Keli Lane has been found guilty of murdering her baby daughter Tegan.
On hearing the verdict, Lane sobbed and collapsed in the dock of the Supreme Court.
Lane screamed out, "Oh, no!" and fell to the floor. The court was closed as court officers, her lawyers and family members rushed to her aid.
A paramedic was called to attend to her.
Her mother, who was in the public gallery, also sobbed and many jurors had tears in their eyes.
In refusing to continue her bail, Justice Anthony Whealy said he didn't want to give Lane false hope as the crime she had been found guilty of carried a substantial sentence.
But, he said, he felt "great sympathy" for Lane.
As court officers attended Lane in the dock, the judge temporarily adjourned the hearing but told the jurors they would return shortly as he wished speak to them.
The verdict came after the jury deliberated for a week after a four-month trial.
Earlier, the jury also found Lane guilty of three counts of making a false statement on oath in relation to documents dealing with her adopting out two other babies.
Earlier today, the jury foreman told the judge, Anthony Whealy, they had not come to a unanimous verdict on the murder charge and it was unlikely that further deliberations would produce one.
Justice Whealy told the jury to continue discussions, giving them the option of returning a majority 11 to one verdict.
The case has intrigued the public for more than five years, since an inquest into Tegan's disappearance revealed the astonishing fact that Lane, 35, managed to keep three pregnancies secret from her family, friends and even her long-term boyfriend.
Tegan was the second of three babies she carried to term and delivered without those closest to her even suspecting she was pregnant.
She put her first and third babies up for adoption but a year ago Lane was charged with Tegan's murder.
Tegan Lee Lane was born on September 12, 1996.
Two days later, Lane left Auburn Hospital with her daughter. There was no sign of the baby when she attended a friend's wedding at Manly that afternoon and a nationwide investigation has found no trace of the child since.
At the trial, Lane pleaded not guilty and maintained she gave the newborn to the child's natural father.
In police interviews she named him as Andrew Morris or Norris, a Balmain resident with whom she had a brief affair.
In one of several different accounts given to social workers and police, she said that after Andrew agreed to raise the child, she handed two-day-old Tegan over to him, his mother and his de facto partner, Mel, at the hospital.
Over the years police have conducted a fruitless national search for Andrew.
Investigators tracked down men named Andrew Norris or Morris in the age bracket given by Lane, and ruled them out as having taken Tegan.
The prosecution contended the man she described had never existed.
The Crown case was that Lane murdered Tegan to rid herself of the responsibility of raising a child.
At the time she was a 21-year-old physical education student and water polo star, with dreams of making the Australian team at the Sydney Olympics.
She was also terrified of how her family and friends would react if they knew of her pregnancies and did not want to tarnish her "golden girl" image, Crown prosecutor, Mark Tedeschi, QC, told the court.
Mr Tedeschi said that when Lane fell pregnant five times over the course of seven years in the 1990s, she had sought "a permanent solution" to all the pregnancies, terminating the first two, adopting two babies out, and allegedly murdering Tegan.
But the defence said there was no proof that Tegan was dead, let alone that Lane had murdered her.
On the contrary, she had done the responsible thing by giving the baby to her natural father, defence barrister, Keith Chapple, SC, said.
The fact that she legally adopted out two other children supported her story that she had given Tegan into somebody else's care.
Mr Chapple said tens of thousand of girls remained unaccounted for after the police search for Tegan.
The failure to find Tegan or Andrew could be explained by names having been changed.
"If you are looking for a needle in a haystack and you are looking for the wrong name, the search is useless," Mr Chapple told the jury.
The trial began on August 9, with jurors hearing from about 80 witnesses and sifting through masses of documents.
But before sending the jury out to consider the verdicts, Justice Anthony Whealy pinpointed the basic issues.
He told them if there was a reasonable possibility Tegan was alive, or that Lane had handed her over to the father or anyone else, then they must acquit her of murder.
But if they were satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Lane caused Tegan's death by a deliberate act, and that it was done with the intent to kill her, she should be found guilty.
Kim Arlington is a Herald Court Reporter.
- with AAP
