Mother charged over baby Tegan's death

THIRTEEN years after baby Tegan Lane disappeared from outside the hospital where she was born, her mother, Keli Lane, has been charged with the infant's murder.

THIRTEEN years after baby Tegan Lane disappeared from outside the hospital where she was born, her mother, Keli Lane, has been charged with the infant's murder.

Ms Lane, 34, who now goes by a different name and has a new identity, will appear in the NSW Supreme Court on December 4.

The disappearance of Tegan is one of the longest-running and most baffling in Australian history, and the murder charge comes three years after NSW coroner John Abernethy ruled there was not enough evidence to charge anyone with a crime.

Ms Lane has previously told police that she left Auburn hospital, in Sydney's west, with Tegan on September 14, 1996, two days after the birth. She says she handed Tegan to the child's father, a man she knew only as Andrew Norris, with whom she had a brief affair. She has said the handover took place in the car park outside the hospital, in the presence of Mr Norris's wife, and his mother.

Mr Norris has never been found. As part of the investigation into Tegan's disappearance, police believe they have interviewed every Andrew Norris in Australia.

Prior to giving birth to Tegan, Ms Lane had given birth to another child, whom she gave up for adoption. She did the same with a third child, born after Tegan.

She did not tell her parents, boyfriend or her employer about any of the children.

Two hours after being discharged from hospital with Tegan, Ms Lane was captured on video at a friend's wedding in the beachside suburb of Manly, wearing a cream-coloured suit. The distance between the two locations is at least an hour, by car.

A barrister who represented Ms Lane at a 2006 inquest into Tegan's disappearance argued there was not enough time for Ms Lane to have killed the baby and disposed of her body, and then made it to the wedding, especially since she stopped at her parents' home in Manly, showered, put on make-up, and picked up her car and her boyfriend on the way.

Ms Lane is now married and living on Sydney's northern beaches.

The search for Tegan began in 1999, when a keen-eyed member of the NSW Department of Community Services noticed she was missing. An inquest by Mr Abernethy in 2006 found Tegan was probably dead, but he couldn't say where, or when, she died.

The NSW Unsolved Homicide Squad said yesterday the Director of Public Prosecutions had issued an indictment "in relation to the alleged murder of a baby girl in 1996".

It said the DPP had "served the indictment for murder on a 34-year-old northern beaches woman" after an investigation by Strike Force Kullara.