It has been more than a decade since Keli Lane first hit headlines in 2005, accused of killing her two-day-old daughter Tegan nine years previously.
A former Australian water polo player from Sydney’s affluent northern suburbs, 21-year-old Lane hid her pregnancy from her family and friends, choosing to give birth in secret in Auburn Hospital in 1996.
Two days later she attended a wedding with her then-partner rugby league player Duncan Gillies, there was no sign of the child.
Throughout her trial, which resulted in an 18 year jail sentence in 2010 for murder, Lane’s parents supported her in silent solidarity, refusing to speak to the media.
It has been five years since Lane Robert and Sandra Lane are still standing by their daughter, but have chosen to speak exclusively to the Australian Women’s Weekly and will appear in a 60 Minutes special on Sunday night.
“As far as Sandra and I are concerned, we won’t believe that Tegan is dead until there is a body,” her father told the AWW.
“And to date, there has neither been a body produced nor any credible motive. This has been a harrowing experience for our entire family from start to finish.”
Lane maintains that she gave Tegan to the baby’s biological father, a man she had a brief affair with whose name she can’t recall and who was never found by police.
Investigators did, however, uncover that Tegan was one of three children carried in secret by Lane over a four year period.
The first and third were given up for adoption.
“As a mother, it’s not an easy thing to see your daughter in prison going through something like this. But she is my child and I love her, and I will stand by her no matter what,” Lane’s mother said, adding that she still visits her daughter weekly and backs her “100 per cent”.
Lane has lodged two unsuccessful legal appeals against her sentence, one of which went to the high court.
Despite this, her case has recently been taken on by a group of lawyers and academics, known as The Bridge of Hope Innocence Initiative, operating out of Melbourne’s RMIT University.
The group argue that while Lane undoubtedly lied to police and under oath, without a body nor credible motive there is no grounds for a conviction.
“This is something we have been living with for 13 years,” Lane’s father said.
“We still live every day under the enormous pressure that this case has brought to bear. And we don’t say that to seek sympathy — it’s just a statement of fact. It’s a daily reality in our lives. Our daughter is in prison for a crime we don’t believe she committed. It’s a heavy burden to carry.”
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I have been profiled by a Scotland Yard Psych as a murder suspect from a distance and his report was actually something I still laugh at amazement about. It was so far from being even remotely close to accurate. It just as easily could have been a ten year old talking about someone in ‘show n tell’ at school. The discipline of Psychology where profiling is concerned is more dangerous than it is useful when a court might come to rely on it. The result from that report being published and reported in the news had some positives in that I am able to see the true value of a free and open media. Unfavourable coverage and coverage unearthing injustice and exposing the truth are both coming from the same place. Keli lane got value judged by a very good lawyer. So what if she banged a team of players and had seventy kids. Its not illegal, nor is it evidence of her having murdered anyone. Mark T is the ultimate lawyer. He had follbigg convicted on evidence that has now been proven as being flawed. Her jury were also lied to. Fair trials are always manipulatable by both sides, but I think an obvious doubt is present in both these cases. Unreasonable? Please.
Of course she had a credible motive, she didn't want to become a Mother because her sporting career was too important to her, as evidenced by the other two adoptions. She did herself no favours by all the lies and deceit that had been going on for years. I think her partner at the time needs to be questioned more closely as well, as he must have known she was pregnant, each time!
I understand her parents standing by her though, that's what parents do.