Bandali Debs turned his gun on police officers, sex workers

STREET prostitute and mother of three Donna Hicks picked the wrong bloke to get in a ute with.

Donna Hicks

STREET prostitute and mother of three Donna Hicks picked the wrong bloke to get in a ute with.

The bloke was Bandali Debs, who years later gained notoriety for the murders of Victoria Police officers Gary Silk and Rodney Miller.

Sergeant Gary Silk

Murder victim Gary Silk. Picture: Supplied

Debs, 58, and a father of five, forced Ms Hicks to have sex without a condom before shooting her in the head during the early hours of April 22, 1995.

He then dumped her body - naked except for a dog collar - in a drainage ditch near the entrance to a quarry in suburban Sydney.

It was not using a condom which proved to be his undoing - but he wasn't to know that until he was charged by New South Wales police with murdering Ms Hicks 15 years after he shot her.

Ms Hicks, 34, had a drug problem and regularly worked as a street prostitute to feed her habit, but she was also a loving mother to her children, then aged nine, six and five.

Because of her drug, relationship and other problems, the children lived with Ms Hicks' mother Barbara, but Ms Hicks was a regular visitor and often took them to school.

The last time the children saw their mother alive was two days before she was murdered when she came round to give them a puppy.

Bandali Debs

Ms Hicks was hard to miss the night she was killed. She turned up at the Colyton Hotel in western Sydney about 10pm on Friday, April 21, 1995, wearing a very tight and short dress, with pink thongs on her feet and a black dog collar around her neck.

Donna Hicks

Murder victim Donna Hicks. Picture: Supplied

A number of pub patrons later told police Ms Hicks was very boisterous and that her dress was so short she was constantly pulling it down as her knickers were on show.

So disruptive was she that security staff ordered her to leave shortly after midnight, which she did with two beers in her hands. She was closely followed by Ronald Zanker, who she met that night.

Mr Zanker and Ms Hicks sat outside the pub and drank the beers. Mr Zanker asked her to come back to his house to have sex but she refused, saying she was heading to her regular prostitution patch outside the Minchinbury fruit and vegetable market on the Great Western Highway.

Still thinking he was in with a chance of sex, Mr Zanker walked with her from the pub to the market and was sexually fondled by her on the way.

Mr Zanker sat down on the grass outside the market while Ms Hicks stood by the side of the highway with her thumb out.

He saw a distinctive four-wheel drive ute with a back canopy pull up next to her. She had a short chat to the driver, walked back to Mr Zanker and told him she would be back in half an hour and then got in the vehicle - never to be seen alive again.

Ms Hicks body was found the next day a short distance away. A DNA profile was obtained from semen left inside the body.

That profile was put on the NSW police DNA database, but there were no matches and the crime remained unsolved for more than a decade.

It wasn't until the national DNA database started receiving DNA profiles from state police forces in 2007 that the DNA from the unsolved Hicks murder was able to be compared with DNA profiles from offenders around Australia and found to be a match with Debs' DNA.

By this time, Debs had been convicted of the 1998 Silk-Miller murders and as a result had his DNA profile placed on the Victorian database. His DNA was added to the national DNA database in 2007, shortly after it became operational.

Rodney Miller and son

Murder victim Rodney Miller. Picture: Supplied

The putting of Debs' DNA on the Victoria Police database after his arrest over the Silk-Miller murders resulted in a cold hit, that is, a hit that links an offender with an unsolved crime the offender would never have become a suspect for were it not for the DNA cold hit.

That cold hit put Debs firmly in the frame for the 1997 murder of Victorian teenage prostitute Kristy Harty.

Much to the surprise of detectives, Debs' DNA profile matched DNA taken from semen discovered with the body of Ms Harty, 18, and he was charged with her murder in 2005.

Kristy Harty

Murder victim Kristy Harty. Picture: Supplied

The NSW Supreme Court jury which yesterday found Debs guilty of murdering Ms Hicks was told of similar fact evidence in the killings of both women.

Prosecutor Pat Barrett said the similarities were significant.

"Both women were engaging in prostitution,'' he told the NSW trial last month.

"One was working on the Great Western Highway in NSW, in a suburb of Sydney. The other was working on the Princes Highway in a suburb of Melbourne.

Mr Barrett said Debs lived near where Ms Harty was murdered and detectives investigating the death of Ms Hicks discovered documentary evidence, including bank statements and transaction records, which showed Debs was in the area at the time Ms Hicks was killed, including visiting the pub she had been in just prior to being murdered.

"In the case of both of them, their bodies were found adjacent to a track in bush land. In both cases, the deceased was lying on the ground and no attempt had been made to cover or bury the body,'' he said.

"In both cases, the body had been dragged a short distance from a pool of blood and in both cases the blood was generally located on a track or roadway accessible to a motor vehicle.

"In both cases, the deceased young women had no underwear on. In both cases, they'd been shot in the head. In both cases, they'd been shot at close range.

"In both cases, they'd had recent unprotected sexual intercourse, that is, unprotected by condom because semen was found. In both cases, the DNA profile taken from the semen is the same as the profile of the accused.''

Other evidence against Debs in the murder of Ms Hicks in NSW, apart from the DNA match, included Debs owning a double cab Holden Rodeo ute with a canopy that matched the description of the vehicle Ms Hicks was seen getting into shortly before she was killed.

Police discovered evidence that the ute was parked in the driveway of Debs' mother, who lived near where Ms Hicks was picked up, a few days before the murder.

Victoria Police also provided NSW police with a secretly recorded conversation between Debs and his daughter's boyfriend, Jason Roberts. Roberts was convicted with Debs of the Silk-Miller police murders.

It was recorded by police investigating the police shootings. Debs was taped telling Roberts what it was like to shoot a woman in the head.

Although detectives listening to the bugged conversation didn't know it then, Debs was talking with some authority as at the time he was being taped he had already shot Ms Hicks and Ms Harty in just such a manner.

"If you put the rod in the mouth and blew her brains away, when you put the rod in their mouth and close their mouth there's no noise,'' Debs said.

"Cross me heart. But you have to push right in and go click.

"All there is, is a bit of spatter everywhere. That's it. You don't clean nothing, just the tip of it.

"You just get a bit of spit and all that on the tip of it, serious. I've seen it. I've done it.''

Detectives investigating the Silk-Miller shootings also literally uncovered damning evidence linking Debs to the murder of Ms Harty in Victoria.

They searched his mother's NSW home in July 2000 on the day Debs was arrested over the police shootings.

Buried in a sealed plastic bucket under the house were several guns, including a Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum of the type used to shoot Ms Harty.

Debs also used a .357 Magnum revolver to shoot Sgt Silk and Sen-Constable Miller after they pulled Debs and Roberts over about 12.15am in Cochranes Rd, Moorabbin on August 16, 1998.

The two officers had been staking out the nearby Silky Emperor as part of a major Victoria Police operation to try to catch the two armed robbers responsible for a string of raids.

There was nothing to alert Sgt Silk and Sen-Constable Miller that the car they were stopping for a routine check contained not only the two robbers, but also a man who had already shot and killed prostitutes Ms Hicks and Ms Harty.

That might explain why Roberts and Debs reacted so violently seconds after being pulled over, neither wanted their past crimes to catch up with them.

Roberts, then aged 17 and the boyfriend of Debs' eldest daughter Nicole, was the first to open fire after Sgt Silk ordered him out of the car. Sgt Silk considered the situation so routine he hadn't drawn his weapon.

With a pen in his hand to take notes, Sgt Silk started asking Roberts questions. Roberts pulled out his gun and shot Sgt Silk in the chest at close range.

Sen-Constable Miller quickly fired at Roberts, but missed.

Debs dived back into his car as Roberts fired, got his Magnum and shot at Sen-Constable Miller through the rear window of the Hyundai. It was glass fragments from that shattered window that ultimately helped police to identify Debs and Roberts as the shooters.

That shot through the back window missed. Sen-Constable Miller crouched behind the Hyundai and returned fire. Debs' second shot hit Sen-Constable Miller in the chest.

Mortally wounded, Sen-Constable Miller found the strength to stagger and crawl back to the Silky Emperor for help, with Debs continuing to fire at him.

Debs then got out of the car and walked over to where Sgt Silk was lying on the nature strip. In what was a cruel assassination, Debs fired two shots from less than 40cms away, hitting the wounded officer in the hip and behind his left ear.

Debs and Roberts were arrested two years later after one of the most thorough and successful Victoria Police taskforce investigations ever, which resulted in Debs getting two life sentences with no minimum and Roberts being jailed for life with and ordered to serve a minimum term of 35 years.

It was the arrest by the Lorimer taskforce of Debs over the Silk-Miller shootings, allowing police to take his DNA for the first time, which led to the years-old murders of Ms Hicks and Ms Harty being solved.