What Did Keli Lane Do With Her Baby?
Case Study: Working With Contamination - Comparative Analysis
Please NOTE: The blog is for educational purposes. All parties are innocent unless proven guilty in a court of law. No analysis can be a substitute for a thorough investigation, but instead must be taken as a tool for investigative purposes.
***I am not associated with any investigation into the case of Keli Lane. My opinions are my own and not necessarily those of any investigating entities.***
At times issues of contamination are unavoidable, particularly when we don’t take a forensic approach to obtaining the statement we wish to analyze. However, once we are on alert for contamination in the account, we can still do the analysis, keeping in mind what issues to temper with concerns for how the contamination may have affected it. Remembering that this is an investigative tool and not court room evidence, we can still work through the analysis to help speculate on the account, just with less confidence in what we see.
‘Comparative analysis’ is a term I like to use when we navigate the concerns we have of contamination by conducting multiple analyses to see if there is any overlap in what they are suggesting that can reduce the likelihood contamination is affecting those issues. For example, in a homicide investigation where there’s concern about how the statements of witnesses may have been obtained, conducting comparative analysis of the different statements may reveal a pattern that suggests all the witnesses are concealing the same information from investigators. This can give investigators an avenue they may find compelling to take.
In 1996, then 21-year-old Keli Lane became pregnant and gave birth to baby girl, Tegan, at a hospital in Sydney Australia. This was the fourth of a total of six pregnancies Lane has had. She terminated her first two pregnancies with abortions. Her third and fifth pregnancies she brought to term, delivered and gave up for adoption, and she kept and raised her sixth child. But no one knows what happened to Tegan Lane, the second child she delivered.
Every one of Lane’s pregnancies, except for her last one, were carried in secret. Reportedly, no one in her life ever knew she was pregnant, and when she delivered in the hospital, she provided falsifying information to officials while placing the two for adoption. It wasn’t until Lane gave birth for the third time (fifth pregnancy) that a social worker helping her place her child up for adoption discovered that she had previously given birth to Tegan. It was several years before Police began to investigate what happened to her. Lane claimed that Tegan was conceived from an affair with a man, she identified as Andrew Morris, and further claimed that she turned over custody of Tegan to the father at the hospital and did not know how to reach him or where to find him. In later police interviews Lane would change the name of Tegan’s father from Andrew Morris to Andrew Norris.
The police have not located Tegan Lane or Andrew Norris to this day. This eventually led to Keli Lane being prosecuted and convicted for murdering Tegan despite that no evidence as to what occurred to Tegan has ever been discovered.
I found this case to be challenging primarily for the issues it raises with contamination. Here we will look at it to explore for how contamination creates trouble for the analysis and then look to see if and how we can utilize what little content we have from the interviews to discuss how we can still extract reliable information from Lane to develop some sense of what occurred.
The only materials we have to analyze are edited clips from interviews with police and journalist, Caro Meldrum-Hanna, who did investigative reporting on this matter. We will tackle this in parts, beginning with a close look at a clip from the earliest interview Lane had with the police. Then we will look at the follow up clips to see if/what from the first analysis can be built upon through the remaining materials. We will conduct a ‘comparative analysis’ of Lane’s accounts and see what patterns she holds in her language to help shed light on where the truth may lie.
Below is a transcript from a portion of the first interview Lane did with Police, which is the earliest known interview we have:
Police: In your words, can you just explain to us when the child was born and what happened subsequent to that?
Keli: Uh after a brief affair with uh the father of the child, I gave birth. We made an arrangement that he would come and take custody of Tegan um as I was unable to take care of her myself and um he dropped me home um and then took Tegan with him into his care.
Police: Okay. And you've told me that uh the person that you uh, is the the natural father of the child is an Andrew Morris. Is that correct?
Keli: That's correct.
Police: To your knowledge, is there any reason why Andrew wanted to adopt or care for Tegan?
Keli: Well, he's the natural father and um I, I was um unable to to take custody of her myself.
Police: Yeah. I think you've explained it. You don't have an address for for Andrew. Is that right?
Keli: No, I don't know where he is.
Below is the transcript with my commentary:
The first thing we need to take notice of is when the police detective said, “Okay. And you've told me...” This demonstrates to us that prior to this point, we have a discussion between the police and Keli Lane that we are not privileged to. This means that there is the likelihood of contamination and with the exception of the topic on what the name of Tegan’s father is, we don’t know what else may have been discussed. What this means for us is that we don’t know if what appears to be sensitive, important or otherwise unexpected in Lane’s words will exist because of something she has internalized from her own personal perceptions and perspectives on this issue, or if it will be something created by questions or statements made by the police just prior.
Police: In your words, can you just explain to us when the child was born and what happened subsequent to that?
This is good in that it is an open-ended question that will bring Lane to monologue on the issue. However, we have to pay special attention to the language the interviewer is using when formulating this question. Terms are important.
Keli: Uh after a brief affair with uh the father of the child, I gave birth.
We note where Lane’s priorities lie in responding to this question. She answers by first expressing a need to share with police that all this occurred “after a brief affair.” It’s outside the boundaries of what was being asked, yet she had a need to include it before providing the information being sought. We must be on alert that this suggests Lane may have a need to build and/or control a narrative about how the pregnancy came to be. Also within this narrative is the need to minimize the time spent in the “affair” as being “brief.” Why? Consider that something like an “affair” being “brief” would make the expectation of finding supporting evidence of its occurrence less likely.
We also note that Lane did not begin her personal account with the personal pronoun “I” which suggests she is dissociated from her commitment to her account to some degree. This is particularly notable under the conjoined context that she is passive about the “brief affair,” meaning she is not linguistically present in it. She does not say she was the one who had a “brief affair.”
Lane introduces the person she had the “brief affair” with as “the father of the child.” Under forensic conditions, “the child” would cause us to scrutinize the title she used for her baby, but because we were vigilant enough to see this language introduced by the investigator in his question, we must merely note its use and set it aside for the moment. However, we also see syntactically she has given linguistic priority to “the father” before “the child” despite giving herself distance from both.
This is fundamentally about “the father” not “the child.”
One must also note that the male she is referencing is improperly introduced. One cannot have an “affair” with “the father of the child” until “the child” is at least conceived and paternity known. Linguistically he is “the father” before she “gave birth.” Some additional known outside context is that she was reportedly in a sexual relationship with another man during this time, so it appears unlikely she could have come to know this particular male was “the father” without a paternity test. And to look at this issue a bit deeper, from her account, it appears no paternity test was done after she “gave birth” either.
And to whom did she give birth to “after a brief affair?” Linguistically she doesn’t say.
We made an arrangement that he wouldcome and take custody of Tegan um as I was unable to take care of her myself and um he dropped me home um and then took Teganwith him into his care.
Where she began with a degree of distancing placed between herself and “the father of the child” by dissociating from the “brief affair” and placing a wedge between the “affair” and “the father of the child” using the word “with,” she now closes that distance using the pronoun, “we.” This comes under the introduction of their “arrangement.”
Consider two things about the “arrangement;” first, they didn’t ‘have’ one, but “made” one, and second, the word “arrangement” suggests an element of complexity and/or being made up of components. ‘Things needed to be arranged.’ What this suggests for us is that there’s an element of ‘effort’ or ‘planning’ gone into this “arrangement.” And we see this further suggested when she went on to say that the “arrangement” was “that he would come and take custody of Tegan.” So, we now can say that the “arrangement” consisted of at least two components. First was that “he would come” and second was that he would “take custody of Tegan.” It appears that there may be more ‘components’ not being shared as this is not an ‘arrangement for him to come and take custody’ but “that he would” do this. “Would” is hypothetical and/or conditional. It means we should question as to whether there were ‘conditions’ agreed upon in this “arrangement.”
Please note that the “arrangement” was not for “the father” to ‘raise Tegan’ but to “take custody” of her. “Custody” is cold and rigid language when speaking of one’s own “child.” “Custody” is also a legal term that makes a “child” a ‘possession’ to some degree. Given the cold and rigidity of “child” introduced by the police, one should consider the possibility that this language was also introduced by police during prior questioning. However, we see that the reason she gives for this is that she was “unable to care” for Tegan, which is to introduce this concept within the same thought, meaning according to her subjective dictionary, it appears “the father” was going to do something different than “care” for Tegan. Given the context of the “arrangement” her language appears consistent with something like the ‘trafficking’ of her “child.”
“...he would come...” and “...he dropped me home...” gives him the linguistic agency and makes her passive in her own account. She is not speaking of what she did, but of what he did, which builds on the previous point about her syntax and shows us that this is primarily an account of what “the father of the child” did and not a personal account of her own actions. Consider this point in concert with the previous one about her not beginning her account with the personal pronoun, “I” and we now see a strong suggestion that Keli Lane is not taking any personal responsibility for what happened with Tegan.
Once Lane is “dropped” home, she strongly edits her account with the temporal lacuna, “and then,” showing us that time and details are omitted. What “then” occurred is that he “took Tegan with him into his care.” Please note that “with” places more distance between “father” and “child” while the unnecessary detail that this was “into his care” shows us something sensitive to Lane. Consider two points. First, it is a need for Lane to say that when Tegan left her, she was being ‘cared for.’ It suggests to us that Lane may be feeling some degree of concerns about her own ego as if to say, ‘I didn’t do anything wrong because she was being cared for.’ There’s an element of emotional ‘guilt’ suggested by these words. Second, we see that what was once referred to as “the father” taking “custody” is now “into his care,” showing a change in her language. The word “into” elevates the sensitivity surrounding this issue as it takes extra linguistic effort, needing to be emphatic. We also note that this was “his care” which is dependent against the concept of ‘her care.’ This change in language represents a change in her perception of reality. Here it appears that the change in reality is her separation with Tegan. We should consider that ‘guilty’ emotions may have driven her need to emphatically relieve herself of that guilt by asserting that when “he took Tegan” she was going to be ‘cared for.’
We need to address one very important issue at this point, the question of whether Keli Lane murdered Tegan. Did Keli Lane give Tegan to her father as she said, or did she murder her own baby as she has been convicted of doing? In asking this question of the analysis, we have to take note of the fact that this open-ended question brought Keli Lane into a short monologue. She began the account by seemingly parroting the investigator’s language of referring to Tegan as “the child,” however, as she appeared to move more into her free editing process, she was able to bring herself to change her own language from “the child” to referring to Tegan by her name.
Reports are that Keli Lane was psychiatrically evaluated and not indicated for any personality disorders, such as psychopathy. Now consider that if someone who can experience empathy and guilt were to plan to give birth to a child, only to murder it, what would their psychological state need to be in order to protect themself from the emotional stress caused by the murder? Lane would likely have had a need to internally depersonalize and dehumanize her child to one degree or another. This puts us on alert for “the child” or “the baby” and even the pronoun, “it” can enter someone’s language. We noted “the child” as highly likely for contamination, but more to the point, using Tegan’s name refutes the distancing we would expect from her. She humanizes her child by using her name, not the opposite.
We now have reason to consider it far less likely that Keli Lane murdered her daughter, particularly when we speak of the idea that it may have been premeditated.
Police: Okay. And you've told me that uh the person that you uh, is the the natural father of the child is an Andrew Morris. Is that correct?
Keli: That's correct.
Police: To your knowledge, is there any reason why Andrew wanted to adopt or care for Tegan?
Keli: Well, he's the natural father and um I, I was um unable to to take custody of her myself.
Issues of direct contamination occur again when we see Lane appearing to parrot the investigator’s language referring to “the natural father.” She does this in her linguistic priority. She first answers the question by invoking him as “the natural father” before negating her ability to “take custody” of Tegan. Why would her inability to “take custody” of Tegan take a back seat to “Andrew” being “the natural father” when addressing this question?
The question of ‘why’ “Andrew” wanted to “adopt or care for Tegan” also caused Lane to stutter on the pronoun, “I” which suggests that she may have experienced elevated anxiety while answering this question. It comes with another change in her language, whereas her first statement that she was “unable to take care of (Tegan herself),” has now become being unable to “take custody of her (herself).” Her language became more rigid, invoking the noted legal term of “custody” again.
Please consider that this question appears to be a sensitive question for Lane.
Police: Yeah. I think you've explained it. You don't have an address for, for Andrew. Is that right?
Keli: No, I don't know where he is.
One last point to take note of is that Lane was asked about an “address” for “Andrew”, but her response was to negate knowledge of where he “is” as opposed to where he ‘lives.’ Is it possible Lane knows where “Andrew” lives and wishes to conceal this from investigators? Is it possible that when she thinks of “Andrew” she thinks of him as being a ‘vagabond’ who doesn’t ‘live’ anywhere but has places where he ‘stays?’
It appears that Lane is deceptive in her account about what she did with Tegan. Her language at this point leans away from the idea that she murdered her, but this doesn’t completely discount for the possibility that something else occurred to cause Tegan’s death. However, it is my opinion that her language is more suggestive of something that occurred which was more ‘trafficking like’ in that it appears that she may be deceptively building a narrative on the issue of “the father” being the one who took Tegan and/or suppressing information surrounding the “arrangement” they made.
However, given the known prior discussions with police and the introduction of their contaminating language, a shadow of doubt lingers over the reliability of this analysis. So, as we continue with this endeavor, we will look to the other content from Lane to see if she establishes a pattern in her language that will give us the ability to create a more reliable hypothesis on what really happened.