A closeup look at the extraordinary court case of Keli Lane - found guilty today of murdering her baby daughter 14 years ago.
Transcript
HEATHER EWART, PRESENTER: It was a shock verdict which produced some of the most dramatic court scenes in recent times.Former water polo player Keli Lane collapsed in the witness box screaming when a jury today found her guilty of murdering her new-born daughter Tegan 14 years ago.
During the four-month trial, the prosecution said Keli Lane had been so desperate to keep her golden girl image she'd decided to kill her baby girl rather than risk having a world of lies exposed.
Deborah Cornwall reports.
DEBORAH CORNWALL, REPORTER: It was a dramatic end to an extraordinary trial, with paramedics rushed to the courtroom after Keli Lane collapsed, hysterical and screaming as the jury delivered its verdict.
The courtroom was cleared. But as we were leaving we heard the court officers attending Keli and saying, "Keli, open your eyes. Keli, can you hear me?" A doctor was called for.
?: Justice for Tegan. That's what I look at.
DEBORAH CORNWALL: It's more than 14 years since Tegan Lane, just two days old, simply vanished.
The last time she was seen alive was with her mother Keli Lane who left the hospital with her, then arrived home alone four hours later, just in time to head off to a wedding.
POLICE OFFICER (police interview, May 9, 2003): Now if something's happened to the child, now is the time to tell us.
KELI LANE: I don't know. Nothing happened. Nothing has happened to her.
DEBORAH CORNWALL: Even now, only Keli Lane knows what really happened to Tegan in those crucial four hours. Back then, her friends, family and the father of the child, former boyfriend Duncan Gillies, still had no idea she'd even been pregnant and that Tegan was one of only three children she gave birth to in total secrecy.
RACHAEL JANE CHIN, AUTHOR, 'NICE GIRL': Keli was a very convincing liar. And this is part of her nice girl image. She's used to being believed. And she's also somebody who is very capable of painting herself as being a victim and of making people feel sorry for her, again, so many don't ask her too many questions.
DEBORAH CORNWALL: Tegan Lane may never have been noticed missing at all if it wasn't for the third child Lane tried to adopt out three years later. A child protection worker had been making some routine checks when he stumbled upon an astounding discovery. Lane had failed to tell authorities she'd already had two other children. And while the first child had been adopted out in 1995, Tegan, born a year later, seemed to have simply disappeared.
JOHN BOROVNIK, FMR CHILD PROTECTION OFFICER: Her answers to my questions about Tegan were just "No". All she said was "No" and repeated that and then said, "I don't know what you're talking about."
DEBORAH CORNWALL: It was just the beginning of what would prove to be a marathon 11-year police investigation in which the terrible secrets of Keli Lane would finally come back to haunt her.
POLICE OFFICER (police interview, May 9, 2003): Do you want to tell me anything?
KELI LANE: No.
POLICE OFFICER: Did you kill the child?
KELI LANE: No, I did not! I did not do anything like that!
POLICE OFFICER: Someone else?
KELI LANE: No! No!
POLICE OFFICER: Keli, like I said, I'm going to have to make a lot of inquiries now and I'm gonna have to ...
KELI LANE: Please don't!
DEBORAH CORNWALL: Keli Lane has always maintained she'd hidden her pregnancies, convinced that her friends and family would abandon her. But according to the Crown Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi, her real concern had been far more cold-blooded. Tegan and her other unwanted babies, he said, had been a threat to her career prospects and her future as a water polo champion. And even more critically, her image as the golden girl and daughter of Robert Lane, a local rugby hero and former policeman in the fiercely tribal beach community of Manly. Lane, he said, told so many lies, she tied up police for years, deliberately sending them on a wild goose chase.
RACHAEL JANE CHIN: Her stories as to what happened at Tegan range from, "I took care of her and breast fed her for six months," to outright denial that Tegan ever existed, to, "I gave Tegan to a couple I met just before she was born and I think they live in Perth now."
DEBORAH CORNWALL: In all, Lane gave eight different versions of what happened to Tegan, prompting a nation-wide dragnet, including trawling through the birthdates and school records of more than 86,000 children. But the prosecution says it was her final version to police that she'd given away the child to a man she'd had a brief affair with that proved the most absurd lie of all, with Lane embroidering details as she went along, even mixing up the name of the father between Andrew Morris and Andrew Norris.
KELI LANE (police interview, May 9, 2003): I said to him, "What about, can you take her? Or take it, 'cause I don't know."
POLICE OFFICER: What did he say?
KELI LANE: Well he wasn't, he wasn't really - he wasn't really happy about it. ... He'd said that I'd trapped him and that I was a slut.
DEBORAH CORNWALL: Secretly recorded telephone intercepts revealed even Lane's own mother had trouble believing she'd give away her own child to a man she'd only met a few times and the girlfriend he cheated on.
SANDRA LANE (23 Jan, 2004): You've got to be telling the absolute truth, I'm telling you, 'cause it's just so unlike a young bloke to want to raise a child. That's the thing I just can't sort of grip. But obviously that's what you agreed. Isn't it?
KELI LANE: Yeah. Well, I didn't really have too many options.
DEBORAH CORNWALL: Summing up the case, Justice Anthony Whealy had warned the jury that just because someone was a liar didn't mean they were a murderer. But the Crown said the recorded conversations showed that even after the coronial inquest into Tegan's disappearance, Lane's only concern had been for herself, not Tegan, evidence she must have known the child would not be found because she'd killed her.
KELI LANE (Police listening device, 24 Aug, 2004): Yeah, I did make stupid choices and I made continually stupid choices, but I can't tell you what sort of person I was then. ... people didn't even notice, people didn't even care enough to ask, people, like, I honestly couldn't trust to speak out to because my embarrassment was greater than my wanting to be helped."
DEBORAH CORNWALL: Lane didn't give evidence at the trial, leaving her defence barrister Keith Chapple to speculate on a range of scenarios on Tegan's fate. But clearly, 11 of the 12 jurors simply didn't buy it.
RACHAEL JANE CHIN: She's never lost any of her confidence or any of her arrogance and this is someone who's facing a murder trial. All the way along, she never - she's like she owned the place.
DEBORAH CORNWALL: Rachel Chin's book on the secret life of Keli Lane is now due to be published early next year. But after five years of trawling through legal evidence and interviewing friends, Lane, she says, still remains a complete mystery.
RACHAEL JANE CHIN: In the five years between the coronial inquest and the murder trial in 2010, Sandy and Robert Lane aged 20 years physically. It took a big toll on them, you could tell the stress, but Keli looked fresh.
DEBORAH CORNWALL: Even before today's verdict, Keli Lane had already lost her job, her marriage was over, and according to Rachel Chin, most of her once-huge band of friends had abandoned her. But it wasn't until today, when the jury declared her guilty, Keli Lane finally gave way to her grief.
RACHAEL JANE CHIN: I'm quite sure there are people in Manly who've known Keli and the Lanes all their lives and they're looking through photo albums of 21sts, of nights out, other special times in their lives and they'd see Keli there and they would think, "Who are you?"
HEATHER EWART: Deborah Cornwall with that report.
