The unanswered questions at the heart of the Keli Lane case still linger in former detective Michael Ashwood’s mind: Where is baby Tegan? What really happened?
“Keli had left the hospital,” Ashwood recalls, “She’s due in two hours to attend a wedding.”
Just two hours after giving birth to baby Tegan, CCTV footage shows Keli arriving at the wedding venue with her then-boyfriend.
Hear the full story from an ex-cop who investigated Kelly Lane on Crime Insiders:
There was no sign of the baby, or even that Keli had just given birth.
“Part of your thoughts are, how did she get to this point? What? Where is the baby? What’s gone on?” Ashwood said.
Ashwood told the Crime Insiders podcast that when detectives asked Keli what happened, she said she left the hospital and gave the baby to a couple, “called Morris or Norris”.
Where did the Keli Lane investigation lead?
Keli Lane played water polo for Australia internationally and was a school teacher at a high-profile private girls’ school.
Crime Insiders: Detectives host Brent Sanders said, “A young woman at the time who had had numerous pregnancies over a very short period of time.”
“Lots of very unusual extenuating circumstances in this case,” Sanders said.
Ashwood said there were thousands of inquiries for Tegan Lane, and police combed through records and leads in a bid to find her.
There was no evidence of where her body was or whether she was even alive.
“In the end, a jury is a panel of peers, of human beings,” Ashwood said about Keli’s trial.
The Supreme Court of New South Wales determined that Keli was guilty of killing her child in 1996.
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