August 11, 1994 began as a calm and clear day for Australian fisherman Mark Peterson. He sailed in his Lady Marion boat on the Hawkesbury River, north of Sydney, enjoying the pleasant sunny weather.
When he swam to a place called Challenger Head, he suddenly noticed something voluminous in his nets and at first thought that he was very lucky with the catch. But when he began to untangle the nets, he saw that it was not a fish, but a steel structure in the form of a cross with additional beams, wrapped in plastic bags.
Perplexed, Peterson began to examine one of the bags and felt through it what looked like a large bone. The frightened fisherman did not know if the remains of an animal or a person were inside, but decided to notify the authorities about the find.
Thus began one of the most macabre, mysterious and unsolved murder cases in Australian history.
When the police arrived, they examined the bones in the bag and said they were undoubtedly human bones. Someone crucified a man on a metal cross and then wrapped plastic bags around his body. The partially skeletonized remains of the body were firmly attached to a rusty cruciform structure with wires and ropes.
From the clothes on the skeleton were only torn remains of a polo shirt and trousers, in whose pockets they found only a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. There was nothing else on the body and there was nothing that would help to identify him.
After examining the remains by forensic scientists, it was revealed that the victim is a white male with dark hair, aged 21 to 46 years. He died apparently from a blunt head injury, although it has not been clarified whether he was crucified on the cross before this injury or after.
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The wire firmly tied him to the construction details by his neck, limbs and torso, and the body spent 6 to 12 months in the water. Despite this, the flesh on the hands was preserved, but fingerprints were not obtained, they have already disappeared.
Inspection of the cross gave amazing results - it was the skill of a welder and it is possible that the cross was specially built for this sacrifice. It also proved to be so severe that the police immediately suspected not one killer, but a group.
However, further the matter reached a dead end. Attempts to find out the identity of the victim did not yield anything, in the database of the missing people matching the description were not found, and leaflets with the reconstruction of the victim's face, hung everywhere and shown on TV, also did not lead to anything.
Variants of reconstruction of the victim's face:
Investigators tried to reach out to the victim and her killers, even by examining clothing labels and contacting frame steel manufacturers. But there were still no answers. No one had any idea who the victim was, where it came from and who could have killed her in such an extremely unusual way.
In the media, this case was soon nicknamed "The Rack Man", and theories abounded with versions from the massacre of gangsters to the human victim of a certain Satanist cult.
For decades, police regularly compared the victim's DNA samples with other DNAs, but so far there hasn't been a single match. They also compared the dental prints and body features to those of the missing people, but found no one suitable.
It wasn't until 2018 that the police approached the alleged victim - a man named Max Tansewski, who was known as a gambler. Shortly before his disappearance on January 11, 1993, a large amount of money was withdrawn from his bank account.
According to investigators, Tansevsky could owe someone a large sum and because of this he was killed. But if they took money from his account, why kill him? And is it really for the sake of an ordinary debtor that such a cross is being erected?
There are only a few stubborn facts in this case. This murder was not committed in the heat of the moment, it was carefully prepared for it. It is possible that the victim was tortured before the murder, but there must also be a reason for that. And was there some hidden symbolism in the crucifixion, or was it a special message for someone else?