Child killer Keli Lane’s mystery man a north coast father
CHILD killer Keli Lane claimed she handed over her two-day-old daughter Tegan to the baby’s father, a man called Andrew Morris. The real Andrew Morris can be revealed as a north coast father who once had a one-night stand with Lane.
NSW
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THE real Andrew Morris can be revealed as a north coast father who once had a one-night stand behind a beach with convicted child killer Keli Lane.
In protesting her innocence, the former water polo player has maintained that she handed her two-day-old baby Tegan on the day she left hospital in September 1996 to the girl’s father, a man she initially named as Andrew Morris and later as Andrew Norris.
She continues to claim that she had sex with Norris or Morris in a unit in Wisbeach Street, Balmain.
Police determined that no Andrew Norris or Morris had ever lived in the Balmain unit block and her trial was told that her account of having an affair with him there was a “complete and utter lie”.
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Police did interview Peter Clark, who lived in unit 24 with his brother Steve, Lane’s trial was told.
Clark said he knew someone called Andrew Morris but he was part Asian and did not fir the description Keli Lane gave of the father of Tegan. That Andrew Morris was interviewed by police and the court was told he is not Tegan’s father.
Homicide Squad detectives discovered there was a real Andrew Morris in Keli Lane’s life but he was certainly not Tegan’s father.
He was a student who met Lane on the weekend of June 25 and 26 1994 after he took part in the Kellogg’s Nutrigrain Australian Rescue Champions at Sydney’s Freshwater beach.
Both in their early 20s, Lane and Mr Morris met at the Sands Hotel at Narrabeen and had unprotected sex on the grass behind the beach near Narrabeen Caravan Park.
It was 18 months before Tegan Lane was even conceived in December 1995.
Mr Morris has since married and had a child — but it is not Tegan.
The existence of the real Andrew Morris was disclosed at Keli Lane’s trial in 2009 but Mr Morris was not called to give evidence at the trial for reasons that involved legal technicalities.
The prosecution alleged that Lane had used his name as she did in so many of her lies, to give them a kernel of truth.
He came from Woolgoolga on the state’s north coast, was a student at Newcastle University and never lived in Wisbeach Street.
He was tracked down by the officer in charge of the investigation into Tegan’s death, Detective Tamar Kilani, while Lane continued to claim the baby’s father was Norris.
By a coincidence, Mr Morris had been robbed of a bicycle and clothing and the police mistranscribed his name and got it wrong as Andrew Norris.
The Supreme Court was told at the start of Keli Lane’s trial for Tegan’s murder that at that stage in his life, Ms Morris was not looking for long-term relationships. He was more
interested in meeting women for brief sexual encounters “colloquially known as one night stands.”
He told police that the The Sands he met an attractive blond girl and they spend hours chatting with groups of their friends.
Afterwards, they couldn’t go to his place because he was staying in an open room at the Narrabeen Surf Life Saving Club.
Lane told him she knew the area well and they walked several hundred metres to a grassed area which was near to Narrabeen Caravan Park where they kissed, cuddled and had “unprotected sex”.
He told her his name and offered to walk her home but she declined his offer.
He pinned down the exact weekend because it was the weekend of the competition when the Woolgoolga team stayed at Narrabeen.
Keli Lane is currently serving an 18-year jail sentence with a non-parole period of 13 years and five months after being convicted of Tegan’s murder. The baby’s body has never been found.