Claims Government Owes Her Millions : Dingo Baby’s Mother Says She Is Broke

Lindy Chamberlain, the mother in Australia’s dingo baby case, says she is owed millions of dollars in promised compensation nearly a year after she was found innocent of charges she killed her infant daughter.

Chamberlain, who claims her 6-week-old daughter was snatched by a dingo, a native Australian wild dog, while on a camping trip in the Outback, says the notoriety has left her broke and prevented her family from living a normal life.

Chamberlain, 41, who has said she resented her trial by media, called a news conference with selected journalists Monday to generate publicity to force the Northern Territory government, which prosecuted her and later pardoned her, to pay compensation for the 3 1/2 years she spent in jail.

Her ordeal, regarded as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in Australian legal history, and her fight for compensation have been front-page stories for years in Australian newspapers.

But despite eight best-sellers about the case, Chamberlain claimed she had not received much money. She also said money she received from the 1988 movie “A Cry in the Dark,” in which Meryl Streep played her role, covered little more than her expenses.

Her husband, Michael, 45, a former pastor with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, said he ekes out a living chopping firewood and selling it for $26 a trailer load. Lindy Chamberlain said she could not afford to buy new shoes for her three school-age children.

“People think a couple so famous should be rich,” she said. “Our anonymity has been blasted; we can’t live a normal life. You can’t plan for the future because you don’t know what that future is.”

The family’s saga has captivated the Australian public since 1980, when Mrs. Chamberlain claimed a dingo killed her daughter Azaria in the Outback.

She was prosecuted for murder by the Northern Territory government but was released following the discovery of vital new evidence while a Royal Commission, the highest form of investigation available, reviewed the case.

She was finally pardoned last November. The Chamberlains have refused to reveal the amount of compensation they were promised, but a figure leaked to the media by the Northern Territory government put it at around $3 million.