Keli Lane: The Baby Who Never Existed

Keli Lane grew up in Manly on Sydney’s northern beaches, the daughter of a police officer, and in the 1990s played elite water polo with hopes for the Sydney Olympics. She concealed several pregnancies from her family, friends and boyfriend, Duncan Gillies. Two babies, born in 1995 and 1999, were adopted out, and she also had two terminations.

On September 12, 1996, Lane gave birth to a daughter, Tegan, at Auburn Hospital in Sydney’s west. Two days later she left with the baby around midday, reached her parents’ Fairlight home alone that afternoon, and went to a friend’s wedding. Tegan’s birth was never registered. The gap surfaced in 1999, when a caseworker checking records during the third adoption found no trace of the 1996 baby. Lane’s explanations kept shifting, and she finally said she had handed Tegan to the father, “Andrew Norris.” A nationwide search never found him or the child, and a 2006 inquest concluded Tegan was probably dead.

Lane was charged in 2009, and in December 2010 a jury found her guilty of murder by majority verdict, along with false swearing. She received 18 years, with at least 13 years and five months before parole, and her appeals failed in 2013 and 2014. She maintains her innocence. In March 2024 she was refused parole under the state’s “no body, no parole” law.