31

The Morling Report

MR JUSTICE MORLING’S REPORT WAS DELIVERED to the governor-general on 22 May 1987. It ran to 379 pages. He began by outlining the nature and scope of the inquiry, and the background to the convictions. He then turned to the question of blood in the car, and made a number of points about the observations that people had made on the night that Azaria had disappeared, or shortly thereafter:

At the trial, counsel for the prosecution submitted to the jury that they should conclude that Mrs Chamberlain had endeavoured to keep people away from the car after Azaria’s disappearance for fear that they might notice signs of the alleged murder. It appears that the Demaines were present at the trial under subpoena, but were not called to give evidence …

[S]ince [Lindy] was away from the barbecue area for only five to ten minutes, there would have been very little time for her to have cleaned up the car thoroughly. She was under observation by others, particularly Mrs Whittacker and Mrs West, for most of the time between the raising of the alarm and her departure for the motel later in the evening. Except for the occasion described by Mr and Mrs Demaine, Mrs Chamberlain was not seen to enter the car … It therefore appears that she had little or no opportunity to clean up any blood in the car after the alarm was raised and before leaving for the motel.

Bobbie Downs, who had travelled in the passenger seat of the car, ‘did not see, feel or smell any blood and she did not pick up any blood on her clothing’. Nor was any seen by Constable Noble and the others who assisted in packing the car prior to the trip to the motel. Downs had spent some time in the driver’s seat of the car on the following morning, but again noticed no blood. And none was seen by Pastor Cozens when he helped pack things into the car on the following day. On 1 October 1980, at Mount Isa, Senior Constable Graham had carried out a lengthy inspection of the car; he ‘would have expected to have been able to identify signs of removal of blood from the vinyl or metal surfaces of the car’, but did not detect any. Despite the Crown’s criticisms of the lighting, Morling was satisfied ‘that Graham was able to carry out a proper and thorough inspection of the car for the purposes described’.

He then turned to the immunological testing, referring, at some length, to the risks inherent in testing old and denatured bloodstains for the presence of significant quantities of foetal haemoglobin, and quoting Freney’s delightfully picturesque description of old stains as ‘tiger country’. These difficulties raised doubts as to the reliability of Mrs Kuhl’s immuno-chemical results and, in particular, those depending upon the use of the anti-foetal haemoglobin antiserum. He noted that Professors Boettcher and Nairn had both said it was ‘strange’ that the recorded result was stronger with anti-foetal haemoglobin antiserum than with anti-haemoglobin serum, when, if the stains had been Azaria’s blood, only 25 per cent of the total haemoglobin present would have been foetal. He said that, despite her protestation that the concentrations of antigens could not be measured, this remained a matter of concern.

He was unable to determine whether the relevant bottles of antiserum had been tested for specificity but said that, since Mrs Kuhl had not carried out adequate testing with known controls, she had suffered from a significant handicap in interpreting the results. Furthermore, she had conceded she had told the jury that she had screened over 230 adult blood samples and that ‘the anti-foetal haemoglobin has never reacted against adult blood’, but that an examination of the laboratory records revealed that positive reactions had been obtained from six samples of blood which should have contained an adult concentration of haemoglobin. She maintained that they had not been true immuno-precipitin reactions, and suggested that there had been some technical problems with the equipment; but the recording of the results as genuine and the lack of a precise explanation for how they occurred added weight to his concerns.

Considerable reservations were expressed concerning the crossover electrophoresis method. ‘As Professor Ouchterlony pointed out, even with a proper set of controls on the same plate as the sample, with everything right in the crossover test, the operator can be misled ... it appears that its use in this case may have prevented Mrs Kuhl from eliminating other possible causes of the reaction seen.’ Morling also referred to her failure to use certain important controls in her tests on samples from the car and to evidence that led him to doubt whether the antiserum was specific only to foetal haemoglobin when used in the crossover electrophoretic technique or the tube precipitin technique.

He was not unsympathetic to the challenges that she faced, and observed that:

All in all, it was clear that the task which Mrs Kuhl was called upon to perform in testing the Chamberlains’ car and its contents posed most substantial difficulties, even for the most highly skilled and experienced forensic biologist. It was much more apparent before the Commission than it was at the trial that there were many traps for the unwary in carrying out immuno-chemical tests upon samples which were old and which had been exposed to severe conditions.

Nonetheless, there were serious grounds for concern. A number of forensic pathologists and biologists had examined the ‘under-dash spray’ both with the naked eye and under microscopes since 1981, and all agreed that it did not look like blood ‘in either the shape of the droplets or the pattern of the spray’. The Crown had suggested that there might have been some blood superimposed on it, but that had not been detected by the orthotolidine test, and there was no evidence it had been covered by another substance.

The result book had disclosed ‘twelve occasions when the recorded results of the tests of these three samples [from the area under the dashboard] were crossed out or changed’. In contrast, there had been few such alterations in the rest of the book. Senior Constable Metcalfe had said that Mrs Kuhl had given him the results of tests carried out on those samples on the same day he delivered them. This was significant because she had said that she always allowed the plates to be washed for twenty-four hours before reading them. Morling found that:

Since Senior Constable Metcalfe’s evidence is well supported by contemporary written records, I accept it as establishing the probability that Mrs Kuhl did read and report on the results of these tests before washing the plates. She agreed that if she had done this it would have been improper since she would have been committing herself to a result before she could have been scientifically satisfied of that result. Of course, it is now impossible to say whether this had any effect on the conclusion she reached. However, the fact that Mrs Kuhl was prepared to do this in response to requests by the police is a matter of concern.

Tests undertaken on two samples from under the dashboard area, one of which had been negative and the other ‘non-specific’, had not been mentioned in either her work notes ‘which were represented to be a complete record’ or in her evidence when she was questioned about these samples in the witness box. There had also been an apparently inaccurate entry suggesting that there had been no reaction with animal antisera, when it was apparent from the results book that animal antiserum had not been used at least in respect of the first test of one of these samples.

Morling concluded that ‘the strong probability is that any sample lifted out of the spray pattern on the metal plate was sound-deadening compound and contained no blood at all. The sample tested ... was dug out of the spray pattern with a scalpel, but Mrs Kuhl concluded that baby’s blood was present in it. The fact that she could come to such a conclusion about something which was, very probably, sound-deadener casts doubt upon the efficacy of her testing generally and upon the accuracy of her other results.’

He noted that the tube precipitin method was ‘an old one with acknowledged drawbacks’, and that to detect foetal haemoglobin reliably one had to use known adult blood as a control. ‘At the trial, Mrs Kuhl said that she used adult and foetal controls for all these tube precipitin tests. However, they are not recorded in her work notes, there is no laboratory result book record of the tests at all, and before the Commission she said that her evidence at the trial was incorrect and there were no adult controls in these tests.’

He found ‘fundamental objections to the acceptance of Mrs Kuhl’s findings of baby’s blood in the area of the off-side rear hinge of the passenger seat and the floor beneath’.

There had been significant debate concerning the immuno-diffusion or Ouchterlony test carried out on stains found on a small pair of scissors in the Chamberlains’ car when taken by the police in late 1981. Mrs Kuhl had reported that there were ‘indications’ of the presence of blood of foetal origin. This conclusion was criticised on a number of bases, including the fact that the necessary controls had failed. ‘Raymond, Scott, Baxter and Martin were in agreement that when controls fail in a test such as this, the result should be rejected as worthless.’ Her explanation for the failure of the controls had been rejected by other experts, including Professor Ouchterlony; and, whilst Baxter had apparently made some earlier suggestion that she could report these indications of foetal blood, he had later said that, ‘considering all the failures in the test, it should have been forgotten’. Morling accepted this assessment. He also pointed out that ‘on the evidence, one could not even find that the scissors were in the car at Ayers Rock in August 1980’.

He noted that the results suggesting blood on the towel had been ‘unsatisfactorily supported and [were] contradicted by many other results’, and added that:

If the towel was used to wipe a murder weapon or to clean up blood from the car, it is difficult to accept that the Chamberlains would have left the towel in the boot of the car for over thirteen months, particularly if it had been their intention to clean up the traces of blood in the car. The lack of a sensible explanation for such strange conduct would raise doubts about the evidence of baby’s blood on the towel, even if the results of the test were much more acceptable than they are.

He was equally sceptical of the results obtained on the chamois:

The chamois was damp when Mrs Kuhl removed it from its container. It was common ground among the experts who gave evidence to the Commission that the conditions in which the chamois was kept, namely in humidity and heat, were most conducive to denaturation of bloodstains. Mr Martin said that, under these circumstances, he would not have tested the chamois or its container. Professor Nairn said that he would be astonished to get a result on something like these articles. Mrs Kuhl agreed that she was surprised by her result. Her surprise was not expressed at the trial.

A second reason for doubting this result is the absence of a control of known adult blood, either upon the same plate or a plate run at the same time. It was common ground among the experts that such a control is necessary. The absence of such a control was not apparent at the trial since Mrs Kuhl’s work notes included a note at the bottom of the relevant item referring to controls being good and specifying those controls as ‘adult human’ and ‘human [cord blood]’. It is apparent from the laboratory’s result book that the former was not used. The making of this incorrect entry in the notes was not satisfactorily explained.

The camera bag had been an item of particular significance. Mrs Kuhl had obtained various positive orthotolidine reactions from it, and had obtained a positive reaction with anti-foetal haemoglobin antiserum by using the crossover electrophoresis test on a stain taken from the zip clasp of one compartment. The Crown had relied upon Mrs Kuhl’s evidence that she thought the camera bag had been washed, and this had been a factor relied upon by two of the High Court judges in dismissing the Chamberlains’ appeal. It had since emerged that Dr Andrew Scott had examined it before the second inquest, but found no indication of blood in significant amounts and nothing to suggest that the bag had been washed. A screening test by Dr Lincoln in May 1982, some four months before the trial, had also failed to demonstrate the presence of blood.

Given the discovery that orthotolidine would react with copper dust, Morling found it ‘significant’ that Mrs Kuhl had obtained the orthotolidine reactions with ‘small amounts of grit found in the bag’. He pointed out that she had not obtained positive reactions with the stitching in the seams of the bag where ‘one would be most likely to find remnants of blood ...’ In her evidence before the royal commission, she had accepted that there appeared to be some inconsistency between her results and the notion that the camera bag had been washed to remove blood. Raymond had tested the bag in 1986 and had obtained ‘non-specific reactions’ which had ‘looked real before the plates were stained’, and he thought that there would have been a possibility of error if someone had tested the metal parts without undertaking full testing.

On the other hand, ‘the accuracy of Mrs Kuhl’s conclusions was given considerable support at the trial by Dr Baxter and Mr Culliford. Dr Baxter said that he saw the plates and gels used by Mrs Kuhl in her experiments and agreed with her conclusions. Mr Culliford said that he had read Mrs Kuhl’s laboratory work notes and her evidence and approved of her methods and conclusions.’ Nonetheless, Morling observed:

It is surprising that in a case where Dr Baxter had given special instructions, at least to the effect that he be shown positive results, three out of the five handwritten draft reports tendered to the Commission were not initialled by him. This suggests that the checking of Mrs Kuhl’s work was not as extensive as it might have been. Overall, Dr Baxter’s lack of recollection of the results he saw and the failure to record his checking of any results significantly diminished the weight of his support for Mrs Kuhl’s conclusions.

… So far as Mr Culliford is concerned, the approval he expressed at the trial of her methods and conclusions could not be further explored since he was too ill to give evidence to the Commission. However, Mr Martin, Mr Culliford’s successor at the Metropolitan Police Forensic Laboratory in London, said that, although he had not read all of Mrs Kuhl’s evidence, he found her work notes extremely confusing. On the information before him, it was impossible for him to pass judgment on the reliability or accuracy of her testing procedures.

Morling concluded that Mrs Kuhl ‘lacked the considerable experience required to enable her to plan and to carry out these complex and difficult testing procedures, at least without careful guidance from a more experienced biologist. Indeed, there appears to be doubt whether any practising forensic biologist would have been sufficiently qualified to perform these tasks without extensive consultation with leaders in immunological research.’

The results of the phosphoglucomutase or PGM tests were swept aside peremptorily. Professor Nairn had described these results as ‘highly suspect’, and Morling accepted this as ‘a fair assessment’. The possibility that the blood had come from the hitchhiker, Lenehan, ‘had not been eliminated’ and, in any event, it could have come from many people, including the other members of the Chamberlain family. He added that:

The fact that the results were obtained, having regard to the customary difficulty in obtaining any results with blood over the age of eight months, itself suggests that any blood producing such results was shed after 17 August 1980. Accordingly, I do not think that any conclusion adverse to the Chamberlains can be drawn from these results.

The more difficult question was whether blood had been found in the car in significant quantities, even if it had not been shown to have contained relevant quantities of foetal haemoglobin. Morling was not satisfied that it had been present in the camera bag and said that, even if some small amount of blood had been found, it could have been ‘readily explicable’ by the use of the bag by someone with a minor cut to a finger. More generally, he said that:

I would not conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that blood was present in the car, even upon the hinge area of the passenger’s seat. However, having regard to the number of positive results from the various tests obtained by Mrs Kuhl in relation to the area of the hinge of the passenger’s seat and the floor beneath, I think it is more probable than not that, at the time of her testing, some blood was present in these areas.

At the trial, it had been alleged that ‘the car floor was awash with blood’. The evidence at the royal commission had been quite different:

Other experts found it very difficult to arrive at any estimate of the volume of blood from Mrs Kuhl’s work notes and evidence. However, having regard to the number of samples taken by her and the fact that Mr Raymond was unable to detect the presence of any further blood in 1986, there was general agreement between the various experts who gave evidence to the Commission, that if there were blood present in the car when it was first tested, there could have been only a very small amount of it.

Lenehan had given evidence that he had bled quite profusely from scalp lacerations on the right-hand side of his head and that Lindy had used a gauze bandage and had a towel on her knees, attempting to staunch the flow of blood throughout the forty-five minute trip to the hospital. Morling found it likely that his head had been in ‘the appropriate position ... for his blood to have fallen in the area of the back of the passenger seat and the hinge on its off-side’. He said that ‘if there was any blood present in the car, it was present in only small quantities in the area of the hinge and on the passenger seat and beneath. I conclude that none of Mrs Kuhl’s tests established that any such blood was Azaria’s. The blood shed by Mr Lenehan could have been the source of stains in the area of the hinge of the passenger seat and beneath ... The presence of a small quantity of blood in this area would not justify the drawing of any inference adverse to the Chamberlains.’

After considering the evidence of a battery of dingo experts, forensic pathologists, odontologists and, in particular, the opinions of Professor Bradley and Dr William Rose, he concluded that ‘the quantity of blood found in the tent is not inconsistent with dingo involvement’. Indeed, he found the presence of this blood highly significant:

It was the Crown case that Azaria was killed in the car. It seems absurd to suggest that Mrs Chamberlain carried Azaria’s bleeding body from the car back to the tent, where she would have been under Aidan’s observation. The presence of Azaria’s blood in the tent, unless it be shown to have been transferred there upon Mrs Chamberlain’s personal clothing, is inconsistent with the Crown case …

I have concluded earlier … that many of the stains found on articles in the tent were probably caused by blood dropping directly either from a wound or from a blood-soaked object … I am unable to conclude from the appearance of the stains which of these two sources of the bloodstains is the more likely. However, the proposition that all the bloodstains found in the tent came from the bloodstained hands or blood-soaked clothing of Mrs Chamberlain has inherent improbabilities. According to Dr Jones and Dr Scott, for this to have happened it would have been necessary that her hands or clothing be literally dripping or soaked with blood. There is no evidence supporting the existence of any clothing or article blood-soaked in this way. Had such a quantity of blood been on Mrs Chamberlain’s hands, there are difficulties in explaining how it would not also have been upon her clothing in large and visible quantities, given the short time she had to clean up before her return to the tent and barbecue area. Further, it seems inherently improbable that she would have run the risk of Aidan seeing her hands dripping with blood. The allegation that she returned to the tent in blood-soaked clothing or with bloodstained hands does not sit easily with the Crown’s allegation that she cleaned up the blood in the car after the murder.

It has not been shown by the Crown that the blood in the tent was transferred there from the clothing or person of Mrs Chamberlain. On the contrary, the evidence points to this being an unlikely occurrence.

He approached ‘with considerable caution’ the competing opinions about what could or should be deduced from the staining on Azaria’s clothing as to the likely cause of death. ‘The question is one which lies on the boundary of the field of expertise of the forensic pathologist. While experience in that field may provide some assistance in the interpretation of such bloodstaining, I do not consider that, in relation to this question … it provides the basis for the firm conclusions.’

He pointed out that Cameron had given evidence at the trial to the effect that ‘the distribution of blood on the jumpsuit necessarily involved the baby being alive at the time of bleeding’. Pleuckhahn had disagreed, maintaining that, since there can be considerable post-mortem oozing, it could not be said whether the bleeding took place before or after death. At the royal commission, Pleuckhahn’s view was supported by Nairn, Jones, and Raymond, and even Cameron was ‘less dogmatic in his opinion, saying that the bleeding took place at or about the time of death, and that he saw nothing to indicate arterial bleeding’. Ferris, who had given evidence at the request of the Crown, also favoured the view that the bleeding was post-mortem. ‘According to him the science characteristic of venous and arterial bleeding could not be seen and there were other characteristics of the bleeding which were more typical of blood dropping from an accumulated area of blood.’

Morling concluded that it was impossible ‘to conclude with certainty whether or not the bleeding took place before or after the time of death’, but said that ‘if Professor Ferris’ preferred view were adopted, the most serious difficulties would arise for the Crown case. His view would make it impossible to accept the pivotal point in the Crown case put to the jury based on Professor Cameron’s evidence, namely that Azaria died when her throat was cut with a sharp instrument.’

Cameron had relied upon Dr Scott’s failure to detect the presence of dingo saliva as establishing that no saliva had been present, but Morling found that ‘this was not a proper inference to draw’. Cameron had also relied upon his experience of dog attacks on humans; but, again, Morling was unimpressed. He pointed to the limited nature of that experience, and concluded that Cameron had clearly not been justified in assuming that he did not need experimental evidence. This was scarcely surprising. I had never understood why petulant snaps by corgis or spaniels in Chelsea should have been seen as offering a reliable guide to the damage that could be caused by a native Australian predator seizing and consuming prey.

Morling found that the pattern of bloodstaining did not support the contention ‘that there was a cutting of the throat with a blade done with an intent to kill the child’. Whilst Ferris would have expected small pieces of tissue or fat globules to have been found on the clothing, several possible explanations emerged from the evidence. ‘Accordingly, while that failure gives no support for dingo involvement, I conclude that it is not necessarily inconsistent with such involvement.’ He also referred to the stain associated with the damaged area of the left sleeve, ‘apparently from a biological fluid’, and said that whilst its ‘significance may be slight … it would seem to be more consistent with canine damage’ than with an attempt to simulate it.

Cameron’s evidence concerning the impression of handprints had been given on the erroneous assumption that the stains had been composed of blood, when most of the material was sand. Ferris had been the only other expert prepared to offer ‘even the faintest support’ for his opinion. He had said that the stains ‘might convey an impression of fingers to some observers’, but that similar marks might have been produced in other ways. None of the other experts, including Scott, Jones, Bradley, Nairn, and Raymond, had been able to detect any impression of a handprint or fingerprints, and nor could Morling himself. He concluded that ‘there were no detectable prints of hands or fingers, whether in blood or any other material, upon the clothing’.

The extensive controversy concerning the concept of ‘planar array’ was analysed at some length, but the findings were succinct:

I am unable to adopt the planar array test as a reliable test for distinguishing between canine teeth cuts in fibres and cuts caused by a knife or scissors. It may well be that the phenomenon of planar array can be used to assist in determining the difference between cuts and tears, but this is not the same as distinguishing between cuts made by canine teeth and cuts made by scissors or knives.

Morling said he was not satisfied that the comparison between the dingo-damaged fabric produced by Smith and Chapman and the damage in Azaria’s jumpsuit, of itself, showed that the jumpsuit probably was damaged by a canid, but added that ‘this is not to say that a canid could not have produced the damage’. Perhaps surprisingly, he did not advert to Pelton’s evidence that any attempt to simulate dingo damage in 1980 would have involved a stab in the dark because the Chamberlains could not have known what damage was likely to have been caused by a dingo’s canine and carnassial teeth.

On the other hand, he was also unconvinced by Dr Griffiths’ hypothesis:

Although Dr Griffiths’ experiments are interesting, they do not persuade me that the damage to the jumpsuit was caused in the manner he suggested ... Dr Griffiths claimed that the circular severance in the left sleeve of the jumpsuit was produced by the cutting of the bunched fabric, followed by the ripping or tearing out of the incompletely severed material. Sergeant Cocks demonstrated how he thought it was produced by the use of scissors. This evidence is too speculative to be of much value, particularly having regard to the contrary evidence given by other witnesses, especially Dr Pelton.

The evidence of the odontologists and of Dr Sanson was ultimately found inconclusive. Dr Sanson’s evidence was ‘impressive’, but even he had not been prepared to say that it was impossible for a dingo to have inflicted the damage on Azaria’s clothing. Fernhead and Gustafson had thought that the damage to the jumpsuit was not inconsistent with dingo damage, and Morling recognised that ‘they are both highly qualified in the field of canine odontology’. Gustafson disagreed with Sanson that a dingo could not bite twice and maintain a straight line in the bite. He, like Orams, stressed ‘the manipulative and holding ability of the dingo’s lips, tongue and gums, and the strength of its jaws’.

Morling said that ‘the appearance of the nappy is yet another puzzling feature of the evidence. On balance, it seems to support the theory of dingo involvement. However, it has to be borne in mind that a dingo from the nearby den could have damaged the nappy after a human being had removed it from Azaria’s body.’

The report reflected his concern about whether a dingo could have removed Azaria from her clothing ‘without causing more damage to it than was observed’, and revealed that he would have found this difficult to accept but for the conflict of expert opinion on this question:

However, Mr Roff’s evidence cannot be lightly dismissed. He is a practical man with much knowledge and experience of dingoes. He is a disinterested witness. As senior ranger at Uluru National Park, it was not in his interests to support an allegation that a dingo had taken a child from a camping area within the park for which he had general responsibility. It is apparent from the evidence that Constable Morris (and probably other police officers) recognised his great experience and deferred to it. Moreover, his opinion gains support from Professor Gustafson’s evidence. In these circumstances, I conclude that, although a dingo would have had difficulty in removing Azaria’s body from her clothing without causing more damage to it, it was possible for it to have done so.

At the trial, Cameron had said that the appearance of the staining of the jumpsuit suggested that it had been buried in sand, but it been extensively handled before he saw it more than a year after its discovery. Dr Scott had been the first scientist to examine it, and he had not seen any indication that the clothes had been buried. Professor Cameron agreed that the subsequent handling and vacuuming may have caused a significant difference in the appearance of the sand upon it, and said he would defer to Scott’s opinions.

Morling noted that most of the soil in the jumpsuit could have come from a large number of places in the Uluru region, including the sand-dune country east of the campsite:

As Dr Collins said, his findings would not be inconsistent with the jumpsuit being dragged across the sand dunes in that area … The geological evidence did not further support the suggestion that the clothing had been buried, rather than dragged along the surface …

Samples taken from the vicinity of the Uluru Motel clearly did not match the soil in the jumpsuit. The closest place in which a reasonably matching sample was taken was from a desert oak about one kilometre from the motel. Thus there is no support for any suggestion that Azaria’s clothed body may have been buried near the Uluru Motel late on the night of 17 August 1980.

This was consistent with botanical evidence from Drs Leach and Latz: ‘[I]t appears that plant materials typical of the plains country lying between the campsite and Ayers Rock were present in significant quantities upon Azaria’s clothing. Further, it appears that seeds of four of the eleven species identified upon the jumpsuit could have come from the sand dune area east of the campsite.’ It was to this sand dune that the tracks had led. ‘The botanical evidence is not inconsistent with a dingo carrying the clothed baby from the camping area across the plains country to the Rock.’

The seeds and other fragments found on the clothing may have come from the area where the clothing was found, but Morling said that this did not lend substantial support for the contention that it came there by deliberate rubbing on the vegetation by human hand. On the contrary, it was ‘not inconsistent with it having been picked up as a consequence of an animal agitating the clothing against vegetation’. He concluded that if the clothing had been taken from the car, buried, disinterred, and later placed at Uluru by the Chamberlains, ‘it is difficult to conceive how it could have collected the quantity and variety of plant material found upon it’. Equally, ‘whilst it is not inconceivable that the plant fragments came upon the clothing by deliberate dragging by human hand through a variety of low-growing vegetation, in the absence of other evidence this does not seem likely.’

The report cited the evidence from Hans Brunner and Dr Harding that the hairs on Azaria’s clothing had been dog hairs, as were two further hairs found in the tent.

On the other hand, Morling also referred to the evidence of Dr Corbett and Dr Newsome which he said reinforced ‘my own impression that, if clothing were removed from a baby by a dingo, it would be likely to be more scattered about than this clothing was when found’. However, he noted that Roff had not considered the appearance of the clothes to be inconsistent with dingo activity, and that Cawood had agreed that the flattening of the undergrowth ‘was consistent with an animal having lain down’.

He rejected the Crown’s argument that the tracking evidence should be discounted and that the tracks seen by the Winmattis on the morning after Azaria’s disappearance could not have been the same as those seen by Roff and Minyintiri the night before: ‘Mr Roff said that they were remarkably well preserved [the] next morning when he showed them to the Winmattis. The fact that this is quite surprising, as Roff himself said, is no reason for rejecting his evidence. I found Roff to be an impressive witness, not given to exaggeration. His veracity was not attacked and is beyond question. I refer elsewhere to his great practical experience.’ He also found Nui Minyintiri to be ‘an impressive witness’, and commented that Mrs Winmatti, also known as Barbara Tjikadu, ‘had the reputation of being an excellent tracker’. Overall, the evidence gave ‘greater credence to dingo involvement in Azaria’s death’.

So far as the space blanket was concerned, he found Sergeant Brown’s evidence as to the loss of his notebook ‘less than satisfactory’, and said that the fact that his diary made no mention of him having collected the space blanket as ‘surprising, if indeed he did’. He noted that Superintendent Grey had said that he had had the blanket collected by Brown after receiving a telephone call from either Gilroy or Charlwood, and that when Brown had subsequently shown it to him he had not seen any marks on it. Morling noted, however, that Grey’s evidence was ‘at odds with the evidence of Inspector Gilroy, and with contemporaneous written records kept at the Alice Springs police station. Gilroy said that he spoke to Inspector McNamara at Mount Isa, not Grey.’

He concluded that Lindy’s mother, brother, and former sister-in-law were ‘all honest witnesses and that they saw marks on the space blanket that they thought may have been made by a dingo’. Morling himself was left ‘in considerable doubt whether the marks which were observed were paw or claw prints left by a dingo’, but had no difficulty in accepting that, if Mrs Chamberlain genuinely believed a dingo had taken Azaria, she would also have believed that the small cuts and holes had been caused by the claws of a dingo walking across the blanket. Accordingly, there was no reason to consider the matter of the space blanket as ‘reflecting adversely on Mrs Chamberlain’s credit’, and the marks were at least consistent with her account of seeing a dingo at the tent.

I was frankly surprised that Morling placed such little weight on this evidence from people whom he expressly found had been honest witnesses. They had not described marks ‘that they thought may have been made by a dingo’, but marks that they were sure had been made by one, including ‘two large paw prints’. Morling thought they may have been mistaken because he assumed that a dingo coming in from a dry, sandy area would not have left prints. However, the dingo might have crossed wet ground near the tap, or there might have been some other explanation, such as moisture on the space blanket or something nearby. In any event, since the Chamberlains had not had a dog for many years, there was simply no other rational explanation for the paw prints.

He found that ‘the marks on the tracksuit pants were not bloodstains’. Other substances would have produced similar marks and, if there had been bloodstains on the pants, ‘it would have been astonishing for her to have been so rash as to wear them in the presence of others, including a policeman in a lighted motel room which she did later in the evening after Azaria disappeared’. It would also have been ‘astonishing conduct on her part to have sent the pants to be dry cleaned if there were incriminating bloodstains on them’.

Morling thought it would have been dangerous to place any weight upon Aidan’s evidence more than six years after the events he described, but that weight should be given to the more contemporaneous statement he made on 1 October 1980:

Several considerations lead me to this conclusion. First, when [Detective Sergeant] Scott interrogated Aidan on 1 October, a period of only six weeks had elapsed since Azaria’s disappearance. Secondly, the expert evidence establishes that a child of Aidan’s age would have had good powers of recall of events which had occurred six weeks previously. Thirdly, Aidan and his parents were given little, if any, warning that he was to be interrogated. Fourthly, Scott was an experienced police officer and formed the opinion that Aidan’s answers were not the result of prompting by his mother. Fifthly, I find it difficult to accept that a seven-year-old child could be so well coached in his answers that an experienced police officer would be unable during the course of an interview exceeding one hour in duration to satisfy himself that the child had no independent recollection of the events of which he was speaking.

Finally, I think it is probable that, if Mrs Chamberlain took Azaria to the car and returned alone, Aidan would have noticed this and would not have assented to his mother’s statement that a dingo had taken the child. It is unlikely that he would have told Mrs Lowe that the ‘dog’s got baby in its tummy’. Thus an important part of the statement made by him on 1 October is consistent with what he said at a time when there would have been no real opportunity for his mind to have been affected by statements made to him by his parents.

Mrs Lowe had not been accused of giving deliberately untruthful evidence, and Morling was emphatic that he ‘would, in any event, reject any such suggestion’. The real question was whether she was mistaken in her belief that she heard Azaria cry, and that could only be addressed in the light of the whole of the evidence. On the night of either 16 or 17 August, Mrs Dawson had heard a ‘fairly short cry’ of a baby. Other evidence established that Azaria’s crying on 16 August had been more prolonged because she was hungry. Furthermore, most of the campers between the Dawsons’ tent and the Chamberlains’ tent had left earlier on the day that Azaria disappeared, and Mrs Dawson felt that it was more likely that she heard the cry on that night. Morling found that ‘her evidence is at least consistent with Mrs Lowe’s evidence that she heard a baby cry shortly after Mrs Chamberlain returned to the barbecue and affords some marginal support for Mrs Lowe’s evidence that a small baby was heard to cry shortly after Mrs Chamberlain returned to the barbecue’.

In his summary of the matter, Morling referred to the two strands in the Crown case: the first, consisting of evidence suggesting that Mrs Chamberlain had taken Azaria to the front passenger’s seat of the car and cut her throat; the second, consisting of evidence suggesting that a dingo did not take the baby:

The effect of the new evidence on the first strand in the Crown’s case is to leave it in considerable disarray …

Taken in its entirety, the evidence falls far short of proving that there was any blood in the car for which there was not an innocent explanation. It is plain that great reliance was placed by the Crown on the findings of blood. The real dispute in this part of the case at the trial was whether the blood came from a baby. The question whether there was any blood in the car went almost by default.

The doubt cast upon the findings of blood in the car is of more general importance than might first appear … The new evidence shows that it cannot be safely concluded that more blood was found in the car than was found in the tent. Moreover, the Crown’s inability to prove that there was any of Azaria’s blood in the car leaves the hypothesis that the blood found in the tent was transferred from the car without any factual foundation.

In the light of the new evidence, the opinion expressed by Professor Cameron at the trial that the pattern of bloodstaining on the jumpsuit was consistent only with a cut throat cannot be safely adopted, nor can it be concluded from that pattern of bloodstaining on the clothing that Azaria’s throat was cut with a blade. Further, Professor Cameron’s evidence that there was an imprint of a hand in blood on the back of the jumpsuit has been weakened, if not totally destroyed, by new evidence that a great deal of what he thought was blood on the back of the jumpsuit was, in fact, red sand …

The new evidence before the Commission discloses that Dr Andrew Scott, the first Crown expert to examine the jumpsuit, did not see any indication that the clothes had been buried … although Azaria’s clothing may have been buried, the quantity and distribution of sand on it might well have been the result of it being dragged through sand.

It had also become clear that the soil found in the jumpsuit was consistent with that found under bushes which were widespread in the sand-dune country and desert-oak trees which grow both in the dune country and other areas in the Uluru region:

Moreover, the new evidence concerning plant fragments on the clothing is consistent with the clothed body of the baby being dragged through low vegetation of kinds which grew in the dune country and on the plains between the camping area and the Rock. In the light of the new evidence, it is difficult to conceive how Azaria’s clothing could have collected the quantity and variety of plant material found upon it if it had been merely taken from the car, buried, disinterred and later placed near the base of the Rock. It is more consistent with the new plant and soil evidence that Azaria’s clothed body was carried and dragged by an animal from the campsite to near the base of the Rock rather than it was buried on the dune and later carried there.

Morling said that the new evidence was not as ‘destructive’ of the second strand of the Crown’s case, but ‘it greatly diminishes its strength’. Evidence of the tracks of a dingo carrying a load ‘which might have been Azaria’s body’ was stronger. He continued:

The Crown expert has conceded that the hairs found in the tent and on the jumpsuit which were said at the trial to be probably cat hairs were either dingo or dog hairs. Dog hairs are indistinguishable from dingo hairs. The Chamberlains had not owned a dog for some years prior to August 1980 …

The evidence given at the trial by Mrs Chamberlain that she saw marks on the space blanket is now supported by plausible new evidence …

The new evidence negates some of the most cogent evidence relied upon by the Crown at the trial to support its claim that the damage to the purple blanket which had covered Azaria in the bassinette was caused by moths. Mrs Chamberlain’s claim that the damage to the blanket was caused by a dingo is more credible as a result of the new evidence.

The quantity and distribution of blood in the tent has been shown to be at least as consistent with the dingo hypothesis as it is with murder …

At the trial, there had been no evidence from a textile expert disputing Professor Chaikin’s view that the jumpsuit was cut, probably with fairly sharp scissors, and that the severances on the clothing were not caused by a dingo … From the great volume of new expert evidence as to the possible causes of the damage to Azaria’s clothing, it cannot be concluded beyond reasonable doubt that the damage to it was caused by scissors or a knife, or that it was not caused by the teeth of a canid …

There is no reason to doubt that when Azaria disappeared she was wearing the matinee jacket discovered in 1986. The jacket would have covered much of the jumpsuit worn by the child. The failure to detect dingo saliva on the jumpsuit is made more explicable than it was at the trial.

He then turned to address the crucial question of whether there were doubts as to the Chamberlains’ guilt:

I have referred elsewhere to the unsatisfactory features in Mrs Chamberlain’s account of having seen a dingo at the tent and I do not underestimate their importance. It can fairly be said that there are inconsistencies and improbabilities in her story and in the various versions she has given of it. However… there are possible explanations for many of the apparently unsatisfactory features of her evidence. On the other hand, the obstacles to the acceptance of the Crown’s case are both numerous and formidable. Almost every facet of its case is beset by serious difficulties.

He referred again to the absence of any motive and the undisputed evidence that Lindy had been ‘an exemplary mother’ who was ‘delighted at Azaria’s birth’. She had not suffered from any form of mental illness, nor ever been violent to any of her children. She had not exhibited any sign of abnormal behaviour, and was not stressed before taking Azaria to the tent to put her to bed. He continued:

If Mrs Chamberlain left the barbecue with the intention of killing Azaria, it is astonishing that she took Aidan with her. It would have been easy for her to have left him at the barbecue with his father. Having taken Aidan with her, it is even more astonishing that she should have murdered Azaria, on the Crown case, a few feet from where he was waiting for her return to the tent. It was a great coincidence that Mrs Lowe not only thought she heard Azaria cry, but also thought she heard Mr Chamberlain or Aidan say that he had heard the same cry. It is surprising that Mrs Chamberlain did not attempt to bolster her story by saying that she also heard the cry.

If Mrs Chamberlain did not intend to murder Azaria when she left the barbecue, it is difficult to understand why, for no apparent reason, she should have formed the intention almost immediately after she left it. There is nothing in the evidence which could account for the formation of such a sudden intention.

It seems improbable that Mrs Chamberlain, having murdered Azaria in the car or elsewhere, would have returned to the tent with so much blood on her person or clothing that some of it dripped onto the articles upon which it was found in the tent. Unless she did, there is no explanation, except the dingo story, for the blood found in the tent. Such conduct on her part seems inconsistent with her donning the tracksuit pants (as the Crown alleges) so as to avoid telltale signs of blood.

It is extraordinary that the persons present at the barbecue area at the time of and immediately after Azaria’s disappearance accepted Mrs Chamberlain’s story and noticed nothing about her appearance or conduct suggesting that she had suddenly killed her daughter and nothing about Mr Chamberlain’s conduct suggesting that he knew that she had done so. She must have been a consummate actress if, having killed her daughter, she was able to appear calm and unconcerned when she returned to the barbecue a few minutes after the murder.

He referred to the different steps that she would have had to have taken if she had killed Azaria, and said that ‘the short period during which Mrs Chamberlain was absent from the barbecue made it only barely possible that she could have committed the crime alleged against her.’ The evidence suggested that it would have taken up to twenty minutes for Azaria to have died if her carotid arteries had not been severed, and the bloodstaining on the jumpsuit indicated ‘an absence of arterial bleeding’.

He found it very difficult to accept that ‘Aidan did not notice that his mother had taken Azaria from the tent and returned without her and did not comment on that fact when his sister was found to be missing’. And there were other factors that made it difficult to accept that the Chamberlains had acted as the Crown alleged:

It was indeed fortuitous that a dog or dingo should have been heard to growl and a dingo should have been seen not far from the tent very shortly before Azaria disappeared and that on the night of 17 August a canid’s tracks should have been found hard up against the tent.

It is surprising that, if Mrs Chamberlain had blood on her clothing, nobody noticed it in the hours after Azaria’s disappearance. If Azaria’s body was left in the car after the alleged murder, it was foolhardy for Mrs Chamberlain, in the presence of the Demaines and their dog, to open the car door and give the dog the scent of Azaria’s clothing. The risks involved in the Chamberlains burying and disinterring Azaria when there were so many people who might have observed them were enormous. It is difficult to explain how the variety of plant material found on Azaria’s clothing could have got there if she had been murdered. It seems improbable that, the murder having been so cleverly accomplished and concealed, the clothing would have been so left as to invite suspicion.

If Mrs Chamberlain told her husband that she had killed Azaria, it was extraordinary conduct on his part to leave his two sons, the younger of whom was aged only three years, in her sole custody on 18 August …

Their conduct upon their return to Mount Isa is inexplicable if she had murdered Azaria. For instance, it is almost incredible that she should have told people there was blood on her shoes if she had murdered her daughter. Further, it was bravado of a high order for Mr Chamberlain to tell the police at Cooranbong that they had taken possession of the wrong camera bag if Azaria’s body had been secreted in the one which he then produced …

The Crown has no direct evidence of the Chamberlains’ guilt to overcome the cumulative effect of all these formidable obstacles. Even so, their guilt would be established if, in spite of so many considerations pointing to their innocence, the conclusion was reached that it had been proved beyond reasonable doubt that a dingo did not take the baby. In the light of all the evidence before the Commission, I am of the opinion that such a conclusion cannot be reached.

After summarising the evidence that had led him to that conclusion, he said that, ‘taken in its entirety, it falls far short of proving that Azaria was not taken by a dingo. Indeed, the evidence affords considerable support for the view that a dingo may have taken her. To examine the evidence to see whether it has been proved that a dingo took Azaria would be to make the fundamental error of reversing the onus of proof and requiring Mrs Chamberlain to prove her innocence.’ He went on:

I am far from being persuaded that Mrs Chamberlain’s account of having seen a dingo near the tent was false or that Mr Chamberlain falsely denied that he knew his wife had murdered his daughter. That is not to say that I accept that all their evidence is accurate. Some of it plainly is not, since parts of it are inconsistent with other parts. But if a dingo took her child, the events of the night of 17 August must have been emotionally devastating for Mrs Chamberlain. Her ability to give a reliable account of the tragedy may have been badly affected by her distress. The inconsistencies in her evidence may have been caused by her confusion of mind. Where her evidence conflicts with the Lowes’ account of what she said and did in the few seconds after she commenced to run back to the tent, it may be the Lowes’ recollection, not hers, that is at fault. The belief that people might unjustly accuse her of making up the dingo story might have led her, even subconsciously, to embellish her account of what happened, and this may explain some of its improbabilities. Her failure to see Azaria in the dingo’s mouth is explicable if, as is quite possible, there were two dingoes, not one. These considerations afford at least as convincing an explanation for the apparently unsatisfactory parts of her evidence as does the Crown’s claim that she was lying to conceal her part in the alleged murder. Having seen Mr and Mrs Chamberlain in the witness box, I am not convinced that either of them was lying.

He found it ‘difficult but not impossible’ to imagine circumstances in which someone else might have interfered with the clothes, and said that it was ‘not inconceivable’ that the owner of a dog intervened to cover up its involvement in the tragedy or that some tourist did so acting irrationally. However, his ultimate conclusion was blunt and to the point:

It follows from what I have written that there are serious doubts and questions as to the Chamberlains’ guilt and as to the evidence in the trial leading to their conviction. In my opinion, if the evidence before the Commission had been given at the trial, the trial judge would have been obliged to direct the jury to acquit the Chamberlains on the ground that the evidence could not justify their conviction.