NEW EPISODE: Keli Lane and Tegan Lane — The Baby Who Vanished
The new Coffee & Crime AU episode is out now.
She left hospital with her newborn daughter.
A few hours later, she arrived home without her.
Then she went to a wedding.
Tegan Lane was just two days old when she was last confirmed alive.
The case
Tegan was born at Auburn Hospital in Sydney on 12 September 1996. Two days later, she left the hospital with her mother, Keli Lane.
By around three o’clock that afternoon, Keli had arrived at her parents’ home in Fairlight without Tegan. By around four, she was at a wedding in Manly.
Nobody at the wedding knew she had given birth. Her boyfriend did not know. Her parents had not known she was pregnant.
And for more than three years, nobody reported Tegan missing.
The investigation
When a caseworker eventually discovered Tegan’s birth in records, Keli gave a series of explanations about where her daughter was. Her eventual account was that Tegan had gone to live with her biological father, a man she identified as Andrew Morris and later Andrew Norris.
Police spent years trying to find the man she described but could not independently verify him. They could not find Tegan either.
The trial
In 2010, Keli Lane was convicted of Tegan’s murder on a circumstantial case.
There was no body. No known cause of death. No identified crime scene and no witness who saw Tegan being harmed.
The Crown argued that the timeline, Keli’s secrecy, her changing explanations and the failed search for Andrew left no reasonable innocent explanation. The defence argued that suspicion and lies were not enough to prove murder.
Eleven jurors found Keli guilty. One did not.
Nearly thirty years later
Keli remains convicted of Tegan’s murder and continues to deny killing her. Tegan has never been found.
This episode follows the story from the days before Tegan’s birth through the investigation, trial, appeals and later questions raised about the case.
Listen now to Keli Lane and Tegan Lane — The Baby Who Vanished on Coffee & Crime AU.
And when you finish, come back and tell me what you think. Which part of the evidence did you find most convincing — and which questions do you think are still unresolved?
