Wearing just a tropical print bikini, an ankle monitor and a big smile, Keli Lane, was as free as a bird over the Easter long weekend. She was spotted enjoying a romantic beach date in Sydney with her boyfriend, Patrick Cogan.
The convicted baby killer still has three and a half years left to serve on her 18-year prison sentence, but was given weekend day release to spend time with her long-time love.
Keli, 50, has been living in a halfway house in Western Sydney and it’s been reported she’s worked at various locations on work release, including at a steel manufacturing company and at a dairy product factory since mid-2023.
And on top of that, she’s been allowed to leave the halfway house every weekend to live it up with her long-time boyfriend, Patrick Cogan, who has loyally stuck by Keli during her incarceration.
He appeared to still be totally smitten with Keli, who is now sporting long dark hair instead of her trademark blonde locks, when they were spotted near her childhood home of Manly on Good Friday.
They were seen frolicking in the rock pool at Fairlight Beach, hugging, swimming, sunbaking and reading together, in the exclusive enclave full of families and children enjoying the school holidays.
Keli looked to be in her element as she dived and did laps – with a black electronic prison monitor on her right ankle – with other holidaymakers oblivious to the killer in their midst.
The couple then returned to Patrick’s reported $2.6 million home to spend the night together.
The former water polo champion and one-time Olympic hopeful was denied parole last year under NSW’s ‘no body, no parole’ because she has always maintained her innocence and that she didn’t kill her baby, Tegan, just days after birth.
Tegan’s body has never been found. The newborn disappeared just two days after being born at Auburn Hospital on September 12, 1996. Keli somehow kept the pregnancy and birth secret from everyone in her life – as she had bizarrely done with four other pregnancies.
The first two times Keli was pregnant, she terminated the pregnancies, but the next three times she carried the babies to term, adopting out two, one born before Tegan and one born after Tegan.
What happened to baby Tegan?
What we know is that Keli snuck out of the Auburn hospital ward with Tegan at about 12pm on September 14 and arrived at her parents’ home on the northern beaches without her three hours later.
Her parents had no idea she was even pregnant let alone that she had given birth to baby Tegan, less than 48 hours before.
A few hours later, dressed all in white, Keli attended a friend’s wedding with her then-partner, former rugby player Duncan Gillies, who also bizarrely had no idea she had given birth two days earlier.
Keli has always maintained that she gave baby Tegan to the biological father, who she claims was a man named either Andrew Morris or Andrew Norris. He has never been located despite exhaustive searches.
If Tegan is alive despite the court’s finding that Keli murdered her two days after she was born, she would be celebrating her 29th birthday later this year. Seven years ago, Keli told a documentary maker that she still hoped someone would come forward with her daughter to prove her innocence.
Why is Keli free?
While the sight of Keli at the beach enjoying freedom will no doubt outrage many, NSW prisoners who are nearing the end of their sentences are often given limited or part-time release from jail to prepare them for life on the outside.
An insider close to the case explains: “Corrective services has to keep preparing her for release – technically if she admitted to where the body is, she could be out tomorrow. [She] needs to be socialised, to have supervised outings, she gets day and weekend leave with sponsors and as long as they don’t broach the rules she could continue doing that until she’s released.
“Technically there is someone watching her GPS [location] on a map. She’s not deemed as a risk to other people’s children, so they are not especially concerned about her being out in public places.”
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