Adele Bailey
Age 2312 Sep 1978
Bonnie Doon, Victoria (Australia)
Shot
TDoR list ref: tdor.info/1984/Adele Bailey
Adele's body was found in a mineshaft in Bonnie Doon in 1995. She was Maori, and had been missing since 1978.
Evidence suggests that a police officer was responsible for her murder, and that his colleagues helped him to dispose of her body.
Adele had surgery in Egypt in 1976. Probably that was at the clinic of Hirschfeld's colleague Ludwig Levy-Lenz who fled from the Nazis and started a practice there in 1939, although Levy-Lenz had died earlier.
Adele worked as a prostitute in St Kilda, Melbourne, where she was arrested by police detective Denis Tanner.
In 1978 she moved to Bonnie Doon, 115 km away. She wrote to her sister that she was having an affair with Denis Tanner, and that she was afraid about a court case where she was to give evidence against an undercover policeman. She then disappeared.
In 1995, seventeen years after her disappearance, Adele’s skeleton was found in a deserted mineshaft near Tanner’s property. Later the same year, [Jennifer] Tanner’s farmhouse was burnt down. The police and others assumed a link between the two killings [the other being that of his sister-in-law, Jennifer Tanner on 14th November 1984], and Denis Tanner was the only person who knew both women.
In 2010, 32 years after the murder of Adele, there was a breakthrough in the investigation. Evidence was given to the Office of Police Integrity that Adele was at a party with several police officers and performed sex on one of them (not Denis Tanner). He later that evening found out that she was transsexual, went berserk and beat her to death. The other officers present covered it up.
NEW EVIDENCE IMPLICATES SEVERAL FORMER POLICE OFFICERS IN ADELE BAILEY MURDER
THE 32-year mystery over the murder of transsexual prostitute Adele Bailey has taken a dramatic twist, with explosive new evidence implicating several former officers being given to the Office of Police Integrity. OPI investigators have been told the alleged killer is an ex-detective with strong links to serving senior members of Victoria Police.
Previously named suspect Denis Tanner is not the former officer identified in the new information.
But Mr Tanner has allegedly known the new suspect since before Ms Bailey died in 1978.
Detectives who interviewed Mr Tanner after Ms Bailey's body was found near a Tanner family property in 1995 accused him of helping to dispose of the body.
Timeline:
May 14, 1978. Denis Tanner arrested and charged transsexual prostitute Adele Bailey during a blitz on street hookers in St Kilda.
September 12, 1978. Evidence gathered years later suggested this was most likely the day Ms Bailey, 23, was murdered.
September 21, 1978. Ms Bailey failed to appear in court and a warrant was issued for her arrest.
November 14, 1984. Denis Tanner's sister-in-law Jennifer died from two gunshot wounds to the head at her Bonnie Doon home.
October 18, 1985. Coroner Hugh Adams recorded open finding at the first Jennifer Tanner inquest, despite claims by some police that she committed suicide.
July 20, 1995. Ms Bailey's body found in Bonnie Doon mineshaft near Tanner family property.
In August 2022 information emerged suggesting that Adele may actually have been the victim of the serial killer Bandali Debs.
A lead has been revealed in the decades-old cold case of trans woman Adele Bailey found dead at the bottom of a mineshaft, with detectives reportedly ignoring the tip-off at the time.
Bailey, a trans woman and sex worker living near Melbourne, Australia, went missing in 1978. In 1995, 17 years later, her body was discovered by two men exploring the “Jack of Clubs” mineshaft in the tiny Victoria town of Bonnie Doone.
According to Daily Mail Australia, during the initial investigation into her death – named Operation Kale – police identified a police officer named Denis Tanner as the prime suspect.
Tanner – who lived near the mineshaft and whose sister-in-law had previously been found dead at the site under suspicious circumstances – had arrested Bailey during a crackdown on sex work in the area prior to her disappearance.
However, there was never enough evidence to charge Tanner, and no one has ever been arrested or convicted in relation to Bailey’s death.
Now, The Herald Sun has unearthed police “information reports” which show officers were given a tip-off linking Adele Bailey’s death to serial killer Bandali Debs.
In 1995, after her body was discovered, Bailey’s friend spoke to police on two consecutive days tipping them off to a possible connection with Debs. At the time he had not been arrested but Debs, now 68, would go on to be sentenced in 2003 to four consecutive life sentences plus 27 years without parole for the murder of two sex workers and two police officers in the 1990s.
The friend said both she and Bailey had known a man named “Joe”, who she later identified as Debs. When interviewed by police, she alleged she had been raped by Debs, that she had once seen him shoot someone in the head, and also that Debs and Bailey had had a sexual relationship.
The Herald Sun reported the friend told detectives: “I think she had a physical relationship with Joe because of the way they acted together, but I don’t know for sure.”. According to the publication’s investigation, the tip-off was dismissed.
Source: The Age, Melbourne, Australia, July 4, 1998
https://www.theage.com.au/national/no-new-twists-in-the-tanner-tale-20030225-gdva4y.html
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2005/s1481896.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/stories/s777248.htm
http://www.writerscafe.org/writing/ruayano111/1988226/
https://zagria.blogspot.com/2009/01/adele-bailey-1955-1978-murdered.html
https://www.theage.com.au/national/copper-in-trouble-20030225-gdva4i.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20130325000139/http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/stories/s27850.htm
https://twitter.com/theheraldsun/status/1554316061096300546
http://students673.ucr.edu/docsserver/lgbt/trans_remembrance_display_posters.pdf
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10_JeZ7LEIRhvewTCoL5mVkH6MQJzf7fSXl4-P6QJ0v0/edit#gid=0
