Next week marks a quarter of a century since Keli Lane’s daughter Tegan was born.
Two days later she vanished.
At 25, Tegan would now be four years older than her mother was at the time she birthed and murdered the newborn baby.
Since being found guilty of Tegan’s murder in 2010, the case of the former champion water polo player – who had five secret pregnancies over seven years – has been the subject of debate and controversy.
If you believe Lane, 46, who has fought for years to have her conviction overturned, then Tegan could still be alive and living with her father.
Lane was a promising Olympic water polo star.
(ABC)But this man, who is allegedly named Andrew Norris or Andrew Morris, has never been located despite a police investigation.
However, Lane has never given evidence in court and has told eight different versions of what happened to baby Tegan over the years, according to former NSW Director of Public Prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery.
“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,” he says in his book Frank & Fearless, which was released after an explosive documentary led to calls for her to be freed.
The 2018 ABC series, Exposed: The Case Of Keli Lane, presented new evidence, and included a rare public denial of the crime by Lane.
“The biggest hope for me is that someone comes forward with my daughter,” she said.
“She’d be an adult now. So she obviously has had a whole life perhaps not knowing she is my child.
“I don’t want to interrupt her life, I don’t necessarily even need to meet her, but obviously for my own family, for myself, I want to show that I did not harm her.
“And I certainly did not kill her.”
What isn’t up for dispute is that Tegan was born at Sydney’s Auburn Hospital on September 12, 1996.
But Lane’s public declaration of innocence fell on deaf legal ears.
After unsuccessfully appealing her conviction, and despite legal academics calling for her case to be reviewed after controversial revelations in the documentary, the one-time Olympic hopeful remains in jail, where she’s serving her 18-year sentence.
Tegan was Lane’s second child after she secretly but legally adopted out her first in early 1995.
In 1999 she gave birth to another child who was also adopted out.
She concealed all her pregnancies during the ’90s, including a further two that were terminated.
Even more bizarre was Lane’s behaviour soon after Tegan’s birth and death.
After keeping the birth a secret from friends and family, just hours after leaving hospital Lane attended a friend’s wedding with her then-boyfriend, rugby union player Duncan Gillies, where she danced and socialised.
Lane enjoying herself at her 21st birthday in 1996.
ABC(ABC)It was alleged in court that she kept all these pregnancies secret because she was concerned that it would affect her chances of representing Australia in water polo at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.
Throughout the various trials and investigations Lane has always maintained her innocence, albeit without testifying under oath, but she remains in the Silverwater Correctional Complex, and isn’t eligible for parole until May 2024.
Over the years Lane has changed dramatically in appearance – she has reportedly lost a massive 30kg after becoming a vegetarian and is no longer blonde, after changing back to her natural brunette hair colour.
She has maintained an on-again, off-again relationship with boyfriend Patrick Cogan, who she met while on bail awaiting trial.
Lane is currently serving an 18-year jail sentence.
(NewsPix)Perhaps one of the biggest ironies about Lane’s life behind bars is the time she spends on the phone each week to a child she did keep, who is also an adult now but cannot be identified because of a court order.
While life on the inside was initially a harsh adjustment for the former private school sports teacher, who was given a cell in a block reserved for child murderers, Lane now allegedly is thought of as one of the toughest prisoners in the complex, even gaining a reputation of being a jailhouse “queen bee”.
