Convicted child killer Keli Lane has been caught out on national television

CONVICTED child killer Keli Lane has been busted concocting a new version of her last moments with her baby in a program designed to test her guilt or innocence.

• Child killer Keli Lane’s mystery man a north coast father
• The moment Keli Lane was found guilty of killing baby Tegan

CONVICTED child killer Keli Lane has been caught out on national television concocting a new version of her last moments with her baby in a program designed to test her guilt or innocence.

Lane, 43, told the ABC from jail where she is serving time for murdering her two-day-old daughter Tegan, that she had spent 15 minutes in a foyer at Sydney’s Auburn Hospital saying goodbye to her baby and handing her over to the man she claims was the biological father and his mother.

Sources close to what has become one of the country’s most notorious and saddest cases have revealed this is the first time she has ever made this “15 minute” claim.

The former water polo champion who hid her pregnancy with Tegan from everyone — apart from, on her account, the biological father — first told police she had left the hospital sometime between 11am and 12 noon on September 14, 1996.

There was evidence at her trial in 2010 that a mother in the next bed noticed she was missing by 12 noon but staff did not realise she had left with her baby until 2pm that day.

Lane was next seen at her parents’ home at Fairlight at 3pm that day — without baby Tegan — and went to a wedding with her then-boyfriend who was not the father of the baby.

Keli Lane leaves the NSW Supreme Court in Sydney during her trial.

When the Department of Community Services began looking into the case of the missing baby in 2000, Lane told a social worker that Tegan was with a family in Perth with whom she had not had contact for some time.

MORE NEWS:

Hunter’s Hill body identified as Nicole Cartwright

More eastern suburbs homes demolished to make flats

Premier calls for immigration ‘breather’

When homicide detectives began investigating, Lane told them that Tegan’s father “Andrew” — who she first gave two names for — had collected her from the hospital “dropped me home and then took Tegan with him into his care”

She said she had been dropped off at an address in Venus Street, Gladesville, where her boyfriend lived.

According to evidence given at her trial, in her next version, she told police that Tegan’s father had taken the baby at the hospital and she had caught a taxi to Venus Street by herself.

Police searching for the remains of baby Tegan Lane in yard of house in Gladesville.

According to evidence at her trial, Lane also told different stories about the purported father’s partner, who she called Mel, and the father’s mother. She said variously that the three of them visited her twice at Auburn Hospital and that Andrew Morris/Norris and his mother had only been to the hospital once when she handed over baby Tegan.

There is no evidence baby Tegan is still alive and her body has never been found.

That Mr Morris told the ABC he was now not sure if the blonde woman he had sex with was Keli Lane.

Lane told the ABC that she was now not sure if Tegan’s father’s name was even Andrew Norris despite earlier telling police she had been to his Balmain unit several times and had even been among his friends at his 30th birthday.

“I don’t know 100 per cent if his name is Andrew because I don’t know at the time if what he was telling me was the truth or maybe I had made a mistake,” Lane said.

But she maintained his first name was Andrew because “he answered to that” name.

In 2013 Lane lost an appeal against her conviction for murdering Tegan and remains in jail serving at least 13 years five months.

Originally published as Convicted child killer Keli Lane has been caught out on national television