Cop killer linked to 1994 Hallam police shooting
SERIAL killer Bandali Debs is a “live’’ suspect for the attempted murder of two police officers in Melbourne’s southeast almost four years before he gunned down two undercover officers in cold blood.
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SERIAL killer Bandali Debs is a “live’’ suspect for the attempted murder of two police officers almost four years before he gunned down two undercover officers in cold blood.
Victoria Police has confirmed Debs remains a “person of interest’’ in a September 1994 shooting involving his then underling, Jason Ghiller.
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Sergeant Allan Beckwith and Constable Jason Bryant had pulled over a Nissan Bluebird driven by Ghiller in an industrial back block of Hallam.
Ghiller’s passenger fired three shots at the police officers before the suspects made their getaway.
Ghiller, the nephew of Debs’s wife, was ultimately convicted nine years later of reckless conduct endangering the police officers’ lives.
In 1998, four years after the shooting, Debs murdered Sergeant Gary Silk and Senior Constable Rod Miller in Cochranes Rd, Moorabbin.
Debs was in a car the two officers had pulled over. The officers were taking part in an operation to find two bandits who were holding up restaurants across southeast Melbourne.
Debs was convicted of their murders, and jailed for life. Despite suspicions he committed armed robberies and murders before his earliest known killing in 1995, the 1994 shooting is the only unsolved case Victorian police have been able to link to Debs.
Police sources have described Debs as a “live’’ suspect for the Hallam shooting.
The Herald Sun does not know whether police have established any further leads, but the case remains open.
Last year, Victoria Police said it had investigated information on “several high-profile unsolved homicide cold cases’’, but could not substantiate a link to Debs.
However, police said: “One non-homicide matter has been identified that links Debs with a non-fatal shooting incident several years prior to the Silk-Miller murder.
“Debs remains a person of interest in relation to a shooting in Hallam where shots were fired at police.’’
Ghiller was jailed for 10 years for the Hallam shooting and robberies the sentencing judge said were “strikingly similar” to the robberies Debs later committed, and which led to the Silk-Miller slayings.
Justice Philip Cummins recounted how, after police pulled Ghiller’s car over, “Sgt Beckwith opened the passenger door and started to get out”.
“As he did he looked up and saw that the passenger had already got out of the Nissan and was aiming a handgun straight at him and fired at him. The sergeant threw himself back towards the seat. Two further shots were fired at the vehicle.”
Police returned fire at the Nissan and gave chase, but the suspects escaped.
The Supreme Court heard Ghiller told undercover police officers that Debs had been the shooter and his co-offender in the robberies. But Debs was not charged because of a lack of admissible evidence.
After Debs was convicted of the Silk-Miller murders, his DNA led to his conviction for the murders of two women: teenager Kristy Harty, who was shot in the head in Upper Beaconsfield in June 1997; and NSW sex worker Donna Hicks, who was shot dead in western Sydney in April 1995.
Debs, a life prisoner inside NSW’s Goulburn maximum-security prison, has never confessed to any crime. But the Herald Sun understands Debs is interested in being moved back to a Victorian prison.
His criminal underling in 1998 — his daughter’s boyfriend, Jason Roberts — was also convicted of the Silk-Miller slayings.