Lindy Chamberlain exonerated - a dingo did it.

There seems to come a point where it's normal simply to accept the "official version", and even to make up fanciful scenarios where it just might have happened. So, rather than look critically at the evidence, people start dreaming up ways in which the accused could theoretically have done it, and supporting the accusation that way.

Sion Jenkins is a case in point. It was always absolutely ridiculous to suggest he murdered Billie-Jo, and strong evidence should have been required to begin to suspect him. There never was any such evidence. The police couldn't get hold of another suspect, so they went after him. In the end this mad crime of unpremeditated rage was accomplished in a couple of minutes (allegedly), whereupon he walked back to join his other daughters without a hair out of place or a drop of blood visible on his clothes.

Then the public vilification started, and everything down to and including the fact that he had sexed up his CV in a job application six or seven years previously was held to be proof that he was the sort of person who would batter a child to death because she had the radio up too loud (or maybe it was because she had got paint on the glass when she was painting a window). It got to the "there must be something in it or they wouldn't be charging him" awfully quickly. Soon, the popular view was that if he couldn't 100% prove an alibi, he must have done it. (The estimate was something like he had a time window of between -5 minutes and +3 minutes to have done it, and the existence of the outside +3 minutes possibility was latched on to to prove he was the murderer.)

Even after he was acquitted at something like the fifth appeal (that presumption of guilt is a bummer) he was denied compensation for the years spent in jail because he wasn't "clearly innocent". He still lives under a cloud, as far as I can see.

There are people in this forum who have stated they still believe Barry George murdered Jill Dando, though on what grounds I have no freaking clue.

This mindset seems to be behind the poor chances of success in many appeals. Look at the number of innocent people who have needed a second or third appeal to get the truth accepted. Because the general public doesn't like to believe the cops would target an innocent and basically frame up a case against them. But they do. With distressing frequency.

I've even heard people say, in effect, well it doesn't matter that [X] might not actually have done it, because he was a bad lot anyway. That is perhaps even more shocking than anything.

A bit more critical thinking when considering the results of police investigations and the findings of the courts, would benefit us all.

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
There are people in this forum who have stated they still believe Barry George murdered Jill Dando, though on what grounds I have no freaking clue.
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I think you know very well that the grounds are "well, he's a bit weird, isn't he? Something not right there. Seems the sort."
 
Psi Baba said:
I heard this earlier this morning. The thing that I could never comprehend was that while there was little or no evidence that the baby had been taken by a dingo, there was equally little or no evidence that Lindy killed her, and yet that was the conclusion that not only the public but the courts went with.
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But there was evidence that a dingo was a more plausible explanation. Certainly more plausible than the fantasy about a woman (with no apparent motive) suddenly deciding to murder her baby with a pair of scissors while on a family camping trip! The head ranger gave evidence that dingoes were a known problem in the area and that on the night Azaria disappeared there were tracks all around the tent. (I believe he'd also previously written a report that something needed to be done about the dingoes but, obviously, it was not acted on).

Psi Baba said:
This whole case vividly illustrates the critically important need for EVIDENCE.
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One of the (many) disturbing elements is that the trial judge in his summing-up apparently directed the jury to acquit on the basis of reasonable doubt. Either they didn't understand what he was saying (a charitable view) or they chose to disregard it.

lionking said:
The religious angle played a part, but so equally did Lindy's cool, carm behavior to the media. She didn't play the hysterical, bereaved mother role expected of her. The hatred of her at the time was certainly media driven.
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After her conviction was overturned, I recall seeing some of the original TV footage that showed Lindy Chamberlain looking obviously distraught - don't recall seeing that at the time, though. I've always thought that a useful reminder to be sceptical of the way the media can filter and frame what we see and how we perceive people and events. I thought there were echoes of the same thing in the way Joanne Lees was treated.

Draca said:
I never understood why it was ridiculous though. I discussed this with an Aussie guy some years back and he said the dingo is a really small dog.
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They're medium-sized dogs, definitely not "really small". Certainly large enough to cause some concern to an adult if you were bailed up by one or more. In the wild they would normally be quite shy but in areas around campsites they become habituated to humans. In those situations, they are not afraid and associate humans with food - not a good combination.
 
Psi Baba said:
I heard this earlier this morning. The thing that I could never comprehend was that while there was little or no evidence that the baby had been taken by a dingo, there was equally little or no evidence that Lindy killed her, and yet that was the conclusion that not only the public but the courts went with.
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Well the first inquest (under Denis Barritt) decided that Azaria "met her death when attacked by a wild dingo whilst asleep in her family's tent"; neither of her parents "in any degree whatsoever responsible for her death".
It wasn't until seven months later that the police searched the Chamberlain's car and home. In the interim one Professor James Cameron1 had stuck his oar in and decided, on the basis of photographs alone, that Azaria's throat had been cut2. This triggered "Operation Ochre" and the political decision to quash the findings of the first inquest and hold a second.

Psi Baba said:
Perhaps it was because the dingo story seemed less plausible, but the problem with that is that it was justice by false dilemma. Disproving or discounting one doesn't prove the other. There were other possibilities, too, such as the Azaria being abducted by another person at the camp, etc. Let's face it, just as much evidence for that, or aliens for that matter, as for anything else.
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Very true. I believe it was Cameron's intervention that caused the police to focus (or fixate) on the Chamberlains.
Actually I vaguely remember from the TV coverage at the time that someone was interviewed (a park ranger perhaps?) who stated that dingo attacks while uncommon weren't unprecedented.

Psi Baba said:
I also never understood where the idea about Lindy slitting Azaria's throat with scissors came from. Did they just make that up? Every time I see that mentioned, there is never any hint as to how that originated.
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Cameron.

Psi Baba said:
How awful to not only have to deal with the uncertain disappearance and death of your child, but to have to spend four years in prison and to be vilified for the next 32 years of your life.
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It is an ****** disgrace. One which has singularly not led to action against those involved in the investigation who are still around.
Not that the politicians did much better.

Psi Baba said:
This whole case vividly illustrates the critically important need for EVIDENCE.
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I am about to rant.
This case shows the still existing problem with expert testimony, a personal bugbear of mine. Such evidence must be as open to challenge and duplication as other evidence and must be as subject to proper scientific methodology and standards as other scientific endeavors.

And I'm not impressed either by the failure of the police to inform the Chamberlain's solicitor that the matinee jacket had been found. Luckily someone tipped him off and he confronted them. Otherwise would it have been "misplaced"?

1 the only "expert" witness I'm aware of to be criticised in two Royal Commissions of Inquiry
2 with those scissors that were later found to be to blunt to do any such thing

ETA: I believe this is my first encounter with the auto-censor.
 
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an Op Ed piece on the case

Link here. Julia Baird wrote, "We see now that our willingness to believe that was a collective failure of empathy. We assumed an innocent woman was guilty. We threw rocks at a grieving mother. And a nation founded by convicts somehow forgot the presumption of innocence."
 
I was thinking about Sally Clark as I read that; another woman imprisoned for murder after two of her babies died naturally. Sally is no longer alive - even though she was eventually exonerated, the eight years in prison left her a shadow of her former self, and she couldn't get her life back together afterwards. She died of a heart attack, possibly associated with drinking a bit too much.

We haven't had a collective guilt trip about Sally in Britain, possibly because many many people doubted her guilt all along. She was never reviled as Lindy was. She was even allowed to stay on the Law Society roll while in jail - almost unprecedented, for a solicitor convicted of murder. The Law Society probably realised she was innocent.

But Sally was still convicted, and lost her first appeal, and spent eight years in jail. While mourning the deaths of two of her children and separated from the third. And the experience killed her. Is the society that let that happen even while it knew in its heart it was wrong any better than the society that reviled Lindy Chamberlain?

Rolfe.
 
Munchausen by proxy

A much less high-profile case than that of Lindy Chamberlain was that of Patricia Stallings, whose son Ryan died of natural causes over twenty years ago. Patricia Stallings was convicted of poisoning Ryan with ethylene glycol, then later exonerated when citizen involvement in the case led to the realization that Ryan suffered from MMA, a genetic disease. I don't know how she fared later in life. I recall that some suggested that the motive was Munchausen by proxy.
 
lionking said:
A lot of Northern Territorians will always consider her a killer, but not so much in the more civilized parts of Australia.
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Without wishing to start a derail, I have always found it very strange that you can see the Lindy Chamberlain affair for what it was, and yet you have always posted very negatively about the Amanda Knox case, which has many similarities.

The accused woman's demeanour and appearance were held against her. She was accused after having been present when the crime was discovered. Investigators became convinced of her guilt and sceptical of her own story, and built a case against her. Forensic scientists behaved as if it were their duty to secure a conviction rather than discover the truth. And so on.

In the Chamberlain case the "blood" was a chemical spray, and the positive results on what should have been negative control samples were maliciously misinterpreted. Evidence that could have exonerated went missing. And so on. You understand that this happened and how. The Knox case is so similar in many ways. The reasons for understanding the forensic results to be flawed are much the same. Again, exculpatory evidence went missing. And so on. And yet in that case you don't seem to understand that the same thing happened.

I'm interested to understand what it is about some cases where the miscarriage of justice is accepted and acknowledged, and yet in other well-nigh identical cases the accused remains caught in a web of vilification and misrepresentation.

Rolfe.
 
George152 said:
The 'law' gets fixated upon a certain person and will go to any lengths to produce evidence to convict while hiding or even destroying evidence that may be proof of evidence..

Those who 'investigated' the crime (what ever it was) should have to serve the same amount of time in prison as their victim....
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Yes.:mad::mad::mad:
 
Rolfe said:
I was thinking about Sally Clark as I read that; another woman imprisoned for murder after two of her babies died naturally. Sally is no longer alive - even though she was eventually exonerated, the eight years in prison left her a shadow of her former self, and she couldn't get her life back together afterwards. She died of a heart attack, possibly associated with drinking a bit too much.

We haven't had a collective guilt trip about Sally in Britain, possibly because many many people doubted her guilt all along. She was never reviled as Lindy was. She was even allowed to stay on the Law Society roll while in jail - almost unprecedented, for a solicitor convicted of murder. The Law Society probably realised she was innocent.

But Sally was still convicted, and lost her first appeal, and spent eight years in jail. While mourning the deaths of two of her children and separated from the third. And the experience killed her. Is the society that let that happen even while it knew in its heart it was wrong any better than the society that reviled Lindy Chamberlain?

Rolfe.
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No!:mad::mad::mad:
 
spray or sound deadener

There was supposed blood spray that was common to the make of car that the Chamberlain's drove, and it was a sticky fluid that was actually sound deadener, IIRC. Does anyone know whether this putative blood was detected with ortho-tolidine, which is a presumptive test for blood, or with the (impure) antibodies to hemoglobin F? (On the other Chamberlain thread, I have some citations about the antibody issue.) Thanks; I have never been able to get to the bottom of this part of the story.
 
Rolfe said:
Without wishing to start a derail, I have always found it very strange that you can see the Lindy Chamberlain affair for what it was, and yet you have always posted very negatively about the Amanda Knox case, which has many similarities.

The accused woman's demeanour and appearance were held against her. She was accused after having been present when the crime was discovered. Investigators became convinced of her guilt and sceptical of her own story, and built a case against her. Forensic scientists behaved as if it were their duty to secure a conviction rather than discover the truth. And so on.

In the Chamberlain case the "blood" was a chemical spray, and the positive results on what should have been negative control samples were maliciously misinterpreted. Evidence that could have exonerated went missing. And so on. You understand that this happened and how. The Knox case is so similar in many ways. The reasons for understanding the forensic results to be flawed are much the same. Again, exculpatory evidence went missing. And so on. And yet in that case you don't seem to understand that the same thing happened.

I'm interested to understand what it is about some cases where the miscarriage of justice is accepted and acknowledged, and yet in other well-nigh identical cases the accused remains caught in a web of vilification and misrepresentation.

Rolfe.
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Here's an article about some of those same comparisons:

From Lindy Chamberlain to Amanda Knox, Vilification to Exoneration
June 18, 2012

http://www.groundreport.com/US/From-Lindy-Chamberlain-to-Amanda-Knox-Vilification/2946762
 
That's an interesting article, indeed. I have to say I'm baffled by Lionking's different approach to the two cases, and in particular why he seems to believe the forensics were sound in the Knox case while understanding the flaws in the Chamberlain case - the parallels are so striking I'd have thought they'd give an Australian pause, in particular.

But I don't think he's going to tell us.

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
That's an interesting article, indeed. I have to say I'm baffled by Lionking's different approach to the two cases, and in particular why he seems to believe the forensics were sound in the Knox case while understanding the flaws in the Chamberlain case - the parallels are so striking I'd have thought they'd give an Australian pause, in particular.

But I don't think he's going to tell us.

Rolfe.
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It may very well be that defending such a position would require delving into the evidence of the Knox case again, causing a massive derail. Probably wise that he doesn't do that.
 
Sideroxylon said:
It may very well be that defending such a position would require delving into the evidence of the Knox case again, causing a massive derail. Probably wise that he doesn't do that.
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That's a cop-out. It wouldn't be a derail to for him to run over what it is that makes the Lindy Chamberlain case different from the Knox/Kercher case.
 
Antony said:
That's a cop-out. It wouldn't be a derail to for him to run over what it is that makes the Lindy Chamberlain case different from the Knox/Kercher case.
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It may not but the inevitable responses from passionate Knox thread veterans surely would, as would lionking's if he got caught up in such a poo storm. Evidently he has better judgement.
 
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two threads are better than one

Sideroxylon said:
It may not but the inevitable responses from passionate Knox thread veterans surely would, as would lionking's if he got caught up in such a poo storm. Evidently he has better judgement.
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You are making an assumption about what other commenters may or may not do. I think this assumption is (at best) unwarranted, but even if were not, nothing would prevent lionking or yourself from making the same comparison on the Knox/Sollecito thread. That thread is moderated; therefore, there can be no "poo storm" that falls outside the MA, as judged by the mods.

The similarities between the two cases are striking, IMO.
 
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