Most people, particularly those who grew up during the 1980s, are familiar with the pop culture phrase, “A dingo ate my baby!” What many people may not know is that this line, often used as a joke, refers to a very real and unbelievably tragic event. Back in 1980, at Uluru in the Northern Territory of Australia, the Chamberlain family was on a camping trip when the unimaginable happened: a dingo apparently nosed its way into the tent where nine-week-old Azaria Chamberlain was sleeping and carried the infant off. The body was never found, though some of the child’s clothing was eventually discovered. As if that event wasn’t horrible enough, the media, a large segment of the public, and the authorities came to believe that the baby’s mother Lindy had actually murdered the infant and used the dingo story as a coverup. This belief — later called into question — led to a conviction and a prison sentence, and might be perhaps one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in Australian legal history. Travel Down Under with Tom and Jenny as they look into this heartbreaking case on a wild and woeful episode 290.

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Channel art and audio & video editing by Jenny Ashford. Music & sound effects courtesy of freesound.org users jamespotterboy, corsica-s, enjoypa, capturedlv, luffy, kiddpark, and justkiddink. Video clips courtesy of Videezy & Videvo.