Mothers Who Murder

by Xanthe Mallett

  Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages records for persons called Andrew Norris born between 1960 and 1976.

  The police were exhaustive in their search for Tegan Lane and Andrew Morris/Norris. The continued media coverage did occasionally yield new information. The police hotline ‘Crime Stoppers’ brought in fifty leads, mainly providing the details of children the caller believed may be Tegan. All were investigated, all were ruled out.

  In 2007 Keli had yet more bad news when her marriage broke down. This was possibly as a result of the strain of the ongoing investigation, together with the fact of the birth of the three children outside of their relationship – all of which had remained a secret, even from her husband, until the pretence could no longer be maintained. Or maybe Lane pushed her husband away, believing that her fate was sealed and he and their daughter would be better off removed from the situation, as the media storm surrounding the case continued in earnest. She also lost her job at Ravenswood School. Lane’s secrets, which she had worked so hard to keep, were laid bare for all to see, as were the lies that she told to protect herself. Her medical records were scrutinised, the late-term abortions detailed. People were looking at her strangely in the street. She had become infamous.

  Tegan Lane’s location remained a mystery. No family could be found that could be caring for Tegan, and the police now believed that Keli Lane had murdered her daughter some time between leaving the maternity ward at the hospital and arriving home to meet with Gillies to get ready for the wedding. So the search for Tegan continued, but now the police were searching for the child’s body. After a tip-off in August 2008, the police elected to excavate the gardens around the home Gillies had bought in Gladesville, and although the police used cadaver dogs in an attempt to find Tegan’s remains, nothing was found. The media was informed of the intention to excavate the garden of Duncan’s old home, and a press conference convened at the local police station. The reason given was that the police believed there was a chance that Keli briefly visited the property after she got out of hospital. The media pack descended on the house, which by now was swarming with police and forensic personnel. Even though the case was by now years old, any development could see it return to the front pages, with reports of the excavation making it to click here the next day. Pictures of the search were accompanied by images of Keli and Duncan. This caused significant distress to the entire Gillies family, as they too were only now learning the secrets of Keli’s former life, a life she had allegedly shared with Duncan.

  Late in 2009 Keli Lane finally appeared in court to hear the charges against her. She was accused of murder and two counts of perjury, to which she plead not guilty. Bail was granted at the initial hearing; this was not opposed by the Crown as Lane had not been in custody since the coronial inquest and there was little chance of her absconding now, although she did have to relinquish her passport. Bail was set at $30,000 and was guaranteed by her father. As a further enforcement, Keli was required to attend Dee Why Police Station every day. On leaving the courthouse, Keli’s solicitor read a prepared statement, in which Lane maintained her innocence of hurting Tegan and her intent to continue to help police with their inquiries to find her. The statement also asked for anyone with information about Tegan’s whereabouts to come forward.

  THE EVIDENCE AND COURT CASE

  This case was made hard for police and prosecutors as there simply was no forensic evidence to prove the accused had murdered baby Tegan. Their case against Keli Lane was purely circumstantial. That is not to say it was simple; the prosecution put a lot of evidence before the jury.

  Keli Lane was tried in the Supreme Court of New South Wales before Justice Anthony Whealy, the trial beginning on 9 August 2010 and running until 6 December, prior to which there had been the usual pre-trial hearings to determine what evidence the jury would hear. Lane was being indicted on four counts: first, murdering Tegan Lee Lane; second, three counts of perjury, all relating to the false statements Keli Lane made in relation to the affidavits when her children were adopted. The first two affidavits focused on Tahlia’s adoption, the third related to Aaron’s adoption.8 These were filed and therefore became part of the paper trail that led to Lane’s trial.

  The Department of Public Prosecutions assigned the case to Mark Tedeschi QC, New South Wales’ senior prosecutor. A highly experienced prosecutor with over thirty-five years’ experience, Tedeschi has prosecuted some of Australia’s most infamous cases, including Ivan Milat following the backpacker murders in New South Wales in the 1990s and Kathleen Folbigg, found guilty in 2003 of murdering her four children. Experienced QC Keith Chapple led Keli’s defence team.

  As part of the case against her, the prosecution wanted to include information about Lane’s drinking habits. The Crown said that Lane’s drinking and socialising were relevant as relating to her potential reasons for not wanting to keep baby Tegan, as well as providing a possible reason as to why Lane may have become pregnant in the first place – that her heavy drinking made the contraceptive pill she was taking ineffective. This would also help explain why she was falling pregnant with such regularity. The Crown presented three motives to explain Lane’s repeated actions to rid herself of her unwanted children – two by adoption and one allegedly by murder. First was Keli’s dream to represent her country at the 2000 Olympic Games, second was her desire to keep up her active social and sex life, and third was her fear of being rejected by her friends and family were they to find out she was pregnant.

  Tedeschi and Justice Whealy continued to hotly debate what evidence the jury would be allowed to hear. The Crown argued that three lies were key to going part way to proving Keli killed Tegan. These all related to the various stories she told over time about what happened to Tegan after they left hospital. Whealy was not convinced that Keli’s lies could prove her guilty of murder. In the end, Tedeschi won, and the lies were heard by the jury.

  Tedeschi went in hard from the beginning, asserting to the jury that the reason Lane wanted to leave Auburn Hospital as quickly as possible on Saturday 14 September 1996 was that she simply wanted to attend a wedding. Apparently, this wedding was important to her – according to the Crown, more important than her daughter’s life. The judge took pains to highlight that Lane was not bound to remain at the hospital after she gave birth to Tegan – she had been discharged and was free to go whenever she wanted – and that the Crown had no evidence she had in fact snuck out as they suggested. She may simply have taken an opportunity to leave quietly. Justice Whealy also took pains to point out to the jury that just because they were going to hear evidence that Keli had built a mountain of lies to hide her three secret children, lying did not make her a murderer.

  In its final address to the jury, the Crown did rely on the three lies that Tedeschi claimed Lane told, which they believed proved her guilt beyond reasonable doubt because they pointed to ‘consciousness of guilt’. These related to a fax Lane sent to Virginia Fung on 25 October 1999, in which Lane said in writing that she had given Tegan to a couple that she barely knew she thought had since moved to Perth. The second focused on an interview with Detective Kehoe in 2001, in which Lane said that Tegan had been handed over to her biological father, Andrew Morris. The third lie was almost a repeat of the second, except that it was told in a recorded interview with Detective Richard Gaut in 2002 in which she said that the natural father’s name was Andrew Norris. The prosecution submitted to the jury that Lane told the lies to hide the fact that she had murdered Tegan. This corresponded with the Crown’s opening – that she’d told these same lies ‘because the truth is too dreadful to admit, that is, the accused got rid of her baby daughter, Tegan, by killing her and disposing of her body’. The reason put forward for Lane not giving her second child up for adoption was that she simply didn’t have the time, as she was only cleared as physically fit for induction two days before the wedding. Giving birth and then getting discharged from hospital in time to get to the wedding was very tight as it was. The Crown made
the following statement:

  Firstly, we have evidence of motive. Mainly, evidence of long-term motive. Her sporting life, her social life, educational career, her job, her Olympic ambitions, her overwhelming fear of rejection by her family and friends that would bring shame on her.9

  Lane did not give evidence in her defence, and the defence didn’t call any witnesses. The evidence, in factual terms, presented by the Crown against Lane was largely uncontested. The inferences that were drawn from the facts were what was in dispute. To find Lane guilty of murder, the jury had to decide if the Crown had established beyond reasonable doubt (the legal criminal standard) each of the following: a) the death of Tegan Lane; b) that it was the deliberate act of the accused that caused the death of Tegan Lane; and c) that the act causing death was done by the accused with an intention to kill Tegan Lane. If the Crown failed to convince the jury of any one of those parts, they were bound to find her not guilty and acquit her of murder.

  All that was left was for the jury to make their decision. At around 11.15 am on Monday 6 December 2010, the jury retired to consider its verdict. This was not a straightforward case, and the deliberation of the jury (comprising six men and six women) was slow and anguished. After a week they did reach a unanimous decision about the lesser charges of perjury, but they hadn’t been able to reach a unanimous verdict for the charge of murder and it was unlikely they would be able to do so. The judge told the jury that a verdict could be reached if eleven of the twelve agreed.10 The jury returned to their deliberations.

  On Friday 17 December 2010, after the jury had deliberated for a full twenty-one hours, a majority of eleven found Lane guilty of murdering her daughter Tegan. Lane was also found guilty on the lesser counts, excepting that where she was accused of perjury she was found guilty of the alternative count of ‘false swearing on oath’. She was sentenced on 15 April 2011; for the counts of false swearing she received a fixed term in prison of nine months, starting from 13 December 2010. In terms of the murder charge, Lane received a sentence of eighteen years, with a non-parole period of thirteen years and five months. This began on 13 December 2010, to conclude on 12 May 2024, with a balance term of a further four years and seven months, to expire on 11 December 2028. What this means in real terms is that the murder sentence covered all the charges, as the other sentences were entirely subsumed into that sentence. The earliest date that Lane can be released to parole is therefore 12 May 2024. She will be forty-nine years old.

  On 20 December 2012 Lane lodged a notice to appeal the murder charge; she did not appeal the false swearing charges and didn’t seek leave to appeal the sentences associated with them. Written submissions were made on her behalf. Lane’s appeal was based on eight grounds, and she also submitted an application for bail. In a criminal case, bail will only be granted if the applicant receives special leave to appeal the conviction. This special leave to appeal is based on the fact that the applicant must demonstrate that they are ‘most likely to succeed’11 in the appeal. If they can’t, they will not be granted bail. Although there were eight counts in total for the appeal, the bail hearing relied on just two – the two grounds that were considered to have high prospects for success: ground 1, the trial judge was wrong when he did not ask the jury to consider the alternative that Lane was guilty of manslaughter as opposed to murder; and ground 2, the trial miscarried by reason of the prejudice induced by the prosecutor, particularly that he essentially reversed the onus of proof in his closing address, by posing ten questions to the jury that he said the defence had to answer to demonstrate Lane was not guilty of murder. This appeal point was based on common law, inherited from England, which states the prosecution, not the defence, has to prove its case. So the concept of the burden of proof relates to both the party with whom the burden lies,12 as well as the scope. In no way does the defence have to prove the criminal defendant’s innocence. That is essentially what the prosecution was asking Lane to do – to answer those questions to the satisfaction of the jury in order to demonstrate she was not guilty of murder.

  Lane’s bail hearing took place on 28 February 2013, but she was unsuccessful on the basis that the judge overseeing the hearing was not convinced that the applicant was most likely to succeed at appeal. Lane’s hearing for her appeal was heard in late July 2013 – the court documentation is available online13 – with a decision handed down on 19 December 2013. The appeal was unsuccessful on the grounds that the three appeal court judges believed that there were really only two alternatives available for the jury to consider: first, either Tegan was dead, or second, she had been given to her natural father, whether named Andrew Morris or Andrew Norris. The judges agreed that the Crown had persuasively excluded any reason able possibility that the child had been given to her father, leaving the one remaining possibility – that Tegan was dead and that Lane was guilty of murdering her.

  THE ALTERNATIVE SUSPECT

  Discussing the idea of an alternative suspect is difficult here, as at no stage has anyone suggested that anyone other than Keli Lane could have harmed the child. Of course, Keli maintains that she handed the baby over safe and well to her biological father. From my perspective, investigating that forensically is in essence impossible, as the police undertook an exhaustive search that yielded no people who could be the man Lane describes. Not one of her friends remembers any potential individuals, and after a huge media campaign no one came forward as knowing anything about Andrew Morris/Norris or Tegan Lane. A mystery.

  In order to review the possibilities I took the drive from Auburn Hospital, near the Sydney Olympic Park site in the western suburbs, to the area of Fairlight, where Lane was living with her parents at the time Tegan disappeared. She had a three- or four-hour window between leaving the maternity ward and arriving at her parents’ house to meet Duncan Gillies to get dressed for the wedding at 3 pm. Sydney is by any standards a beautiful city, but it is fairly built up and is well populated; the green areas and beach sites are picturesque but very busy. The Crown’s argument was that Keli killed Tegan and then disposed of her body sometime during that three- to four-hour window. How and where remain unknown. Having done that drive, during which I attempted to think like a person who needs to dispose of a body would think, I noted that there are some areas that might at first seem a suitable spot for disposing of a baby’s remains. The prosecution even postulated that Lane could have disposed of Tegan’s body at the Olympic site, which was under development at the time. She could have, but this suggestion was dismissed, as this was pure conjecture.

  Of course, had the forensic investigation begun earlier we may have had some clues as to where to start to look for the baby’s remains. The allegation, although dismissed, that the Olympic site was used could have been systematically tested and the claim upheld or refuted on scientific grounds. This could have been done by looking at the soil and other debris on the tyres and within the wheel arches of the car Lane drove from the hospital to her home, on the carpets inside the car, on the shoes Lane was wearing that day, or any artefacts that may have attached to her clothing from the body deposition site. Instead, when the car Lane drove in 1996 was checked many years later, no evidence was forthcoming.

  What struck me on that drive was not that there weren’t places where a baby’s remains could be disposed. Rather, what I found most perplexing was that without any premeditated scouting of the area – and there is no evidence to suggest Lane actively selected a burial site prior to giving birth – Lane successfully deposited Tegan’s body where it would not be discovered, even now, eighteen years later. And this happened on a Saturday in spring, when Sydney would have been buzzing with locals and tourists. Perhaps then the Olympic site would have looked like a good option, but still we have the problem that no child’s body was found during development of the Olympic village. Lane would have needed tools had she dug a grave, and even if these were – for argument’s sake – available where she buried Tegan’s remains, then she would have at least been dirty when she arriv
ed home. Yet no one noticed anything about her appearance or demeanour that was out of the ordinary. That, for me, is the biggest stumbling block in this case and one that I cannot resolve.

  COMPARATIVE CASES

  What concerns me about this case is the lack of a body. Of course, there are other examples of cases where people have been found guilty of murder with no body has been found. But these cases are hard to prosecute and usually rely largely on circumstantial evidence, as in Lane’s prosecution.

  Infamously, in 1982 Lindy Chamberlain was found guilty of murdering her baby without the presence of a body, and we all know what the eventual outcome was (see Chapter 2). A more recent no-body murder example is the English case of Danielle Jones, who disappeared on 18 June 2001 at the age of fifteen and has never been seen again. Jones’ uncle, Stuart Campbell, was found guilty of Danielle’s abduction and murder in 2002. The prosecution relied on the forensic analysis of text messages sent from the victim’s mobile phone. Other evidence consisted of bloodstained stockings found hidden in Campbell’s house that contained traces of both the offender’s and victim’s blood. Unlike in baby Tegan’s case, though, Danielle could simply have run away from home, or been abducted by someone else.

  In Australia in 2007, after three trials in the Victorian court, the Crown eventually achieved a successful conviction against Sudo Cavkic, Costas Athanasi and Julian Michael Clarke, who were found guilty of murdering Keith Allan, who disappeared in 2000.14 This was a contract killing, taken out against Allan, a solicitor, by Julian Michael Clarke, who was stealing large sums of money from the solicitor trust account of his employer, Allan. The actual hit is thought to have taken place at the Mount Macedon region in central Victoria on 28 May 2000. As his body has never been found, the cause of death is unknown. The expertise of forensic accountants was essential in this case; they discovered that Clarke had misused a client’s trust account and was responsible for thefts totalling over $900,000. The plan was for Allan, who was murdered to avoid him discovering the theft, to simply disappear and be listed as a missing person. The police would then presume that he was the thief. It was a simple plan and they almost got away with it, except for the work of Victoria Police, who caught Cavkic driving Allan’s car. In the back of the car the police discovered a shovel and a hoe, with soil from the burial site still adhering to the tools. There was also a petrol tin wedged in the front seat. And, if that weren’t enough, Cavkic was wearing a shoulder holster. The Crown managed to convince a jury that all three men were guilty, even in the absence of a body or any witnesses. Again, the remote possibility exists that the quiet solicitor has in fact fled and remains safe and well. Possible, but highly unlikely.