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American journalist jailed for 11 years in Myanmar. However, Professor Boettcher said he would not discount Mr Cole's claims and said there may be "some inaccuracies due to the passage of time".
I think he should be accorded some credence and police should look at his claims. In a textiles expert found that damage to Azaria's jumpsuit, singlet and matinee jacket had probably been produced by a single knife stroke. Azaria's jumpsuit and matinee jacket are stored in a secure room at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine. Mr Cole's son, Don, told a Melbourne newspaper yesterday his father told him the story for the first time about 14 months ago.
My interpretation of it is that it was playing on his mind and he wanted to get it off his chest," he said. In Mrs Chamberlain was sentenced to life in prison after a jury found her guilty of killing her baby.
She was released in Her husband Michael was found guilty of being an accessory, but was given a suspended sentence. Reporters saw the tide beginning to move a bit in the Crown's direction when a parade of forensic experts took the stand.
Andrew Scott, a biologist from Adelaide, testified that his study suggested that the blood on Azaria's singlet flowed downward, from what appeared to be from the cutting by a sharp instrument, in the area of the neck. Barry Cocks testified that the jumpsuit seemed cut, not torn by a dingo. Professor Malcolm Chaikin, Australia's leading textile expert, demonstrated for the jury how cutting the jumpsuit produced small loops of toweling, much like those discovered by investigators in Michael Chamberlain's camera bag, where police suspected Lindy might have temporarily hid her dead baby.
On cross, the defense got Chaikin to admit that the loops might also have come from a new, unwashed suit. The Chamberlains said that they sometimes used the camera bag as a place to stuff Azaria's clothes. Biologist Joy Kuhl, the prosecution's thirty-fifth witness, presented what the Crown saw as some of its most damning evidence. Kuhl told jurors that her tests proved that the blood found on the dash support bracket in the Chamberlain's Torana belonged to an infant.
On cross, Defense Counsel Phillips forced Kuhl to admit all the plates she used in her actual blood tests "have been destroyed"--a practice she called "standard procedure in our laboratory. Crown witness Bernard Sims had investigated about two dozen attacks by dogs on humans in his job as a London ondontologist. Sims saw nothing consistent with a dingo attack in Azaria's clothing, claimed that a dingo attack would cause "copious" bleeding, and indicated that a baby's head could not fit into the jaws of a dingo.
On cross, Sims reaffirmed that a the opening of a dingo's "mouth wouldn't allow it to get [over a baby's skull. Sims, staring at the photograph, could only concede that his earlier supposition might have been mistaken. James Cameron was the final witness for the prosecution. Cameron, a professor of forensic medicine, testified that Azaria was killed by "a cutting instrument across the neck, or around the neck" held by a human.
He exhibited to the jury slides of Azaria's clothing taken in his laboratory with ultra-violet light which he believed showed the pattern of bloodied fingers. Cross-examination focused attention on previous cases in which Cameron's pro-prosecution testimony had helped incriminate what turned out to be innocent suspects.
On October 13, the defense began its case. John Phillips ended his opening statement by pointing to the witness stand and saying, "I call Mrs. Tears slid down Lindy's face as she described the clothing her daughter was wearing the last night she laid her down: "She had a white knitted Marquis jacket, with a pale lemon edging. The point became obvious, when spectators realized that the print made by so-called bloodied fingers showed four phalanges, while Lindy Chamberlain, and virtually every other human on the planet, have only three.
Much of Ian Barker's cross-examination of Lindy was devoted to poking holes in her story about seeing a dingo in the vicinity of the family tent. He asked her to explain how a dingo, shaking a bleeding baby, would not have left large quantities of blood in and around the tent. He also challenged the defendant to account for the fetal blood which his experts claimed to have found in the family car. Lindy resisted saying, "I'm not going to speculate how it got there.
Chamberlain," the Queen's Counsel said at one point, "may I respectfully suggest to you that the whole [dingo] story is mere fantasy? More than two dozen defense witnesses followed Lindy to the stand. Several testified as to the Chamberlain's fine character and their grief over the loss of their daughter. Other witnesses told either of their own frightening encounters with Ayer's Rock dingoes, or testified in general about the aggressiveness of the region's wild dogs.
In addition, eight defense forensic experts would attack the dubious tests or conclusions of the prosecution's experts, on subjects ranging from fiber to blood evidence. The defense saw Professor Barry Boettcher as one of its most important forensic experts. Boettcher attacked Joy Kuhl's conclusions that the Chamberlain car contained significant quantities of fetal blood. In complicated testimony that might have flown right over the heads of the jurors, Boettcher tried to explain why Kuhl's testing method might have produced false positives for fetal blood.
Later, another expert, Richard Nairn would also pile on Kuhl's results, arguing that the sheer number of Kuhl's tests was irrelevant: "Two hundred bad tests are poorer than one good test.
Some of the most riveting defense testimony came from defense dingo expert Les Harris contended that a dingo after prey the size of Azaria would "make seizure, which would be of the entire head, and it would close its jaws sufficiently to render the mammal immobile.
Harris said dingo kills in the field produce "very little" blood and that they characteristically shake their heads after taking prey "to break the neck. Except for one recalled expert, the last defense witness was Michael Chamberlain. Ian Barker, in his cross-examination of Michael, focused heavily on the his actions in the first hours after Azaria's disappearance.
Barker suggested that Michael's failure to ask Lindy certain questions, or to go running off into the brush in search of his daughter, was because he already knew Lindy had killed his daughter: "Could it be because you knew that the dingo did not take her, and that she was dead at the hands of your wife? Barker," Michael insisted again. Courtroom observers concluded that Chamberlain's testimony lacked spirit; it seemed both weary and inappropriately nonchalant.
When his long hours on the stand finally ended, he took a seat in the courtroom next to his wife, and held her hands. Phillips, in his summation, stressed that the prosecution failed to provide even a remotely plausible explanation as to why Lindy Chamberlain would want to kill her own child.
Barker, summing for the Crown, admitted that no motive had been proved, but insisted that was neither the prosecution's intent or its job. He turned the tables by asking the jury to consider the lack of evidence that might suggest the dingo was guilty. On October 28, , Justice Muirhead instructed the jury--in a manner that generally pleased the defense.
He reminded them that Sally Lowe distinctly remembered hearing a baby's cry coming from the Chamberlain's tent, and that if she was correct about that, then the prosecution's assertion that Azaria was at the time lying dead in the Chamberlain's car with her throat cut could not be true.
When the matinee jacket turned up after five years, it was proof Lindy had not lied. Senator Bob Collins forces local reporter Frank Alcorta to check his sources. He does, and is so infuriated he writes an article for the local paper and shows it to the NT Government, threatening to print it if Lindy is not released from jail by 12 noon, or an Inquiry is called.
They do both. If he had been asked he finds support for the view that Azaria was taken by a dingo. In response the NT offers them a Pardon. This still indicates guilt in Australia. It polarises the nation. Aidan divides his time between the two homes. Findings of the Third Inquest are announced.
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