Why I desperately want to find Debbie Ashby and close her case

Debbie Ashby may have disappeared over 36 years ago, but her memory lives on, and it drives me. I can’t forget her, writes former police officer Meni Caroutas.

Losing a child is a tragedy no parent should ever have to endure. It’s an experience that can leave lasting emotional scars, causing immense pain and suffering. But when your child goes missing, and you don’t know what happened to them, that is a wound that can never be healed.

As a cop in Kings Cross during the 1980s, I dealt with lots of missing persons cases, mainly teenage runaways who flocked to Sydney’s red light district like moths to a flame.

Few escaped unscathed or alive, and I lost count of how many I found dead at the point of a needle. Countless young lives wasted by the carnage that heroin wreaked back then.

In reality, many of the runaways, especially the young girls were escaping a dreadful home life of abuse and abandonment. They were vulnerable and innocent, and easy targets for any number of predators who trawled the streets, hunting scared young things.

After leaving the police in the early 1990s and beginning a new career as a television journalist, I wanted to highlight missing persons cases. I guess, in a naive way, I wanted to try and save them.

LISTEN TO EPISODE ONE OF THE MISSSING PODCAST BELOW:

Meni Caroutas form The Missing podcast during his time as a police officer.

Debbie Ashby who was last seen leaving her family home at Leumeah in Sydney's west on October 9, 1987. Picture: Supplied

The first case I reported on was a 16 year old girl named Debbie Ashby, who vanished on October 9, 1987. Debbie’s case lit a fire within me, and inspired me to do what I do.

Debbie vanished from her family home in Leumeah, in Sydney’s south west, two days after her 16th birthday. I vividly remember going to the Ashby house to interview Debbie’s mum Mary, father Tony, and older sisters Hayley and Mechelle.

LISTEN TO MENI’S THEORY ON WHAT HAPPENED TO DEBBIE:

Unlike many of the kids in Kings Cross, Debbie came from a loving family, who were devastated when she disappeared, and who continued to search for her year after year.

At the time, Mary, Debbie’s mother, showed me a large display board of Debbie’s photos that she travelled around New South Wales with, stopping at Shopping Centres to seek information about her missing daughter.

I went home that day consumed by the desperation and helplessness of the Ashby family. I sensed that each day for them was an emotional form of torture, that never gets easy. Things like that are hard to forget.

In the days after the interviews, I drove to Kings Cross with a photo of Debbie I cut from a newspaper, and starting on one side of Darlinghurst Road, I walked up and down stopping at every club, bar and business, showing the photo to see if anyone recognised Debbie.

Debbie Ashby with her family. Picture: Supplied

I also spoke to the Detectives I used to work with and gave them a photo of Debbie so they could keep a look out for her.

One night, an old informant of mine rang me convinced Debbie was working in a club called Porky’s. I jumped out of bed and raced into Kings Cross full of hope, but it wasn’t Debbie.

For more than 30 years Debbie’s case has stayed with me, and I’ve thought of her and her family often. I have two daughters; I thought of Debbie when they were born and it frightened me.

Whenever I hear of human remains being discovered, I think of Debbie’s mother Mary, and the rollercoaster of emotions she would be feeling; asking herself, “Is it Debbie?”

I recently caught up with Mary for The Missing Podcast, and I asked her if time heals. “No it doesn’t. Definitely doesn’t,” she replied before breaking down in tears.

Debbie Ashby may have disappeared over 36 years ago, but her memory lives on, and it drives me. I can’t forget her, and I’ll keep fighting to find Debbie, and bring her home to her family.

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Originally published as Why I desperately want to find Debbie Ashby and close her case