Case of chef who cooked ‘partner’ shocks Australia

DPA/Sydney The case of a chef who dismembered and cooked the body of his wife was gripping Australia, with fresh revelations yesterday that she was a transgender prostitute supporting her family in Indonesia. The case began on Saturday when police were called to an apartment block in Brisbane by neighbours complaining of a bad smell coming from a ground floor apartment. When police knocked on the door it was opened by Marcus Peter Volke, 28, who immediately turned and ran, escaping over a balcony, reports said. Police found the dismembered body of Mayang Prasetyo on the kitchen floor with pots on the stove cooking body parts, media reports said. Authorities have not yet commented on those reports. Police later found Volke’s body in a garbage skip, apparently after committing suicide with a knife. More details of the shocking case emerged over the next few days. The Brisbane Courier-Mail reported yesterday that Volke had married Prasetyo overseas last year after they met working on a cruise ship. The paper said the victim was a “high-end” prostitute advertising her services online as a “top high-class Asian shemale.” The newspaper said Prasetyo’s mother in Lampung, Indonesia, described the victim, a son she called Febri, as the family’s breadwinner who sent money home regularly for herself and her two daughters, aged 18 and 15. “He put the sisters through school,” Nining Sukarni said. Prasetyo was described as friendly and popular among neighbours and tributes have flooded in for her on social media where she had posted glamorous photos of herself. Volke frequently spoke out against violence towards women on his Facebook site. Police were investigating Volke’s background but had reportedly found no record of mental illness or sign of illegal drug usage.