Australia Australia - Tegan Lane, 2 days old, Sydney, 14 Sept 1996 *K. Lane guilty*

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Via Marple said:
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I am guessing that it was not standard practice to check mobile call records at that time. Not many people had mobiles back then. Forensics was not quite the same. Does anyone catch whether she had a Telstra or Optus mobile?

Among other things police/prosecution did not do, as exposed by this journalist investigation: get a sketch done of Andrew M/Norris, lie detector test, face to face psychological assessment of Keli.

The two journalists explained in their facebook live that lie detector tests were not standard in Australia either.
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She was with Vodaphone.
 
Just saw an interview with Caro on abc24. Keli gets assessed in gaol by a forensic psychiatrist over a two day period. She has never done this before but agreed to it. Caro says the result of the assessment was "mindblowing" and "totally not what they were expecting".
Can't wait for tonight.....
 
Morrisa said:
I'll have to do a catch up on iview. Anyone watch it? What did the psychiatrist say?
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Thinks Keli killing Tegan doesn’t fit except in the context of her easily relinquishing care of her babies. Also that the name ‘Andrew Norris/Morris’ is not genuine due to Keli’s body language, demeanour, speech, etc. Doesn’t think Keli has a mental illness.
 
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I was a bit underwhelmed by this whole show. I don't think it takes much time to abandon a baby on a building site or similar, and it would fit with her excellent denial skills "oh I'll come back to pick her up after the wedding". But everyone seems to assume Lane brutally murdered Tegan and buried her, which isn't usually how infant deaths happen.

Having Lane finally admit that she might have been wrong about the father's surname is nice but it doesn't change anything or open up new lines of inquiry. I believe the friend who heard her speak about an affair with a guy named Andrew. But that doesn't change anything either.

And honestly, giving your baby to some rando you shagged for a while when you're not even certain of his surname, and then not keeping in touch with him... it's not completely implausible but why do that instead of adoption? It comes across like she just couldn't be bothered with the paperwork. I t

I do think the trial sounds crappy, but not worse than many others. Any journalist who's covered the court beat before would not be surprised by the way lawyers treat it all like sport. I'm disappointed that Tedeschi seems like a bit of a dick, because I've got one of his books in my to-read pile.

Maybe I'm just an old grump but I remain very unsympathetic towards Lane. If she thinks her trial was crap or her lawyers gave her bad advice, then she can lodge an appeal like everyone else. Being a rich sporty woman at the time of your crime shouldn't get you special treatment.
 
Banquo's Ghost said:
I was a bit underwhelmed by this whole show. I don't think it takes much time to abandon a baby on a building site or similar, and it would fit with her excellent denial skills "oh I'll come back to pick her up after the wedding". But everyone seems to assume Lane brutally murdered Tegan and buried her, which isn't usually how infant deaths happen.

Having Lane finally admit that she might have been wrong about the father's surname is nice but it doesn't change anything or open up new lines of inquiry. I believe the friend who heard her speak about an affair with a guy named Andrew. But that doesn't change anything either.

And honestly, giving your baby to some rando you shagged for a while when you're not even certain of his surname, and then not keeping in touch with him... it's not completely implausible but why do that instead of adoption? It comes across like she just couldn't be bothered with the paperwork. I t

I do think the trial sounds crappy, but not worse than many others. Any journalist who's covered the court beat before would not be surprised by the way lawyers treat it all like sport. I'm disappointed that Tedeschi seems like a bit of a dick, because I've got one of his books in my to-read pile.

Maybe I'm just an old grump but I remain very unsympathetic towards Lane. If she thinks her trial was crap or her lawyers gave her bad advice, then she can lodge an appeal like everyone else. Being a rich sporty woman at the time of your crime shouldn't get you special treatment.
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She could've abandoned Tegan somewhere in between Auburn and Fairlight. She could even have put her in the car boot, still alive then, before heading to the wedding. No it wouldn't take much time at all.

The Andrew Morris guy that was found seems like an impressionable type. The police might have convinced him that the girl he had sex with was Keli. Then the journalists might have convinced him that it was not. Unreliable for a witness anyway.

And if a guy called Andrew minus last name, with a face as in the sketch, had taken Tegan... Good luck in finding him. The forensic psychiatrist basically identified that guy as the hole in her story, even though her conscience was clear regarding killing Tegan. Apparently. I don't know how good a human expert is compared to a lie detector machine.

For me the only sure thing that was established was that Keli is not crazy, no mental illness diagnosis.
 
What's the chance that Tegan was handed over to Keli's mum, when she arrived at parents house, before going to the wedding? And mum actually helped with the cover up? That would be the simplest solution for most young women.
 
Deleted, not sure that call was between who I thought it was.

It's the second episode from 40:15, I think the caller identifies herself but I can't make that out.

I think it's a bugged call between Keli and her mother, it's placed in the middle of an interview between Caro and Sandy, and there's a visual of a computer screen and a man taking notes. But maybe it's Keli talking to an investigator? If it's the mother it rules out Via Marple's attractive hypothesis.
 
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JLZ said:
No. Police covertly recorded a phone call between Sandra and Keli in which Sandra asked what had happened to Tegan, whether Keli was saying that Tegan had been alive up until a few years before. And Keli said yeah, she was under the impression that Tegan was alive even then, at the time of the call. Keli didn't say to Sandra that Sandra was the person who would best know what had happened to Tegan.
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Yes that is strong evidence.

I am just wondering, what would cause Keli to have stuck to her lie about Andrew M/Norris, even going to jail for it, because no one could find that guy? Her mum would have been one person she would protect.

She could have said a long time ago, that ok actually I can't be sure of that name. That would have been reasonable with someone in a secret affair.
 
I've transcribed what Anne Buist, the psychiatrist-novelist, had to say.

Anne: There's a great deal of murkiness here. She's the hardest, most difficult case. She differs very much to the other cases that I've seen.

Caro: I'm just going to rattle off all of these names, descriptions of Keli that we've been given over the many months. I'm just going to go for it. Is she a narcissist?

Anne: No.

Caro: Is she a pathological liar?

Anne: (hesitates) Not as a diagnosis, no.

Caro: Is she delusional?

Anne: No.

Caro: Is she evil?

Anne: No.

Caro: Are you sure she's not mentally ill?

Anne: Certainly not in the diagnostic sense, absolutely certain of that.

Caro: What do you think drove Keli to have all those pregnancies?

Anne: From a very early age, she got the message that um her family didn't like dealing with negative emotions. They got pushed down. They got squashed. Her first sexual experience at 15 which was a date rape um which she blamed herself--

(Cut to phone call in which Caro asks Keli about the effects of the date rape. Then)

Anne: She certainly had empathic identification with her children. She breast-fed them! She had them in her care. So this was not just get this child out of my way.

Caro: So you can't see her actively murdering a child?

Anne: Um. See. It just doesn't fit. I can't find a [word indistinguishable to me] from a psychological sense apart from we know she has this capacity to disown her children um and it fits into that.

Caro: Could Tegan be alive?

Anne: Yes.

(Later)

Caro's blonde coworker: When you did the assessment with her . . . what were the things that didn't sit right or that stuck out?

Anne: The key thing was her manner as she discussed Andrew Norris--the Andrew Norris/Morris situation was the key number 1, 2 and 3 thing. (Some editing, resumes on partial word I can't get, then) . . . body language changed, there was something there that didn't ring true and um I can't actually say what it was, what--what the truth is.
 
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Via Marple said:
Yes that is strong evidence.

I am just wondering, what would cause Keli to have stuck to her lie about Andrew M/Norris, even going to jail for it, because no one could find that guy? Her mum would have been one person she would protect.

She could have said a long time ago, that ok actually I can't be sure of that name. That would have been reasonable with someone in a secret affair.
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BBM--Maybe. I've been reading a Reddit forum about problem mothers and mothers-in-law. As a generalization, when a mother kills her daughter's baby, the daughter is not disposed to protect her mother.
 
I'm quoting this earlier article to potentially expand on Anne Buist's comment Keli is very different to the other cases she's seen.

Buist mentions the case of Keli Lane, convicted of the murder of her newborn child, who concealed a pregnancy despite a career as professional water polo player.

Tabloid news coverage focuses on outrage, the Euripidean aspect — but in the eight cases Buist has seen, the women's stories are rarely so simple.

"Almost all of them were not very well educated," Buist says.

While some were aged in their 20s, Buist says their mental age was closer to that of a 12-year-old.

"Basically, what I was seeing in all of these cases was a 12-year-old who had suddenly given birth," she says.

"I challenge anyone who has had a much-wanted baby to … pretend you are 12 — you don't know anything much about sex, and suddenly you've got these incredible pains and something falls out of you. They panic."

Some dissociate, Buist says.

"They separate out of their bodies essentially … blank it out," she says.

In addition, half of all neonaticide cases involve perpetrators with significant abuse histories.

"These are not women who have gone through pregnancy planning it, thinking about it, dreaming of a baby — they are cut off emotionally and they remain cut off quite often," Buist says.

What drives someone to kill their own child?
 
John Borovnik labelled Keli a psychopath. It's interesting that that was missing from the list of descriptions Caro asked Anne Buist about. Traditionally psychopathy would not be considered a mental illness. I would like to have heard AB's answer on that.
 
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