NSW Premier Chris Minns is urged to allow parole for Keli Lane, according to Anthony Dowsley’s exclusive report in The Daily Telegraph.
The family of convicted killer Keli Lane has made a personal plea to NSW Premier Chris Minns to release her on parole. Lane is serving an 18-year sentence for murdering her newborn daughter Tegan in 1996, writes Dowsley.
In March 2024, she became the first NSW inmate to be denied parole under “no body, no parole” laws. Lane, 51, has maintained her innocence since her 2010 murder conviction and her family believe she is the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
They remain adamant the mandatory law – which states she must reveal where she buried Tegan to be considered for parole – is “unfair, unreasonable and harsh”.
NSW’s “no body, no parole” laws were introduced in 2022, following the conviction of Chris Dawson over the 1982 murder of his wife, Lynette.
Keli Lane on day release at Dee Why with her partner (pic Daily Telegraph)
Lane is allowed supervised day release but will remain an inmate until her sentence expires in December 2028. She was last year named in NSW’s parliament as a victim of senior prison officer Wayne Astill, who in 2022 was found guilty of 27 criminal charges including sexual assaulting female inmates at Dillwynia Correctional Centre. Astill is serving a 23 year jail term.
Lane’s family say she is a model prisoner and was responsible for “initiating the inquiry into the sexual abuse of women by Wayne Astill”.
COMMENT:
A better idea?
An improvement on the no body no parole rule, unfair to the wrongfully convicted, would be the prospect of earlier parole as an inducement for the information about the location of the victim’s remains. The advantage of this approach is that the wrongfully accused (who doesn’t have the required knowledge) suffers no loss in being unable to locate the body and the guilty is ‘rewarded’ to help achieve the intent of the proposed law. The importance of the information outweighs the apparent leniency in ‘rewarding’ the killer.
Such an approach might work like this: the accused is found guilty and sentenced to 26 years, with a non parole period of 16 years, reduced to 13 years if they provide assistance to recover their victim/s within, say, 7 days of sentencing.
Good idea.
If you Google search “Mark Tedeschi she wasn’t born yesterday”, , you find a 47 minute interview on 5 September 2025 in which at the 38 minute to 40 minute part, Keli’s prosecutor Mark Tedeschi explains why he thinks the No Body No Parole law is so bad. Here is my transcript of the linked audio:
MT: “I’m not in favour of it for a variety of reasons. Firstly, history has shown that there have been no bodies that have been found as a result of that law. [then he briefly discusses the Matthew Leveson/Michael Atkins case which, as he points outs, is different] …. The reason that I’m against it is this – that the whole system of jail, discipline and order relies upon people who behave well in jail getting parole and if you take away that incentive, there’s no reason why people should try to rehabilitate themselves, or try to do the right thing in jail, try to educate themselves – for all those reasons I think it’s counterproductive and I don’t think it’ll result in bodies being located….”
End of Quote
He continues to discuss related issues in the next couple of minutes.
Logic in action !!
I see this as more ——a young woman was convicted of a purported crime—no body, no evidence, no witness. The crime would be that she sought to resolve a personal catastrophic situation by a method condemned by a patriarchal society. The nasty comments I read about her on Facebook reflect badly on our society. Who are these women so prepared to condemn another? The parole board is intransigent—-what sort of people are they? (I notice that they gave parole to the rapist Skaf. The man who murdered a woman on Norfolk Island has long been home with his mother.).
What about “innocent until proven guilty”? What about “beyond reasonable doubt”?
How likely is it to find a newborn baby’s remains anyway?
Emails to members of Parliament and to the Premier and to the Prime Minister have had no answer. Not interesting. How about Womens Rights? Memories of Chamberlain and Folbigg come flooding in. What about forgiveness and charity?
If someone else is urging Chris Minns to intervene , well, good on them, but it seems, nowadays, that you have to get it on a TV programme shortly before the election to get any sort of attention from our politicians. Keep at it, Anthony Dowsley!
Sounds like a good idea.