years after his Azaria claims, also not true.

In saying that though, I truly believe Lindy is innocent, and that a dingo took little Azaria, consuming her entirely, and that is why no remains have been found.

You're Perfect Yes It's True.... But Without Me You're Only You

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I just found out about this case about a week ago. How terrible. :( I completely believe that Lindy is innocent. And I don't think there is anything wrong with taking a young baby camping. Especially considering the circumstances. They weren't alone in the middle of nowhere. There were other campers nearby. The other campers said that they had heard dingoes in the area. No one saw Lindy murder her baby, and don't you think that if she had murdered the baby that someone would have seen something? There's no running water in the desert, so where would Lindy have washed up? I just can't believe that a jury believed she did it. Of course, I haven't heard what the prosecution had to say. But come on! How would Lindy have been able to murder a baby w/o getting blood all over herself, get rid of the body, ditch the clothing, and create dingo tracks? All without catchign the attention of a nearby camper? And what would Lindy's motive have been? She had 2 older children who she had raised w/o harm. And in case anyone is still doubting, lets not forget that she has now raised a 3rd child w/o harm.

The whole thing makes me sad. It breaks my heart that this happened to Azaria. I can't imagine what it must feel like to lose a baby under those circumstances. And then to be accused of murdering your baby. Ugh! Awful!

And as for the original poster. That quote does not sound crazy to me. To me, it sounds like she wanted her story to get out b/c the public had only heard what the media had to say about her. And she wanted to make sure that someone was spot on in portraying her. If I wanted to get my story out there, I wouldn't want a terrible actor to portry me. I'd want someone who could actually act to portray me.

"The hideousness of that foot will haunt my dreams forever."

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"in those conditions (the heat, the bugs and HELLO the Dingos)."

Wouldn't August be wintertime in Australia?

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Yeah it is winter in august well the last month of winter, but its pretty much always hot in The Northern Territory which is the top end of Australia (where Ularu (Ayers Rock) is).

God sent us an angel from the heavens above and called him Wentworth Miller

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Ayer's Rock is at 25.23 degrees S in latitude - technically, it's slightly below the Tropic of Cancer.

In Australia, anything in the "tropics" - i.e. north of the Tropic of Cancer doesn't actually have seasons - there is no distinct summer, winter, fall, and autumn. There is the "wet" and the "dry" season. Both are hot. My point is that even though August is winter in Australia, in that part of the country, during the day, it would still be hot.

(I lived for a while in Darwin, which is in the Northern Territory).

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Sorry, but it sounds like you're a little ignorant of conditions in the area.

Azaria died on the 17th of August, 1980.

the heat


Temperature ranges in August are:
Record High = 35.2 degrees C.
Average High = 22.6 degrees C.

(Mt Isa, where Michael Chamberlain was pastor has higher temperatures)

the bugs


I think you could probably count on one hand how many deaths have been attributed to bugs in Uluru's campgrounds. You know, if you do a search for 'deaths at Uluru' the first page is entirely about people falling to death in climbing accidents... so the bugs don't rank highly.

(Mt Isa, where Michael Chamberlain was pastor has a similar kind of 'bug' count).

the Dingos


Sorry, but nobody, and I mean nobody considered the dingoes to be a threat. So much so that it was one of the main things that stood against the Chamberlains.

They were also experienced parents (they had two other children) so knew what they were doing. Accidents happen all the time for even the most well prepared, but something like this happening is like lightning striking - you can't prepare!


SpiltPersonality

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Lindy may be a bit weird ... creepy even ... but she was certainly innocent of murdering her daughter.

But you ARE Blanche ... and I AM.

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There are numerous fatal and non-fatal attacks recorded on children both for territorial and presumed predatory reasons. The reason the children in those attacks weren't eaten was because they were too large to take from the site of the attack and help arrived soon afterward, (too late in some unfortunate instances). A baby the size of Azaria would be quite easy for a dingo to carry off bodily as has been demonstrated in tests associated with the Chamberlain inquiry. The matinee jacket, which the police refused for years to believe existed, was eventually located in an isolated, well hidden area adjacent to a dingo lair and was taken as strong evidence for the dingo predation.

People keep them as pets? ... they are well known for being of unreliable temperament and are never kept by anyone with any sense, around small children, even when hand raised, which the dingoes in question were not.

Flesh, to a predator, is flesh ... there is nothing special about human flesh that distinguishes it to a hungry animal. The final inquiry completely exonerated Lindy Chamberlain, and it became obvious that much of the evidence was erroneous and malicious. Dingo behaviour experts Testified that a dingo was perfectly capable of having carried out the attack ... your argument, such as it is, is nonsense.

But you ARE Blanche ... and I AM.

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in addition to my previous reply ... I actually live in an area where wild dingos are common, I have experience of the wild and I know people who have them as pets, and none of them would leave a child unattended with them ... and anyway, people also keep tigers as pets .. I suppose they are incapable of devouring a human baby too?

In the little village where I live, which is one of only two places in Australia where wild red-deer are to be found, in the 1920's there was a major drought ... a big herd of red deer came down from the hills to drink at the local weir ...packs of dingoes slaughtered and ate the lot, and a red deer is considerably bigger than a nine week-old baby

But you ARE Blanche ... and I AM.

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The most recent fatal attack was on an eight year old boy at Fraser island ... you look it up, I'm not here to do all the work for you ... a witness at the Chamberlain enquiry also described how her daughter was approached and attacked with an attempt by the dingo to drag her from the van. She suffered severe lacerations to the legs a matter of days before the Azaria incident.

Are you seriously trying to tell me that if a hungry dingo was presented with some red -deer meaat and some human meat, it would turn its nose up at the human meat and say ... "oh, no ... that is human meat and therefore I must not eat it"? I don't say that dingos regularly "feast on human flesh", (a bit of hyperbole there), but that as an opportunistic predator, there's nothing that would distinguish to a dingo, a baby from any other prey of manageable size.

(... by the way I WAS wrong about the timing of the mass-attacks on the red-deer ... I looked it up and it was in the fifties). There were plenty of bones left on that occasion, it is very small animals that are consumed whole, (usually marsupials)...but I don't see your point here as the baby was carried away bodily and no skeletal remains were ever found.
Do you have any idea of the size and wildness of the search area? ... and the infinitely small likelihood of finding remains? ... the matinee-jacket was found by an almost miraculous coincidence ... again, you look it up if your so fired up about it all.

...but I am now ready to concede any point to you, including that the moon is blue, because I'm bored now and you must have many calls of a similar nature to make in the neighbourhood.

But you ARE Blanche ... and I AM.

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I remember this when it actually happened, i was a little lad, and my sister was teh same age as Azaria. I remember my parents being very doubtful of Lindy's story, and questionning how the baby's remains could have just vanished. All through my childhood and teen years this story has fascinated me, and i could never truly make my mind up as to Lindy's guilt. Having just returned home to the UK from a two year trip round Australia i can hand on heart say that i believe in Lindy's innocense completely. i stopped at a rest area in N.T to fill my vehicle with water etc and myself with food, and came face to face with a few of these animals. No one will EVER convince me that they are not capapble of hunting humans, having seen it first hand, but the whole point id they are WILD HUNTERS. they wont differentiate between types of meat?? dinner is dinner is dinner. the other reason that i believe her implicitly is the location. The sheer size of barren space in and around Uluru has to be seen to be believed, and moreover the atmosphere and "feeling" of the place is just eerie. I dont think there would be any chance of ever finding the little one's remains.

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Im glad you agree, but shhhh! ...You might get the somewhat rabid IsisVista started again, and I swear that if I get one more message from that direction, the air will turn blue from my "beeping".
But you ARE Blanche ... and I AM.

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Apologies in advance for the length of this post!


I lived in Alice Springs for over a year and worked routinely at Uluru and Kata Tjuta.

First of all: In August, it is mildly warm during the day, and freezing at night. There is no humidity in the centre of Australia - so it is also a dry heat/cold which makes the temperature seem lower. The person who was comparing Centralian temperature with Darwin temperature is an idiot - for lack of a better word. I'm not quite sure what that has to do with anything about the case though.

People who say she shouldn't have taken a 10 week old baby on a camping trip may have a point - it would be a real burden to have to look after a baby that needy on a holiday. HOWEVER. I wouldn't say it was irresponsible. You can create a very comfortable camping site with no fewer luxuries than you would have in a cheap motel. Uluru is so unbelievably tourist friendly - then and now - and the Chamberlains were from outback Queensland. The outback did not daunt this family. Having lived there myself, it is not the uncivilised starkness that everyone believes it to be. Sure, driving through the general outback is very isolated, but once you hit the Lasseter highway (the road to uluru) it is pretty crowded by Centralian standards. Uluru itself is even more family/tourist friendly.

As for the debate about dingoes - they are a type of wolf, not a wild dog. People in Australia may keep them as pets, but only if they are raised from birth. You don't just find a dingo and adopt it. They are wild animals. Even ones raised from birth are kept under very tight wraps. The only one i know of being kept as a pet was near Stuarts Well just south of Alice Springs, a large cattle station and even then the dingo was chained up all day. The dingo was raised from a small pup but even her owner didn't trust him.

Dingoes are not like other wolves. They are solitary hunters. Yes they live in packs - but the packs are spread out over many kilometres which is why you can hear them howling sometimes - they are trying to figure out the location of other members of their pack so that they know whether to spread out more or move closer together. They only ever come together as a group during mating season, and even then its only to mate. Because they are solitary hunters, they are by nature COWARDS. They do not attack anything bigger than them, because they don't have the luxury of other dingoes covering their backs. They only attack things they know they can beat - like small animals.

They have a natural fear of humans and normally steer clear of them. However, if humans show them friendliness and feed them - slowly but surely this fear fades and they become more and more bold. I've seen this first hand at Fraser Island AND at Kings Canyon in central Australia where tourists have fed dingoes. I once woke up in my swag in the middle of the outback to a dingo smelling my face, and i had a mate who woke up with a dingo CHEWING ON HIS FOOT.

I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that a dingo saw the baby as an easy target, and was hanging around the uluru camp in the hopes of being fed by a human. It had the opportunity to take the baby and so it did.

People who believe Lindy is guilty should rot in jail.

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I think she's innocent. There is no way she could kill her child, hide the body in the camera bag and then clean herself up (as the way she was accused of murdering azaria would have resulted in alot of blood) in the time frame they say she did it in. Also if she did it in the car like they say, she wouldn't have had time to clean the blood and i don't think she'd be as dumb to just leave a bunch of blood in the car with all the cops and people around. There was a professional aboriginal tracker who claimed that there were drag marks consistent with a dingo carrying something appoximately Azaria's size. But for some reason his evidence was discredited. It was also discovered that much of the evidence was tampered with(mostly uninttensional)or ignored completely. I don't believe that the old man who came forward and claimed he found Azaria had anything to do with what happened but was just loking for attention or something just as stupid. I do believe there was human intervention but not from him. Though why you'd watch a family being torn apart and not come forward is just sickening. In my personal opinion Lindy is innocent.

sTaY iN sChOoL, sAvE tHe EnViRoNmEnT, aNd LeArN tO fLy

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Lindy it seems paid a huge price for even speaking to the media it totally blew up in her face it is disgusting that she got locked up in the 1st place.

Just another example of how distorted and powerful the media really is it's pathetic that we grasp on and believe everything they say.

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Why would you take your newborn (2 1/2 months) camping in the wilderness? I wouldn't even taken the older children due to confirmed dingo attacks earlier in the week.

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i thik she killed her body because when i seen her on tv she had an evil twinkl in her eye and she was a part of a cult...not a normal religion.

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i thik she killed her body because when i seen her on tv she had an evil twinkl in her eye and she was a part of a cult...not a normal religion.
Seventh-Day Adventism is a "normal" religion, not a cult.

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"I've always resisted the notion that knowledge ruined paradise." Prof. Xavier

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Obviously you haven't done much research on the subject. Oh, and the media can make people look however they want. They do it constantly. Half of what you read about people isn't true. Any media outlet is in it for MONEY, not the truth. Sensational stories sell better. If you had done an ounce of research on this subject you would know she is actually innocent. Oh, and Seventh Day Adventist is NOT a cult. It's an accepted form of Christanity like Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist, etc. They tend to be a little more strict; i.e. they are vegetarians, but they certainly aren't a cult.

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Some people do consider them a "cult" of sorts...but mostly because they are somewhat insular and restrictive.

By that standard, the Amish would also be a "cult"...so unless there's evidence that people cannot come and go from the church as they please, or that they face reprisal or estrangement from those who are still members, including their families if they decided to leave, then I wouldn't consider them a cult.

There's a checklist for dangerous and destructive cults...and I can't see how they would fulfill that criteria at all.

As for being an "accepted form of Christianity"...Well...not really.

I don't want to go into the ins-and-outs of comparative theology, nor the whole sordid history of the SDA church, but suffice to say that there's a lot of doctrines of the SDA church that are either not based in scripture, or actually run counter to scripture.

Most bible-believing Christians would reject the doctrines of the SDA church as being false, and hence not see them as an "accepted form of Christianity" at all.

That being said, even though some of their beliefs are restrictive, can run counter to scripture, there's nothing in there that would justify the ridiculous rumors that were circulated around the time of this event.

No sacrifices to Satan...no witchcraft...no call to cleanse the sins of the SDA church with your child's blood, etc.

I would call them "pseudo-Christian"...which some may consider a spiritual hazard...but physically, they're harmless.

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Why would you take your newborn (2 1/2 months) camping in the wilderness? I wouldn't even taken the older children due to confirmed dingo attacks earlier in the week.


Yes, because doing something irresponsible like that makes her the sole one to blame. In the same way we should blame a girl who gets raped because she wasn't smart enough to steer clear of the dark alley way.

Sig...

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Night lex,

I don't advocate rape. NO RAPE VICTIM IS EVER AT FAULT! I was raised not to go down the dark alley, not to get into a car with strangers, always stay with the group, not to place myself in precarious positions. Where my parents advocating rape, no! There were believers in personal responsibility. Yes, some people have taken precautions and still were assaulted. This occurs because you can't control the actions of others or wild animals for that matter. You can only control yours. I wished this was a world of peace and absolute safety, but it's not and I would take all the precautions I can.

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But the way you worded your other post gave me the impression you were trying to put some of the blame on Lindy Chamberline for a Dingo eating your baby, which is similar to putting some blame on a victim of rape (or even assault or murder) because they made the mistake of going down a dark road. It doesn't mean you advocate rape or anything, just comes across as though you are victim blaming.

Though, I could have easily just misinterpreted what you said.

Sig...

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