Mystery Rack Man, Body of Murder Victim Tied to Pole
By: Alienworkshop
Tags: Unsloved Mysteries, Mystery, True Crime, Crime, Murder

Mystery Rack Man, Body of Murder Victim Tied to Pole

A murder case is a criminal case that will always attract anyone’s attention. Because there is a challenge when those who investigate the case must find out how the victim was killed and why there are people who can take the lives of victims. It is even more dizzying if the identity of the victim can not be immediately known and the victim killed unnaturally.

That’s the kind of thing that’s the Rack Man case, the case of the discovery of the body of a murder victim in Australia in 1994. The case has still not been solved to this day and was often touted as the most baffling murder case ever committed in Australia.

It all started on August 11, 1994, a local fisherman named Mark Peterson was sailing on his boat on the Hawkesbury River, north of Sydney. The weather looks sunny and at first glance, the day will be no different from the usual days. But that was before Peterson found something underwater that would confuse him.

When Peterson was pulling his way under the water, the net was heavy. At first, Peterson didn’t feel suspicious. Instead, he felt happy and curious because normally, heavy nets indicate that there is a lot of fish caught.

After struggling, Peterson finally managed to pull the net out completely from the water. It was only then that Peterson realized that the object stuck in his path was not a fish or anything like that, but a metal pole shaped like a fishbone or across with a lot of eyes. On the cross pole, there was a large plastic bag attached to the pole.

A bewildered Peterson then decided to take a closer look at what was inside the plastic bag. Then he saw a bone in it. Confused by the discovery, Peterson decided to report his findings to the police.

When the police finally arrived, the police immediately carried out an examination of the bones in the plastic bag. Based on the examination, the police concluded that the bone was a human skeleton bone. According to police, at first, the poor man was tied to a metal pole while covered with plastic, then disowned into the river.

Unable to escape, the man then drowned on the spot. Over time, the body rotted until finally left the skeleton bones tied to the pole. Police also found that while strapped to a pole, the man was wearing a polo shirt and training pants. But other than that, there are no Identity cards or other objects that can be used by the police to identify the victim.

To get more information about the case, the police then took the body to the police station. Based on a more in-depth examination, the victim was identified as a black-haired man and aged between 21 and 46 years old. The victim was known to have died by being hit with a blunt object on his head. After his death, the victim was tied to a pillar and cast into the river.

The victim was thought to have been killed on January 11, 1993, and has been submerged underwater for about a year. Because the victim’s body had been damaged by being too under the sea, police could not analyze the victim’s fingerprints to determine his identity.

An examination was also carried out on a metal pole tied to the victim’s body. Instead of giving a bright spot, the analysis on the metal pole actually makes the police more amazed as well as confused. Because the metal pole was known to be not just ordinary metal bars combined in origin.

Whoever made this metal pole, is known to be very experienced in his field because this metal pole looks very neat. Police even suspected that the metal poles were assembled in such a way as to match the victim’s posture. And because these metal poles are so heavy, the police estimate that the perpetrators did not work alone. But the identity of the perpetrator, his motive for committing murder, and the reasons why he bothered to make metal poles are all still a mystery to the police.

Feeling that their investigation hit a dead end, the police then made a reconstruction of the victim’s face while still alive and published his image to the media. Police hope that if anyone recognizes the victim’s face, then the police can get clues to help solve the case. To attract public interest, the police also promised lucrative prize money.

While waiting for information from those who may know the identity of the victim, police also sought advice from garment factories about the clothes the victim was wearing, as well as to metal experts as to whether they had information about metal poles that were spraining the victim’s body.

Police are also investigating missing person cases while looking for a match with the case. DNA and dental tests were carried out to help uncover the victim’s identity. But again, all these efforts did not succeed in bringing the expected results. Because the victim’s identity was unknown, local media later dubbed the victim by the alias “The Rack Man.”

For more than 20 years everything related to Rack Man has been shrouded in a fog of mystery. But in 2018, the police finally managed to find out the identity of the victim. The victim was known to be Max Tancevski, a 37-year-old man known to have a hobby of gambling.

One of the reasons why police believe Tancevski was the victim’s real identity is because Tancevski was reportedly never seen again after January 11, 1993, the date of the victim’s death. An examination of the victim’s account also found that before he disappeared, Tancevski had withdrawn a large amount of money from his own account.

By looking at these things, the police also estimated that Tancevski was in debt and he withdrew money from his account to pay the debt. But either because the money wasn’t enough or paying the debtor for some other reason, the in debt got angry and then killed Tancevski.

Suppose Tancevski was killed because he couldn’t pay his debts, then why did his body have to be tied to a metal pole of strange shape? If the one who killed Tancevski was a criminal gang, then disposing of his body in such circumstances could be intended as a way to show that if anyone was looking for trouble with the gang, then the person in question will have the same luck as Tancevski.

Some have speculated that Tancevski was killed by a heretical group. If the one who killed Tancevski was indeed them, then that could explain why Tancevski’s body was found in such unnatural conditions that it was part of their ritual beliefs.

Although Rack Man’s identity has been known, the perpetrator of his murder is still unknown until now. The police and the general public can only guess about who committed the murder and what their motives were to commit murder and dispose of the body in this way. Just as Rack Man was hidden underwater and his whereabouts have been unnoticed by the public, the answer to this case seems to still be hidden and will not be solved anytime soon.