Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton was born Alice Lynne Murchinson on 4 March 1948 in Whakatane, on the North Island of New Zealand. When she was twenty months old her family moved to Victoria, Australia. Her father was a pastor, and they moved to pastor new churches often, usually once a year.
Educated in Victoria, Lindy matriculated at Benalla in 1965. Lindy worked vacation jobs as a waitress, shop assistant and clerk. Later Lindy worked as a receptionist and book keeper.
On 18 November 1969, she married Michael Leigh Chamberlain, who was also born in New Zealand. Shortly after marriage, Lindy and Michael moved to Tasmania where they lived for five years while Michael pastored churches there. Their first child, Aidan Leigh was born on 2 October 1973.
In 1974 Lindy received her dressmaking, tailoring and drafting certificate at Launceston Technical College. The Chamberlains then moved to northern Queensland where Reagan Michael Chamberlain was born in Bowen on 16 April 1976. During their time in Queensland Lindy specialised in making wedding dresses to order as well as performing the normal duties of a clergyman’s wife with high church involvement. Later they moved to Innisfail, then on to Mt. Isa where on the 11 June 1980 Azaria Chantel Loren Chamberlain was born.
On 17 August 1980, while on a family holiday, nine week old Azaria Chamberlain was taken by a dingo from a camping ground near Ayers Rock. After two inquests and a police raid on her house, Lindy Chamberlain was tried and convicted of the murder of her baby daughter. She was sentenced to life in prison with hard labour. While inside and outside the prison, Lindy and thousands of others fought to clear her name. Lindy’s fourth child Kahlia Shonell Nikari Chamberlain was born on 17 November 1982 in Darwin Hospital while Lindy was in the custody of Darwin Prison.
In February 1986 the missing matinee jacket was found along with several other items and after two previous appeals against Lindy’s sentence had been rejected, the Northern Territory Government remitted Lindy’s life sentence and she was immediately released from jail and announced a Royal commission. The 1987 commission found her innocent and revealed that a jury would not have convicted if the new evidence had been available. In September 1988, after forcing a new law through Parliament, Lindy Chamberlain returned to court and this time the criminal convictions were finally quashed by the NT Court of Criminal Appeal.
Lindy and Michael were divorced in June 1991. In February 1992 she met Rick Creighton while on a speaking tour in the USA; they were married later that year, on December 20th. They lived in Seattle for several years, returning to Australia in late 1998.
Lindy is quite literally our own piece of ‘living history’. Very happily married, and residing in Australia’s Hunter Valley, Lindy is currently working on a book for children, as well as another on grief and forgiveness. There is still enormous media interest in Lindy and her life. She is an entertaining, articulate person who gives seminars, lectures and keynote addresses on a variety of topics including how to deal with stress; grief and forgiveness; privacy and the media’s responsibilities in news reporting; lawyers’ responsibilities to seek the truth and be impartial; and prison life – what it is really like inside and how it differs from the the public’s perception; finding faith and perspective beyond religion; and divorce, marriage, and step-parenting.