A talented Australian water polo player accused of killing her baby daughter to focus on competing at the Sydney Olympics was jailed yesterday for 18 years for murdering the infant.
Keli Lane, 35, was found guilty in December last year of killing newborn Tegan — the result of a pregnancy she had kept secret from her partner, family and teammates — in September 1996.
Lane had maintained her innocence, saying she had handed the child to its father shortly after the birth and never seen it again, but Supreme Court of New South Wales Justice Anthony Whealy accepted she killed the girl.
Photo: EPA
Whealy said “golden girl” Lane, who represented Australia as a junior water polo player, had been desperate when she murdered the baby, whose remains have never been found.
“The present case may properly be seen, in every sense, as a tragedy involving mother and daughter,” he said, Australian news agency AAP reported.
The fact that Lane had destroyed the natural relationship between mother and daughter would haunt her for the rest of her life, Whealy said as he set a maximum term of 18 years, with a non-parole period of 13 years and five months.
Lane has always said she gave the baby to its father, an Andrew Morris or Andrew Norris, with whom she had had a brief and secret affair, shortly after the birth.
However, prosecutors said she killed the child, her second, because it stood in the way of her sporting and social ambitions, including representing Australia in the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
Her four-month jury trial heard that Lane had given up for adoption the children from her first and third pregnancies, which she had also kept secret, and had terminated two other pregnancies.
Questions about Tegan first emerged when a social worker raised concerns with welfare officials after dealing with Lane during the adoption of her youngest child.
Lane was not charged with murder until 2009, after a major search for Tegan.
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