Mafia and escort bosses named in notorious Revelle Balmain cold case
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A breakthrough has been delivered in one of Australia’s most notorious cold cases.
A coroner investigating the disappearance of 22-year-old Revelle Balmain on Friday exposed the sex worker’s two bosses.
Revelle Balmain’s personal belongings were found strewn across several streets of Kingsford in the days that followed her disappearance. 9News
Handing down inquest findings into the case that has tormented Balmain’s family for more than three decades, NSW Deputy State Coroner Joan Baptie ruled the former model is dead, mirroring the finding of a previous inquest.
However the latest findings went further.
It was Balmain’s former bosses Jane King and Zoran Stanojevic who lied to police, Judge Baptie said.
“The evidence concludes that they either knew who was responsible for Ms Balmain’s disappearance or they themselves were somehow involved,” she found.
The couple ran the illegal escort business Select Companions when they were formerly married.
Both have denied any wrongdoing.
King was a madam and her evidence was “littered” with inconsistencies and untruths, Judge Baptie said.
She also believed Stanojevic lied to police about his whereabouts on November 5, 1994.
That was the night Balmain was last seen.
Jane King and Zoran Stanojevic lied to police, Judge Baptie said. 9News
That evening she had seen a client, Gavin Samers, in Kingsford and he dropped her at a hotel nearby about 7pm.
It was meant to be one of her last jobs as an escort before flying to Japan to work as a dancer.
She had another job at 10pm that day with Stanojevic’s two friends who were involved in the Yugoslavian mafia, according to King.
But Balmain cancelled.
She had other plans to meet up with friends to farewell her that night, although she never showed, a companion said during the inquest.
The friend said she disliked Stanojevic, who she believed was infatuated with Balmain.
Reports from the evening also claim a dark-coloured Holden Commodore was seen in the Kingsford area of Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
A loud skid and the sound of a woman’s scream were heard before the car carrying multiple people sped off.
The witness who saw it noticed someone in the car with “a surfy sort of haircut” because it was different to anyone else’s hair in the car.
Judge Baptie thanked Balmain’s sister Suellen Simpson for her decades of courage and for her vigorous, diligent and unwavering determination to find the truth. 9News
Balmain’s personal belongings were found strewn across several streets of Kingsford in the days that followed.
The items included her birth certificate, diary, bank card, keys and high-heeled clogs decorated with shells.
But much remains unknown about the day surrounding her disappearance and evidence is lacking to refer King and Stanojevic for criminal prosecutions, Judge Baptie said.
She instead referred the matter back to NSW Police’s unsolved homicide detectives, who will continue to probe Balmain’s disappearance.
What is known is that she never arrived to meet her mother Jan, who stood waiting to pick her up at the train station the morning after she was last seen.
Zoran Stanojevic did not comment on the coroner’s findings. 9News
Jan, who had already lost son Matthew when he drowned in the family swimming pool at 15 months, never got the answers about Revelle before dying in 2020.
King, the sex worker agency boss, took part in the inquest and accused her former husband of domestic violence and coercive control.
She said she changed her accounts to the police out of fear of her former husband.
“I was trying to survive … I know I’m not the victim here but I lived a life of terror for so long,” she said.
Stanojevic did not take part in the inquest, although he did take part in the 1999 inquest that found Balmain died at the hands of person or persons unknown.
The case was freshly investigated between 2007 and 2009, and formal reviewed in 2020 – all of which failed to produce any compelling evidence in the case.
Revelle Balmain was working as an escort prior to her disappearance. NSW Police
A $1 million reward remains on offer for information leading to a conviction.
In her closing remarks, Judge Baptie thanked Balmain’s sister Suellen Simpson for her decades of courage and for her vigorous, diligent and unwavering determination to find the truth.
Simpson told the inquest “Revelle didn’t deserve to be murdered”.
“Losing Revelle devastated me – she was my sister, very much loved and held a very special place in our family.”
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