Revelle Balmain’s final shift as a sex worker was supposed to mark a turning point, allowing her to clear her debts and gather a little extra for her dreams of traveling abroad. However, that night led to her unexplained disappearance.
At the time of the model’s vanishing, the escort agency Select Companions was managed by King and her then-husband, Zoran Stanojevic.
Balmain was last spotted when a client dropped her off at a hotel in Kingsford, located in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, around 7 p.m. that evening.
She was expected at another appointment but never showed up and has been missing ever since.
King recounted that she contacted Balmain’s flatmate the day following her missed engagement.
King said she called the escort’s flatmate the day after she missed the appointment.
“I was worried about her,” she told Lidcombe Coroners Court.
The former madam rejected suggestions by counsel assisting Matthew Johnston SC her primary reason for chasing up the escort was because she owed the business money.
The outstanding funds would have been taken out of what Balmain earned that night, King said.
“It wasn’t a huge amount of money and I didn’t have any reason not to believe her,” she told the inquest.
A missed pager message sent to Balmain the morning after she disappeared read “pls call Zoran to arrange settlement of your account”.
King told the inquest she didn’t remember if she sent the text.
She couldn’t remember what was discussed during a one-minute phone call to Stanojevic about 8pm on the Saturday night that Balmain disappeared.
“I could have been asking him to get me some takeaway or something,” King said.
She denied making any calls from the landline in her two-bedroom apartment to her husband, despite records showing five calls made that night and during the early hours of the following morning.
The former madam said the landline calls would have been diverted to the escort agency’s receptionist, known for legal reasons as Danielle.
King said she had been pregnant at the time and would have been in bed watching TV.
Her husband had returned home the following day with complaints about drama at work after Balmain missed her booking and his vehicle had a flat tyre, King told the inquest.
He told her not to call police as that would alert the model’s family, who did not know she was working as an escort.
“She’ll turn up, don’t worry, she always does,” he allegedly said.
When there had still be no word from the model on Monday, King contacted police.
A previous inquest in 1999 found Balmain had died at the hands of a person or persons unknown and the matter was referred to the Unsolved Homicide Unit.
A fresh investigation between 2007 and 2009 followed by a formal review in 2020 failed to produce any compelling evidence in the case.
Authorities offered a $1 million reward for information in 2021.
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