Hmm, I tried to circumvent the above problem by making my own .deb file with checkinstall to replace the one from the repository while keeping the dependency of Panda3D from complaining.
Not sure if I did it all correctly, but it looks fine from my side. The difference seems to be that the libode1.so.x files reside in usr/local/lib and I am not sure if that is where Panda also looks.
But the bigger problem seems to be that when I compile ODE 0.12 or 0.13 it always gives me a libode1.so.3 while Panda3D asks for a libode1.so.1 specifically and refuses to run without it.
I tried symlinking the .so.3 to a .so.1 file in the above directory, but no difference. But I am really not sure if I did everything correctly.