A woman who was brutally hacked to death by her husband in
a tragic murder-suicide in Brisbane has been identified as Indonesian
transsexual Mayang Prasetyo. Parts of the 27-year-old's body were found
strewn across a Teneriffe apartment - in the Queensland capital's inner-city -
and some had been cooked up by her chef husband, Marcus Peter Volke, on a
stove. Volke, 28, slit his own throat soon after fleeing police when they
knocked on the door of the couple's home after receiving complaints of a bad
smell on Saturday night.
Ms Prasetyo's family back in Indonesia were said to be
devastated by her death, 9News reported.
According to Volke's Facebook page, the pair have been
engaged since August last year but a friend of Ms Prasetyo's said they were
married around late November or early December.
An old school friend - who did not wish to be named - told
Daily Mail Australia Ms Prasetyo and Volke came to visit him in Germany for
their honeymoon.
He said
the couple seemed 'very happy' when he saw them together in December. 'Volke
was a bit of a shy guy. He didn't talk too much,' the friend - who met Ms
Prasetyo in 2009 when they studied German together at the Goethe institute in
Indonesian city Surabaya - told Daily Mail Australia. 'Mayang is nice and kind
girl too. She liked travelling.' Daily Mail Australia can also reveal Ms
Prasetyo had previously advertised herself as a high-class, transsexual escort
on a British online classifieds website.
In an advertisement on the U.K.
version of Backpage - a site similar to Gumtree - posted back in March 2013,
the transsexual wrote she was a first-timer in London who was 'busty' and
'extra hot in bed' with a 'big banana'. More recently, Ms Prasetyo advertised
on the same website for the Teneriffe area, charging $200 for half an hour to
$500 an hour for her 'top high class international' services as a 'shemale'
escort. 'Anyone need some hot pleasure, I am here ready to bring you to high
level,' the ad said. Police discovered body parts
belonging to his Indonesian girlfriend boiling in chemicals and in plastic bags
strewn across the apartment on Saturday,The Courier Mail reported. The grisly death is being treated as
a murder-suicide after police found Volke's body in a wheelie bin in a street
next to the complex shortly after the dismembered body was found.
Volke reportedly fled the scene by
jumping over a balcony after police knocked on the door of the Commercial Road
apartment complex on Saturday night. He had tried to dispose of his
girlfriend's remains by using an oven but called an electrician to the
apartment after his oven failed, according to 9News. When the tradesman showed up he
noted that the carpet made a squelching noise as he walked across it. Managers of the recently-constructed
complex raised the alarm on Saturday after reporting the couple who lived at
the apartment had not been seen for several days. Authorities could not say how long
the woman had been dead, but neighbours say a 'rotting meat' smell had surfaced
in the days before the grisly discovery.
The man's family have been left
shocked by the incident, saying the couple had a loving relationship. 'They were happy. They were always
together,' cousin Troy Volke told 9News. Volke grew up in Ballarat with three
other siblings and trained in martial arts at his parents' business, Kyokushin
Karate.
The man's mother, Dorothy Volke,
told The Courier Mail on Sunday she had spoken with her
son just a week before and he seemed normal. 'He was happy and he was coming home
for Christmas, everything was normal,' she told the newspaper. Mrs Volke said her 28-year-old son
had only recently settled in Brisbane with his girlfriend after both working on
international cruise ships as chefs. 'He'd been on a ship, going from one
country to another. They hadn't been in Brisbane for very long, only a few
months. They were starting to get settled. I don't know what was going on... we
hadn't seen him for a year-and-a-half,' she said. Police reportedly told Mrs Volke
they still had to identify his body with dental records and an autopsy.
Alex Reichart and Courtney
Thoresen-Reichart, who moved into the complex just six weeks ago, told Fairfax Media on Sunday there had been a
'rotting meat' smell in the building in recent days. 'I smelled something a few days ago,
but we've had sewerage problems through the building over the past few weeks,
which building managers have been trying to solve,' she said. 'It smelled like off dog food, so I
just thought someone had either been feeding their animal, or the dog had made
a mess.' On Sunday, Dath St resident Ryan
Lane told The Courier Mail: 'I came outside and there
were probably about 10 or so cop cars out here, and they wheeled one of our
wheelie bins outside.' 'I saw them, there were about 15
cops with their guns drawn and then they tipped the bin over and the guy came
rolling out covered in blood. 'The guys who live upstairs from us
said the police were giving CPR to him.' Investigations into the
circumstances surrounding the discovery of human remains inside the unit remain
ongoing.