Bandali Debs: Smooth operator, psychopath, serial killer

As a young man, Bandali Debs was a smooth operator but friends soon caught glimpses of the psychopath who became a serial killer.

The many faces of Bandali Debs.

When “Joe” became “Ben”, it was as if Jekyll became Hyde.

And the woman who knew both sides of him, sex worker Marion King*, sensed her life was in danger.

Bandali Debs, had moved himself into King’s Prahran apartment in 1977, then raped her and allegedly killed a man in front of her.

King knew too much about “Benny” – enough for her to fear he would kill her.

It caused her to stop working the streets in St Kilda and never look back.

Then in 1995, nearly two decades after the pair’s paths had crossed, King felt obliged to call police.

The skeletal remains of her former friend, Adele Bailey, had been found down an old mineshaft 17 years after she had gone missing.

By then King had a career, a husband, a new name, a whole new life.

But she still knew things from the past no one else could.

King phoned police anonymously and told them she had briefly lived with Bailey in 1977, the year before her friend had vanished.

She was one of the Maori trans women who congregated at Bailey’s Elwood flat in Scott St

that King had flown into Tullamarine from New Zealand on February 4, 1977.

Bandali Debs called himself Joe and Benny but was known to friends as a smooth operator.

She had met up with Bailey who gave her an open invitation to “come and see her” at her Elwood flat.

And it was there that Bailey introduced King to “Joe’’.

“I think she had a physical relationship with Joe because of the way they acted together, but I don’t know for sure,’’ King told police.

“He was (a) very friendly, nice looking guy, who would come and visit me from time to time.”

Joe was smooth, talkative and interested.

“He also didn’t drink or take drugs and the girls felt they knew him,” King said.

“All I knew about Joe at this time was that he came from Sydney.

“He got to know all of us in the flat and everyone liked him.’’

The other thing that distinguished Joe was the unusual van he owned called “Bongi’’.

It was the type of van a newspaper delivery man would own.

The van would become significant in corroborating witnesses memories of Debs at the time.

The evil lurking inside Bandali “Ben’’ Debs showed itself to King soon after she rented a flat in Prahran.

King planned to live there alone but Joe freeloaded the day after she moved in.

“I had no objections at the time because it wasn’t until after he made himself comfortable that things turned really bad,” King said.

A car similar to the ‘Bongo’ van Bandali Debs drove.

“He didn’t actually ask to move in, he just did. I thought he was a physically attractive man, but I knew he was getting about with the girls, so I didn’t really want to get involved with him in a physical way.

“He was a bit of a sl-t.’’

King knew Joe was especially keen on one girl, Marsha, “who was in drag’’, and who people referred to as his girlfriend.

It took about a month for Joe to emerge as Ben and Jekyll became Hyde.

“I came home after working one night and Joe wanted to have his way with me,” King told police.

“I said, ‘No piss off I’m tired’.”

King said Debs then dragged her into the bathroom, slapped her, held his hand on her throat and threatened her with a razor before raping her.

“I’ll cut your f--king throat if you don’t do what I want,’’ she alleged Debs said.

“Benny gets what Benny wants.’’

It was a phrase he would repeat.

King’s information to police about Debs, whom she described as an “animal’’, would spark an off-the-books homicide probe.

She said she had witnessed Debs shoot a mystery man dead inside the Prahran flat.

“They were about two arm lengths away from me as I walked in and within about 30 seconds of me entering the flat, Joe pulled out a gun and shot the guy in the head at point blank range,’’ King told police.

“He pulled the gun out from somewhere on his front and had it in his right hand when he shot the guy.

Adele Bailey’s body was found down a mineshaft 17 years after she vanished.

Bailey’s friends say she knew Debs and he was part of their circle.

“The shot was just right between the eyes, just above the eyebrows.

“The guy just slumped to the ground and Joe just looked at me and then picked the guy up and put him over his shoulder and left.’’

Debs allegedly threw the man’s body into the ‘Bongo’’ van and drove away, returning hours later.

Operation Trencher, established in 2003, searched tirelessly for the van but could not find Debs’ vehicle.

They did, however, find a record of a Bongo van being registered to Debs.

They also searched missing persons files and came up with a potential match close to King’s description of the shooting victim, but could never prove a murder took place.

King said at the time she believed, as the only witness, she would be next to die.

And that her and Debs never spoke about the fatal shooting.

But it solidified King’s belief he was a psychopath.

King also told police Debs would push the sex workers for money.

“I think Joe was trying to run prostitution in St Kilda,” she said.

“The reason I say this is that he used to just come up to me on the street and grab my bag and take money from my purse.

“He wouldn’t ask, he would just take.”

Debs picked up Kristy Harty from the side of the road and shot her in the head.

Debs killed Donna Hicks and dumped her naked body at a quarry.

Debs was proud of his Lebanese father and boasted that he lived in a “big house’’ in Sydney.

He also had a brother, Robert Rutherford, who also stayed in King’s rented flat.

Rutherford would soon date another trans sex worker known to the group, Krystal*.

But the longer Debs stayed at the Prahran flat the more Joe became his true self.

“Joe had a handgun, which was sort of silvery black in colour,” King said.

“He didn’t make an effort to hide it from me.

“A couple of times he left it on the bedside table.’’

Although King knew the Joe and Benny sides to her flatmate, she didn’t know his true identity until she rifled through the Bongo van’s glovebox.

Debs had parked the car in Fitzroy St, St Kilda, and left King in the car while he met with someone.

“I opened up the glovebox and I found a passport in there and the name in it was Bandali Michael DEBB (sic),’’ she said.

“I also looked at the photo and it was Joe.”

“I was very nervous about fishing around in his glovebox as he had shown his violent side. I have always remembered that name because it was a different kind of name.’’

King also talked of aimless trips the pair would make to the country, which roused the interests of police.

On at least two occasions Debs took King on long drives along the Old Princes Hwy.

They drove east of Sale and stopped by a “dried up lake’’ on one occasion.

“Joe got out of the car and he was just walking around and looking,’’ she said.

Debs is now serving life without parole over four murders.

On another occasion she remembered being taken to another remote area near Berwick.

Debs would spend at least 10 to 15 minutes walking the area before returning to Melbourne.

It has been speculated Debs, by then in his mid-20s, was scouting for burial grounds.

King eventually abandoned her flat and fled.

She never saw Debs again until images were printed in the newspapers and flashed on the nightly news.

On July 25, 2000, Debs was arrested for killing two police officers.

King instantly recognised him.

“When Bandali’s name appeared in the media I recognised his name, I also saw some of the pictures of him and even though he looked older and fatter, he still looked the same,” she said.

“I could recognise the shape of his nose.’’

It was no surprise it had ended for Debs like this.

King then thought of her old friend, Adele Bailey.

“He was on the streets way back then and my concern was that I thought he might have been involved in her disappearance and/or murder because I had seen him murder someone with my own eyes.

“I was pretty sure he was involved with Adele in a relationship and I thought by ringing the police and giving them the information … it may lead to solving Adele’s disappearance.’’

King’s belief that Debs was unpredictably violent had been horrifically borne out in the years she was off starting her new life.

In 1995 Sydney sex worker Donna Hicks, a mother of three, had been shot by Debs and her naked body dumped at a quarry.

In June 1997, Debs killed 18-year-old Kristy Harty after he picked her up on the Old Princes Hwy, the very road he used to travel with King.

He took Ms Harty to a bush track in Upper Beaconsfield, had unprotected sex with her, then shot the teen in the back of the head with his .357 magnum.

Debs recently said he felt nothing and the murder “just happened”.

It was not far from where King describes a location where he took her in the back blocks of Berwick in 1977.

In August 1998, he would kill for the last time when he shot police officers Sergeant Gary Silk and Senior Constable Rod Miller, propelling himself back into King’s life.

*name changed to protect anonymity