Mothers Who Murder (20 page)

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,
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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 online
¹³
– 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 arrived 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.
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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.

April Jones, a five-year-old British toddler who went missing while playing near her home in Wales in October 2012, clearly did not simply decide to vanish. In May 2013, Mark Bridger was convicted of her murder, although he claims he killed her by accident after running her over in his car. He then said he forgot where he hid her body as he had been drinking heavily at the time. At his trial
the jury rejected Bridger’s version of events, as the child’s blood and bone fragments were recovered from his house. The rest of April’s body, besides the small pieces found in Bridger’s home, has never been found, despite the largest police search in British history. Witnesses reported seeing the child being taken away in a van or four-wheel drive vehicle. Bridger owned a Land Rover. She was going willingly; there was no sign of a struggle. It later transpired that Bridger knew the family and had talked to April. The judge presiding over his trial labelled him a pathological liar and pedophile after child sex abuse images were found on his computer and Internet searches in his computer’s history included terms such as ‘naked young five-year-old girls’. The police also found images of murder victims Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman;
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arguably innocent in itself, but given the rest of the circumstantial evidence, highly suspicious. Bridger is only the thirty-seventh person in the United Kingdom to receive a whole-life tariff for his crimes. Bridger did plan to appeal, but on 14 January 2014 he abandoned his application for permission to appeal against his whole-life tariff. Again, there was no body, but we do have witnesses and the offender did confess to the crime. Plus, there’s physical forensic evidence linking the offender to the victim, and the evidence also proves that the child had been seriously injured, as a bone fragment found in Bridger’s woodburner came from a child’s skull.

Developments in forensic science have had a twofold impact on prosecuting these types of scenarios. First, juries, partly as a result of television programs such as
CSI
, expect forensic evidence in every case, and are less likely to deliver a guilty verdict if none is forthcoming. Second, it is really hard to commit an act of this nature and get away
with it. Developments in our understanding of geographical profiling (or crime mapping)
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and advances in DNA technologies, for example, mean that even the smallest pieces of evidence that appear almost incidental can be the key to a crime. And certainly the forensic sciences have moved forward since 1996, the year in which Lane is accused of murdering baby Tegan. Yet still, knowing all we know, we can’t find the child’s remains, or a sound motive for her murder.

CASE CLOSED

Keli Lane never fulfilled her ambition to represent Australia at the Olympic Games. It remains a mystery why Lane decided to adopt out her first and third children and yet do something completely different with Tegan. While it is true that a thorough search of birth and death records in New South Wales reveals Tegan Lane was probably not living in that state, there remains the possibility that Tegan and her new family left the state and are currently living elsewhere. However, it should be noted that the police did not limit their search to Australia. Department of Immigration records were searched for passport applications for female children aged under twelve months born between 14 September 1996 and 31 December 1996, none of which could have been Tegan. There are too many possibilities to list to surmise what could have happened to Tegan Lane. Perhaps Keli Lane is the only person alive who knows. Perhaps there are others who know but aren’t, for whatever reason, coming forward.

This is an unusual case for a number of reasons, not least because Tegan’s body – if she is dead – has never been found, and neither has the elusive alleged father, Andrew
Morris/Norris. Another unusual aspect of this case was the coroner’s decision to use the media to seek information. The non-publication order, initially put in place to protect Keli and baby Tegan had she been found, as well as the Lane family’s privacy, was lifted in a desperate attempt to find out where baby Tegan was. In 2004 and 2005 the police also used the mass media to attract the public’s attention to the investigation in the hope of finding either Tegan or Andrew Morris/Norris. Information was forthcoming, all of which was followed up. However, all attempts failed and no person who could have been the father or the child was located. Keli’s defence barrister summed it up well when he told the jury that Keli’s desire to live her young life without the additional burden of a child was a long way from making her capable of murdering her newborn daughter.