Exposed: The Case of Keli Lane - First Season

Please don't touch me.

The Keli Lane case is like no other.

A murder mystery.

She's a murderer.

The golden girl who ended up a baby killer.

There's no way she'd kill a baby.

Baby Tegan was never seen again.

Nothing was found. Not anything.

It doesn't add up.

Lane told more than 95 lies...

She hadn't told a single solitary person in her life.

There is only really one person

who can tell what happened,

and that's Keli Lane.

You know, dead sure. Two o'clock, two o'clock.

Lots of things can go wrong with this call.

And we're at the very beginning.

Waiting.

Wasn't it, like, yesterday, they said around two?

Half-past.

You are about to receive a phone call from an inmate

at the Silverwater Women's Correctional Centre.

Your conversation will be recorded and may be monitored.

If you do not wish to receive this call,

please hang up now.

Go ahead, please.

(ON PHONE) Hello, Caro.

Hi, Keli. How are you? How are you?

I'm... I'm well. Thanks for calling.

Oh, thank you.

I got caught up at work. I've only just got out.

So, it's a little bit noisy on the wing, but...

OK. So good to talk to you, finally.

Yeah.

And I know we've got limited time, we've got six minutes.

So... Yeah.

I guess what I'm interested to know

is, you know, why did you write to ME?

What do you hope will come of this?

(ON PHONE) Well, obviously, the biggest hope for me

is that someone comes forward with my daughter.

She'd be an adult now.

She's, 20, 21, so she obviously has had a whole life

perhaps not knowing that she's my child.

I don't want to interrupt her life.

I don't even necessarily 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.

It was a shock verdict.

Keli Lane was found guilty

of murdering newborn daughter Tegan.

She let out a primal scream,

she threw herself to the floor of the dock.

A paramedic was rushed to the courtroom.

Her mother, Sandra, remains sedated.

Keli Lane is one of the state's

most notorious child killers.

She had insisted she gave Tegan to her natural father -

a man called Andrew Morris or Andrew Norris.

Detectives searched for a man named Andrew Morris or Norris,

but concluded he never existed.

She claims that she gave Tegan

to Andrew Morris... Norris and his mother

in the hospital.

But those people have never come forward.

There was also a description of this man's partner -

a woman... supposedly called Mel,

who was ever so willing to take on this child.

No, it was Andrew Norris, or was it Morris,

and his girlfriend, Mel, and her mother.

Do you know what I mean? Like, it's just bizarre.

Like, how can you...?

There were so many incredulities

that made it inherently unbelievable.

Yes. "I gave the baby away."

You know? No.

There was a big hunt into where that child was -

big hunt because of the versions she gave.

And nothing was... nothing was found.

Not... not... not anything.

Not Norris.

Nothing... nothing worked for her.

Nothing.

"Why don't people believe me?"

'Cause you're full of shit.

Although it may seem very unusual to everybody else,

21 years ago, they're the steps I took,

and I safely gave her to her father.

And I want to show... I want to clear my name.

I want to show the public that that's exactly what happened.

Well, I need to... I'm gonna lose you very soon,

but I want to ask you, you know,

part of making those choices

and what you've been harshly criticised for...

Mm-hm. ..was telling lies.

Yeah. ..and telling lots of lies

over many years.

Yeah. You know, you were lying then.

Will you be truthful with me through this?

Oh, 100...

I wouldn't have sought you out

and I wouldn't have been pushing for seven years

and have my life dug into and exposed

and my family and my friends, my partner.

I...

I would never do that to them. It's such a huge responsibility.

And I could sit here, Caro, and do my time.

I'm halfway through. But, nuh. No way.

I'm happy for you to go to the ends... ends.

I want you to go to the ends.

OK. I look forward to it.

OK, well, it's gonna take us to some... to some tough...

Whoa.

She accepts she lied.

But we're dealing with a serial liar.

But we're down the tube.

OK.

Baby Tegan has never been found.

Where is she?

Her mother claims she's alive.

Investigators say she's dead,

but where is the evidence of that?

And, really, too, I mean, growing up, for me,

the Keli Lane case here in Sydney, it was massive.

The New South Wales Coroner...

What this woman had done, all these secret pregnancies,

how promiscuous she was, the lies she told...

to charge a known person with her homicide...

But through all of that,

I didn't then, and I still don't now,

have a picture and a full understanding of who Keli Lane is,

and there is always a story behind the story.

I guess looking at the next kind of six months or so

is just completely daunting and overwhelming

because there's so much to do

and there's so many challenges with this story.

Getting people to talk to us,

it's something that happened 20 years ago, so long ago,

that even finding original documents and things from the time

is going to be really difficult.

It's not like you can just google it and get things to come up.

Um, so it's going to be really challenging.

Caro can be a very exacting person to work with.

But she's wonderful at getting to the bottom of things

and she will not let things go.

Right, so, where do we begin?

We need to retrace and rebuild her life.

Who knew what, who saw what and when.

Keli was, like, more Manly than anyone.

She epitomised what Manly was.

When I was growing up, it was like a little country town.

Everyone knew each other.

Upsides to that, everyone knows each other.

Mmm. Downsides?

Everyone knows each other. (LAUGHS)

Yeah, I mean, there's lots of gossiping.

It's a very ins... like, the 'Insular Peninsula' as they call it.

If you were all growing up

in a close-knit but gossipy sort of a community...

Mm.

..what do you learn from that, growing up?

You learn to keep secrets.

Absolutely. You absolutely learn to keep secrets.

Manly's quite a small place, really.

And you've got a lot of...

..you had a lot of profiled people there at the time.

You know you've got Olympic swimmers.

A very happy Johanna Griggs there.

Scott Miller here.

And you had kayak paddlers and you had ironmen

and you had rugby league players.

Chance for Manly!

She had a big group of friends.

She was very popular. She knew everyone in Manly.

She was a really sporty girl.

Keli was... she was cool. She was a star.

Here I am, doing cartwheels in a regional athletics carnival,

she's in fourth grade,

running with sixth graders and whipping our pants,

back then, you know?

She just had gifted natural talent.

She was a real strong, robust competitor

and I think that's probably what helped her in water polo.

Mr and Mrs Lane had very high expectations

and they had very high expectations of their kids,

and that sort of pressure can be a good and bad thing.

So, Keli would have done what she was told to do.

Oh, everyone knew the Lanes. I mean, everyone knew who they were.

I mean, I'd heard about them before I knew them.

Very well respected. Very well respected.

So, they were involved in Manly Surf Lifesaving

and he was a really good surfer.

At the rugby club, Robert used to coach

and they were there all the time, supporting, helping,

whatever it was.

How did Robert see Keli?

She was the apple of his eye.

Yeah. They were close. They had a great relationship.

She had a great relationship with her mum as well.