Chilling phone call reveals man requested electrician after he cooked wife's body on stove
Mayang Prasetyo was married for a year before her murder
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.A disturbing phone call has recorded the moment a man who had murdered his wife requested an electrician fix the power supply in his apartment, where he had been cooking her body on the stove.
In a gruesome case of domestic violence, chef-turned-escort Marcus Volke killed his wife, Mayang Prasetyo, and tried to dismember the body, but the boiling stove had cut off the power in the apartment.
“G’day, is this a 24 hour electrician?” the 27-year-old can be heard in the October 2014 phone call.
“'Yeah I got a bit of a problem,” Volke continued.
“Um, I was cooking on my stove, it's an electric stove and the stock pot boiled over, dripped down and got into the oven and basically made this big bang and then all the power turned off.
“Does it sound like something you'd be able to fix today?”
When Mr Coyne turned up, Volke warned him about “the smell” and said he was cooking pig’s broth.
The tradesman noted that there were bottles of bleach, rubbish bags and rubber gloves strewn around the apartment.
He restored the power and alerted the building manager, who called the police to carry out a “welfare check”.
After initially acting co-operative with police outside his front door, Volke said he needed to go back inside and secure his dogs.
He then locked himself in, slashed his throat and jumped the garden fence, hiding inside a bin, where he bled to death.
Inside the apartment, authorities thought they had found a sick joke when they saw human feet in a pot on the kitchen floor. They then discovered his wife’s remains inside a rubbish bag.
“Originally I thought it was some sort of sick prank...Halloween or something — when I put two and two together, I realised it wasn't a prank,” Constable Liam McWhinney said at the inquest.
Neighbours said that they had not seen his wife taking their three pugs on a walk for a few days, since they had heard the couple arguing.
Volke told his family he was a cook on cruise ships, but for months he and his wife, an Indonesian pre-operative transgender sex worker, had worked as high-paid escorts and travelled around the world.
The couple lived in Denmark for more than a year, where Volke called himself Heath XL, and described himself as a “young sexy Australian boy, very friendly and easy going, discreet and professional.”
His wife was born as Febri Andriansyah. She had started to transition to a woman in Indonesia before moving to Australia and working as an escort, sending the money to her family at home so that her two younger sisters could go to school.
She married Volke in 2013 in Copenhagen, after Volke asked her mother's permission when they visited Prasetyo’s family.
Volke’s family, who live an 18-hour drive south of Brisbane, were not aware of his wife or how he made his living.
The lengthy investigation into the murder-suicide was carried out by the Queensland Ethical Standards Command, which oversees internal police investigations, and will probe whether the officers who were called to the scene contributed to Volke’s death.
Detective Sergeant Joshua Walsh said that Volke went to a doctor for anxiety, depression and a sleep disorder two weeks before the murder.
The day after the murder, Volke went to hospital for a cut on his hand.
The death of Prasetyo is expected to be an open and shut ruling.
Her relatives are in communication with authorities to organise Prasetyo's remains to be sent to Indonesia for a funeral.
Her mother, Nining Sukarni, told local news that she had spoken to Prasetyo a week before her death and she had said everything was "fine".
"She would have told me if anything was wrong," she said.
The coroner is expected to make a final ruling after a hearing this month.
In Australia, one woman on average is killed every week by a former or current partner, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology.