Evil Angels: The Case of Lindy Chamberlain

by John Bryson

The basis for the Meryl Streep film A Cry in the The dramatic true story of a mother’s worst nightmare and the murder trial that shocked Australia. On a camping trip at Ayer’s Rock, the Chamberlain family’s infant daughter disappeared in the middle of the night. Her distraught mother, Lindy, claimed she saw a dingo carry her off into the Australian outback. Two years later, their tragedy worsened when, without a murder weapon, a body, or even a motive, a jury convicted Lindy Chamberlain of killing her own daughter. The public cheered.   John Bryson, a trial lawyer and award-winning journalist, deconstructs the factors that led to a seemingly reasonless incarceration and the public attitude that demanded it. With this book, he began to sway popular opinion in the Chamberlains’ favor by discussing the failures on the part of the police, forensics team, and press.   Winner of the CWA Gold Dagger and the inspiration for the film A Cry in the Dark starring Meryl Streep, Evil Angels presents an impartial analysis of the most notorious miscarriage of justice in Australian history. It serves as a reminder of the dangers of blindly searching for a conviction, the importance of scientific accuracy, the volatility of the media, and the ease with which a nation can fall prey to bigoted thinking. Written with literary finesse, this is one of the twentieth century’s most important—and thoughtful—works of true crime.  

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction, Australia, History, Crime, Biography, Animals

568 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1985

Reviews

[Colin Baldwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A necessary read! I don't know if it was an intentional clever piece of writing, but Bryson managed to present all the forensic evidence in such a detailed, complicated and scientific manner that it surely echoed how the jury at the Chamberlain trial must have been similarly confused, challenged and bamboozled. I remember all the media hype and countless dinner-party discussions that divided Australia. A troubling and unnecessarily drawn-out period in our modern-day Australian history and certainly a sad indictment on some of the flaws in the judicial system.
(NB released as 'A Cry in the Dark' outside Australia and New Zealand)

[Paul Gaya Ochieng Simeon Juma · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. There is quite a lot to learn in terms of the Australian Criminal Justice system.

[Kat Perry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brilliant book that everyone should read. A terrible injustice was done to Lindy and Michael Chamberlain, just so devastating to read and remember the cruelty of the Australian public towards this family and their tiny baby who died a cruel and awful death. The focus was on the legal case and police corruption in NT which heavily influenced the outcome for Lindy. Terribly sad. Her daughter Kahlia was removed at four hours of age after she was born during Lindys incarceration. She lost two babies, nothing will ever bring back the three years of Kahlias life that she spent in foster care, the three years the boys missed having a mother, or the marriage that broke down as a result of the unjust court outcome for Lindy. The book is devastating but not melodramatic. It leaves the reader to imagine the devastating grief and loss inflicted on this family by a cruel public and an incredibly inadequate jury. In examining the process, many questions remain regarding the legal system and it’s genuine capacity to remain impartial. Disturbing and saddening reading. Azaria would have been 38 years old this year; RIP little one.

[Ted · Rating 3 out of 5]

For my tastes, too much material about foresnics and not enough about the human element.

[Moira]

Dry but fairly interesting story behind the film A Cry in the Dark, starring Meryl Streep. What lifts this book a bit above the regular true-crime nonfiction field is it's apparently written in true Australian English, which, apart from the interesting slang, gives you a little more insight into the cultural background of Lindy Chamberlain's ordeal. A bit long and drawn-out, but the author clearly has done a staggering amount of research, which he integrates and popularizes rather skilfully. Mainly read this because the ebook was on sale and I was sick as a dog and needed something to occupy me, and I'd been impressed by the screenwriting in the movie a while ago (there's an interesting use of unknown background characters -- people arguing at dinner parties, for example -- as a kind of Australian Greek chorus). Much less gruesome and exploitive than most nonfiction true crime books; I might have liked it better if it hadn't been so ploddingly thorough. But not bad.


(Yeah, this is the origin of the infamous 'Dingoes ate my baby!' joke, which is a band name on 'Buffy' among other things, altho by the time you finish reading this book, that'll be about as funny as 'drinking the Kool-Aid' after reading A Thousand Lives. Modern tastelessness never fails to amaze me.)

[Eric_W · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was reminded of this book after reading Notgettingenough's review of Who Killed Leanne Holland?. I read it years ago, but the basic story still sticks in my mind. A nine-week old child disappeared and the parents claimed it had been taken by a dingo. The mother and father were charged with murder despite negative views of the police inquiry. The parents were Seventh-Day Adventists which led to a series of ridiculous charges regarding false assumptions about their religious beliefs, you know, the usual crap about eating babies, etc., etc.

Very well written and the kind of book that gets you really mad.

[Michael Burge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Compulsory reading for anyone claiming the right to an opinion about the Chamberlain case.

Captures the Australian appetite for opinion over fact perfectly.

[Missy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heart-breaking book, the first half covers the incident and its immediate aftermath. Then the second half is all about the mess the police made. First half spent almost crying, as it is incredibly written. Second half I spent seething, and wanting to throw the book across the room. Well written, and incredibly eye-opening. I'm glad I'm not Australian, or I would be ashamed!

[Fayette · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am going to mark this book read, even though (true confession) I mostly just read the first and last parts. I got bogged down in the middle for about a year. I gave it 3 stars because it was a faithful exploration of a very famous crime, and if you are interested in true crime/and or this case in particular, it is very well written and quite exhaustive. If you are a CASUAL observer, though, I would rate this as a 2 star. It's just not worth the time it takes to read about every little bit of nappy left behind in the dust by the dingos. I am putting it on my books read list so that I can be reminded that I have read it.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read the summer of the film "A Cry in the Dark," and was glad I had. A truly horrifying story of institutionalized prejudice and bumbling police inspectors and how their ineptness compound a family's grief about the death of their child. Sadder still that "A dingo took my baby!" has become a laugh line these many years later. Anyway, a fantastic bit of crime/sociological writing about the Australia of thirty years ago.

[Melinda Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

very easy to read book. By the end of it it was more like a transcript of the legal proceedings more than anything else and it was a little dry, but overall considering the topic matter it would be pretty difficult to mess this book up.

[Scarlett Sims · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saw this ebook was on sale and since I'd always kind of wanted to know the story behind the case, I bought it and immediately started reading it. When I was about halfway through, there was also an episode of My Favorite Murder where Georgia covered this case.

It's another one of those cases (Adnan Syed, Stephen Avery, Michael Peterson) where even if you think the person is guilty you can't help but think they didn't get a fair trial. And I think after having read this book it would be very hard to consider Lindy guilty but apparently there are still people who do.

Bryson does a good job setting the scene. I'm not at all familiar with Australia but he described the areas so it wasn't like being dropped into a totally foreign landscape.

[Billy Stevenson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lindy Chamberlain is such a big part of the Australian consciousness that I didn’t realise how much I didn’t know about her case – or how much I took for granted – until I read John Bryson’s Evil Angels, which was released in 1985. Since reading it, I’ve actually tried to go back and reconstruct the vague and hazy outlines I had of the Chamberlain trial, many of which were informed by my own life as much as anything else. I come from a rural family on my mother’s side, and my sense is that the Chamberlain trial struck a particular note in rural communities – among other things, a well-worn copy of Evil Angels is one of the few books I can remember from my grandparent’s living room.

Recovering those inchoate impressions is always difficult, however, and all that I can really recover is just how vague my knowledge of the case was, despite having heard it referenced hundreds of times – and the first time, strangely enough, in an episode of Seinfeld, rather than closer to home. What I do recall is that I sensed that the case was still somehow open, and that there was still a quantum of ambiguity about whether or not Chamberlain had killed her child, fueled in part by fragments of tabloid media throughout the 90s, including one sensational broadcast (I seem to recall?) in which the body of Azaria Chamberlain was supposedly “discovered” beneath the foundations of a Melbourne home.

Reading Bryson’s book, however, makes me realise that my residual that the case was “ambiguous” was itself a symptom of the way the media handed the case in the first place, a situation that Bryson sets out to rectify in the most rigorous and meticulous way possible. Given that Chamberlain was released from prison a mere five days after Azaria’s matinee jacket was discovered in a remote site in Uluru, it’s hard not to believe that Bryson’s book, and the media debates that it causes, contributed in no small way to her release, setting out the problems with her case so systematically that a single new piece of physical evidence was enough to set her free.

In part, that is a result of Bryson’s prose style, which is quite contorted and awry, especially in the opening parts of the book, as if he is trying to confound the audience’s expectations, and force them to reconsider their preconceptions, at the level of language itself. For the first hundred pages or so of the book, you have to continually recalibrate your approach to the written word, and apply an almost forensic attention to the pattern of Bryson’s sentences, before you can immerse yourself in the particulars and atmosphere of the case he’s describing.

That’s not to say that the book isn’t forensically fascinating or atmospheric, since these opening pages are already replete with vivid and evocative depictions of Australian life in the 70s. Over the rest of Evil Angels, these expand into incredible portraits of Alice Springs, Mt. Isa (where the Chamberlains lived at that time) and the infrastructure and topography surrounding Uluru, or Ayers Rock as it was still called in the late 70s and early 80s. Yet Bryson continually offsets this atmospheric immersion with a meticulous and scrupulous taste for details, effectively foreshadowing both the substance of the trial and the various cases that the State would try to build against Chamberlain.

In their own macabre way, these cases are the most interesting part of the book, as Bryson methodically outlines all the different ways in which the Northern Territory police tried to construct a murder narrative around physical and circumstantial evidence that all pointed in the opposite direction. To a certain extent, this conspiratorial reading of the Chamberlains was exacerbated by limitations in forensic science and an over-deference to witness testimony, but it also stems from a narrative insatiability and ingenuity on the part of the prosecutors themselves, who leave no stone unturned in their efforts to craft a story in which Lindy Chamberlain, in particular, can plausibly play the role of a murdering mother.

That’s no small task, given the facts of the case, and is a testament to the disturbing picture that the Chamberlains cut in the Australian media during the trial – disturbing enough that the media and the prosecution had to effectively collude on a murder narrative to explain their difference. In subsequent popular culture, the Chamberlains have tended to be presented as unconventional, and so not amenable to the media at the time, but in some ways Bryson suggests that their most provocative feature was the manner in which they overidentified with Australian values of stoicism, family and tradition – or identified with them so strongly that they effectively shut out the media as a point of reference.

Of course, the fact that these Australian values were mediated through their Seventh-Day Adventist background was a sticking-point, since Australians by nature tend to be sceptical of ideology, let alone American ideology, let alone any American ideology that has religious overtones. Unable to quite frame the Chamberlains as fringe figures, but unable to quite compute their Australian qualities either, the media instead appear to have approached them with a broad spectrum suspicion that invested even their most apparently sincere protestations, or the most factual elements of the case, with a sense of theatricality.

In other words, what the media seemed incapable of conceptualizing was the fact of Australian Seventh-Day Adventism itself, along with the extent of the Australian Seventh-Day Adventist community, since virtually all of the Chamberlains’ behaviours – especially their most controversial behaviours – were consistent with that community, and amounted to little more than an orthodox observance of their particular faith. All that it took to resolve the optics of this situation, Bryson suggests, was to acknowledge the existence of this community and – perhaps more importantly – the sheer possibility of its existence in areas as imbued with conservative values as Mt Isa, where Michael acted as pastor.

In order to counter the media’s inability to conceive of that community, Bryson presents it as a matter of fact, largely refraining from any sustained history of the Seventh-Day Adventist movement in Australia. While Bryson does start the book with the early days of the Seventh-Day Adventist church in Phoenixville, the import of that brief backstory is figurative as much as factual, as the Australian desert, and the deserts where the Seventh-Day Adventist church originated, are fused into a single wilderness that the Chamberlains are forced to traversed and conquer before they finally arrive at justice.

Within that wilderness, the dingo becomes the key antagonist of the book, along with the media, as Bryson signals his allegiance with the Chamberlains partly by the sheer amount of detail on dingo habits, and partly by the way in which he turns the dingo into a character and subjectivity in itself. Apparently, the dingos around Uluru were especially dangerous because they weren’t quite wild, and weren’t quite tame, providing them with an environment in which they could negotiate their relationships with humans as never before.

It’s no exaggeration to say that these dingos in Evil Angels are like the whale in Moby Dick, forming an all-encompassing and surveillant subjectivity that the humans in question can only know in an incomplete way, a situation epitomised by the image that defines the case – Lindy Chamberlain arriving at the tent, seeing a dingo against the opening, but unable to quite discern what is in its mouth, or to track its immediate movements from that point on. While the Uluru dingos might be variously compared to wolves, large felines and small primates, the book never quite establishes the dingo-human threshold in a consistent way, at least at Uluru, although this also seems deliberate – a way of distancing Bryson’s account from the plethora of “expert” witnesses who all claimed to offer the final word on dingo habits.

Speaking of expert witnesses, if Evil Angels has any flaw, it’s that the last hundred pages, which deal with the trial, might feel a bit repetitive now that Chamberlain has been acquitted. It’s here that Bryson’s background as a barrister really comes to the fore, as he gathers the voluminous mass of evidence into one vignette of the witness stand after another, taking us through testimonies that we have already heard two or three times with the same meticulous, scrupulous approach that he adopted when he first introduced them.

Yet this final part of the book may also have had the greatest impact, since it’s where the ellipses and inconsistencies in the State’s case really come to the fore as well. When you recall that the book was released at a time when the media consensus was that Chamberlain should be jailed for life, this last section feels like nothing less than a riposte to media as she knew it – an effort to reinstate the legal procedure absent from the case, and to replace the selectivity the media with an exhaustive, and often exhausting, facticity.

In effect, Bryson asks the readers to unlearn what they knew of the trial by media – and the fact that Chamberlain was released so quickly after the discovery of Azaria’s matinee-jacket speaks, indirectly, to the role that the book played in preparing the courts and the public for this moment. Unlike so much true crime, which arises out of journalistic economy, then, this is a defiant and distinctive work of anti-journalism, as relevant as ever in our current era of fake news, and a more haunting insight into the Australian psyche than anything I’ve read in a long time.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

The basis for the Meryl Streep film A Cry in the Dark: The dramatic true story of a mother’s worst nightmare and the murder trial that shocked Australia.

On a camping trip at Ayer’s Rock, the Chamberlain family’s infant daughter disappeared in the middle of the night. Her distraught mother, Lindy, claimed she saw a dingo carry her off into the Australian outback. Two years later, their tragedy worsened when, without a murder weapon, a body, or even a motive, a jury convicted Lindy Chamberlain of killing her own daughter. The public cheered.
 
John Bryson, a trial lawyer and award-winning journalist, deconstructs the factors that led to a seemingly reasonless incarceration and the public attitude that demanded it. With this book, he began to sway popular opinion in the Chamberlains’ favor by discussing the failures on the part of the police, forensics team, and press.
 
Winner of the CWA Golden Dagger award and the inspiration for the film A Cry in the Dark starring Meryl Streep, Evil Angels presents an impartial analysis of the most notorious miscarriage of justice in Australian history. It serves as a reminder of the dangers of blindly searching for a conviction, the importance of scientific accuracy, the volatility of the media, and the ease with which a nation can fall prey to bigoted thinking. Written with literary finesse, this is one of the twentieth century’s most important—and thoughtful—works of true crime

What did I think of it:
5 stars
First off I would like to say that even though this is the first time I ever read this book I do in fact already know a little bit about the case, because even though its been a while and I do mean a while I have seen the movie that come out in 1988 , wit that said lets get to what I thought of the book, while it does take it a while to actually get to where the story starts , you do see how the story unfolds , even while I was reading this I still kept having one thought that kept coming to my mind , why didn't she stay with her baby when she put her to bed that night, she know and in fact saw a dingo in their camp, and why didn't anyone get any wronging about dingo attacks, because there were people who knew about them, in fact the rangers were getting them almost daily about children getting attack, ok so there was a lot of things that was wrong on both sides but still there was things that happened that didn't have to come to pass but did. This book has a way at pulling at your heart and mind , because it shows you want the family went though that night and from the days that followed, it also brings up the question did a dingo actually kill a baby and could they do it, or did in fact did the mother do it , Mr. Bryson has a way with this story that as your reading it you can see what is going on before your very eyes or at lest I think so, it like your reading it and a movie is playing before your very eyes , were you can see and feel as well as hear what is going on , and your hoping that they find baby Chamberlain and bring her back to her mom and dad ,but a part of you also already knows that's its to late for her, this is a book that I think everyone should read at lest once in their life time. With that said I would also love to say that I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion and review and that these are 100 % my own thoughts to what is truly a great book

[Wayne]

This event became Australia's "Dreyfuss Affair".
It caused immense divisions, heated discussions and smug and self-satisfied condemnations of the Chamberlains especially the mother, Lindy. And then there was the string of Q&A Dingo Jokes which were funny and clever, but under the circumstances cruel, insensitive and tasteless.
What was stunning was the complete surety and confidence with which people continually condemned Lindy Chamberlain, as if it was an almost personal grievance or vendetta.

The media played a major role in stirring up a witch hunt mentality, milking it for all it was worth especially when newspaper and magazine sales went through the roof. It also added zest,entertainment and gossip to many people's tired boring and limited lives, a sort of ready and reliable Side Show they could turn to to brighten up their pointless days.
I soon learned that I really did not particularly warm to most of the Teaching Staff I'd landed among in 1981. Limited by their racism, homophobia, sexism...it was a sure bet where Lindy Chamberlain registered in their world.
I soon grew tired of holding my tongue listening to their Lindy Hate Litanies.
One day I suddenly heard my voice saying:"So, you were there, Sandy?" "Eh?" says Sandy, the opinionated, peroxided Year 6 teacher, her head jerking up.
"You were there, at Ayers Rock...when Lindy did it, you know, killed the baby? You actually saw it."
"Nahhhhh! But I know she did it..must have. You only have to see her shifty eyes."
"So, you weren't there. But you know it happened. That she killed her own baby. You didn't actually see anything. You were in Sydney at the time?"
The staff room had fallen silent. I was notching up a reputation and I couldn't have cared less.
"Well, if you were in Sydney, how could you know what was happening at Ayers Rock!!!"
Glares, nasty ones.
I was settling in at last.

[Sally Edsall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a classic in not only telling the story of the Chamberlains, particularly Lindy, the mother whose baby was taken by a dingo 20 years ago, but also about how people can be caught up in a maelstrom of media scrutiny.

I remember the events so well, and, like the rest of Australia, watched them unfold year by year.
The Northern territory government and the media have a lot to answer for. The NT remains a backwater of injustice to this day - most often directed towards Aborigines, but also, as demonstrated here, with invective directed towards another group outside the conventional mainstream.

The media reported in the most outrageously biased and one-sided fashion, and actually whipped up the populous into a frenzy of finger-pointing, gossiping hatred toward Mrs Chamberlain.

I am not at all religious, but to my mind Seventh Day Adventism doesn't even sit far outside the mainstream Christian tradition, yet we were encouraged to believe it was some sort of devil-worshipping Jim Jones type sect.

Eventually the government was forced to recognise the veracity of the Chamberlain's story. ironically, another person died on The Rock for the essential clue to be discovered - a tourist fell off and his body was found near the baby's matinee jacket. It is almost beyond belief the lengths the authorities went to to balme the parents, when most of the people closest to the event on that night verified or supported the Chamberlain's case. Yet those voices were drowned out for years.
Bryson did a wonderful job of bringing this story to public atttention,and some of the most important parts were effectively translated to the screen in the Meryl Streep movie (Cry In The Dark).

[Vaughan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant expose of the shameful conviction and jailing of Lindy Chamberlain for the supposed murder of her 2 month old baby Azaria at Uluru on the evening of 17th August, 1980, a crime she did not commit and was later pardoned for. John Bryson has written a very moving narrative of the events from start to finish. This is a story that any Australian over 45 years old would know something about (and probably have an opinion on Mrs. Chamberlain's guilt or innocence) but not necessarily all the details. A hugely important story on one of Australia's most shameful miscarriages of justice.

[Fishface · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good, if disturbing read about how Lindy Chamberlain was imprisoned for years on a very dubious charge of murder, after a dingo ate her baby on a camping trip to Ayers Rock.

[Felicity Gray · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was incredibly dry, prolonged, and devoid of heart; more a laundry list of times, places, facts and statements than a novel. I knew it was written by a lawyer without needing to be told.

It’s full of problematic attitudes and comments (not just depicting the people and events, but from the writer himself), which, to be fair, is indicative of the decade it was written in. I felt at times uncomfortable that I was in effect humouring an entitled white man enjoying listening to his own voice as he writes about a family (and in particular, a mother) being persecuted, largely, by entitled white men who enjoy listening to their own voices...nonetheless, it is clear the author’s sympathies are with the Chamberlains, and that, combined with clearly establishing the facts of the matter, would’ve made this a very important and unique book indeed in 1985.

I remember watching the Meryl Streep movie as a child, so when I found this book in a second hand bookstore for a few dollars, I decided to revisit the Chamberlains. If you weren’t there in Australia in the 80’s (I was), and you didn’t experience the almost hallucinogenic fever pitch of hatred and delusion (and misogyny) surrounding the case, this book would miss the mark for you.

If you were there, you’ll probably trudge through its laborious pages out of nostalgia and a desire for clear facts, but you’ll find none of the emotion that accompanied the events in this book. Perhaps strangely fitting, given an apparent lack of the requisite emotions was what most enraged people about the Chamberlains (especially Lindy) at the time.

[Caroline B · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's a shame that this book is regarded as 'the' book on the Chamberlain case as unfortunately it is one of the worst books I have ever read. And yes, I have read alot of SHIT

Here's why:
- about 1/3 of the information in the book is not relevant to the story or the case. I am referring to chapters about ancient shrimp, and many many chapters about local Aboriginal people and culture. When I was reading I would go 'oh this must come up later in forensics or something.' It doesn't and purely serves to exist to flatter the author's own ego as he must believe he is a truly gifted writer.
- this book is extremely racist, even for the time it was written. Actually disgusting and unnecessarily so. Many additional 'anecdotes' added in about Aboriginal people that contribute NOTHING to the story or the case. Shameful.
- to be honest I don't know if alot of the info in this book is even true - there are no references. The book is written like this "This isn't going my way" she thought. How could the author know this?

My advice to this author? Please don't write any more books.

Can someone please write a new book on this case that's just factual and good please.

1 star because I literally cannot give 0 stars. Just read the Wikipedia article and save 11 hours of your life.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Forget everything you think you know about this case. Bryson lays out excruciatingly detailed forensic and eyewitness evidence and presents enough authoritative expert opinion and actual reports on the savagery and physical prowess of dingos to completely eviscerate the prosecution's ridiculous and unjust witch-hunt. Shockingly, all of this evidence was available at the time of her trial and false imprisonment.

The Northern Territory turned against Lindy and Michael Chamberlain for bigoted and ignorant reasons. First, the Chamberlains were Seventh-day Adventists, a religion many people in that part of the world saw as cultish and weird. Second, Lindy herself, who also had two little boys at the time, did not respond in a way the public believed was consistent with how a woman should react in this situation. Instead of melting into a puddle of feminine hysterics on camera (which she did privately), she attempted to comport herself with control and dignity in public. So much for that.

A must-read if you're interested in this case.

[Mrs B · Rating 4 out of 5]

A compelling history of Lindy Chamberlain, falsely accused and convicted of the murder of her baby Azaria at Uluru, and subsequently released when irrefutable proof emerged that a dingo really did take her baby.

The narrative focuses on forensics, blood patterns and dingo bite marks. You get a sense of the Chamberlains (pious, dogged and difficult for a jury to empathise with). You get caught up in the story and it’s easy to forget about the horrible, cruel death suffered by a sleeping child.

[Lord Bathcanoe of Snark · Rating 4 out of 5]

An account of what became known as the Dingo Baby Case. This is a long book, 550 pages, and at times it is compelling reading. However, quite a lot of space is taken up with details of how the reporters covering the case spent their time during the investigation and trial. I wasn't really interested in who drank this and who said what when they were lounging around in their hotels. If the book had just stuck to the story of this remarkable case and it's outcome it would merit five stars.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Going by the description on the back cover of the book I did not think it was going to be very interesting. I was convinced the book would not be able to hold my interest for long but I was definitely wrong about tjaym I wasn't even going to read it. I thought about just getting rid of it or donating it but I'm glad I gave it a chance.

[Bergemeister · Rating 5 out of 5]

Compelling story of a famous murder trial

Thoughtful and well written this book was an engrossing read for anyone who is a fan of true crime stories.

[Therese Bergwall · Rating 2 out of 5]

Läst på svenska: Ett skrik i mörkret

[Fady Khattab · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mother is innocent for sure and media don't help in finding the truth in most cases !

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the story of a mother's worse nightmare and the trial afterward. The story's setting is in Australia.

[Christine Davis Mantai · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredible, true story of mass hysteria and a cautionary tale for journalism. This is a Salem Witch Trial in the 1980s.

[Mike Wigal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Had the opportunity to hear Stuart Tipple’s account of this case on a recent cruise aboard the Queen Elizabeth. Even knowing most of the particulars beforehand this was still a compelling read.