'I shot the dingo that had baby Azaria in its jaws'

Police in Australia are to investigate an elderly man's claims that he shot the dingo that killed baby Azaria Chamberlain and hid the body he took from its jaws.

Frank Cole, 78, said the body may have been buried in a friend's backyard in Melbourne, Victoria.

"Over the past 25 years, I've had nightmares and sleepless nights over the whole affair," said Mr Cole. "But I may not have long left, and if anything happened to me nobody would know the truth."

A spokesman for Northern Territory Police today confirmed they would investigate the new evidence.

Azaria's mother, Lindy Chamberlain, was jailed for the baby's murder after the incident in a campsite at Ayers Rock in 1980, but the body was never discovered.

She was freed in 1986 when a blood-stained babygrow suit showed the child could have been taken by a wild dog.

Mr Cole told a newspaper he had fled the Northern Territory after finding Azaria, fearing he might face jail for using a firearm in a national park.

Today Mr Cole was in hiding, but his son Don Cole confirmed his father's story that he was camping with three friends when he went to find food for their dog and shot a male dingo by mistake. "As I approached it, I saw it had a baby in its mouth," Mr Cole said. He put the baby on the front seat of his vehicle and drove to the camp site.

"We were shocked. We realised what had happened and we were in tears," he said. "The baby had four puncture holes in its head and one of its ears was missing.

"Otherwise, it didn't seem to have been harmed, but it had obviously been dead some time. We decided we'd try and clean it up, so we got some water boiling, and started to take its clothes off.

"We had some trouble with the buttons on the jacket, so I took a pair of small tin snips and cut the buttons off."

The original coroner's inquiry found that a dingo took the child but that a person using a pair of scissors disposed of the body.

Azaria's jumpsuit was found by a tourist seven days after her disappearance. Her jacket was found in 1986.

Mr Cole said that as one of them had served time in prison the men decided not to tell police straight away. "We left on the understanding the other blokes would go to the authorities but they never did ," he said.

The other two members had since died, he said.

Mr Cole said he had felt "pretty lousy and guilty" when Ms Chamberlain was jailed. "It was on my conscience but I couldn't do anything by then," he said.