Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode is not suitable for children to listen to
or overhear. It may contain course language, adult themes, and
graphic descriptions. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners are advised
that the following program may contain the names of people
who have died. A perfect storm, the true story of
(00:22):
the Chamberlains.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
I think Azaria would have lasted a matter of minutes.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
There were certain people within the Northern Territory Police who
were determined to get her.
Speaker 4 (00:34):
People were saying to me, Oh, you're going there to
see that woman who killed a child.
Speaker 5 (00:38):
Bad things happen to good people.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Episode eight, Fresh Evidence.
Speaker 6 (00:47):
Hello, I'm John Buck. After I spoke to Duncan McNabb,
the former New South Wales detective and private investigator, something
stuck in my head. He said to me, take a
deep breath, step back and look at the whole scene.
What's going on? Well, an innocent couple are sitting in
(01:10):
a holding cell under a Darwin courthouse waiting for a
jury of nine men and three women to decide their fate.
Why were they there despite there being no motive, no weapon,
no opportunity. Lyndy and Michael Chamberlain were there because their
statements to the police varied enough to arouse suspicion, their
(01:33):
odd manner and religious beliefs bothered the public, and they
were there because the Crown had presented compelling evidence of
a murder. Iash retired Judge Kenneth Rafael Sally Shaw, Stuart
Tipple and the journalists Linda Scott, Malcolm Brown and Paul
White to take us back to Friday, October twenty ninth,
(01:57):
nineteen eighty.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Two, before the jury retired to consider its verdict. Justice
Muirhead said the evidence had shown that Lindy Chamberlain was
a loving mother and that they should take into account
her proven good character. Despite initial fears. He said the
trial had not been a sensation and that all had
apparently gone according.
Speaker 7 (02:15):
To the law.
Speaker 8 (02:16):
Well, the judge sums up, and there's summing up usually
takes the form of going through the evidence and reminding
the jury of their responsibilities to come to a view
about things with the degree of certainty that's contained in
the phrase beyond reasonable doubt.
Speaker 9 (02:38):
And you've got the justice system and you're hoping, look
there's a judge presiding over and the truth willowed. You're
sort of holding on to that that it's going to
work out because.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
It's the truth.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
James heads. The very last thing he said was Lindy
and an independent witness heard the baby cry at a
time in on the Crowns in an area the baby
would have been dead. They left that ringing there.
Speaker 10 (03:04):
He is.
Speaker 5 (03:05):
They retired on a Friday, and we were thinking that, yeah,
well it could go all weekend here.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Well, having covered the first six weeks of the trial,
and to my mind there was certainly reasonable doubt. And
then I think the jury was only out for six hours,
and to me it seemed like they just wanted an
easy resolution. They all wanted to go home.
Speaker 11 (03:29):
Well, the forensic evidence was hard fought, and somes they
discredited or not discredited. But she didn't have time. That
was the simple matter. Whether you liked her or didn't
like it, She did not have time to do what.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Was alleged of her.
Speaker 11 (03:44):
There was absolutely no way she is guilty.
Speaker 5 (03:48):
So when the jury came into court, it was pretty
obvious to me that things didn't look quite so good.
They did not make eye contact, But I guess I
still have this belief that there was no one in
the world they couldn't have a reasonable doubt.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
At this point, the jury filed in and mister Justice
me my head said to the foreman, what do you
please stand? He asked the foreman, have you reached a verdict?
He said, yes, you're on a How do you find
Alice Lynn Chamberlain. The foreman replied guilty?
Speaker 5 (04:20):
And how do you think when the verdicts were delivered?
I was just shell shok Absolutely shell shock.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
There was a shock went right through the courtroom. Lindy
gasped as though she'd been shot. Her mouth gaped. Michael
stood there rigidly.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
A lot of the evidence pointed to the guilty so
and the Australian public seemed to want to find her guilty,
so they found it guilty. It just seemed like justice
gone crazy.
Speaker 11 (04:53):
I don't think anyone was expecting guilty after was it
six hours?
Speaker 3 (05:02):
At this point Justice Miller had turned to Lindy Chamberlain.
He said, you've been found guilty of murder by verdict
of a jury. There's only one sentence I can pass
upon you, and that sentence is you'll be imprisoned with
hard labor for life.
Speaker 5 (05:17):
And of course in the Northern Territory. The judge doesn't
have any discretion. Only one option that was to sentence
Lindy to life in prison of hard labor, which he
did there and then that was really shocking.
Speaker 11 (05:32):
Just to get life like that out of the blue
on the spot was astonishing. Barker presented it as a
dingo or a murder, and obviously the jury picked murder.
Speaker 9 (05:47):
And we're utterly shared it, utterly, utterly shared it.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
He deferred the sentencing of Michael. Then he retired, the
court started adjourneying, the jury went out. I called after them,
you pack of bastards.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
So straight away Lindy and Michael are taken down below
the court. There's a cell under there, and we file
down there and everyone's totally shell shocked and we get
down there and Michael turns to me and he just says, so,
this is British justice for you. And although that's many
(06:35):
years ago, I'm still wanted by that, and it's something
I keep hearing in my head and it's one of
the things that has kept me determined to try and
improve the system because the system failed. The system let
us down, and I've got absolutely no doubt it's let
(06:55):
other people down and it will continue to do so.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Seven years.
Speaker 6 (07:03):
Reporter Paul White rushed out to begin live interviews. As
his cameraman set up, he captured the sounds of other
journalists and members of the public leaving the court room.
You can hear their astonishment over the very guilty.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Guilty.
Speaker 12 (07:21):
The verdicts in Missus Chamberlain's case guilty for mister Chamberlain, guilty.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Missus Chamberlain said.
Speaker 6 (07:27):
The news was broadcast across Australia and the world.
Speaker 13 (07:31):
The end of the tale came suddenly, less than two
minutes after the jury delivered its verdict.
Speaker 6 (07:36):
Lindy Chamberlain was.
Speaker 10 (07:37):
On her way to serve a life sentence with hard labor.
Speaker 7 (07:43):
The night that the jury brought in their verdict. I
was home in bed, right.
Speaker 6 (07:48):
That's interesting. Did someone wake you up?
Speaker 10 (07:50):
What happened?
Speaker 14 (07:51):
You're in bed?
Speaker 7 (07:52):
Someone did wake me up and coerced me in the
came out and having a beer reluctantly, I went, but yeah,
there was no grave elation on my part. It was
just another result.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
But your colleagues fell differently.
Speaker 7 (08:08):
They did. They were more called it in twos than
I was.
Speaker 6 (08:13):
Why's that?
Speaker 7 (08:15):
I don't know?
Speaker 6 (08:17):
That's Detective Sergeant Graham Childwood, the lead investigator on the
Chamberlain past.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Basically he agreed to speak.
Speaker 6 (08:25):
About it for the first time. I've only just finished
that interview with him, and it covers his involvement from
the first day to the last. My interview with Graham
Childwood went for more than an hour, so I'll edit
down the rest and share it in the next episode.
The twelve person jury had ignored Sally Shaw's testimony that
(08:47):
Azaria Chamberlain was alive when the Crown said she was dead.
Sally and Lindy, two mothers from very different backgrounds, met
over a barbecued a rock and were now joined in
one way or another forever.
Speaker 9 (09:05):
On the night when I meet her, a lovely young
mum and doting mother. She was tired, but she was
happy and cheery and yeah, just a lovely person. I
was pleased I met her.
Speaker 6 (09:24):
I'm still in awe of Sally for her strength and
her compassion and her support of Lindy at the expense
of her own plans and friendships.
Speaker 9 (09:37):
Whilst you could forgive some people for believing everything in
the media, there was disappointment that people close to you
believed what they read in the media and didn't believe
you like, we must have been duped in some way.
We even had arguments with people where we agreed to
differ so that we could still remain friends, you know,
(09:59):
things like that. It was just I guess I can't
blame them because there's so much in the media, there's
so much out there that's wrong, and they weren't there
that we were, so we know the truth.
Speaker 6 (10:13):
You know, Stuart Tipple wasn't at Airs Rock on August seventeenth,
nineteen eighty, but he may as well have been. The
chamberlains have dominated his life too. My guess is that
you couldn't wish for a better lawyer or friend in
a crisis than Stuart. His clients were guilty, all seemed lost,
(10:40):
and yet he kept going.
Speaker 14 (10:44):
Well.
Speaker 5 (10:45):
From the court, Michael's granted bail and bail to appear
on the Monday, and Michael of course doesn't want to
be alone, and so he and I make the walk
back to my hotel room and the travelers. We talked
until the early hours of the morning. You know, what's
(11:07):
going to happen. He's looking at a jail sentence, what's
going to happen? To know, the children, So we talk
about all those things and then eventually he goes his way,
I go mine.
Speaker 6 (11:24):
With the verdict handed down on a Friday night, the
Chamberlain's lawyer asked the judge, the late James Muirhead, if
he could sentence Michael Chamberlain the next day rather than
make him wait all weekend.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
And on the Saturday morning we all assemble there and
the Michael was standing up like a man before a
firing squad, waiting for him to waiting to be sentenced.
Speaker 6 (11:46):
Meuwerhead was the son of a Chief magistrate and he's
served with the Australian Armed Forces during the Second World War.
After the Chamberlain case, he ran the Royal Commission into
Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and he was awarded the Companion
of the Order of Australia for public service and service
to the law. Murehead was known for his compassion and
(12:09):
his sense of fairness. Publicly, all he ever said about
the Chamberlains was that it was a very sad case.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
And Muirhead said that the children needed a father, that
he had done what any husband would do is to
try to protect his wife.
Speaker 6 (12:32):
Malcolm Brown isn't like any journalist I've ever worked with.
He remembers details that most forget. He's been invaluable to
me in understanding just what it was really like inside
those courtrooms when all we have is an artist's sketch.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
At the point it slowly sank into Michael that he
was not going to go to jail, and at that
point that he was sobbing and crying in that witness box,
and one of the lawyer's Green Caverner from the Northern
Dirty later became a coroner, was trying to stop himself
crying as well. It was a terrible thing to have happened.
Speaker 5 (13:12):
The immediate concern was, well, Lindy was about to have
this baby. She's now in jail. What's going to happen
to the baby?
Speaker 10 (13:21):
Now?
Speaker 5 (13:22):
From our research, it was quite common for mothers to
have babies when they were in prison and to be
given the custody of that child, and so we made
an application for that to happen.
Speaker 13 (13:36):
Earlier today, the Northern Territory government announced that Missus Lindy Chamberlain,
who is to give birth later this week, will not
be allowed to keep the baby in jail, as this
would not be in the child's best interests.
Speaker 5 (13:49):
So Michael was then having to make arrangements, So what's
going to happen to the baby? How am I going
to care for the baby?
Speaker 15 (13:57):
Lindy Chamberlain was taken from Barama Jail after five o'clock
this morning and admitted to Darwin Hospital.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
A little over three and a half hours later, she
gave birth to a healthy baby girl.
Speaker 6 (14:07):
Lindy Chamberlain was unable to speak with the media during
this time, but some years later she spoke to seven's
Terry Willacy about the birth of her daughter, Carlia. I
think it's really important to share this at this moment.
Speaker 14 (14:24):
And I had, I think the most painful birth that
I've had with my four children, because I worked so
hard against that birth because I knew a minute she
(14:44):
was born she was no longer mine and I did
not want her to be born. Every time the nurses
to say to me push, I do everything in my
power not to push whole back, and I ended up
with a very painful delivery, and I knew I was
doing it, but I just couldn't control those instincts because
(15:11):
I just did not want to let her go.
Speaker 10 (15:17):
And your feelings to Carlia when she was born.
Speaker 14 (15:22):
I wanted so badly to hold her, and yet I
didn't want to hold her, and because I knew if
I held her, I wouldn't want to let her go.
And I think the nurse sensed that because she just
dumped her blood and all just on top of me,
and she was there and I just instinctively grabbed her,
(15:44):
and as I thought, I just didn't want to let
her go. And finally, when I had to, I said
to the nurse, take her and get her out of
here quick, and don't come back before I have to go,
because I can't bear going. Last night, she's left behind.
Speaker 5 (16:03):
And I just.
Speaker 14 (16:06):
Couldn't bear to think of her as my child when
she was born, because I knew I couldn't have her,
and I knew I couldn't handle that. I just did
my best to think of her as a baby that wasn't.
Speaker 5 (16:18):
Mine, and the baby was taken from her. And we
made an application for bail, and to be honest, of
all the proceedings that I never thought we would succeeded.
That was that was the one I thought, Who on
earth is every going to give bail to someone who's
(16:39):
been convicted of murder of gar after a newborn baby.
But anyway, I did what I had to do, and
I got some terrific psychiatric evidence. She was assessed. And
the good thing is there's never been any suggestion that
Lindy's had any mental illness, and whoever sees her just says, look,
she's the sanest, most level person, and you get ever me.
(17:02):
And so with this application, we made the bar application
and I couldn't believe it. So two out of three
judges ground a bail. So Carlia was born in jail,
Lindy comes home.
Speaker 6 (17:17):
We need to take a quick break and we'll return
to a perfect storm in just a moment. I spoke
with former Federal Circuit Court judge Kenneth Rafael about the
appeal process that the Chamberlain's now faced.
Speaker 8 (17:30):
There are three sort of ways in which you deal
with an appeal. You know, you can you can say
that there's some fault in the conduct of the trial.
You can say there's some fault in the judge you're
summing up of the trial. And you can say that
based upon the evidence, no reasonable cury could convict. So
(17:51):
there's a very strong resistance to overturning cury verdicts, reason
for good reason, because if that happens all the time,
if that happens frequently, then there's what's the point of
a jury.
Speaker 6 (18:05):
Along with Sally Shaw and Stuart Tipple, there's another person
who never gave up on Lindy Barry Botcher.
Speaker 16 (18:12):
When the Chamberlains were found guilty, I was shattered. I
didn't know what to do.
Speaker 6 (18:20):
Yes, he's the poor scientist whose testimony was torn apart
in the trial, and he's the sweating witness that the
jury struggled to understand.
Speaker 16 (18:31):
I went to Stuart and said Stuart that I will
continue making inquiries about the test solution for fetal hemoglobin.
Speaker 6 (18:44):
During the trial and in the years that followed, Barry
was told by his peers and fellow scientists that he
was out of his depth, his tests were wrong, and
worse that he was ruining his career by tying himself
to the Chamberlain's innocence.
Speaker 5 (19:02):
I received a call from Derek Roff, who was the
head ranger, and he was shell shocked by the verdict,
and he was particularly concerned about something and said I
need to come and I need to come and see you.
And he said he had not been given the opportunity
(19:25):
of disclosing that where the clothing was found, there was
evidence that the dingo had been there, and he pointed
out the photographs where that had happened. And so I
took a statement from him and an afphidavit, and we
used that as part of the appeal grounds that there
(19:48):
was important evidence that he had not been able to give.
Speaker 6 (19:52):
What I couldn't understand was why didn't Derek Roff tell
the jury this when he was called to testify. I've
since discovered that Roff was a Crown witness and they
only wanted certain facts from him presented to the jury.
They would ask certain questions and he'd be compelled to
answer them, but they didn't ask about the dingo poor
(20:15):
Prince near Azaria's clothes. And of course the defense lawyers
didn't know at the time that he had more to tell.
So in nineteen eighty two, all of the facts weren't
presented to the jury. And that's just the way the
system worked and still works. In his summary at the
(20:36):
Royal Commission in nineteen eighty seven, Justice Marling said, quote
mister Roff's evidence cannot be lightly dismissed unquote. In Lyndy
Chamberlain's trial. It was the Chamberlain's defense team of Glenn Miller,
Stuart Tipple and Michael McHugh took Professor Carroll and Derreck
(20:58):
Roff's evidence to the Federal Court, but they knew that
it was unlikely to be accepted.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Council for the Chamberlains presented twenty one grounds of appeal
and sought to introduce fresh evidence concerning dingoes at Airs
Rock and the testing of baby's blood.
Speaker 5 (21:13):
You know, once they read the evidence, surely they will
accept that there was a reasonable doubt and we have
got a hope with an unsafe and unsatisfactory verdicts.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
The Chamberlains were led him to court just a few
seconds before the full bench, headed by Sir Nigel Bowen,
took their seats. Sir Nigel then said it was the
court's decision that the appeals be dismissed, and he ordered
that Lindy Chamberlain.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
The appeals called judges rather let men down. They were
they were quite they weren't done favor of the channels
at all. I didn't see, I didn't think, and that
they were committed to upholding the jury verdict if they could,
because that the whole legalcism based on the jury and
you don't have a turn then, and this is a
very good reason. I felt that they had a good chance,
(22:00):
but holdable dead.
Speaker 15 (22:02):
When no win for Lindy Chamberlain, it was her first
full day back behind bars since the Federal Court rejected
her appeal against her conviction for the murder of baby
as Area. Her husband Michael, took their youngest daughter Klia
to the prison in Sydney's inner western suburbs to be
breast fed just after midday.
Speaker 6 (22:23):
Despite the loss in federal court, the Chamberlain's church rallied
around them. We found this interview by seven years reporter
Laurie Brennan with Pastor Russell Krantz.
Speaker 17 (22:34):
Here as a young couple who from the very very
beginning of the case has have steadfastly maintained their complete
and absolutinessnce and it must be very frustrating for them
to feel that somehow they might not be able to
carry their case to the highest steshcalons of the Jewish
Rudents in Australia.
Speaker 10 (22:55):
Regg asked me if I'd like to copy any particular
section of transcript.
Speaker 6 (23:01):
Adventists like Les Smith volunteered to help out with what
was to become a High court challenged by the Chamberlains.
Despite being an engineer with the health food company Sanitarium,
Smith wasn't too proud to help out with photocopying.
Speaker 10 (23:18):
And I knew that there'd been some challenge in the
court on the spray pattern in this metal bracket, and
so he gave me that part of the transcript to copy.
Speaker 5 (23:31):
The thing that troubled me the most was that under
dash spray.
Speaker 10 (23:34):
So one of the.
Speaker 5 (23:35):
People that came knocking on my door was a fellow
called Les Smith. He said, can I see you? I
think I can help.
Speaker 6 (23:42):
Smith had studied the metal bracket presented at the trial,
a bracket that, according to missus Coole, had baby's blood
sprayed on it.
Speaker 10 (23:51):
If the Crown was correct in this, then there was
no question the toll that Lindy Chamberlain was guilty, because
they said this is human blood with the marker fetal
hemoglobin in it that disappears from human blood by about
the age of nine months. And then they had two
(24:13):
pathologists and both of them said this has the appearance
of a spurting wound, an arterial spray.
Speaker 5 (24:22):
He came to my office and he obviously came from
a scientific background. Academically, his qualification very poor. All he
had was a diploymer. So he had a fellow that
was a scientist with a diploma, squaring off against the
most qualified forensic witnesses in the world.
Speaker 10 (24:45):
But I can remember asking him if he would like
to know what the material on that metal bracket was,
and his exact reply to me was would I ever said.
Speaker 5 (25:00):
To me, Look, I'm happy to do whatever you want
me to do, But he said, I want to be
sure that whatever I do sees the light to day.
If I want your assurance that if it's damaging, it's
not going to be hidden. And I said, las were
on the same page. I'm not in this to hide things.
(25:23):
I want the truth.
Speaker 6 (25:25):
During the trial, the Crown had presented the bracket taken
from the Chamberlain's tarannica, which it claimed had Azaria's blood
spray on it, and the defense had also found and
presented a bracket from a different taranic car.
Speaker 10 (25:42):
And I made the observation that since they had already
seen two of them, there was a good chance, a
statistical chance, that there might be more around and they
were going to be in that model car. And so
it was a matter of going around every car like
that that we might see I might see in a
(26:02):
wrecker or for sale in a used car yard, and
simply looking under the dashboard and seeing if there was
a plate with that marking on it. Period, but every Saturday,
I'd get the Saturday paper and look at all the adverts.
I went around all of the car wreckers, I went
(26:25):
around all of the used car dealers, and eventually I
turned up not one, but several brackets with that appearance.
When we got the first bracket, I looked at it
under a microscope, and I noticed that there were microscopic
spots of paint over the over the spray, over all
(26:50):
of the sprays, and in every case the color of
the microscopic dots matched the color of the exactly. So
I knew that whatever was on that bracket got onto
the bracket before the car had been painted in at
(27:11):
the GMH. On the GMH assembly line, the very first
one that I found, a guy had a car like this.
He'd driven into the car wreckers. He was after something
for his car, and I asked him if i'd if
he minded, if i'd look under the under the dashboard
(27:35):
of his car, and he said, no, no problem, go
right ahead and bingo there it was the very thing
that I wanted. And I explained to him the very
the very reason why I was interested, and would he
allow me to cut it out? And he said, listen, mate,
I didn't murder anybody in this car and no, so
(27:59):
he stood the implication straight away.
Speaker 5 (28:03):
Within a couple of months he came back absolutely ecstatic,
but said, what I need to do is I need
to see the original spray.
Speaker 10 (28:15):
Where is it?
Speaker 5 (28:16):
Well, this time we'd lost the Federal Court appeal, so
all the exhibits had gone down to Canberra and we're
in the High Court custody and.
Speaker 10 (28:25):
I said to Stuart, I predict that we'll see yellow
dots of paint, microscopic dots of paint. I predict that
we'll see a particular shape of material.
Speaker 5 (28:41):
So we flew down to the High Court, the registrar
was there, got out the under dash spray with a
little metal bracket with a spray on it.
Speaker 10 (28:54):
Blood has a different characteristic than habitumen compound. The tuminus
compound has virtually no water content, and when it dries
it doesn't change shape. But blood formed a crater in
the center.
Speaker 5 (29:16):
Las gets out a little magnifying glass that is of
ten power and he trains it on this spray pattern,
and he says, have a look at this. And even
under ten power, I could see that whatever that material was,
it had spray paint over it.
Speaker 10 (29:37):
And at that stage I knew without doubt that there
was a dreadful problem in the prosecution case.
Speaker 5 (29:46):
What had been tested could not possibly be blood, and
the results of joy call were now all in question.
If she had determined that that material was fetal blood,
then none of it tests could be relied on. And
so what he realized was that the spray pattern was
(30:09):
actually a sound deadening compound.
Speaker 10 (30:11):
And then I went and bought the front end of
the car, and I took this front end of the
car into a darkened workshop, and I shone a light
through the particular place where I predicted the spray would
come from, and the light fell only on that part
(30:32):
of the bracket that contained the spray. And so at
that stage I was very confident that the material on
the bracket had come through that particular hole in the
wheel arch of the car.
Speaker 5 (30:49):
So when the car was being manufactured, the spray material
would be sprayed in the wheel arches and the underneath
of the car, and every now and again the person
spraying would just get the angle of the spray gun
such that it would go up through this strain hole
and deposit itself on the underdash, And so there it was.
Speaker 6 (31:10):
Les Smith had proved that the underdash spray was due
lux soundproofing, not Azaria Chamberlain's blood, and the people at
General Motors Holden could have done the same thing before
the trial even began, but they didn't. They didn't want
to get involved either way. This discovery sounds like a
(31:31):
breakthrough right last minute, but a breakthrough well no. The
crippling element of the appeals process in this country is
that only new evidence can be presented in appeals. Former
Federal Circuit Court Judge Kenneth Rafael.
Speaker 8 (31:51):
Sometimes new evidence is capable of being brought on an appeal,
but only where the new evidence was not available reason
available at the time of the trial. If the matinee
jacket had been found at the time of the appeals, yes,
that could have been brought in because it wasn't you know,
that's new, real new evidence, and wasn't available at the time.
Speaker 6 (32:15):
Azaria Chamberlain's matine jacket had not been found by the
Operation Ogre detectives, and now that Lindy Chamberlain was behind bars,
there was even less reason to look.
Speaker 5 (32:29):
So we went to the High Court hearing three years and.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
Three months after the disappearance of Azaria Chamberlain at Airs Rock.
The case today ended its final stage after two coroner's
in quest.
Speaker 5 (32:42):
We clearly had two judges against us. We had two
judges clearly for us. Justice Murphy and Justice Steam were
clearly on our side.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
As it was it was a Dean and Murphy who
found in favor of Lindy and would have acquitted her,
and I think there were. Murphy was a real renegade
and unconventional but brilliant lawyer, but a renegade. He haled
through the nonsense and Dean went within.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
Justice Murphy said the presumption of innocence was not displaced
and Missus Chamberlain is entitled to an acquittal. Justice Murphy
referred to the absence of a body weapon, motive or
admissions from the accused, and he was backed up by
Justice Dean, who said the verdicts of guilty was a
miscarriage of justice because the evidence does not established beyond
(33:37):
reasonable doubt the guilt of missus Chamberlain.
Speaker 5 (33:40):
And the Chief Justice. We didn't know.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
It wasn't by much. It was only three judges to two,
and only one judge had to go their way.
Speaker 5 (33:50):
When you've got two High Court judges that say the
verdict is unsafe and unsatisfactory, you've got to say to yourself, hey,
reasonable doubt.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
In a split decision, the court ruled that the applications
for leave to appeal be allowed. However, the appeals themselves
were immediately dismissed. That means the verdicts of guilty will
stand and Lindy Chamberlain will serve her life sentence in
Darwin jail.
Speaker 6 (34:16):
I spoke to Paul White, not only because he had
followed the Chamberlain's story through the courts for seven years,
but because he understands the legal system far better than me.
Speaker 11 (34:27):
People forget they lost a trial, and they lost a
full federal court, and then I lost a close to
full High Court. You know, the system was the system.
How it got that far you look back and go,
I don't know, but it wasn't like it was just
a random territory jury being persuaded.
Speaker 6 (34:51):
Lindy Chamberlain didn't stay in jail because of a jury's
decision in Darwin, nor because of the Northern Territory government
or the Northern Territory Police. She was in a cell
at Berrima Prison because our legal system makes it very
hard to overturn jury decisions and for guilty people to
get out, and on occasion innocent people get trapped in
(35:17):
that same system.
Speaker 5 (35:21):
When you get a bad result like that, and certainly
in the Chamblain case, what you're reflecting on is, hey,
this is so wrong. Look what's happening to Lindy and Michael.
Looks what's happening to their family. Look how bad the
system is here. I was say, Nai'm thinking we had
the best system in the world, and here it's let
(35:42):
the Chamberlain's down, and it's let everybody down.
Speaker 6 (35:47):
So when people ask me why am I bothering with
a story from forty years ago, I asked them to
imagine being charged tomorrow for a murder they didn't commit,
and then going to court they'd face the same system.
Let's hear Michael Chamberlain speaking to the media after the
High Court decision on February twenty second, nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 12 (36:10):
I am firstly bitterly disappointed at the decision that has
been made here at the High Court.
Speaker 10 (36:17):
I would like to.
Speaker 12 (36:18):
Affirm that Lindley and I are innocent people and that
we will not stop fighting to clear our names and
the names of our family. I'd also like to thank
the members of the public who have supported us in
a very real way, and I hope that they will
continue to do this in the future. Finally, I would
(36:40):
just like to say that this case is not over yet.
Speaker 6 (36:45):
And it wasn't. The true story of the Chamberlain's still
has some remarkable events to come. If you subscribe now,
you'll get an alert the moment we released the next show.
I'd like to say thanks to Nicky, Simon and Stephen
who helped create this episode, and a shout out to Cyanne,
Molly and Mario, and thanks to you for listening.
This episode is not suitable for children to listen to
or overhear. It may contain course language, adult themes, and
graphic descriptions. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners are advised
that the following program may contain the names of people
who have died. A perfect storm, the true story of
(00:22):
the Chamberlains.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
I think Azaria would have lasted a matter of minutes.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
There were certain people within the Northern Territory Police who
were determined to get her.
Speaker 4 (00:34):
People were saying to me, Oh, you're going there to
see that woman who killed a child.
Speaker 5 (00:38):
Bad things happen to good people.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Episode eight, Fresh Evidence.
Speaker 6 (00:47):
Hello, I'm John Buck. After I spoke to Duncan McNabb,
the former New South Wales detective and private investigator, something
stuck in my head. He said to me, take a
deep breath, step back and look at the whole scene.
What's going on? Well, an innocent couple are sitting in
(01:10):
a holding cell under a Darwin courthouse waiting for a
jury of nine men and three women to decide their fate.
Why were they there despite there being no motive, no weapon,
no opportunity. Lyndy and Michael Chamberlain were there because their
statements to the police varied enough to arouse suspicion, their
(01:33):
odd manner and religious beliefs bothered the public, and they
were there because the Crown had presented compelling evidence of
a murder. Iash retired Judge Kenneth Rafael Sally Shaw, Stuart
Tipple and the journalists Linda Scott, Malcolm Brown and Paul
White to take us back to Friday, October twenty ninth,
(01:57):
nineteen eighty.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Two, before the jury retired to consider its verdict. Justice
Muirhead said the evidence had shown that Lindy Chamberlain was
a loving mother and that they should take into account
her proven good character. Despite initial fears. He said the
trial had not been a sensation and that all had
apparently gone according.
Speaker 7 (02:15):
To the law.
Speaker 8 (02:16):
Well, the judge sums up, and there's summing up usually
takes the form of going through the evidence and reminding
the jury of their responsibilities to come to a view
about things with the degree of certainty that's contained in
the phrase beyond reasonable doubt.
Speaker 9 (02:38):
And you've got the justice system and you're hoping, look
there's a judge presiding over and the truth willowed. You're
sort of holding on to that that it's going to
work out because.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
It's the truth.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
James heads. The very last thing he said was Lindy
and an independent witness heard the baby cry at a
time in on the Crowns in an area the baby
would have been dead. They left that ringing there.
Speaker 10 (03:04):
He is.
Speaker 5 (03:05):
They retired on a Friday, and we were thinking that, yeah,
well it could go all weekend here.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Well, having covered the first six weeks of the trial,
and to my mind there was certainly reasonable doubt. And
then I think the jury was only out for six hours,
and to me it seemed like they just wanted an
easy resolution. They all wanted to go home.
Speaker 11 (03:29):
Well, the forensic evidence was hard fought, and somes they
discredited or not discredited. But she didn't have time. That
was the simple matter. Whether you liked her or didn't
like it, She did not have time to do what.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Was alleged of her.
Speaker 11 (03:44):
There was absolutely no way she is guilty.
Speaker 5 (03:48):
So when the jury came into court, it was pretty
obvious to me that things didn't look quite so good.
They did not make eye contact, But I guess I
still have this belief that there was no one in
the world they couldn't have a reasonable doubt.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
At this point, the jury filed in and mister Justice
me my head said to the foreman, what do you
please stand? He asked the foreman, have you reached a verdict?
He said, yes, you're on a How do you find
Alice Lynn Chamberlain. The foreman replied guilty?
Speaker 5 (04:20):
And how do you think when the verdicts were delivered?
I was just shell shok Absolutely shell shock.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
There was a shock went right through the courtroom. Lindy
gasped as though she'd been shot. Her mouth gaped. Michael
stood there rigidly.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
A lot of the evidence pointed to the guilty so
and the Australian public seemed to want to find her guilty,
so they found it guilty. It just seemed like justice
gone crazy.
Speaker 11 (04:53):
I don't think anyone was expecting guilty after was it
six hours?
Speaker 3 (05:02):
At this point Justice Miller had turned to Lindy Chamberlain.
He said, you've been found guilty of murder by verdict
of a jury. There's only one sentence I can pass
upon you, and that sentence is you'll be imprisoned with
hard labor for life.
Speaker 5 (05:17):
And of course in the Northern Territory. The judge doesn't
have any discretion. Only one option that was to sentence
Lindy to life in prison of hard labor, which he
did there and then that was really shocking.
Speaker 11 (05:32):
Just to get life like that out of the blue
on the spot was astonishing. Barker presented it as a
dingo or a murder, and obviously the jury picked murder.
Speaker 9 (05:47):
And we're utterly shared it, utterly, utterly shared it.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
He deferred the sentencing of Michael. Then he retired, the
court started adjourneying, the jury went out. I called after them,
you pack of bastards.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
So straight away Lindy and Michael are taken down below
the court. There's a cell under there, and we file
down there and everyone's totally shell shocked and we get
down there and Michael turns to me and he just says, so,
this is British justice for you. And although that's many
(06:35):
years ago, I'm still wanted by that, and it's something
I keep hearing in my head and it's one of
the things that has kept me determined to try and
improve the system because the system failed. The system let
us down, and I've got absolutely no doubt it's let
(06:55):
other people down and it will continue to do so.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Seven years.
Speaker 6 (07:03):
Reporter Paul White rushed out to begin live interviews. As
his cameraman set up, he captured the sounds of other
journalists and members of the public leaving the court room.
You can hear their astonishment over the very guilty.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Guilty.
Speaker 12 (07:21):
The verdicts in Missus Chamberlain's case guilty for mister Chamberlain, guilty.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Missus Chamberlain said.
Speaker 6 (07:27):
The news was broadcast across Australia and the world.
Speaker 13 (07:31):
The end of the tale came suddenly, less than two
minutes after the jury delivered its verdict.
Speaker 6 (07:36):
Lindy Chamberlain was.
Speaker 10 (07:37):
On her way to serve a life sentence with hard labor.
Speaker 7 (07:43):
The night that the jury brought in their verdict. I
was home in bed, right.
Speaker 6 (07:48):
That's interesting. Did someone wake you up?
Speaker 10 (07:50):
What happened?
Speaker 14 (07:51):
You're in bed?
Speaker 7 (07:52):
Someone did wake me up and coerced me in the
came out and having a beer reluctantly, I went, but yeah,
there was no grave elation on my part. It was
just another result.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
But your colleagues fell differently.
Speaker 7 (08:08):
They did. They were more called it in twos than
I was.
Speaker 6 (08:13):
Why's that?
Speaker 7 (08:15):
I don't know?
Speaker 6 (08:17):
That's Detective Sergeant Graham Childwood, the lead investigator on the
Chamberlain past.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Basically he agreed to speak.
Speaker 6 (08:25):
About it for the first time. I've only just finished
that interview with him, and it covers his involvement from
the first day to the last. My interview with Graham
Childwood went for more than an hour, so I'll edit
down the rest and share it in the next episode.
The twelve person jury had ignored Sally Shaw's testimony that
(08:47):
Azaria Chamberlain was alive when the Crown said she was dead.
Sally and Lindy, two mothers from very different backgrounds, met
over a barbecued a rock and were now joined in
one way or another forever.
Speaker 9 (09:05):
On the night when I meet her, a lovely young
mum and doting mother. She was tired, but she was
happy and cheery and yeah, just a lovely person. I
was pleased I met her.
Speaker 6 (09:24):
I'm still in awe of Sally for her strength and
her compassion and her support of Lindy at the expense
of her own plans and friendships.
Speaker 9 (09:37):
Whilst you could forgive some people for believing everything in
the media, there was disappointment that people close to you
believed what they read in the media and didn't believe
you like, we must have been duped in some way.
We even had arguments with people where we agreed to
differ so that we could still remain friends, you know,
(09:59):
things like that. It was just I guess I can't
blame them because there's so much in the media, there's
so much out there that's wrong, and they weren't there
that we were, so we know the truth.
Speaker 6 (10:13):
You know, Stuart Tipple wasn't at Airs Rock on August seventeenth,
nineteen eighty, but he may as well have been. The
chamberlains have dominated his life too. My guess is that
you couldn't wish for a better lawyer or friend in
a crisis than Stuart. His clients were guilty, all seemed lost,
(10:40):
and yet he kept going.
Speaker 14 (10:44):
Well.
Speaker 5 (10:45):
From the court, Michael's granted bail and bail to appear
on the Monday, and Michael of course doesn't want to
be alone, and so he and I make the walk
back to my hotel room and the travelers. We talked
until the early hours of the morning. You know, what's
(11:07):
going to happen. He's looking at a jail sentence, what's
going to happen? To know, the children, So we talk
about all those things and then eventually he goes his way,
I go mine.
Speaker 6 (11:24):
With the verdict handed down on a Friday night, the
Chamberlain's lawyer asked the judge, the late James Muirhead, if
he could sentence Michael Chamberlain the next day rather than
make him wait all weekend.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
And on the Saturday morning we all assemble there and
the Michael was standing up like a man before a
firing squad, waiting for him to waiting to be sentenced.
Speaker 6 (11:46):
Meuwerhead was the son of a Chief magistrate and he's
served with the Australian Armed Forces during the Second World War.
After the Chamberlain case, he ran the Royal Commission into
Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and he was awarded the Companion
of the Order of Australia for public service and service
to the law. Murehead was known for his compassion and
(12:09):
his sense of fairness. Publicly, all he ever said about
the Chamberlains was that it was a very sad case.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
And Muirhead said that the children needed a father, that
he had done what any husband would do is to
try to protect his wife.
Speaker 6 (12:32):
Malcolm Brown isn't like any journalist I've ever worked with.
He remembers details that most forget. He's been invaluable to
me in understanding just what it was really like inside
those courtrooms when all we have is an artist's sketch.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
At the point it slowly sank into Michael that he
was not going to go to jail, and at that
point that he was sobbing and crying in that witness box,
and one of the lawyer's Green Caverner from the Northern
Dirty later became a coroner, was trying to stop himself
crying as well. It was a terrible thing to have happened.
Speaker 5 (13:12):
The immediate concern was, well, Lindy was about to have
this baby. She's now in jail. What's going to happen
to the baby?
Speaker 10 (13:21):
Now?
Speaker 5 (13:22):
From our research, it was quite common for mothers to
have babies when they were in prison and to be
given the custody of that child, and so we made
an application for that to happen.
Speaker 13 (13:36):
Earlier today, the Northern Territory government announced that Missus Lindy Chamberlain,
who is to give birth later this week, will not
be allowed to keep the baby in jail, as this
would not be in the child's best interests.
Speaker 5 (13:49):
So Michael was then having to make arrangements, So what's
going to happen to the baby? How am I going
to care for the baby?
Speaker 15 (13:57):
Lindy Chamberlain was taken from Barama Jail after five o'clock
this morning and admitted to Darwin Hospital.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
A little over three and a half hours later, she
gave birth to a healthy baby girl.
Speaker 6 (14:07):
Lindy Chamberlain was unable to speak with the media during
this time, but some years later she spoke to seven's
Terry Willacy about the birth of her daughter, Carlia. I
think it's really important to share this at this moment.
Speaker 14 (14:24):
And I had, I think the most painful birth that
I've had with my four children, because I worked so
hard against that birth because I knew a minute she
(14:44):
was born she was no longer mine and I did
not want her to be born. Every time the nurses
to say to me push, I do everything in my
power not to push whole back, and I ended up
with a very painful delivery, and I knew I was
doing it, but I just couldn't control those instincts because
(15:11):
I just did not want to let her go.
Speaker 10 (15:17):
And your feelings to Carlia when she was born.
Speaker 14 (15:22):
I wanted so badly to hold her, and yet I
didn't want to hold her, and because I knew if
I held her, I wouldn't want to let her go.
And I think the nurse sensed that because she just
dumped her blood and all just on top of me,
and she was there and I just instinctively grabbed her,
(15:44):
and as I thought, I just didn't want to let
her go. And finally, when I had to, I said
to the nurse, take her and get her out of
here quick, and don't come back before I have to go,
because I can't bear going. Last night, she's left behind.
Speaker 5 (16:03):
And I just.
Speaker 14 (16:06):
Couldn't bear to think of her as my child when
she was born, because I knew I couldn't have her,
and I knew I couldn't handle that. I just did
my best to think of her as a baby that wasn't.
Speaker 5 (16:18):
Mine, and the baby was taken from her. And we
made an application for bail, and to be honest, of
all the proceedings that I never thought we would succeeded.
That was that was the one I thought, Who on
earth is every going to give bail to someone who's
(16:39):
been convicted of murder of gar after a newborn baby.
But anyway, I did what I had to do, and
I got some terrific psychiatric evidence. She was assessed. And
the good thing is there's never been any suggestion that
Lindy's had any mental illness, and whoever sees her just says, look,
she's the sanest, most level person, and you get ever me.
(17:02):
And so with this application, we made the bar application
and I couldn't believe it. So two out of three
judges ground a bail. So Carlia was born in jail,
Lindy comes home.
Speaker 6 (17:17):
We need to take a quick break and we'll return
to a perfect storm in just a moment. I spoke
with former Federal Circuit Court judge Kenneth Rafael about the
appeal process that the Chamberlain's now faced.
Speaker 8 (17:30):
There are three sort of ways in which you deal
with an appeal. You know, you can you can say
that there's some fault in the conduct of the trial.
You can say there's some fault in the judge you're
summing up of the trial. And you can say that
based upon the evidence, no reasonable cury could convict. So
(17:51):
there's a very strong resistance to overturning cury verdicts, reason
for good reason, because if that happens all the time,
if that happens frequently, then there's what's the point of
a jury.
Speaker 6 (18:05):
Along with Sally Shaw and Stuart Tipple, there's another person
who never gave up on Lindy Barry Botcher.
Speaker 16 (18:12):
When the Chamberlains were found guilty, I was shattered. I
didn't know what to do.
Speaker 6 (18:20):
Yes, he's the poor scientist whose testimony was torn apart
in the trial, and he's the sweating witness that the
jury struggled to understand.
Speaker 16 (18:31):
I went to Stuart and said Stuart that I will
continue making inquiries about the test solution for fetal hemoglobin.
Speaker 6 (18:44):
During the trial and in the years that followed, Barry
was told by his peers and fellow scientists that he
was out of his depth, his tests were wrong, and
worse that he was ruining his career by tying himself
to the Chamberlain's innocence.
Speaker 5 (19:02):
I received a call from Derek Roff, who was the
head ranger, and he was shell shocked by the verdict,
and he was particularly concerned about something and said I
need to come and I need to come and see you.
And he said he had not been given the opportunity
(19:25):
of disclosing that where the clothing was found, there was
evidence that the dingo had been there, and he pointed
out the photographs where that had happened. And so I
took a statement from him and an afphidavit, and we
used that as part of the appeal grounds that there
(19:48):
was important evidence that he had not been able to give.
Speaker 6 (19:52):
What I couldn't understand was why didn't Derek Roff tell
the jury this when he was called to testify. I've
since discovered that Roff was a Crown witness and they
only wanted certain facts from him presented to the jury.
They would ask certain questions and he'd be compelled to
answer them, but they didn't ask about the dingo poor
(20:15):
Prince near Azaria's clothes. And of course the defense lawyers
didn't know at the time that he had more to tell.
So in nineteen eighty two, all of the facts weren't
presented to the jury. And that's just the way the
system worked and still works. In his summary at the
(20:36):
Royal Commission in nineteen eighty seven, Justice Marling said, quote
mister Roff's evidence cannot be lightly dismissed unquote. In Lyndy
Chamberlain's trial. It was the Chamberlain's defense team of Glenn Miller,
Stuart Tipple and Michael McHugh took Professor Carroll and Derreck
(20:58):
Roff's evidence to the Federal Court, but they knew that
it was unlikely to be accepted.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Council for the Chamberlains presented twenty one grounds of appeal
and sought to introduce fresh evidence concerning dingoes at Airs
Rock and the testing of baby's blood.
Speaker 5 (21:13):
You know, once they read the evidence, surely they will
accept that there was a reasonable doubt and we have
got a hope with an unsafe and unsatisfactory verdicts.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
The Chamberlains were led him to court just a few
seconds before the full bench, headed by Sir Nigel Bowen,
took their seats. Sir Nigel then said it was the
court's decision that the appeals be dismissed, and he ordered
that Lindy Chamberlain.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
The appeals called judges rather let men down. They were
they were quite they weren't done favor of the channels
at all. I didn't see, I didn't think, and that
they were committed to upholding the jury verdict if they could,
because that the whole legalcism based on the jury and
you don't have a turn then, and this is a
very good reason. I felt that they had a good chance,
(22:00):
but holdable dead.
Speaker 15 (22:02):
When no win for Lindy Chamberlain, it was her first
full day back behind bars since the Federal Court rejected
her appeal against her conviction for the murder of baby
as Area. Her husband Michael, took their youngest daughter Klia
to the prison in Sydney's inner western suburbs to be
breast fed just after midday.
Speaker 6 (22:23):
Despite the loss in federal court, the Chamberlain's church rallied
around them. We found this interview by seven years reporter
Laurie Brennan with Pastor Russell Krantz.
Speaker 17 (22:34):
Here as a young couple who from the very very
beginning of the case has have steadfastly maintained their complete
and absolutinessnce and it must be very frustrating for them
to feel that somehow they might not be able to
carry their case to the highest steshcalons of the Jewish
Rudents in Australia.
Speaker 10 (22:55):
Regg asked me if I'd like to copy any particular
section of transcript.
Speaker 6 (23:01):
Adventists like Les Smith volunteered to help out with what
was to become a High court challenged by the Chamberlains.
Despite being an engineer with the health food company Sanitarium,
Smith wasn't too proud to help out with photocopying.
Speaker 10 (23:18):
And I knew that there'd been some challenge in the
court on the spray pattern in this metal bracket, and
so he gave me that part of the transcript to copy.
Speaker 5 (23:31):
The thing that troubled me the most was that under
dash spray.
Speaker 10 (23:34):
So one of the.
Speaker 5 (23:35):
People that came knocking on my door was a fellow
called Les Smith. He said, can I see you? I
think I can help.
Speaker 6 (23:42):
Smith had studied the metal bracket presented at the trial,
a bracket that, according to missus Coole, had baby's blood
sprayed on it.
Speaker 10 (23:51):
If the Crown was correct in this, then there was
no question the toll that Lindy Chamberlain was guilty, because
they said this is human blood with the marker fetal
hemoglobin in it that disappears from human blood by about
the age of nine months. And then they had two
(24:13):
pathologists and both of them said this has the appearance
of a spurting wound, an arterial spray.
Speaker 5 (24:22):
He came to my office and he obviously came from
a scientific background. Academically, his qualification very poor. All he
had was a diploymer. So he had a fellow that
was a scientist with a diploma, squaring off against the
most qualified forensic witnesses in the world.
Speaker 10 (24:45):
But I can remember asking him if he would like
to know what the material on that metal bracket was,
and his exact reply to me was would I ever said.
Speaker 5 (25:00):
To me, Look, I'm happy to do whatever you want
me to do, But he said, I want to be
sure that whatever I do sees the light to day.
If I want your assurance that if it's damaging, it's
not going to be hidden. And I said, las were
on the same page. I'm not in this to hide things.
(25:23):
I want the truth.
Speaker 6 (25:25):
During the trial, the Crown had presented the bracket taken
from the Chamberlain's tarannica, which it claimed had Azaria's blood
spray on it, and the defense had also found and
presented a bracket from a different taranic car.
Speaker 10 (25:42):
And I made the observation that since they had already
seen two of them, there was a good chance, a
statistical chance, that there might be more around and they
were going to be in that model car. And so
it was a matter of going around every car like
that that we might see I might see in a
(26:02):
wrecker or for sale in a used car yard, and
simply looking under the dashboard and seeing if there was
a plate with that marking on it. Period, but every Saturday,
I'd get the Saturday paper and look at all the adverts.
I went around all of the car wreckers, I went
(26:25):
around all of the used car dealers, and eventually I
turned up not one, but several brackets with that appearance.
When we got the first bracket, I looked at it
under a microscope, and I noticed that there were microscopic
spots of paint over the over the spray, over all
(26:50):
of the sprays, and in every case the color of
the microscopic dots matched the color of the exactly. So
I knew that whatever was on that bracket got onto
the bracket before the car had been painted in at
(27:11):
the GMH. On the GMH assembly line, the very first
one that I found, a guy had a car like this.
He'd driven into the car wreckers. He was after something
for his car, and I asked him if i'd if
he minded, if i'd look under the under the dashboard
(27:35):
of his car, and he said, no, no problem, go
right ahead and bingo there it was the very thing
that I wanted. And I explained to him the very
the very reason why I was interested, and would he
allow me to cut it out? And he said, listen, mate,
I didn't murder anybody in this car and no, so
(27:59):
he stood the implication straight away.
Speaker 5 (28:03):
Within a couple of months he came back absolutely ecstatic,
but said, what I need to do is I need
to see the original spray.
Speaker 10 (28:15):
Where is it?
Speaker 5 (28:16):
Well, this time we'd lost the Federal Court appeal, so
all the exhibits had gone down to Canberra and we're
in the High Court custody and.
Speaker 10 (28:25):
I said to Stuart, I predict that we'll see yellow
dots of paint, microscopic dots of paint. I predict that
we'll see a particular shape of material.
Speaker 5 (28:41):
So we flew down to the High Court, the registrar
was there, got out the under dash spray with a
little metal bracket with a spray on it.
Speaker 10 (28:54):
Blood has a different characteristic than habitumen compound. The tuminus
compound has virtually no water content, and when it dries
it doesn't change shape. But blood formed a crater in
the center.
Speaker 5 (29:16):
Las gets out a little magnifying glass that is of
ten power and he trains it on this spray pattern,
and he says, have a look at this. And even
under ten power, I could see that whatever that material was,
it had spray paint over it.
Speaker 10 (29:37):
And at that stage I knew without doubt that there
was a dreadful problem in the prosecution case.
Speaker 5 (29:46):
What had been tested could not possibly be blood, and
the results of joy call were now all in question.
If she had determined that that material was fetal blood,
then none of it tests could be relied on. And
so what he realized was that the spray pattern was
(30:09):
actually a sound deadening compound.
Speaker 10 (30:11):
And then I went and bought the front end of
the car, and I took this front end of the
car into a darkened workshop, and I shone a light
through the particular place where I predicted the spray would
come from, and the light fell only on that part
(30:32):
of the bracket that contained the spray. And so at
that stage I was very confident that the material on
the bracket had come through that particular hole in the
wheel arch of the car.
Speaker 5 (30:49):
So when the car was being manufactured, the spray material
would be sprayed in the wheel arches and the underneath
of the car, and every now and again the person
spraying would just get the angle of the spray gun
such that it would go up through this strain hole
and deposit itself on the underdash, And so there it was.
Speaker 6 (31:10):
Les Smith had proved that the underdash spray was due
lux soundproofing, not Azaria Chamberlain's blood, and the people at
General Motors Holden could have done the same thing before
the trial even began, but they didn't. They didn't want
to get involved either way. This discovery sounds like a
(31:31):
breakthrough right last minute, but a breakthrough well no. The
crippling element of the appeals process in this country is
that only new evidence can be presented in appeals. Former
Federal Circuit Court Judge Kenneth Rafael.
Speaker 8 (31:51):
Sometimes new evidence is capable of being brought on an appeal,
but only where the new evidence was not available reason
available at the time of the trial. If the matinee
jacket had been found at the time of the appeals, yes,
that could have been brought in because it wasn't you know,
that's new, real new evidence, and wasn't available at the time.
Speaker 6 (32:15):
Azaria Chamberlain's matine jacket had not been found by the
Operation Ogre detectives, and now that Lindy Chamberlain was behind bars,
there was even less reason to look.
Speaker 5 (32:29):
So we went to the High Court hearing three years and.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
Three months after the disappearance of Azaria Chamberlain at Airs Rock.
The case today ended its final stage after two coroner's
in quest.
Speaker 5 (32:42):
We clearly had two judges against us. We had two
judges clearly for us. Justice Murphy and Justice Steam were
clearly on our side.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
As it was it was a Dean and Murphy who
found in favor of Lindy and would have acquitted her,
and I think there were. Murphy was a real renegade
and unconventional but brilliant lawyer, but a renegade. He haled
through the nonsense and Dean went within.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
Justice Murphy said the presumption of innocence was not displaced
and Missus Chamberlain is entitled to an acquittal. Justice Murphy
referred to the absence of a body weapon, motive or
admissions from the accused, and he was backed up by
Justice Dean, who said the verdicts of guilty was a
miscarriage of justice because the evidence does not established beyond
(33:37):
reasonable doubt the guilt of missus Chamberlain.
Speaker 5 (33:40):
And the Chief Justice. We didn't know.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
It wasn't by much. It was only three judges to two,
and only one judge had to go their way.
Speaker 5 (33:50):
When you've got two High Court judges that say the
verdict is unsafe and unsatisfactory, you've got to say to yourself, hey,
reasonable doubt.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
In a split decision, the court ruled that the applications
for leave to appeal be allowed. However, the appeals themselves
were immediately dismissed. That means the verdicts of guilty will
stand and Lindy Chamberlain will serve her life sentence in
Darwin jail.
Speaker 6 (34:16):
I spoke to Paul White, not only because he had
followed the Chamberlain's story through the courts for seven years,
but because he understands the legal system far better than me.
Speaker 11 (34:27):
People forget they lost a trial, and they lost a
full federal court, and then I lost a close to
full High Court. You know, the system was the system.
How it got that far you look back and go,
I don't know, but it wasn't like it was just
a random territory jury being persuaded.
Speaker 6 (34:51):
Lindy Chamberlain didn't stay in jail because of a jury's
decision in Darwin, nor because of the Northern Territory government
or the Northern Territory Police. She was in a cell
at Berrima Prison because our legal system makes it very
hard to overturn jury decisions and for guilty people to
get out, and on occasion innocent people get trapped in
(35:17):
that same system.
Speaker 5 (35:21):
When you get a bad result like that, and certainly
in the Chamblain case, what you're reflecting on is, hey,
this is so wrong. Look what's happening to Lindy and Michael.
Looks what's happening to their family. Look how bad the
system is here. I was say, Nai'm thinking we had
the best system in the world, and here it's let
(35:42):
the Chamberlain's down, and it's let everybody down.
Speaker 6 (35:47):
So when people ask me why am I bothering with
a story from forty years ago, I asked them to
imagine being charged tomorrow for a murder they didn't commit,
and then going to court they'd face the same system.
Let's hear Michael Chamberlain speaking to the media after the
High Court decision on February twenty second, nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 12 (36:10):
I am firstly bitterly disappointed at the decision that has
been made here at the High Court.
Speaker 10 (36:17):
I would like to.
Speaker 12 (36:18):
Affirm that Lindley and I are innocent people and that
we will not stop fighting to clear our names and
the names of our family. I'd also like to thank
the members of the public who have supported us in
a very real way, and I hope that they will
continue to do this in the future. Finally, I would
(36:40):
just like to say that this case is not over yet.
Speaker 6 (36:45):
And it wasn't. The true story of the Chamberlain's still
has some remarkable events to come. If you subscribe now,
you'll get an alert the moment we released the next show.
I'd like to say thanks to Nicky, Simon and Stephen
who helped create this episode, and a shout out to Cyanne,
Molly and Mario, and thanks to you for listening.
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