Tegan LANE

 

Above - Tegan's mother Keli Lane


Missing girl Tegan dead: Coroner

February 15, 2006 - The Australian


THE New South Wales Coroner is "comfortably satisfied" that missing Sydney girl Tegan Lane is dead.

But Coroner John Abernethy said today there was not enough evidence to charge a known person with her homicide.

He delivered his findings today after an lengthy inquest into Tegan's suspected death. The girl has not been seen since she was discharged into the care of her mother, Keli Lane, on September 14, 1996, two days after her birth at Auburn Hospital.

Mr Abernethy told Westmead Coroner's Court he was "disturbed at the possibility that Tegan may have met with foul play", but added it was possible the child was still alive.

However, he made the formal finding that Tegan died about 1996.

"As to the place, manner and cause of her death, the evidence adduced does not enable me to say," Mr Abernethy said.

He recommended that the case be referred to the NSW Police Homicide Squad for review or further investigation.

Ms Lane, now 30, kept Tegan's birth and those of two other children secret from her family and friends.

The two other children were legally adopted out but when Tegan's birth was discovered by authorities in 1999 she initially denied the baby's existence then offered inconsistent versions of events.

In her latest account, she gave the newborn to Tegan's natural father, a man named Andrew Norris, with whom she had had an affair.

Mr Norris, his de facto girlfriend Mel, and his mother collected the newborn from Auburn Hospital, Ms Lane told police.

But nationwide searches have failed to find any trace of him or the child.

Mr Abernethy today said without the untruths and half truths Ms Lane had told police, adoption agencies and social workers, her version of what happened to Tegan was "possible, though unlikely".

"With those untruths ... I am completely unable to accept the final version given by Keli Lane," he said.

Mr Abernethy said he found it "inherently unlikely that a man with whom (Ms Lane) was having an affair, who already had a partner, who initially at least was incredibly angry on learning she was pregnant, nevertheless was happy to take the child".

"This is all the more unlikely because that man's cuckolded partner also agreed."

Earlier this week, Ms Lane exercised her legal right to silence when called to give evidence at the inquest.

While Mr Abernethy acknowledged her right not to incriminate herself, he said "the position is that without Keli Lane's evidence this court is unable to ... make a final meaningful assessment as to whether this inherently unlikely version of events may be true".

Detectives investigating disappearance of Tegan Lane dig under Gladesville house

2008-08-04 11:31:51


 
 
A large-scale operation has begun at a Sydney house as part of inquiries into the disappearance and suspected death of baby Tegan Lane.
 
Tegan disappeared soon after her mother, Keli, was discharged from Auburn Hospital about 2pm on 14 September 1996.
 
A coronial inquest into the circumstances of baby Tegan's disappearance concluded in early 2006. Former NSW Coroner John Abernethy ruled that Tegan was deceased and referred the case to the NSW Police Force's Homicide Squad for review and further investigation.
 
Strike Force Kullara was established by the Homicide Squad in October 2006 after the review of the case was completed.
 
The case is now one of more than 190 that are the subject of further investigation by the Unsolved Homicide Team.
 
Homicide Squad Commander, Detective Superintendent Geoff Beresford, said today's operation began with the execution of a crime scene warrant shortly before 10am.
 
"The Gladesville property was the home of one of Keli Lane's former boyfriends and she is known to have attended this location briefly on the day she was discharged from hospital.

 
"As a result of further inquiries over almost two years, we have uncovered information which suggests Tegan's remains may be at this location," Detective Superintendent Beresford said.
 
The home is now occupied by a family who have been relocated by the NSW Police Force for the duration of the operation.
 
"Further investigation has been carried out by the detectives into the disappearance and suspected death of Tegan Lane.
 
"Our inquiries have led us to the house in Venus Street, Gladesville, where an operation has begun today to excavate under the home for possible remains.
 
"This work is expected to take up to a week and will also include a search of the entire property," Detective Superintendent Beresford said.
 
At least 20 people are involved in the operation, led by the Unsolved Homicide Team, with the assistance of officers from the Public Order and Riot Squad (PORS), Police Rescue, and Forensic Services Group (FSG).
 
Detective Superintendent Beresford said, "As part of our ongoing inquiries, we are appealing for help to identify people who might have seen or had contact with Keli Lane while she was in Auburn Hospital between 12 and 14 September 1996."
 
Detectives are also keen to hear from any members of the public who might have seen Keli Lane in the Auburn Hospital carpark on 14 September 1996.
 
Strike Force Kullara detectives can be contacted via Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.  Information will be treated in the strictest confidence and can be provided anonymously.

Is the body of baby Tegan Lane under a house?

Article from: The Daily Telegraph

By Kara Lawrence

August 05, 2008 12:00am

IN Keli Lane's own words, she visited her former boyfriend's house in Gladesville 12 years ago after handing her baby over to its natural father - a man police have never been able to prove existed.

Now police believe those words may return to haunt her, with a dig under that same weatherboard house to find missing baby Tegan Lane's remains.

For the first time, a thorough excavation at the property has been launched in an effort to ascertain once and for all whether Tegan's remains are buried there.

The case of missing baby Tegan - who would be 11 if she was still alive today - has fascinated Sydney, with a painstaking national police search unable to find any record of the child.

In 2006, former State Coroner John Abernethy found Tegan was dead but stopped short of finding she had met with foul play.

Forensic anthropologist Dr Denise Donlon, accompanied by police and cadaver dogs, yesterday began sifting through the soil underneath the Venus St home , which neighbours say underwent extensive renovations from 2004.

When two-day-old Tegan was discharged from Auburn Hospital on September 14, 1996, Ms Lane's then-boyfriend and footballer Duncan Gillies owned and lived in the Venus St home, which has since changed ownership.

Cadaver dogs were used in a 2005 search, without success.

But a two-year review of the case led to police gaining new information which pointed to the location, Detective Superintendent Geoff Beresford said.

"It is known that Keli Lane frequented this house prior to the birth of Tegan and we believe she may have visited there shortly after leaving Auburn Hospital," he said.

Ms Lane told police during a previous interview she stopped by Mr Gillies' home that day.

She claimed to have handed the child over to her natural father, an Andrew Norris, who has never been found, before catching a cab to Gladesville.

Ms Lane also gave birth to two other children in secret in the 1990s and legally adopted them out. She kept a fourth child she bore with her husband.

Ms Lane could not be found at her parent's Fairlight home yesterday, with her former policeman father Robert ordering media from the property.

 Police operation at Gladesville concludes - Unsolved Homicide Team

2008-08-08 17:26:16


 
A five day police operation at a Gladesville house, conducted as part of ongoing inquiries into the suspected death of baby Tegan Lane, was finalised at 5pm today.
 
A number of items have been located during the operation which will be subjected to further forensic analysis to determine their relevance to the ongoing investigation.
 
Strike Force Kullara detectives are continuing to investigate the disappearance and suspected death of baby Tegan Lane and are renewing their appeal for information.
 
Since the operation began on Monday, detectives have received a number of calls from members of public with new information.  This information has provided detectives with additional lines of inquiry, which are being investigated.
 
Meanwhile detectives are renewing their appeal for information from the public about the disappearance of baby Tegan.
 
Detectives are also urging anyone who might have seen Keli Lane in the Auburn Hospital carpark on 14 September 1996 to contact police.
 
Strike Force Kullara detectives can be contacted via Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000. Information will be treated in the strictest confidence and can be provided anonymously.
 

Bones found in hunt for Tegan

Dylan Welch - SMH
August 9, 2008
 

POLICE found small bones during their week-long search for the remains of newborn Tegan Lane, but are not sure if they are human.

Officers, a forensic archaeologist and cadaver dogs have been undertaking a forensic excavation of a cottage in Gladesville to find the remains of the baby who went missing 12 years ago - two days after her mother, Keli Lane, gave birth. Police said they found several items during the operation, which will be further analysed to "determine their relevance".

The Herald understands the items include bone fragments, although police will have to wait for tests to determine whether they were those of a small baby or an animal. On Monday police cordoned off the house on Venus Street, where Ms Lane's one-time boyfriend was living when Tegan disappeared. A forensic archaeologist, Dr Denise Donlon, and officers sifted through soil under the house.

Ms Lane, a former representative water polo player and teacher at Ravenswood School for Girls in Gordon, gave birth to Tegan on August 12, 1996.

Three years later it was discovered that, although the birth had been recorded, there was no sign of the infant.

At first Ms Lane denied Tegan's existence but later recanted. Police were unable to find the father, and now doubt his existence. It was eventually revealed that Ms Lane had given birth to three children between 1995 and 1999, all of whom were kept secret from her family and her boyfriend. The other two children were given up for adoption.

At a subsequent coronial inquiry a state coroner John Abernethy found Ms Lane's "litany of lies" had made it impossible to discover the truth. It was ruled that Tegan died in 1996.

Keli Lane loses High Court application to appeal against conviction for murdering baby Tegan

By court reporter Jamelle Wells ABC

Posted 

Former water polo champion Keli Lane has lost her application to the High Court to appeal against her conviction for murdering her baby.

Lane is serving a minimum sentence of 13 years and five months after being found guilty of killing her two-day-old daughter Tegan in 1996.

Her maximum sentence is 18 years.

She has always maintained she gave the child to a man with whom she had a brief and secret affair. Tegan's body has never been found.

Lane applied for leave to appeal in the High Court after the Supreme Court upheld her conviction in late 2013.

Her barrister Winston Terracini SC today told a two-judge panel in the High Court an alternative count of manslaughter should have been open to the jury, as there was no evidence about how Tegan died.

"There was a viable case of manslaughter," Mr Terracini said.

"The jury should have been at least told ... there was an alternative verdict.

"There's no evidentiary basis on how the deceased was killed."

Lane's second ground for appeal was that crown prosecutor Mark Tedeschi reversed an onus of proof in asking rhetorical questions during his wrapping up of the case to the jury.

But the High Court judges noted the strength of the prosecution case was in part due to the fact no arrangement was made for the baby to be placed in care after her birth.

They pointed out Lane arrived at her family's home soon after leaving Auburn Hospital, and a short time an act "dangerous or contrary to the law" may have occurred.

The judges said the defence case relied on a "murder or nothing" tactic throughout the trial.

Tegan's body has never been found and Lane has always maintained she gave the baby to the biological father, a man she called Andrew Norris or Morris, with whom she had an affair.

But prosecutors maintained Lane killed Tegan after leaving Auburn Hospital, in western Sydney, two days after giving birth.

Lane had two terminations as a teenager and kept three pregnancies and births secret from family and friends, giving up two children for adoption, the court heard.

The crown's case was that Lane hid five pregnancies and did not want the responsibility of a child because of her ambition to compete in the 2000 Olympics.

Lane's mother Sandra was in court today but made no comment outside. 

Lane's earliest release date will be in May 2024.

The moment Keli Lane was found guilty of killing baby Tegan

FOR months she had sat quietly in the dock listening to claims that she killed her baby daughter Tegan 14 years earlier. As a guilty verdict was delivered, Keli Lane shattered her silence with a piercing scream of “No!” and collapsed to the floor.

THE notorious case of Keli Lane has captured the public’s imagination for years.

The aspiring sports star managed to hide the birth of three babies from all those around her — and while two of them were put up for adoption, the second child, a little girl called Tegan, hasn’t been seen since Lane left hospital with her two days after her birth.

Lane maintained she handed Tegan over to the child’s father, a man called Andrew Norris or Morris, so that he could raise her.

But in 2010 she was found guilty of her daughter’s murder, later sentenced to 18 years in prison, and her attempts since to appeal the conviction have failed.

Now she is making a renewed bid to clear her name, talking to the ABC’s Exposed: The case of Keli Lane from Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre.

“The biggest hope for me is that someone comes forward with my daughter,” she says.

“She’d be an adult now. So she obviously has had a whole life perhaps not knowing she is my child.”

In 2010, Lisa Davies covered the Keli Lane case for The Daily Telegraph and was in court for the dramatic moment the guilty verdict was delivered.

This is an edited version of her account of that day:

FOR months she had sat quietly in the dock of Sydney’s King St Supreme Court, silently listening to prosecution claims that she killed her baby daughter Tegan 14 years earlier.

But on December 13, 2010, Keli Lane shattered her silence with a piercing scream of “No!” and collapsed to the floor as a jury found her guilty of murder.

Struggling to her feet after the jury members filed into the courtroom at 2.20pm to deliver their verdict, a nervous Lane had barely reached a vertical position before the jury foreman softly announced “guilty”.

As she uttered her distraught shout, her legs gave way and she crumpled sideways. A loud bang was heard — the sound of her head striking the wooden dock — as her mother also let out a scream from the public gallery.

Lane’s legal team sat stunned, while those representing the Crown also appeared shocked.

As the 35-year-old lay convulsing on the floor and howling, sheriffs and lawyers rushed to her aid and medics were called to the court.

The court was briefly cleared as Lane was treated, before the jury returned to be formally discharged by Justice Anthony Whealy.

Lane’s eyes stared emptily at the men and women who, moments before, had sealed her fate.

As Justice Whealy thanked them for their service, many of the jury members cried and none of them could bring themselves to look at Lane.

It was a dramatic and unexpected end to the four-and-a-half-month trial of torment for the former water polo player, who had continually denied charges that she murdered her two-day-old daughter in 1996.

The day of the verdict began like any other for Lane since the trial began in August — with a solemn walk along Elizabeth St from her lawyer’s office.

The journey took less than 10 minutes but there was nothing easy about it, thanks to the big elephant that walked beside her.

That charge. The trial. Those lies. The secrets she had so desperately tried to keep. Lane heard the whispers, and she saw the looks, as she walked. “Baby killer”, the strangers in the street were clearly thinking. But others stopped her in support, as well.

“I can’t believe what they’re doing to you,” one man said early in the trial.

“Hang in there.”

At 10.55am on December 13, 2010, Lane began that walk for the final time. But she was completely unprepared for what lay ahead.

There had been a phone call minutes earlier, the jury had sent a note.

Once inside the court precinct, Lane tried to contain her fear. But the tears came anyway.

She mouthed to her mother and close friend “Where’s Patrick?”, referring to her then boyfriend, Patrick Cogan, who sent a dozen roses to court one day in a show of support.

Her ex-husband, who could not be identified, sneaked into the back of the court, along with her brother Morgan.

Her father, former policeman Bob Lane, had been waiting at their Manly home, too frail to endure the strain.

Eventually, after much confusion, there were two notes — one from the foreman, one from another juror.

The court was told there was a unanimous decision on some charges, but not another — the one that mattered, the murder charge.

For the three charges of making a false statement under oath about the adoption of her first and third born, the jury was unanimous — guilty. Lane sobbed as the foreman convicted her, disbelieving.

She hunched toward the mahogany dock for support, her strong leg muscles suddenly unreliable.

The foreman told the judge the six women and five other men were unable to reach a verdict on the main charge — that she murdered two-day-old Tegan on September 14, 1996, after leaving Auburn hospital.

At 12.35pm, Justice Whealy told them they could reach a majority verdict — 11-1 — if they so desired.

They again retired but at 2.20pm they filed back into the courtroom.

After the drama had subsided, Justice Whealy was asked to consider bail. It was a hopeless request, with the law stating Lane must receive at least 10 years jail on a charge of murder.

“I feel great sympathy for the accused, particularly the great weight these verdicts will have on her and her situation,” Justice Whealy said.

But he said “even though it’s difficult for me to come to this conclusion [it would be] a very unfair result” to grant Lane bail because “it would hold out false hope” to her.

Lane was then escorted handcuffed from the court complex by corrective services officers and driven to jail.

This court report was originally published in The Daily Telegraph on December 14 2010, and is edited here for clarity on dates

 

 

 

The 13 questions baby killer Keli Lane should answer

The 13 questions that would nail baby killer Keli Lane’s guilt and forever silence her media attempts to protest her innocence.

The former NSW Director of Public Prosecutions has 13 questions he believes would nail down convicted baby killer Keli Lane.

In his new book Frank & Fearless, Nicholas Cowdery has criticised Lane’s repeated attempts to exonerate herself via the media.

The retired leading NSW prosecutor also points out how Lane narrowly faced a massive minimum sentence of 25 years in prison for killing her newborn baby.

Lane, 44, a former elite water polo player, Olympic hopeful and private girls’ school coach, was convicted in 2010 of the 1996 murder of her two-day old daughter, Tegan.

She was sentenced to a maximum 18 years prison and will be eligible after 13 years for parole in 2024.

Lane’s appeals to the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal and the High Court have both failed.

Lane has featured on Channel 7’s Sunday, twice on Channel 9’s 60 Minutes and this year from jail spoke to ABC-TV to air her claims of innocence on Exposed.

Lane’s claim was that Tegan’s father, named Andrew Norris or Andrew Morris, took the child from her after she left hospital on her way to a wedding.

Cowdery criticised “slipshod and misleading reporting” that he said risked “undermining public confidence in the … criminal justice system”.

“Keli Lane is a highly unusual individual,” he writes in Frank & Fearless.

“Since she has consistently refused to testify in her own case in any court, there has been no opportunity to put challenging questions to her.

“Television journalists have declined to ask the forensically pertinent ones.

“Why have journalists not asked such questions when they had the opportunity?”

The 13 questions Cowdery proposes go right to the core of Lane’s stories over the years.

Lane secretly became pregnant five times before finally keeping a sixth child.

Two pregnancies were terminated, two babies were adopted out and then there was Tegan.

After a child protection worker, John Borovnik, alerted police, they began investigating Lane. A coronial inquest was held and a fruitless search for a body or a living Tegan Lee Lane began.

These are abbreviated versions of some of the 13 questions Cowdery lists in his

book:
1. When you were first told by police they were looking for Tegan … why didn’t you immediately seek out Andrew Morris or Norris?

2. Why did you give eight different versions of what happened to Tegan?

3. You told the Exposed ABC program that you handed over Tegan to “Andrew: in the foyer of Auburn Hospital” … this was the first time you had given that version … why have you now advanced another version. Which version is correct?

4. If you were intending to hand over Tegan to the natural father, why did you fill out a Medicare form putting her membership under your name?

5. Why did you lie to (a specific detective) that your friend Lisa had known Andrew Morris/Norris and had known about the birth of Tegan … and also tell him you didn’t know how to contact Lisa?

6. In 2004, your then husband found 13 “A Norris” entries in the NSW phone book and offered to ring them. Why didn’t you insist he do so?

Police later determined that the Balmain, Sydney flat in which Lane claimed she conceived Tegan with Andrew Morris/Norris, had never had such a tenant.

Last year, The Daily Telegraph exclusively revealed police interviewed a real Andrew Morris in Lane’s life with whom she’d had a brief tryst at a 1994 surf sporting event.

The one-off sexual encounter took place 18 months before Tegan was even conceived.

Cowdery also lists reasons why Lane rightly was found guilty, her motives, and the trial judge Anthony Whealy’s difficulty in sentencing Lane.

Cowdery reports the exchange between Justice Whealy and the trial’s Crown prosecutor, Mark Tedeschi, QC, in which Tedeschi argues Lane’s premeditated guilt in disposing of Tegan rather than just abandoning the child to die.

“You could put a baby in a dumpster and leave it there,” Justice Whealy ventured.

Mr Tedeschi replied: “When Keli left the hospital she clearly had an intention that the baby was not going to survive.

“Keli left the hospital with the intention of killing a baby and did kill a baby.”

As has been reported, two hours after doing so Lane was attending the wedding of friends with her then boyfriend, Duncan Gillies.

Video footage has since surfaced of Lane, dressed in white, at St Patrick’s College, Manly with Mr Gillies.

Mr Gillies was unaware of the pregnancy and no mention of Tegan was made by Lane.

Despite Mr Tedeschi’s compelling Crown case, it was he who saved Lane from being incarcerated until 2036, when she would be 61 years old, Cowdery reveals.

At the time of Lane’s trial, “the new standard non-parole period for those convicted of child murder … was 25 years”.

Cowdery says Tedeschi saved Lane by arguing the new penalty could not be applied retrospectively, but that some would “call it a close shave”.

Cowdery was NSW’s DPP for more than 16 years, presiding over headline-grabbing trials that he recounts in his new book.