Episode Details

The Rack Man - Australian True Crime - Unsolved Mystery

In August 1994, a squid fisherman trawling the lower Hawkesbury River, north of Sydney, pulled a steel crucifix from nine metres below the surface. Strapped to it were the remains of a man.

For twenty-four years, the man had no name. An open coronial verdict. A hundred thousand dollar reward nobody claimed. A forensic reconstruction of a face that matched no one in any database.

This episode covers the discovery, the forensic investigation, the long cold-case years, and the theories that have surrounded this case for three decades.

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Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay

Sources:

• Australian Missing Persons Register — Max Tancevski: australianmissingpersonsregister.com/ampr/Tancevski.html 
• Dictionary of Sydney — "John Doe 1994" by Darrienne Wyndham (2021): dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/john_doe_1994
• Coffs Coast Advocate — "Crucified body identified" (August 2018): coffscoastadvocate.com.au
• Strange Remains — "Who killed Australia's Rack Man?" (October 2015): strangeremains.com
• Justine Ford, Unsolved Australia, Macmillan Publishing, 2015 — Chapter: "Who Was the Rack Man?" pp. 115–123
• Cold Case Australia — "Who is the mystery man found in the Hawkesbury, tied to a crucifix?" (January 2019): coldcaseaustralia.home.blog