Keli & Patrick’s bizarre love affair
Patrick is Keli’s biggest supporter, and she insists nothing – including jail or other partners – can come between them
Even on the eve of being jailed for 18 years for murdering her newborn baby, Keli Lane’s boyfriend Patrick Cogan declared his enduring love for the former water polo champion – and he’s never stopped loving her.
“We love each other very much,” he told Woman’s Day after her final appeal was rejected in 2014. “Ours has been a relationship borne of difficult circumstances and challenges, and these have strengthened our bond.”
Patrick dated Lane when they were teenagers and reconnected with her just before she was arrested in 2009 for killing her newborn daughter Tegan, who went missing after Lane left with her from a Sydney hospital and has never been found.
But it was her bizarre history of hiding pregnancies – she had five pregnancies between 1992 and 1999 that she managed to keep secret from her family, friends, water polo teammates and boyfriends – that fascinated and repelled Australia.
However, it didn’t deter Patrick from loving Lane, with the father-of-two regularly visiting her in Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre, and seemingly maintaining an on-again, off-again love affair with her from the outside.
Even her lesbian relationships in jail haven’t affected his commitment to Lane, with Patrick telling The Daily Telegraph she had chosen to turn “gay for the stay”.
“She has got close to other women, she needs to survive,” he said in a recent interview.
“The truth is weirder than a lie, but I believe her and love her. I’m waiting for the day she comes out and we can be a family.”
Lane reputedly has now earned the nickname of “Queen Bea” – after the tough character on Wentworth and Prisoner – because she sells soaps, deodorants, lollies, drinks, chips and bags of rice to other inmates in the jail.