SYDNEY — Michael Chamberlain, who waged a decades-long battle to prove his baby daughter was killed by a dingo in Australia’s most notorious case of injustice, died Monday, his former wife said. He was 72.
Mr. Chamberlain’s longtime friend and former lawyer, Stuart Tipple, told Australia’s Fairfax Media that he died as a result of complications from leukemia.
Lindy and Michael Chamberlain were wrongly convicted in the death of their 9-week-old daughter, Azaria, after the infant vanished from their tent during a 1980 camping trip to Uluru, the sacred monolith in Australia’s Outback.
The mystery led to the most divisive and sensational legal drama in Australian history. It gained a place in global pop culture after Meryl Streep portrayed Lindy in the movie ‘‘A Cry in the Dark.’’
The Chamberlains insisted that a dingo snatched their daughter from the tent. But officials doubted the wild dogs were capable of carrying an infant. Instead, prosecutors argued that Lindy had slit her daughter’s throat and buried her in the desert.
There were no witnesses, no motive, and no body; Azaria’s remains were never found. But in 1982, Lindy was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Michael was convicted of being an accessory after the fact and given a suspended sentence.
Three years later, Azaria’s jacket was found in the desert near a dingo den and Lindy was released from prison. A Royal Commission, the highest form of investigation in Australia, later debunked much of the forensic evidence used at trial and the Chamberlains’ convictions were overturned. In 2012 — more than three decades after Azaria vanished — a coroner finally ruled that the infant had died as a result of a dingo attack.
The trial remains a source of shame for the many Australians who initially doubted the Chamberlains and cast Lindy as a villain largely due to her religious beliefs. Michael Chamberlain was a pastor with the Seventh-day Adventist church, a Protestant denomination that few Australians understood. Rumors circulated that Lindy had killed her daughter as part of a grisly religious ritual.
Shortly before the coroner’s ruling in 2012, Michael Chamberlain said religious bigotry played a large role in the injustice he and his former wife suffered.
‘‘The church got so smashed up, erroneously, and all through, really, a nasty dose of prejudice,’’ Mr. Chamberlain said.
Michael and Lindy divorced in 1991. He married Ingrid Bergner and became an author and teacher.
Actor Sam Neill, who portrayed Michael in ‘‘A Cry in the Dark,’’ said on Monday that the Chamberlains had been ‘‘terribly, cruelly wronged.’’
‘‘Throughout their cruel ordeal & the years of injustice, (Michael) Chamberlain maintained that quiet unassuming dignity — an impressive man,’’ Neill tweeted.
Mr. Chamberlain, who was born in New Zealand, leaves his wife and four children.
