by Damilola Jagun

An Australian chef, Marcus Volke, killed his girlfriend, chopped her and boiled parts of her body, and slashed his throat when police tried to arrest him.

The Chef’s victim is an Indonesian woman, Mayang Prasetyo.

Police had visited his apartment in Brisbane on the night of Saturday, 4 October, after other residents in the building complained of a nauseating rotting meat smell.

When the officers arrived, 28-year-old Volke fled through a glass door, leapt over a balcony and hid in an alleyway, where he slashed his throat in a refuse bin.

The officers would find body parts of Volke’s girlfriend in a pot on the stove, while other parts of the Indonesian woman’s dismembered body were found in garbage bins outside the apartment.

According to his mother, Volke had met Mayang while they were both working on international cruise ships, and had only recently returned to Australia. “He was happy and he was coming home for Christmas, everything was normal,” said Dorothy Volke.

A resident of the area, Courtney Reichart told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that she first noticed the smell on Wednesday and it got worse each day.

She said, “On Saturday when I came out for a walk, it made your eyes water, it made you want to be sick. The smell it was like as if somebody had put out some dog food or red meat and left it out for a few days.”

“It makes you feel sick that that poor girl sat there for however many days and we’ve been walking past, living our lives and thinking ‘hmmm what’s that smell’, but you don’t put two and two together. You don’t think that a bad smell equals a murder.”

Reichart also said she had met the couple a number of times, and that they were a “normal couple” and the girlfriend was “gorgeous”.

Kolapo Olapoju