Nice Girl - The story of Keli Lane and her missing baby, Tegan
This is the true story about a baby named Tegan Lane who went missing in 1996 and is now presumed dead.
Keli Lane, mother of missing baby Tegan (Keli's father Robert Lane in the background)
The baby’s mother, Keli Lane, is the sort of person most people would describe as a nice girl. She comes from a solid, very popular middle class family in the Sydney suburb of Manly. Keli’s father was once one of Manly’s most successful first grade rugby union coaches. In her teens and early twenties Keli was an elite water polo player who represented her state and her country.
However, right at the peak of her sporting career, Keli secretly gave birth three times. She was living at home with her parents throughout all three pregnancies and was in a long-term relationship with an up and coming footballer named Duncan during the first two. Incredibly, both her parents and Duncan claim they had no idea she had ever given birth once these secret babies became part of a police and then a coronial investigation many years later. A key reason why Keli was able to conceal the pregnancies, even though she spent a lot of time in her swimming costume each week, was that she was a big girl who looked bloated rather than round at the front when she was pregnant.
Keli’s extraordinary double life may never have been exposed if her second secret child, Tegan, hadn’t disappeared in worrying circumstances two days after she was born. Authorities noticed the baby’s disappearance three years later in 1999 when Keli was trying to organise the adoption of her third secret child.
Despite Keli’s firm belief that Tegan is alive, she was charged with murdering her baby in late 2009. Her trial begins in July 2010.
There is no suggestion of strong religious beliefs as an explanation for Keli’s behaviour. While things may have been different in her mother’s day, girls Keli's age in the 1990s were not expected to be virgins when they married. Keli had a long-term boyfriend and a good reputation. Falling pregnant by accident is not unusual, but doing so three times is, especially when the use of reliable contraception is normal. She also had the option of abortion if she got desperate. Someone like Keli simply didn’t have to give birth if she didn’t want to.
The fact that she gave birth three times with no intention of raising her children or wanting anyone in her life know about their existence raises many possibilities as to why Keli did what she did. Was she trying to trap Duncan into marriage? Was she acting erratically due to the pressures of elite sport and trying to keep up with her high-achieving peers? Was she mentally ill? Or was she in deep denial about something terrible in her life, something so horrific that giving birth in secret was easier than dealing with it?
The key themes through this story relate to how Keli’s family and friends behaved during her supposedly secret pregnancies and once the search for Tegan became public. Vicious jealousies and competitiveness, not only in elite sport but just beneath the surface of middle and upper middle class circles as each seeks to secure their place in the social pecking order, sexual politics between men and women, and the line where loyalty to family and friends turns blind and capable of habouring terrible secrets and injustices provide the backdrop to this most puzzling and frustrating case.