Debbie Malone is a psychic detective. She helps police find dead bodies.

Debbie Malone knows where Lyn Dawson's body is. Or at least was.

She knows the mother-of-two, whose killer was convicted of her 1982 murder just last year, was buried at the very rear of number two Gilwinga Drive, Bayview, in Sydney. 

She knows it wasn't near the pool where police have long concentrated their search. It was further back, near the big rock, in a place police still haven't properly investigated.

"I don't know if she's there now though, because they have developed... he's also built retaining walls. But there was a big rock, and she showed me that," Debbie told Mamamia's podcast True Crime Conversations.

Listen to my entire chat with Debbie. Post continues after podcast.

She means Lyn showed her that. In a vision. 

You see, Debbie is a psychic, and before you click out of this article rolling your eyes, even the police believe her. In fact, she works alongside them.

In the case of Lyn Dawson, Debbie was put in touch with former New South Wales Detective Sergeant Damian Loone, who was in charge of the case at the time. He invited her to the house and her evidence was recorded, but before they could return with the dog squad to search the area she had identified, Loone was transferred to another department. 

Although Lyn's killer is now behind bars, her body has never been recovered. 

Lynette Dawson. Image: NSW Police.

The first case Debbie helped with was the backpacker murders by serial killer Ivan Milat in the late 80s and early 90s. She started getting visions through his eyes. 

"I didn't know who he was at that stage. But I would see him taking the two English backpackers. So I saw him behind them. I saw him with a gun, then I would become the girls and I would feel terrified and I'd be wanting to run away," she explained. 

Then she started seeing other victims before they were released in the media.

One of her friends, a police officer, put her in touch with the detectives on the case and at first, she received a grilling.

"[They asked] 'have you had any mental health issues?' 'What's your medical history?' 'Are you a psychic?' And I said, 'I don't know.' And then after some time, they ended up assigning two detectives to me and I would just record all of my visions."

In that case, Debbie says she was a puzzle piece that helped police get to their man. She helped unscramble some of the clues for them and from there she has gone on to work alongside police officers across the country and around the world.

Debbie has had the ability to see the spirit world since she was a baby, she just didn't know what it was as a child. She credits several near-death experiences throughout her life for helping her to enhance her psychic abilities. 

In the decades since the Milat case, Debbie has been able to better hone her skill - although she did spend a considerable amount of time trying to 'turn it off.'

"I tried everything. I went to a learning circle to learn to shut it down, but then it made it worse. So I just decided that you can't beat them join them," she told True Crime Conversations.

She decided to continue using her abilities to help in the crime space, and learnt how to do psychometry or 'soul reading' which is where you hold an item and become the victim, or the witness, or whoever the item belonged to.

"It's like watching TV... like watching a vision through your hands," said Debbie.

"Sometimes, it's like I pop into it. So I'm actually there... sometimes when I'm on a crime scene, I'll see it when it's all been cleaned up. And you know, it might have even been renovated, but I can actually be standing there and it'll take me back in time and I can be seeing the murderer do the crime. I can also be the victim being murdered or raped or stabbed."

Of course not all police are believers in her work.

"Some officers have been extremely wonderful, and some have been extremely rude," she said. 

"One asked me to go and work on a case down in Young, but he said to me 'if I found the body, then he was going to arrest me because I must have done it' because I would have to have known where it was. So I didn't bother going."

Debbie does all of her police work pro-bono. She does it to help bring families closure, and she continues to have relationships with many of the loved ones she's helped over the years. 

When six-year-old Kiesha Weippeart went missing in 2010, she initially worked with the little girl's extended family members. They gave her Kiesha's Dora the Explorer bucket hat to channel and from the moment she touched it Debbie says, "I started to see the dreadful life that poor little girl had".

Kiesha was murdered by her mother and stepfather, after suffering horrific abuse in their care. Her body was found in bushland in Sydney's west the following year.

Kiesha Weippeart. Image: NSW Police.

Debbie was invited to work alongside the dog squad as they searched for the little girl's body.

"I would tune in through Google Maps and they'd be on location and I'd be sort of telling them what I was seeing. I was getting all different things; I could smell bushfire - like burning. I felt there were BMX bike tracks near where she was, I could see big power lines, and I wasn't sure if it was a suitcase or a bag, but I felt like she was all scrunched up," she explained.

Kiesha's body was eventually found inside a suitcase that had been set alight and buried. Debbie's visions helped police find their mark. 

Debbie says we all have psychic abilities, it's just that some of us are better at channelling them than others. But songs, smells and taste are all ways to connect with those who've passed on.

"So sometimes we might have what's called clairalience, and that's when we smell something. So we might smell someone's aftershave or their deodorant or their perfume or their hairspray. That's part of our psychic abilities, that's them connecting with you," she told True Crime Conversations.

After Debbie has worked on a case, the spirits sometimes stay with her for a while. Chris Noble - who was killed in his Sydney apartment in a deliberately lit fire in 2014 - hung around for many years, for example. 

He loved watches. So whenever Debbie would walk past a watch shop, there he would be, pointing out his favourite one in the display.

But Debbie wants us to know that once someone dies, any pain they feel is usually just reserved for those of us left on Earth.

She says when spirits become Earthbound, it's usually because they want their story told or the truth to come out, so they'll, "hang around for that side of it. But they're not feeling that pain anymore when they are passed, it's more the suffering they see their families go through".

In the future, Debbie is hopeful Australia will become more accepting of psychics and the assistance they can offer in solving crime.

In the case of missing three-year-old William Tyrrell, for example, she "got a little bit of information" but she knew that the police officers on that case weren't open to psychics so, "there was no point me putting energy into something that wasn't going to be listened to".

She prefers to lean into the cases where she can actually make a difference, and recently has been assisting with some crimes in Canada. 

"I think we are behind in Australia," she said. 

"Because in the States and in England and even in Europe, they use psychics all the time. And I think it's just being open-minded. It's not thinking that the 'woo woo' or the psychic sort of stuff is going to solve it all. It's a matter of using it as a tool." 

Feature image: Mamamia/NSW Police.