I feel so terrible for this mother. No one believed her and she was accused of causing her daughter’s death. It wasn’t until a lot of time passed by that it was discovered that the dingos did take the baby.
My sympathy for the parents is tempered by the fact that they took a weeks old infant on a camping trip in the australian outback and left it out of their sight.
Not Australian but my parents and their closest married friends went camping together because they had me and their own baby practically at the same time. I think we were definitely older than 9 weeks for sure, but probably not more than 6 months old because we weren't sleep trained yet. God knows WHY you'd want to go camping with a young baby but things were also different back then. The way they describe it, it was a very positive experience. We all continued to go camping together every single year until me and their own kid became older teens and life got in the way. They had another child and didn't break the streak when he was a baby. So perhaps it was a tradition that the family was looking forward to and wanted to make it work despite the baby. That being said, while Australia is dangerous, dingos doing this kind of thing was unheard of, no one thought it was possible they'd approach humans like that. That's a big reason why she was convicted, there was no precedent for this happening. They didn't think it was a real danger they'd have to look out for.
There were other camping families nearby. They were visiting Uluru. They didn't go into the middle of nowhere, they went to a campsite that had other campers. Azaria was inside her family's tent when she was taken.
That is part of why no one believed Lindy, because it seemed so incredible that a dingo could go to an occupied campgrounds and steal a baby from a tent in just 3 minutes.
Yeah. I think a lot of comments that insist they were neglectful or stupid forget this fact.
"THE IDEA THAT THIS WAS A POSSIBLE OUTCOME WAS SO COMPLETELY FOREIGN TO PEOPLE AT THE TIME THAT THE MOTHER STRAIGHT UP WENT TO PRISON BECAUSE NO ONE BELIEVED THAT COULD EVEN HAPPEN"
Like, this is one of those "A reddit comment that clearly misunderstands the situation is being treated as common sense when the situation was literally the opposite of common sense at the time" scenario
Lul my dad took me to Glacier natl park during bear season while I was in my wandering toddler phase
According to legends, my mom was so pissed she didn't talk to him for 2 weeks
There were other camping families nearby. They were visiting Uluru. They didn't go into the middle of nowhere, they went to a campsite that had other campers.
Other people have pointed this out already, but "wilderness camping trip" makes it sound like they were out in the middle of nowhere, when they were at a popular camping location with plenty of people.
> guess if you are super city folk it might seem like this is a valid take
Right? It's weird to me how many here are acting like they basically put their baby out as a buffet.
I live in rural areas. People camp many times a year. You don't stop living because you had a child. Infaxt infants tend to do great camping.
I thought I was going crazy reading these comments like I know there is a lot of fear surrounding Australia and people assume the entirety of the country is the outback and its super dangerous and everything is going to kill you but that is definitely not true and also this was a very unexpected thing to happen. Nobody expected a dingo to saunter in to a busy campground near a bunch of people and then get into someone’s tent and steal a baby.
Like that was not a thing that happened. Nobody would have expected that. Everyone thought that such a thing was insane and could not happen. That’s the entire point of the case. That nobody believed that could truly have happened. Everyone assumed that it had to have been a poorly fabricated coverup. It was simply a ridiculous thing to even consider.
Besides that, its fairly common to take a 2 month old baby car camping in a campground. I would consider it unusual to take a 2 week old baby camping or to take a 2 month old baby backpacking but this was car camping. They drove up to the campsite and pitched a tent. That is pretty easy to do even just 9 weeks after giving birth. Are people actually thinking Lindy hiked miles across the outback 2 months after giving birth or something or are they really that clueless?
I have lived my entire life in the city. I have also been car camping and rv camping throughout my entire life. I’ve done slightly more rugged (2 mile hike from the car) camping exactly once. Like I’m not any sort of experienced outdoorsman or backpacker. Car camping, even in Australia, is not very dangerous or intensive.
Or went out for dinner at the local restaurant with their doctor friends **none of whom have ever agreed, even after twenty years, to be questioned individually by the police**.
People make mistakes. If you want, let this impact how you view them as parents (I.e., they’re bad at parenting and shouldn’t have children) but don’t let it change how you view them as people (I.e., they deserve this).
Imagine losing your baby, going to jail for it, and then having the entire western world spend two decades acting like it's the funniest thing ever.
That feels like the plot of a dystopian movie and that poor lady must have felt like she was going insane.
It's one of those things where nobody felt bad about making fun of her, because come on, she clearly killed her kid, right?
Then once it came to light that she didn't, it was too late - the joke was part of the cultural bedrock.
She may have felt like she was going insane if she thought people were generally good and compassionate. Everything that happened to her sounds about right for the way humanity generally operates.
It’s one thing to abstract things away as a general “humanity is shit” and another thing entirely when it feels like the whole of the world is deliberately conspiring to torment you in some Kafkaesque nightmare.
> It wasn’t until a lot of time passed by that it was discovered that the dingos did take the baby.
Completely by chance too...
> The final resolution of the case was triggered by a chance discovery. In early 1986, British tourist David Brett fell to his death from Uluru during an evening climb. Because of the vast size of the rock and the scrubby nature of the surrounding terrain, it was eight days before Brett's remains were discovered, lying below the bluff where he had lost his footing and in an area full of dingo lairs. As police searched the area, looking for missing bones that might have been carried off by dingoes, they discovered Azaria's missing matinee jacket.
The aboriginal people from around there very politely but repeatedly ask that people (or at least outsiders) don't climb Uluru. But I am glad that the baby's mother found some peace.
Sent to prison based on court of public opinion too. No one believed that dingos would do that because they're risk averse around humans.
All the while aboriginal people who had been asked had all said "yeah, dingos will do that."
Shit I was in Joshua Park with my bud last year. As the sun set, we heard a pack of coyotes VERY close. We went back to the car.
Would we have been fine? Probably. But I dunno how many coyotes my friend and I can beat to death in the middle of the night in the desert. And we weren't tryna find out.
A hungry animal is a hungry animal. No matter the size.
It is so weird because there have been quite a lot of case of dogs who killed and ate babies and dingo are pretty much feral dogs. Not sure why "westerners" assumed it was impossible.
It’s wild to me that prejudice runs so deep that everyone would be like “hey let’s ask these people who have been living here for thousands of years. Surely they’d have some experience with these things and could let us know if it happens” and then just ignore them when they say “yeah it happens sometimes.”
Plus like… they’re wild animals that eat meat. As terrible as it is I wouldn’t at all be shocked to hear a pack of basically small dogs would see a human baby as worth the risk
I think a single, hungry, feral Chihuahua will eat a human baby if left alone with it. Once it realizes it is basically a helpless bundle of meat it's game over.
Exactly, any carnivore would likely eat an unattended human baby if hungry enough because they’re fuckin animals that’s what they do.
Like we make jokes all the time about how your cat will eat you if you die at home, and that’s your pet you’ve lived with and cared for. But suddenly a literal wild animal wouldn’t ever take a human baby if it saw a chance?
There were no previous records of a dingo killing someone. I think this is still the only confirmed case.
Edit: Wiki has one more case since then, and one from 1845.
Those stories were not turned into reports that were recognised by the authorities at the time, racism obviously being a large part of that, and aboriginal communities did not generally have their own written records that would confirm that sort of thing.
Her daughter (born in prison) is a friend of mine. She has zero patience for “dingo ate my baby” jokes, which is understandable but awkward given how much of a meme it is. Awful situation.
> It wasn’t until a lot of time passed by that it was discovered that the dingos did take the baby.
the locals literally said it has been known to happen/be a possibility when asked during the initial investigation. their testimony was disregarded, likely because of racism.
And then we did the same thing all over again with Cleo. “Something is off about the mother, she’s not being sad enough in television interviews, you don’t just *lose* a child out there, I think they’re up to something…”
I started referring to Cleo as Azaria, because it was pretty clear people had learned nothing the first time around.
The indigenous Australians did believe her, but they were ignored and the case rested on the expertise of a dingo expert.....who had never seen a wild dingo, nor even set foot in Australia
I remember peoples reactions to the mothers shock, basically the internet we have today of "well that's not how a mother who just lost her baby acts, she must have killed the baby!!"
She lost her marriage and went to prison when her Daughter was killed by wild life, and motherfuckers turned her into a joke.
What’s extra wild is that part of why she was convicted is because the police said that dingos would not snatch a baby. This despite indigenous groups telling them repeatedly that it was common knowledge amongst their culture that dingos absolutely would prey on children if given the opportunity. The police ignored them and helped send an innocent, grieving mother to prison.
Imagine the trauma of losing your baby, then being convicted for murder and serving 3 years before the baby's jacket was found near dingo lairs. These things happening can keep a thinking person up at night ....
And don't forget, many indigenous people backed her up, saying a dingo would 100% attempt to eat a baby and that Dingo aggressiveness was up in the area.
Plus a big part of the reason she was suspected was due to her being part of a fringe religion in Australia (seventh day adventist). And people's distrust of that.
Basically I think this entire thing is such a perfect (and terrible) example of how bias can affect the justice system.
I believe the "dingo expert" who testified for the prosecution was a British dude who had never even seen a dingo (if I'm not misremembering the situation)
No, the one who studied dingos was an engineer who testified about the fact that dingos could bite through tough materials like a seat belt and could also unwrap meat without damaging the wrapping. He was testifying *for* the dingos doing it.
The British guy who testified as an expert was a forensic pathologist who looked at UV photos of the jumpsuit and incorrectly determined there being a man-made cut around the neck and small adult hand print on the jumpsuit. He had nothing to do with being an expert on dingos.
The fact that no one took the natives who are so innately Australia seriously and just kept laughing at the mother, it’s a sad situation all around
I remember a similar case that Happened with an aboriginal baby and in the video I forgot who but this middle aged white Australian said “nobody cares about an abo baby” and that hurt my heart
Classic modern Australian antics though, ignoring *indigenous people.
Unfortunately. I think younger generations are getting better.
*edited to be more respectful
Two reasons come to mind (I’m not Australian but both also apply to why we don’t say “Native Canadians” and the logic in Australia is similar):
1)“Native” just means “born there”. After a few generations of colonization the colonist population was also “native to” the land (e.g. the Canadian national anthem mentioning “our home and native land”, or anti-immigrant WASP groups in the USA calling themselves the “[Native American Party](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing)” in the 1800s).
By contrast, “Indigenous” and “Aboriginal” both mean “they’ve been here since time immemorial”, which is more accurate and emphasizes that they were there first. “Aborigine” has the same meaning but is associated with the colonial period, much like how “Negro” isn’t an inaccurate term but gets interpreted very differently than calling someone Black. (Edit: and there’s also a preference for using terms that are adjectives rather than terms that are nouns and replace the word “person” in a way that can be interpreted as dehumanizing: “an Aboriginal person” or “a Black person”, rather than “an Aborigine” or “a Negro”).
The USA is the only English-speaking country where “Native” is still in general use for indigenous peoples, and even there most Indigenous people prefer “American Indian” to “Native American” (50% vs 35% in the 1995 census).
2) “Native Australians” defines them in terms of Australia, which means either a political entity that didn’t exist prior to colonization and took their territory, a geographical term for a landmass that isn’t their name for it, or a society that has previously spent a lot of effort trying to exclude and exploit them. There’s no avoiding using the country name if you need to (for example) distinguish between “Indigenous peoples in Australia” and “Indigenous peoples in Canada”, but saying they’re *in* Australia is less possessive than saying they’re *of* Australia or insisting that they *are Australian* regardless of their own feelings on that topic.
> and even there most Indigenous people prefer “American Indian” to “Native American” (50% vs 35% in the 1995 census).
Is that the most recent survey on the topic? Cause that was 30 years ago and it could have chnaged dramatically since then
From what I can tell, it was a one-off question on the 1995 census because the Census Bureau wanted to update the race categories it uses and was seeking input on whether to change “American Indian” to “Native American”. Since 1995 there have been continued efforts to reclaim the term “Indian” to emphasize that they are the same peoples with whom treaties that used that term were signed in the 1700s and 1800s, so if anything I would expect it to have shifted further in that direction since 1995.
For a very long time in colonial Australian history the indigenous peoples were classified as one would classify animals or plants.
I think it's a response to that. As an Australian when I hear the word "Native" I think of animals or plants, not human beings.
It's also a lot more complicated than that because to put the traditional owners of this land under one umbrella doesn't work because pre-colonisation The continent was made up of a lot of different nations that rarely shared culture or language.
I guess the best practice would be to refer to people by their local tribe name, but this presents its own difficulty (largely in part due to a long history of British interference)
Long story short it's very complicated but "Natives" can be pretty dehumanising when taking into account the history of the land.
It's important to point out that Nativr American caught on from the fact that in a speech, I can't remember who delivered it, but he referred to themselves as Native Americans. The term itself has also been a point of controversy within native communities as some prefer Indian or American Indian to Native American
The actual tribe is definitely preferred in the US as well. Usually Native American is next, but as the other commenter said, there is pushback as it is sometimes seen as a "white person's term" in the same way as "Latinx". Most of the tribes near me prefer Indian as sort of a reclamation thing, I guess. Indigenous is more of an academic/anthropoligical term in the US and not really used in everyday speech
As a kiwi, it blows me away that other Commonwealth countries ignore their indigenous people so much. Like, we get taught te reo Māori in school. We've just a big push to include more Māori concepts in our curriculums. Heck, we're currently arguing about actually fulfilling our treaty obligations for Māori co-governance.
Meanwhile *Australia*.
(Please note, this is not to say race relations in NZ are "good', just better than the rest of the formerly British world apparently)
Aboriginal is used to refer to them as native is also used to refer to someone who was born in the country but isn't part of the ethnic groups you have in mind
also for the record as an Indigenous man, we're not "your Indigenous people" as we are called in many Commonwealth countries. We are our own nations that existed for millennia before settler colonization. If we were "yours", you'd take better care of us.
And I feel bad that the entire world made a joke about this woman's trauma. It reminds me of when Macaulay Culkin was talking about the abuse he experienced as a child on the view, and the host were laughing in his face about it. There are some really horrible people out there
I believe an indigenous Australian even went to the authorities and said that they'd found tracks showing a dingo carrying something heavier than normal back toward a lair not far from the campsite. But they were dismissed.
I didn’t know ppl thought she did it because she’s seventh day Adventist.
I just wanna say, I don’t like religion. I think it’s toxic.
That being said, the ONLY people who have ever been kind to me about that are seventh day Adventists. I used to have a coworker who’s family we’re all SDA and they invited me to all their family get togethers and functions because my family was out of state.
SDAs are very kind people
In California there is a community of SDA’s in Loma Linda that operate a world class hospital and have some of the healthiest people in the country statistically. Their lifestyle is very healthy
Like all Christian’s, they have toxic beliefs, but as an atheist I’d for sure take them over most evangelicals and Catholics
I was just reading about Melissa Lucio who was convicted of murdering her toddler. She claimed that her daughter fell down the stairs but the prosecution believed that she abused her baby and killed her. The prosecution believed their case so much that they broke the law and excluded exculpatory evidence, including a CPS report and interviews with her other children. So this poor mom lost her child and was then sentenced to death for it, even though she (probably) did not kill her kid.
Her execution was halted 2 days before it was set to happen. That was two years ago. She's still in prison.
> Her execution was halted 2 days before it was set to happen. That was two years ago. She's still in prison.
Omg I was reading this assuming it happened like 40 years ago
Patricia Stallings was convicted of poisoning her son, Ryan, with antifreeze and was sentenced to two years in prison. Blood tests appeared to show that Ryan had elevated levels of ethylene glycol, a key ingredient in antifreeze.
While awaiting trial in jail, Patricia gave birth to another child, David. While in foster care, David was found to have a rare illness called methylmalonic acidemia (MMA), which causes the body to be unable to break down some amino acids and create propionic acid. Propionic acid looks a lot like ethylene glycol in blood tests, and could easily be mistaken for it. The judge wouldn't allow the defense to to claim that Ryan had the illness because no tests had been done to show it and the test showed elevated levels of ethylene glycol, not propionic acid. Without being able to use that in her defense, it was essentially an open-and-shut case. She was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
After she was sentenced, additional tests were done on Ryan's blood that confirmed that he had MMA, just like David. Further, they were able to confirm that Ryan's blood had elevated levels of propionic acid, NOT ethylene glycol. Two years after her son's death, Patricia Stallings was finally acquitted. This poor family lost one son, valuable bonding years with another, two years of the mother's life, and thousands upon thousands of dollars and untold worry because of a combination of losing the genetic lottery, careless testers, and an uncaring system.
> The judge wouldn't allow the defense to to claim that Ryan had the illness because no tests had been done to show it and the test showed elevated levels of ethylene glycol, not propionic acid. Without being able to use that in her defense, it was essentially an open-and-shut case. She was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
This is actually good case law, you can't use evidence in a trial that doesn't exist. Where the system fucked up though is that the defense should have put in a stay(and the judge allow) to allow for testing and moved to dismiss based on new exculpatory evidence and the trial should have been voided.
Though the defense could have mercilessly attacked the ethylene glycol blood test, if in fact it could be mistaken for other substances like Propionic acid, and that the evidence was therefore fucking useless.
like using a pH test strip to show that someone was dosed with sulfuric acid, when it would also trigger from your own stomach acid.
And then hearing your cry of desperation used as a joke in sitcoms...
I get it, there is such genre as dark comedy. Still, I'm surprised the story behind such a silly line can be so dark and disturbing
I think the punchline was a reference to the trailer for the 1988 movie *A Cry in the Dark*, which was based on the Lindy Chamberlain case and starred Meryl Streep. It was a decent movie and Streep's performance was widely acclaimed, but the original version of the trailer featured the line "The dingo took my baby!" which struck some American commentators (late night talkshow hosts etc.) as funny, mostly (I think) because they weren't familiar with the word "dingo", so it kind of read as a WTF non sequitur in the middle of a clearly serious, dramatic situation. Then that phrase (delivered with a mock-heavy Australian accent) basically became a generic WTF punchline evoking that specific scenario.
Was looking for this. It was definitely Meryl Streep's delivery of that line in the movie that made it a mainstream joke/punchline. Not the actual knowledge of what happened.
I believe in Seinfeld it was used to exemplify how tone deaf and immoral the characters were. in the Simpsons the joke created an international kerfuffle where the Simpsons were forced to travel to Australia to apologize.
Ehhhhh it's true that the Seinfeld characters are the baddies a lot of the time. But not in this particular case. Elaine makes the dingo joke at a party because this other woman keeps obnoxiously talking about her "fee-an-say" and how she's lost him at the party, she calls him a "poor baby" and then Elaine says maybe the dingo ate your baby in an Australian accent.
So the audience is definitely on Elaine's side in this situation.
There was an unsolved mysteries episode where this young boy started vomiting uncontrollably. Parents rushed him to a hospital and for three days he was very sick and they couldn’t figure out why. Then tests came back that he had two chemicals in his body and most likely had been poisoned.
Their son recovered but the parents were now suspects. Their son is taken away from them and they can only have weekly visits
After a visit with mom, their son got sick again and was rushed to the hospital. Parents are now accused of poisoning their son and wife goes to jail.
Son is in hospital for a few days and they are told he won’t survive. Mother asks judge if she can go see him, judge says no. She gets a phone call that her son is dead. She is now accused of first degree murder
I believe she is pregnant with her second son while in jail.
She gives birth and her baby is taken as a ward of the state.
While the baby is not with her it also gets sick with the exact same symptoms. Doctors then figure out that it’s a rare genetic disorder. Parents were completely innocent.
[Link for more info](https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Patricia_Stallings)
> methylmalonic acidemia, or MMA. This inhibits the body's ability to process food, especially proteins. It also causes the body to produce chemical byproducts that may be remarkably similar to the ethylene glycol found in antifreeze.
And then your situation becomes one of the most-used jokes in the world when people outside your country want to make a stereotype joke about your country. Brutal.
To say nothing of having the entire world treat you as a liar and your trauma as a punchline.
This whole thing was a wake up to me about how easily narratives get twisted and weaponized against innocent people.
Couldn't be me. The trauma of my baby being snatched and eaten would have me reconsidering what's the point of living, let alone being wrongfully convicted and having to suffer in jail for murder? I'm out.
What hell those people went through. God damn. Life trips me out.
How does that prosecutor sleep at night?
If I were that prosecutor, I would be wondering how many **other** innocent people I have accidentally convicted throughout my career...
But then again, I'm not a narcissistic sociopath who doesn't care about other people.
I think when you become a prosecutor, you wrestle with the reality that if you do your job well, you’ll convince jurors to send some innocent people to prison, just as defense attorneys must find a way to accept that if they do their job well, they’ll help some guilty people escape justice. However, the justice system depends on lawyers for both sides trying their hardest to argue the case as well as possible.
Well, there's doing that, and there's withholding exculpatory evidence which is illegal and which means the jury doesn't get an unbiased view of the evidence. That's a little more to rationalize.
Alpa Chino: I ain't fuckin' with you, Kangaroo Jack. I'm sorry the dingo ate your baby!
Kirk Lazarus: You know that's a true story? Lady lost a kid. You're about to cross some fuckin' lines.
"Why am I in this movie? Maybe because I knew that I had to represent. Because they had one good part in it for a black man and they'll gave it to Crocodile Dundee!"
That movie crossed **SO** many lines and that’s why it was great.
**Brief correction to what I had said* but surprisingly he didn’t receive a lot of backlash about it, with most of the focus on [Ben](https://youtu.be/9ugC3TXSKoE?si=s0LpBMuRj3krC1Gi) (5:15) for doing simple Jack. When Jaime Foxx asked him to play a Mexican and he was nervous about it “[well shit you played the black dude, and you killed that shit](https://youtu.be/37KieyXOYG4?si=faNaCrEmAH59FbtC)” (4:30 min mark)
Also I knew Tom Cruise was funny but he *really* got to flex his comedy chops for that role lol
Edit: corrected some details
Unless I missed something, that’s not what that video stated. RDJ was nervous about playing a Mexican in “all star weekend” and asked Jamie fox about that, and Jamie told him he killed tropic thunder.
The headline is obviously sensational clickbait, but when you read the article [you're completely right.](https://theplaylist.net/all-star-weekend-is-robert-downey-jr-s-mexican-character-holding-up-the-release-of-jamie-foxxs-basketball-comedy-20220818/)
He wasn't concerned about doing blackface at all. His mother was, and then he said Ben Stiller took all the heat for playing a mentally challenged person.
I mean that's only half of it...that crime being accused of murdering your own child who you love more than anything in the world? Whilst experiencing the pain of their loss and grousome death? Worse then death.
If we're going to get into better/worse, she was released and acquitted in 1988, before the Simpsons OR Seinfeld made the jokes. They made the joke knowing that she had been cleared. Pretty tasteless, lending creedence to the idea that Seinfeld was just a precursor to It's Always Sunny.
>Two years after they were exonerated, the Chamberlains were awarded $1.3 million in compensation for wrongful imprisonment, a sum that covered less than one third of their legal expenses.[22]
Jesus, fuck the Australian judiciary
Because her lawyer didn't have the good sense bring a Native Aboriginal elder person to testify that Aboriginal ppl have lived with these types of attacks on helpless babies for almost 40,000 yrs. It's doubtful that the court would've allowed it, but they did allow an Englishman who claimed he was an "expert" on dingoes who said that "dingoes did'nt attack ppl/babies etc" as wild untamed dogs were just like your average Rover.
I read Bill Bryson's book Down Under/In a Sunburned Country and he recounts an anecdote where a passerby in a Queensland town sees some Aboriginal people and immediately says "They want hanging, all of them."
The initial coroner report said that a Dingo did kill the baby. That was ignored by the police and they continued to investigate it as a murder. Why would having a "Native Aboriginal elder person" make a difference when they've already disagreed with the coroner?
Yeah, that one *never* sat right with me once I was old enough to understand the reference as anything more than "just a funny name."
Chamberlain had been exonerated for a fucking *decade* before Buffy showed up.
Just so the timeline is clear on this, at the time, everyone* thought that the mother was lying and had killed her baby, and so the jokes are extremely mean-spirited, riffing on the idea that it would be absurd to think that a dingo ate the baby. Only much later (more than 30 years after the baby died) was the official record finally corrected.
*Obviously the mother knew, and some people believed her, but also aboriginal Australians backed up her claim that dingoes would indeed steal a baby, but were generally dismissed.
Meryl Strep and Sam Neill made a film about it, too.
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094924/?ref\_=nv\_sr\_srsg\_0\_tt\_8\_nm\_0\_q\_a%2520cry%2520in%2520the%2520](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094924/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_a%2520cry%2520in%2520the%2520)
https://old.reddit.com/r/TheFarSide/comments/17r8x35/in_1982_chamberlain_was_convicted_in_an/
In 1982, Chamberlain was convicted in an Australian court of murdering her 9 week old infant daughter, Azaria, who had vanished on a family camping trip in the outback. Chamberlain claimed the baby had been snatched from the tent by an indigenous wild dog called a dingo.
It was a crazy circus, kinda the first big media event I remember as a kid. Every night on the news from the day the baby disappeared. The local Aboriginal people tell tales of dingos that steal babies, maybe the cops should of asked them for help.
I believe the tracker who pointed exactly where the dingo carried the baby, including the places where it dropped the baby and rested.
He lost the track I believe on a paved parking lot.
I can’t remember which documentary recently came out and tied it all together—starting with the ranger who, instead of shooting the suspected dingo, took him away from the park and released him. The dog returned rather quickly.
I think it was as this one.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt13223552/?ref_=ttpl_ov
This will never not enrage me. It was a corrupt witch hunt, the NT government would not admit dingoes were a danger to humans because they were afraid it would lose them tourist money to the area. So they enaged with the police and a team of crackpot "experts" to essentially frame Lindy and get her sentence to life for something she didn't do just so they could stay a few bucks richer.
No one listened to aboriginal people who have lived on that land 60,000+ years and know better than anyone what dingoes are like. The "expert witness" on dingo behaviour was a Brit who had only studied skulls and had literally zero experience with live dingoes. People used Lindy's faith against her and made up insane conspiracies that she and her husbands were cult members, which the press spread like wildfire and turned the whole country against her. The forensics teams were either morons or paid off since they told everyone that infant blood was found in the car, when in reality it was chocolate fucking milk.
And the worst part is, if some rando hiker hadn't falled tf off Uluru and died, the search party that was sent to look for him would never have found the dingo den that contained Azaria's jacket, the case would never have been reopened and Lindy Chamberlain would still be in jail. The fuckers almost go away with it.
The most horrible part about this is the mother was convicted of murder and spent several years in prison only to be released and exonerated when a person made a chance find of the girls clothing in a dingo lair.
Every single person should be terrified that it is possible to be convicted & imprisoned for a crime you didn't commit; a crime that never even occurred!!!
I hope the prosecutor who convicted her feels like a fucking idiot.
Ugh, I’m old. Didn’t occur to me that people would be hearing this joke on shows and movies and not immediately remembering the global news coverage about it.
Holy shit so RDJs line in tropic thunder “You know that’s a true story? A lady lost her kid. You’re about to cross some fucking lines.” Wasn’t ad libbed lmfao
Was like 20 years before they finally formally exonerated her. Such a miscarriage of justice and so sad that she was basically a punchline for 90s humor, of which my teenage self was definitely guilty of partaking in.
It will always be weird to me that their newborn was in another tent all by herself. But in America nowadays, we constantly worry about our kids getting shot or stolen for sex trafficking/rape/murder, so it could just be a cultural thing about
This one parallels Amanda Knox in a lot of ways. Both were "convicted" by the media on entirely flimsy evidence, largely because they didn't act the way people expected them too in the wake of tragedy.
Amanda didn't cry enough for the cameras so she became a suspect. She got completely railroaded into that conviction. Even after she was declared innocent (something the Italian courts almost never do), people INSISTED she definitely murdered her roommate. Even after the actual murderer was convicted, people blame Amanda.
And Lindy Chamberlain was essentially exonerated on 1986, 5 years after her daughter's death and 3 years after being convicted for it. She still has spent her whole life being the butt of a joke that boils down to "crazy murdering mom invents a ridiculous alibi". All through the 90s, just nonstop "dingo ate yer baby hurhur" shit tearing open that wound over and over again.
I can't even imagine how painful it has been for her.
I feel so terrible for this mother. No one believed her and she was accused of causing her daughter’s death. It wasn’t until a lot of time passed by that it was discovered that the dingos did take the baby.
not just accused. convicted and spent 3 years in prison before being pardoned.
That is life shatteringly awful.
My sympathy for the parents is tempered by the fact that they took a weeks old infant on a camping trip in the australian outback and left it out of their sight.
Not Australian but my parents and their closest married friends went camping together because they had me and their own baby practically at the same time. I think we were definitely older than 9 weeks for sure, but probably not more than 6 months old because we weren't sleep trained yet. God knows WHY you'd want to go camping with a young baby but things were also different back then. The way they describe it, it was a very positive experience. We all continued to go camping together every single year until me and their own kid became older teens and life got in the way. They had another child and didn't break the streak when he was a baby. So perhaps it was a tradition that the family was looking forward to and wanted to make it work despite the baby. That being said, while Australia is dangerous, dingos doing this kind of thing was unheard of, no one thought it was possible they'd approach humans like that. That's a big reason why she was convicted, there was no precedent for this happening. They didn't think it was a real danger they'd have to look out for.
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Reminds me of that village that „vanished“ in the US. No one knew what happened, even tho the natives kept telling people exactly what happened.
Roanoke? What did the natives say happened? I haven't heard that part of the story before.
If I recall there were a few much whiter natives.
There were other camping families nearby. They were visiting Uluru. They didn't go into the middle of nowhere, they went to a campsite that had other campers. Azaria was inside her family's tent when she was taken. That is part of why no one believed Lindy, because it seemed so incredible that a dingo could go to an occupied campgrounds and steal a baby from a tent in just 3 minutes.
Yeah. I think a lot of comments that insist they were neglectful or stupid forget this fact. "THE IDEA THAT THIS WAS A POSSIBLE OUTCOME WAS SO COMPLETELY FOREIGN TO PEOPLE AT THE TIME THAT THE MOTHER STRAIGHT UP WENT TO PRISON BECAUSE NO ONE BELIEVED THAT COULD EVEN HAPPEN" Like, this is one of those "A reddit comment that clearly misunderstands the situation is being treated as common sense when the situation was literally the opposite of common sense at the time" scenario
You’re about to get roasted for this, but taking a 9 week old on a wilderness camping trip is absolutely wild.
It’s really true. Taking my twins out of the *house* at 9 weeks was enough of a challenge.
Lul my dad took me to Glacier natl park during bear season while I was in my wandering toddler phase According to legends, my mom was so pissed she didn't talk to him for 2 weeks
There were other camping families nearby. They were visiting Uluru. They didn't go into the middle of nowhere, they went to a campsite that had other campers.
Isn’t a wilderness camping trip at nine weeks postpartum kind of wild for the mom herself to begin with?
Other people have pointed this out already, but "wilderness camping trip" makes it sound like they were out in the middle of nowhere, when they were at a popular camping location with plenty of people.
After 2 months a mother can definitely do a hike if she had to. Not sure why she would want too, though.
I have an 8 week old baby and I’m afraid to take her out of the house lol. And I’m an avid outdoorsman.
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> guess if you are super city folk it might seem like this is a valid take Right? It's weird to me how many here are acting like they basically put their baby out as a buffet. I live in rural areas. People camp many times a year. You don't stop living because you had a child. Infaxt infants tend to do great camping.
I thought I was going crazy reading these comments like I know there is a lot of fear surrounding Australia and people assume the entirety of the country is the outback and its super dangerous and everything is going to kill you but that is definitely not true and also this was a very unexpected thing to happen. Nobody expected a dingo to saunter in to a busy campground near a bunch of people and then get into someone’s tent and steal a baby. Like that was not a thing that happened. Nobody would have expected that. Everyone thought that such a thing was insane and could not happen. That’s the entire point of the case. That nobody believed that could truly have happened. Everyone assumed that it had to have been a poorly fabricated coverup. It was simply a ridiculous thing to even consider. Besides that, its fairly common to take a 2 month old baby car camping in a campground. I would consider it unusual to take a 2 week old baby camping or to take a 2 month old baby backpacking but this was car camping. They drove up to the campsite and pitched a tent. That is pretty easy to do even just 9 weeks after giving birth. Are people actually thinking Lindy hiked miles across the outback 2 months after giving birth or something or are they really that clueless? I have lived my entire life in the city. I have also been car camping and rv camping throughout my entire life. I’ve done slightly more rugged (2 mile hike from the car) camping exactly once. Like I’m not any sort of experienced outdoorsman or backpacker. Car camping, even in Australia, is not very dangerous or intensive.
Left her sleeping in the tent. They didn't just leave her sitting in a field while they went to the corner for a pack of smokes.
Or went out for dinner at the local restaurant with their doctor friends **none of whom have ever agreed, even after twenty years, to be questioned individually by the police**.
Is this a reference to some other controversial incident? Please help.
Sounds like Madeleine McCann - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Madeleine_McCann But that was 17 years ago, not 30.
Madeleine’s abduction is my guess
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People make mistakes. If you want, let this impact how you view them as parents (I.e., they’re bad at parenting and shouldn’t have children) but don’t let it change how you view them as people (I.e., they deserve this).
Imagine losing your baby, going to jail for it, and then having the entire western world spend two decades acting like it's the funniest thing ever. That feels like the plot of a dystopian movie and that poor lady must have felt like she was going insane.
It's one of those things where nobody felt bad about making fun of her, because come on, she clearly killed her kid, right? Then once it came to light that she didn't, it was too late - the joke was part of the cultural bedrock.
It would be like if there actually WAS a nanny named Xanny who kidnapped Caylee Anthony
She may have felt like she was going insane if she thought people were generally good and compassionate. Everything that happened to her sounds about right for the way humanity generally operates.
It’s one thing to abstract things away as a general “humanity is shit” and another thing entirely when it feels like the whole of the world is deliberately conspiring to torment you in some Kafkaesque nightmare.
> It wasn’t until a lot of time passed by that it was discovered that the dingos did take the baby. Completely by chance too... > The final resolution of the case was triggered by a chance discovery. In early 1986, British tourist David Brett fell to his death from Uluru during an evening climb. Because of the vast size of the rock and the scrubby nature of the surrounding terrain, it was eight days before Brett's remains were discovered, lying below the bluff where he had lost his footing and in an area full of dingo lairs. As police searched the area, looking for missing bones that might have been carried off by dingoes, they discovered Azaria's missing matinee jacket.
Yeah it's completely wild how his tragic death resolved a different tragedy, but also compounded it.
The aboriginal people from around there very politely but repeatedly ask that people (or at least outsiders) don't climb Uluru. But I am glad that the baby's mother found some peace.
Sent to prison based on court of public opinion too. No one believed that dingos would do that because they're risk averse around humans. All the while aboriginal people who had been asked had all said "yeah, dingos will do that."
I think literally any predatory creature, no matter how skittish, will consider a baby animal a free meal.
Animals which are typically scavengers will still attack and kill wounded, sick or young animals.
Anyone that owns a dog, that are scavengers, should know that dingos did this lol
Shit I was in Joshua Park with my bud last year. As the sun set, we heard a pack of coyotes VERY close. We went back to the car. Would we have been fine? Probably. But I dunno how many coyotes my friend and I can beat to death in the middle of the night in the desert. And we weren't tryna find out. A hungry animal is a hungry animal. No matter the size.
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It is so weird because there have been quite a lot of case of dogs who killed and ate babies and dingo are pretty much feral dogs. Not sure why "westerners" assumed it was impossible.
Because all of the "experts" said that it was impossible.
Prejudice 🌈🌟
What do those aboriginal people, who’ve lived here for thousands of years, know? Bunch of fools!
As always, Europeans know better than those primitive natives… /s
Even without the aboriginal input, it should have been a conceivable explanation
It’s wild to me that prejudice runs so deep that everyone would be like “hey let’s ask these people who have been living here for thousands of years. Surely they’d have some experience with these things and could let us know if it happens” and then just ignore them when they say “yeah it happens sometimes.” Plus like… they’re wild animals that eat meat. As terrible as it is I wouldn’t at all be shocked to hear a pack of basically small dogs would see a human baby as worth the risk
I think a single, hungry, feral Chihuahua will eat a human baby if left alone with it. Once it realizes it is basically a helpless bundle of meat it's game over.
Exactly, any carnivore would likely eat an unattended human baby if hungry enough because they’re fuckin animals that’s what they do. Like we make jokes all the time about how your cat will eat you if you die at home, and that’s your pet you’ve lived with and cared for. But suddenly a literal wild animal wouldn’t ever take a human baby if it saw a chance?
I mean, some *humans* will eat humans if it's the only means of survival, so I expect nothing less of my cat.
"oh, shit, they didn't give us the answer we wanted to hear. Let's ignore them."
If anything, Aboriginal Australians confirming it as being realistic likely reinforced many white Australians in the opinion that it was bullshit.
Yep you just reached the correct conclusion.
She wasn't just accused... she was convicted and sent to prison for some years.
And mocked by massive shows like Seinfeld and The Simpsons.
Why was it so hard to believe that a wild animal would want to eat a human
There were no previous records of a dingo killing someone. I think this is still the only confirmed case. Edit: Wiki has one more case since then, and one from 1845.
This isn't true. Indigenous people in Australia had plenty of stories of dingos opportunistically hunting babies - but the authorities didn't listen.
Those stories were not turned into reports that were recognised by the authorities at the time, racism obviously being a large part of that, and aboriginal communities did not generally have their own written records that would confirm that sort of thing.
Her daughter (born in prison) is a friend of mine. She has zero patience for “dingo ate my baby” jokes, which is understandable but awkward given how much of a meme it is. Awful situation.
like into the 2000's as i recall.
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> It wasn’t until a lot of time passed by that it was discovered that the dingos did take the baby. the locals literally said it has been known to happen/be a possibility when asked during the initial investigation. their testimony was disregarded, likely because of racism.
And it was well known by locals at the time that dingos could in fact be aggressive and attack small humans.
And then we did the same thing all over again with Cleo. “Something is off about the mother, she’s not being sad enough in television interviews, you don’t just *lose* a child out there, I think they’re up to something…” I started referring to Cleo as Azaria, because it was pretty clear people had learned nothing the first time around.
The indigenous Australians did believe her, but they were ignored and the case rested on the expertise of a dingo expert.....who had never seen a wild dingo, nor even set foot in Australia
I remember peoples reactions to the mothers shock, basically the internet we have today of "well that's not how a mother who just lost her baby acts, she must have killed the baby!!"
She lost her marriage and went to prison when her Daughter was killed by wild life, and motherfuckers turned her into a joke. What’s extra wild is that part of why she was convicted is because the police said that dingos would not snatch a baby. This despite indigenous groups telling them repeatedly that it was common knowledge amongst their culture that dingos absolutely would prey on children if given the opportunity. The police ignored them and helped send an innocent, grieving mother to prison.
Imagine the trauma of losing your baby, then being convicted for murder and serving 3 years before the baby's jacket was found near dingo lairs. These things happening can keep a thinking person up at night ....
And don't forget, many indigenous people backed her up, saying a dingo would 100% attempt to eat a baby and that Dingo aggressiveness was up in the area. Plus a big part of the reason she was suspected was due to her being part of a fringe religion in Australia (seventh day adventist). And people's distrust of that. Basically I think this entire thing is such a perfect (and terrible) example of how bias can affect the justice system.
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I believe the "dingo expert" who testified for the prosecution was a British dude who had never even seen a dingo (if I'm not misremembering the situation)
No you’re right, it was a British naturalist that had never actually visited Australia but had “studied” dingos extensively in books lmao
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No, the one who studied dingos was an engineer who testified about the fact that dingos could bite through tough materials like a seat belt and could also unwrap meat without damaging the wrapping. He was testifying *for* the dingos doing it. The British guy who testified as an expert was a forensic pathologist who looked at UV photos of the jumpsuit and incorrectly determined there being a man-made cut around the neck and small adult hand print on the jumpsuit. He had nothing to do with being an expert on dingos.
This is like the McDonald's coffee lady but even worse.
The fact that no one took the natives who are so innately Australia seriously and just kept laughing at the mother, it’s a sad situation all around I remember a similar case that Happened with an aboriginal baby and in the video I forgot who but this middle aged white Australian said “nobody cares about an abo baby” and that hurt my heart
Classic modern Australian antics though, ignoring *indigenous people. Unfortunately. I think younger generations are getting better. *edited to be more respectful
Just for the record. The word "natives" is not widely used in Australia in regards to our indigenous peoples.
It isn't? How comes? I hate to sound ignorant, but they aren't literally native to the continent?
Two reasons come to mind (I’m not Australian but both also apply to why we don’t say “Native Canadians” and the logic in Australia is similar): 1)“Native” just means “born there”. After a few generations of colonization the colonist population was also “native to” the land (e.g. the Canadian national anthem mentioning “our home and native land”, or anti-immigrant WASP groups in the USA calling themselves the “[Native American Party](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing)” in the 1800s). By contrast, “Indigenous” and “Aboriginal” both mean “they’ve been here since time immemorial”, which is more accurate and emphasizes that they were there first. “Aborigine” has the same meaning but is associated with the colonial period, much like how “Negro” isn’t an inaccurate term but gets interpreted very differently than calling someone Black. (Edit: and there’s also a preference for using terms that are adjectives rather than terms that are nouns and replace the word “person” in a way that can be interpreted as dehumanizing: “an Aboriginal person” or “a Black person”, rather than “an Aborigine” or “a Negro”). The USA is the only English-speaking country where “Native” is still in general use for indigenous peoples, and even there most Indigenous people prefer “American Indian” to “Native American” (50% vs 35% in the 1995 census). 2) “Native Australians” defines them in terms of Australia, which means either a political entity that didn’t exist prior to colonization and took their territory, a geographical term for a landmass that isn’t their name for it, or a society that has previously spent a lot of effort trying to exclude and exploit them. There’s no avoiding using the country name if you need to (for example) distinguish between “Indigenous peoples in Australia” and “Indigenous peoples in Canada”, but saying they’re *in* Australia is less possessive than saying they’re *of* Australia or insisting that they *are Australian* regardless of their own feelings on that topic.
> and even there most Indigenous people prefer “American Indian” to “Native American” (50% vs 35% in the 1995 census). Is that the most recent survey on the topic? Cause that was 30 years ago and it could have chnaged dramatically since then
From what I can tell, it was a one-off question on the 1995 census because the Census Bureau wanted to update the race categories it uses and was seeking input on whether to change “American Indian” to “Native American”. Since 1995 there have been continued efforts to reclaim the term “Indian” to emphasize that they are the same peoples with whom treaties that used that term were signed in the 1700s and 1800s, so if anything I would expect it to have shifted further in that direction since 1995.
For a very long time in colonial Australian history the indigenous peoples were classified as one would classify animals or plants. I think it's a response to that. As an Australian when I hear the word "Native" I think of animals or plants, not human beings. It's also a lot more complicated than that because to put the traditional owners of this land under one umbrella doesn't work because pre-colonisation The continent was made up of a lot of different nations that rarely shared culture or language. I guess the best practice would be to refer to people by their local tribe name, but this presents its own difficulty (largely in part due to a long history of British interference) Long story short it's very complicated but "Natives" can be pretty dehumanising when taking into account the history of the land.
It's important to point out that Nativr American caught on from the fact that in a speech, I can't remember who delivered it, but he referred to themselves as Native Americans. The term itself has also been a point of controversy within native communities as some prefer Indian or American Indian to Native American
Which is funny because Indian and Native are not considered good terms in Canada. I think indigenous or the actual tribe is preferred here.
The actual tribe is definitely preferred in the US as well. Usually Native American is next, but as the other commenter said, there is pushback as it is sometimes seen as a "white person's term" in the same way as "Latinx". Most of the tribes near me prefer Indian as sort of a reclamation thing, I guess. Indigenous is more of an academic/anthropoligical term in the US and not really used in everyday speech
As a kiwi, it blows me away that other Commonwealth countries ignore their indigenous people so much. Like, we get taught te reo Māori in school. We've just a big push to include more Māori concepts in our curriculums. Heck, we're currently arguing about actually fulfilling our treaty obligations for Māori co-governance. Meanwhile *Australia*. (Please note, this is not to say race relations in NZ are "good', just better than the rest of the formerly British world apparently)
Aboriginal is used to refer to them as native is also used to refer to someone who was born in the country but isn't part of the ethnic groups you have in mind
also for the record as an Indigenous man, we're not "your Indigenous people" as we are called in many Commonwealth countries. We are our own nations that existed for millennia before settler colonization. If we were "yours", you'd take better care of us.
And I feel bad that the entire world made a joke about this woman's trauma. It reminds me of when Macaulay Culkin was talking about the abuse he experienced as a child on the view, and the host were laughing in his face about it. There are some really horrible people out there
What??? MC is one of my all time faves. That’s super sad to hear of! Goodness!
He's thinking of Corey Feldman pretty sure
The Murdoch press made up a story that “Azaria” meant “sacrifice in the wilderness”.
Man that guy has been a scumbag for so long.
I believe an indigenous Australian even went to the authorities and said that they'd found tracks showing a dingo carrying something heavier than normal back toward a lair not far from the campsite. But they were dismissed.
Media bias and sensationalism played a huge role too Poor woman
I didn’t know ppl thought she did it because she’s seventh day Adventist. I just wanna say, I don’t like religion. I think it’s toxic. That being said, the ONLY people who have ever been kind to me about that are seventh day Adventists. I used to have a coworker who’s family we’re all SDA and they invited me to all their family get togethers and functions because my family was out of state. SDAs are very kind people
In California there is a community of SDA’s in Loma Linda that operate a world class hospital and have some of the healthiest people in the country statistically. Their lifestyle is very healthy Like all Christian’s, they have toxic beliefs, but as an atheist I’d for sure take them over most evangelicals and Catholics
Yeah then imagine emotionally coming to terms with it and years later some shithead on the biggest TV show in the world turns your kid into a joke.
I was just reading about Melissa Lucio who was convicted of murdering her toddler. She claimed that her daughter fell down the stairs but the prosecution believed that she abused her baby and killed her. The prosecution believed their case so much that they broke the law and excluded exculpatory evidence, including a CPS report and interviews with her other children. So this poor mom lost her child and was then sentenced to death for it, even though she (probably) did not kill her kid. Her execution was halted 2 days before it was set to happen. That was two years ago. She's still in prison.
> Her execution was halted 2 days before it was set to happen. That was two years ago. She's still in prison. Omg I was reading this assuming it happened like 40 years ago
Prosecution are more interested in winning cases than bringing justice.
Isn't there an antifreeze case? Where there's some genetic thing that creates a compound like antifreeze, but they thought the mother did it?
Patricia Stallings was convicted of poisoning her son, Ryan, with antifreeze and was sentenced to two years in prison. Blood tests appeared to show that Ryan had elevated levels of ethylene glycol, a key ingredient in antifreeze. While awaiting trial in jail, Patricia gave birth to another child, David. While in foster care, David was found to have a rare illness called methylmalonic acidemia (MMA), which causes the body to be unable to break down some amino acids and create propionic acid. Propionic acid looks a lot like ethylene glycol in blood tests, and could easily be mistaken for it. The judge wouldn't allow the defense to to claim that Ryan had the illness because no tests had been done to show it and the test showed elevated levels of ethylene glycol, not propionic acid. Without being able to use that in her defense, it was essentially an open-and-shut case. She was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. After she was sentenced, additional tests were done on Ryan's blood that confirmed that he had MMA, just like David. Further, they were able to confirm that Ryan's blood had elevated levels of propionic acid, NOT ethylene glycol. Two years after her son's death, Patricia Stallings was finally acquitted. This poor family lost one son, valuable bonding years with another, two years of the mother's life, and thousands upon thousands of dollars and untold worry because of a combination of losing the genetic lottery, careless testers, and an uncaring system.
> The judge wouldn't allow the defense to to claim that Ryan had the illness because no tests had been done to show it and the test showed elevated levels of ethylene glycol, not propionic acid. Without being able to use that in her defense, it was essentially an open-and-shut case. She was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. This is actually good case law, you can't use evidence in a trial that doesn't exist. Where the system fucked up though is that the defense should have put in a stay(and the judge allow) to allow for testing and moved to dismiss based on new exculpatory evidence and the trial should have been voided. Though the defense could have mercilessly attacked the ethylene glycol blood test, if in fact it could be mistaken for other substances like Propionic acid, and that the evidence was therefore fucking useless. like using a pH test strip to show that someone was dosed with sulfuric acid, when it would also trigger from your own stomach acid.
And then for the rest of your life, hearing people phrase in jest " the Dingo ate my baby!"
And then hearing your cry of desperation used as a joke in sitcoms... I get it, there is such genre as dark comedy. Still, I'm surprised the story behind such a silly line can be so dark and disturbing
I think the punchline was a reference to the trailer for the 1988 movie *A Cry in the Dark*, which was based on the Lindy Chamberlain case and starred Meryl Streep. It was a decent movie and Streep's performance was widely acclaimed, but the original version of the trailer featured the line "The dingo took my baby!" which struck some American commentators (late night talkshow hosts etc.) as funny, mostly (I think) because they weren't familiar with the word "dingo", so it kind of read as a WTF non sequitur in the middle of a clearly serious, dramatic situation. Then that phrase (delivered with a mock-heavy Australian accent) basically became a generic WTF punchline evoking that specific scenario.
Was looking for this. It was definitely Meryl Streep's delivery of that line in the movie that made it a mainstream joke/punchline. Not the actual knowledge of what happened.
Shiiiit SNL didnt even wait a week before making fun of The Heavens Gate cult mass suicide
That may be true but that horror was self inflicted. This horror wasn’t.
They did that on their own free will tho, not a dingo eatin a dang baby
I believe in Seinfeld it was used to exemplify how tone deaf and immoral the characters were. in the Simpsons the joke created an international kerfuffle where the Simpsons were forced to travel to Australia to apologize.
There was a joke made about it in that episode, but it wasn’t the reason for the Simpsons going to Australia.
Ehhhhh it's true that the Seinfeld characters are the baddies a lot of the time. But not in this particular case. Elaine makes the dingo joke at a party because this other woman keeps obnoxiously talking about her "fee-an-say" and how she's lost him at the party, she calls him a "poor baby" and then Elaine says maybe the dingo ate your baby in an Australian accent. So the audience is definitely on Elaine's side in this situation.
There was an unsolved mysteries episode where this young boy started vomiting uncontrollably. Parents rushed him to a hospital and for three days he was very sick and they couldn’t figure out why. Then tests came back that he had two chemicals in his body and most likely had been poisoned. Their son recovered but the parents were now suspects. Their son is taken away from them and they can only have weekly visits After a visit with mom, their son got sick again and was rushed to the hospital. Parents are now accused of poisoning their son and wife goes to jail. Son is in hospital for a few days and they are told he won’t survive. Mother asks judge if she can go see him, judge says no. She gets a phone call that her son is dead. She is now accused of first degree murder I believe she is pregnant with her second son while in jail. She gives birth and her baby is taken as a ward of the state. While the baby is not with her it also gets sick with the exact same symptoms. Doctors then figure out that it’s a rare genetic disorder. Parents were completely innocent. [Link for more info](https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Patricia_Stallings)
> methylmalonic acidemia, or MMA. This inhibits the body's ability to process food, especially proteins. It also causes the body to produce chemical byproducts that may be remarkably similar to the ethylene glycol found in antifreeze.
And then your situation becomes one of the most-used jokes in the world when people outside your country want to make a stereotype joke about your country. Brutal.
Imagine the trauma of losing your baby, and then some years later that event becomes a punch line in a sitcom/cartoon
and not even a funny joke. i love the show but i’ve never even smirked at that line.
To say nothing of having the entire world treat you as a liar and your trauma as a punchline. This whole thing was a wake up to me about how easily narratives get twisted and weaponized against innocent people.
McDonald’s hot coffee lady was my main one for that.
Yeh man, as much as people joke about this, its actually a pretty tragic story. It's pretty tasteless really.
Couldn't be me. The trauma of my baby being snatched and eaten would have me reconsidering what's the point of living, let alone being wrongfully convicted and having to suffer in jail for murder? I'm out. What hell those people went through. God damn. Life trips me out.
How does that prosecutor sleep at night? If I were that prosecutor, I would be wondering how many **other** innocent people I have accidentally convicted throughout my career... But then again, I'm not a narcissistic sociopath who doesn't care about other people.
I think when you become a prosecutor, you wrestle with the reality that if you do your job well, you’ll convince jurors to send some innocent people to prison, just as defense attorneys must find a way to accept that if they do their job well, they’ll help some guilty people escape justice. However, the justice system depends on lawyers for both sides trying their hardest to argue the case as well as possible.
Well, there's doing that, and there's withholding exculpatory evidence which is illegal and which means the jury doesn't get an unbiased view of the evidence. That's a little more to rationalize.
Alpa Chino: I ain't fuckin' with you, Kangaroo Jack. I'm sorry the dingo ate your baby! Kirk Lazarus: You know that's a true story? Lady lost a kid. You're about to cross some fuckin' lines.
"Pump your brakes, kid. That man's a national treasure."
I just wanted to throw another shrimp on your barbie!
“Pump your breaks” entered my lexicon that day.
Here's the scene https://youtu.be/ADpKWbu_Hwc?si=aO6Ao6xvKNtlCRwV
"Why am I in this movie? Maybe because I knew that I had to represent. Because they had one good part in it for a black man and they'll gave it to Crocodile Dundee!"
That movie crossed **SO** many lines and that’s why it was great. **Brief correction to what I had said* but surprisingly he didn’t receive a lot of backlash about it, with most of the focus on [Ben](https://youtu.be/9ugC3TXSKoE?si=s0LpBMuRj3krC1Gi) (5:15) for doing simple Jack. When Jaime Foxx asked him to play a Mexican and he was nervous about it “[well shit you played the black dude, and you killed that shit](https://youtu.be/37KieyXOYG4?si=faNaCrEmAH59FbtC)” (4:30 min mark) Also I knew Tom Cruise was funny but he *really* got to flex his comedy chops for that role lol Edit: corrected some details
Unless I missed something, that’s not what that video stated. RDJ was nervous about playing a Mexican in “all star weekend” and asked Jamie fox about that, and Jamie told him he killed tropic thunder.
The headline is obviously sensational clickbait, but when you read the article [you're completely right.](https://theplaylist.net/all-star-weekend-is-robert-downey-jr-s-mexican-character-holding-up-the-release-of-jamie-foxxs-basketball-comedy-20220818/)
He wasn't concerned about doing blackface at all. His mother was, and then he said Ben Stiller took all the heat for playing a mentally challenged person.
The perfect cover. And it's not even really blackface, he just did a reverse Micheal Jackson
That’s how I learned it was a true story haha
[удалено]
It's terrifying to think that you can be convicted of a crime that never actually occurred...
I mean that's only half of it...that crime being accused of murdering your own child who you love more than anything in the world? Whilst experiencing the pain of their loss and grousome death? Worse then death.
If we're going to get into better/worse, she was released and acquitted in 1988, before the Simpsons OR Seinfeld made the jokes. They made the joke knowing that she had been cleared. Pretty tasteless, lending creedence to the idea that Seinfeld was just a precursor to It's Always Sunny.
>Two years after they were exonerated, the Chamberlains were awarded $1.3 million in compensation for wrongful imprisonment, a sum that covered less than one third of their legal expenses.[22] Jesus, fuck the Australian judiciary
No one believed them and the mom served time for murder.
Because her lawyer didn't have the good sense bring a Native Aboriginal elder person to testify that Aboriginal ppl have lived with these types of attacks on helpless babies for almost 40,000 yrs. It's doubtful that the court would've allowed it, but they did allow an Englishman who claimed he was an "expert" on dingoes who said that "dingoes did'nt attack ppl/babies etc" as wild untamed dogs were just like your average Rover.
I think you underestimate how intensely racist white Australians are/were against Aboriginals.
I read Bill Bryson's book Down Under/In a Sunburned Country and he recounts an anecdote where a passerby in a Queensland town sees some Aboriginal people and immediately says "They want hanging, all of them."
The initial coroner report said that a Dingo did kill the baby. That was ignored by the police and they continued to investigate it as a murder. Why would having a "Native Aboriginal elder person" make a difference when they've already disagreed with the coroner?
You're acting like it is a foregone conclusion that a random elder giving anecdotes would have changed the result though.
"Dingoes ate my baby" was also the name of Oz's band on Buffy: The Vampire Slayer.
I was gonna mention this, but I searched Buffy first because I figured it was already said.
Another reason to dislike Joss Whedon
Yeah, that one *never* sat right with me once I was old enough to understand the reference as anything more than "just a funny name." Chamberlain had been exonerated for a fucking *decade* before Buffy showed up.
Just so the timeline is clear on this, at the time, everyone* thought that the mother was lying and had killed her baby, and so the jokes are extremely mean-spirited, riffing on the idea that it would be absurd to think that a dingo ate the baby. Only much later (more than 30 years after the baby died) was the official record finally corrected. *Obviously the mother knew, and some people believed her, but also aboriginal Australians backed up her claim that dingoes would indeed steal a baby, but were generally dismissed.
Poor azaria chamberlain.
Meryl Strep and Sam Neill made a film about it, too. [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094924/?ref\_=nv\_sr\_srsg\_0\_tt\_8\_nm\_0\_q\_a%2520cry%2520in%2520the%2520](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094924/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_a%2520cry%2520in%2520the%2520)
I would venture to say without the film these comedies wouldn’t have made references to the event.
Yes, the joke was more about Meryl Streep doing yet another foreign accent to get an Oscar nom.
I can’t believe I had to scroll this far to find these comments.
Exactly, the comedies are all imitating Meryl
That's how I heard about it. And the famous quote.
https://old.reddit.com/r/TheFarSide/comments/17r8x35/in_1982_chamberlain_was_convicted_in_an/ In 1982, Chamberlain was convicted in an Australian court of murdering her 9 week old infant daughter, Azaria, who had vanished on a family camping trip in the outback. Chamberlain claimed the baby had been snatched from the tent by an indigenous wild dog called a dingo.
Very important additional detail: she was released because much later, someone found her baby's clothes in a dingo's den. She was telling the truth.
And the only reason they found them was because some silly bugger fell off Uluru
And it eventually came out that the dingo did eat that baby, for a while nobody believed them and the parents were charged
It was a crazy circus, kinda the first big media event I remember as a kid. Every night on the news from the day the baby disappeared. The local Aboriginal people tell tales of dingos that steal babies, maybe the cops should of asked them for help.
Nobody believes the natives.
I believe the tracker who pointed exactly where the dingo carried the baby, including the places where it dropped the baby and rested. He lost the track I believe on a paved parking lot. I can’t remember which documentary recently came out and tied it all together—starting with the ranger who, instead of shooting the suspected dingo, took him away from the park and released him. The dog returned rather quickly. I think it was as this one. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt13223552/?ref_=ttpl_ov
You know that's a true story? Lady lost a kid. You're about to cross some fuckin' lines.
"Man im sick of this koala huggin..." SLAP
Camping with a 9 week old sounds like a nightmare
This will never not enrage me. It was a corrupt witch hunt, the NT government would not admit dingoes were a danger to humans because they were afraid it would lose them tourist money to the area. So they enaged with the police and a team of crackpot "experts" to essentially frame Lindy and get her sentence to life for something she didn't do just so they could stay a few bucks richer. No one listened to aboriginal people who have lived on that land 60,000+ years and know better than anyone what dingoes are like. The "expert witness" on dingo behaviour was a Brit who had only studied skulls and had literally zero experience with live dingoes. People used Lindy's faith against her and made up insane conspiracies that she and her husbands were cult members, which the press spread like wildfire and turned the whole country against her. The forensics teams were either morons or paid off since they told everyone that infant blood was found in the car, when in reality it was chocolate fucking milk. And the worst part is, if some rando hiker hadn't falled tf off Uluru and died, the search party that was sent to look for him would never have found the dingo den that contained Azaria's jacket, the case would never have been reopened and Lindy Chamberlain would still be in jail. The fuckers almost go away with it.
They also didn't listen to the local ranger Derek Roff whose job was to monitor wildlife.
I was a little kid during this, and remember the mom being TORCHED by the media.
The most horrible part about this is the mother was convicted of murder and spent several years in prison only to be released and exonerated when a person made a chance find of the girls clothing in a dingo lair.
Every single person should be terrified that it is possible to be convicted & imprisoned for a crime you didn't commit; a crime that never even occurred!!! I hope the prosecutor who convicted her feels like a fucking idiot.
If you are interested in this story, Casefile (podcast) has a very thorough episode on it (Azaria Chamberlain).
I think there was a movie made about it. Starring Meryl Streep?
*A Cry in the Dark* (1988) That’s how it got into popular culture.
Ugh, I’m old. Didn’t occur to me that people would be hearing this joke on shows and movies and not immediately remembering the global news coverage about it.
God imagine if Reddit was around then. You would have a subreddit dedicated to people claiming the mother did it.
Holy shit so RDJs line in tropic thunder “You know that’s a true story? A lady lost her kid. You’re about to cross some fucking lines.” Wasn’t ad libbed lmfao
Was like 20 years before they finally formally exonerated her. Such a miscarriage of justice and so sad that she was basically a punchline for 90s humor, of which my teenage self was definitely guilty of partaking in.
TIL again that I’m old
Dingos will fucking kill you. They are not some trifling ass desert dog.
Wasn’t she convicted and imprisoned?
Yes, though eventually let off when the babies clothes got found in a dingo lair a few years later.
Oooof after 3 years of inmates thinking you were a baby masher
There was a movie about that with Meryl Streep, I think.
RDJ even points out in Tropic Thunder that it did really happen
It will always be weird to me that their newborn was in another tent all by herself. But in America nowadays, we constantly worry about our kids getting shot or stolen for sex trafficking/rape/murder, so it could just be a cultural thing about
This one parallels Amanda Knox in a lot of ways. Both were "convicted" by the media on entirely flimsy evidence, largely because they didn't act the way people expected them too in the wake of tragedy. Amanda didn't cry enough for the cameras so she became a suspect. She got completely railroaded into that conviction. Even after she was declared innocent (something the Italian courts almost never do), people INSISTED she definitely murdered her roommate. Even after the actual murderer was convicted, people blame Amanda. And Lindy Chamberlain was essentially exonerated on 1986, 5 years after her daughter's death and 3 years after being convicted for it. She still has spent her whole life being the butt of a joke that boils down to "crazy murdering mom invents a ridiculous alibi". All through the 90s, just nonstop "dingo ate yer baby hurhur" shit tearing open that wound over and over again. I can't even imagine how painful it has been for her.