Brisbane, 2014. A young couple move into a Teneriffe apartment for what’s meant to be a fresh start: new city, new lease, same old money problems. Three weeks later, one of them is dead and the other is about to become a headline.

In this episode we meet 27-year-old Indonesian woman Mayang Prasetyo and her husband, chef Marcus Volke. We follow them through Melbourne’s adult industry, a quick marriage in Denmark, years of drifting between Europe and Asia, and finally into a riverside unit where migration stress, sex work stigma and domestic tension quietly build.

This episode focuses on who they were before the crime — Mayang as a daughter and breadwinner, Marcus as a drifting chef and sex worker — and the hidden dynamics of domestic violence in LGBTI relationships. We end the story on the night neighbours hear a violent argument and a woman’s screams… and then silence.

Content note: Domestic and family violence, transphobia, sex work stigma, dismemberment and suicide.

For support on domestic violence, we have listed some helpful links below:

https://www.dvconnect.org/

https://fullstop.org.au/

https://www.vic.gov.au/family-violence-statewide-support-services?

https://whiteribbon.org.au/helplines/?