Keli Lane biography: 13 things about Fairlight, New South Wales native

Keli Lane is an Australian woman who used to be a water polo player and a teacher. During the 1990s, he allegedly became pregnant five times over seven years, terminating the first two pregnancies, placing the third and fifth babies up for adoption, and allegedly murdering the fourth baby.

In September 2018, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation aired a three part documentary titled “Exposed: The Case of Keli Lane.” It featured interviews with Lane that were conducted via numerous 6-minute telephone calls from inside jail.

Lane was born in Fairlight, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia to Robert Lane and Sandra Lane. Robert is a retired police officer while Sandra is a retired hospital worker.

After graduating from Mackellar Girls High School in Manly, New South Wales, Keli entered the University of Newcastle in Newcastle, South Wales to pursue a bachelor’s degree in arts. She dropped out from the university and started working part-time at Ravenswood School for Girls in Gordon, New South Wales as a water polo coach.

1. Between 1994 and 1998, she was in a relationship with rugby union player Duncan Gillies.
2. She was a member of the Australian Junior Women’s team that won the silver medal at the 1995 World Championships in Quebec, Canada. Also in 1995, she gave birth to a boy who she decided to put up for adoption.
3. On September 12, 1996, she gave birth to Tegan Lee Lane at Auburn Hospital in Auburn, New South Wales. On September 14, 1996, she left the hospital with Tegan. She allegedly killed Tegan before she and Gilles attended a friend’s wedding later that day.
4. In February 1999, while she was 25 weeks pregnant, she went to Queensland, Australia to seek a late-term abortion but was refused because the fetus was of a viable gestation. In May 1999, she gave birth to another boy who she decided to put up for adoption. She told a social worker that it was her first child and the father was Gillies, who denied the claims.
5. In October 1999, she denied the existence of the two earlier children but later admitted to giving birth to Tegan, who she claimed was living with a family in Perth, Western Australia, Australia.
6. In February 2001, while she was 7 months pregnant, she told police officers that she had given Tegan to Tegan’s father named Andrew Morris, which she later changed to Andrew Norris. A man with such identity has neither come forward nor been found.
7. On November 17, 2009, New South Wales director of public prosecution Nicholas Cowdery charged her with murder. She pleaded not guilty.
8. On December 13, 2010, she was found guilty of lying under oath in relation to documents dealing with her adopting out two babies and of murder of Tegan. She was refused bail.
9. On April 15, 2011, she was sentenced to 18 years in prison with a non-parole period of 13 years and five months. On April 18, 2011, the media aired claims that a taxi driver saw her dump a baby in bush land en route to Manly on September 14, 1996. Tegan has yet to be found.
10. On December 13, 2013, Chief Justice Tim Bathurst, Justice Carolyn Simpson and Justice Christine Adamson dismissed her appeal against her conviction. She served out her sentence in various prisons including Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre in Silverwater, New South Wales, Dillwynia Women’s Correctional Centre in Berkshire Park, New South Wales and Clarence Correctional Centre in Grafton, New South Wales.
11. She made an application for leave to appeal to the High Court of Australia, which was rejected in August 2014.
12. On August 30, 2023, it was revealed that she has been living in a halfway house in Sydney and has a full-time job processing cartons of milk for New South Wales’ state prison population.
13. She will be 49 years old when she becomes eligible for parole on May 12, 2024.