Outback talk is echo of dingo baby-death case

Policeman leading manhunt attacks media speculation about British woman's mental health and behaviour

First it was only whispered about. Then it was openly canvassed. Was Joanna Lees ­ far from being the victim of an outback gunman ­ telling the whole truth about the bizarre kidnapping of her boyfriend, Peter Falconio?

Rupert Murdoch's national daily The Australian ran a headline last week, "The Ghost of Lindy rises to haunt Joanne Lees", which claimed reporters on the scene were at last asking the hard questions as to whether police still believed her nightmare story of the ambush two weeks ago.

The Lindy in question was Lindy Chamberlain who entered the national consciousness in August 1980 when she cried "A dingo stole my baby" at a campsite at Ayers Rock in an incident immortalised by Meryl Streep in the film, A Cry in the Dark.

While Northern Territory police have stuck by Joanna and emphatically denied she is suspect in any way, they were more desperate 20 years ago to pin the apparently motiveless crime on its living victims, Mrs Chamberlain and her husband.

That inexplicable disappearance into the same vast wastes of the Northern Territory, and the fact that baby Azaria's body was never found, saw Lindy with her fatalistic demeanour at the loss of her child convicted in the court of public opinion.

The witch hunt now has been far more muted. But in the lack of a startling breakthrough the suspicion has arisen, here and in the UK, that something is not quite right.

Early on, Commander Bob Fields, who is leading the investigation covering an area five times larger than the UK, was asked on a live radio interview from England if Joanna, 27, was a suspect.

He said afterwards that the question was extremely offensive and if it had not been live on air he would have given the interviewer a piece of his mind. "I think these people [Lees' and Falconio's family] simply deserve better than that. We haven't had any of that crap here." But it did happen at Alice Springs when the Northern Territory police commander, Max Pope, was stunned to find himself being asked at a press conference if Ms Lees was under suspicion, and then if she had a history of mental problems.

The mutual distrust between Ms Lees and the media was apparent at her own press conference, when, after refusing to speak publicly for over a week, she made a heavily stage-managed appearance at which only one reporter was permitted to ask three, agreed questions. Expressing her bitterness at the press, she said: "Anyone who has spoken to me or had contact with me... no one doubts me, only the media have asked questions about my story."

Arguably that is their role ­ but what about a case as singular as this one? The Sydney Daily Telegraph asked Dianna Kelly, a leading psychologist from Sydney University, to assess Joanne's performance. Dr Kelly warned: "We need to be careful here because this case has shades of Lindy Chamberlain. When people don't come across in the media as people expect, the public will jump to conclusions, based on very little evidence, that maybe there's some guilt."

Lindy Chamberlain was given life imprisonment for murder and it took two appeals and a public inquiry before the convictions against her and her husband were quashed in 1988. But it was only when a dingo killed a young boy a few months ago, in the first ever recorded fatal attack, that the cloud over the couple finally lifted.

The shameful memory of Chamberlain's treatment still weighs heavily on many Australians. That is perhaps why the public, if not all the media, tend to resent any suggestion that the latest victim of an outback tragedy hides any secrets.