The Crimes of Mark Rust | Forensic Investigators | Australian Crime Documentary #crimestories

[Music] a handwritten note on a scrappy piece of paper would lead police to a murder site and a two-year investigation to find the killer along the way another woman would die and three families would be torn apart forever [Music] why has he done that how could he have done that the more we tried to find out who she was the less information we were getting [Music] ability of a particular piece of evidence to show that one person is responsible is highly specific we really didn't have any idea as to who might have been the offender I was quite convinced by that time that I needed to contact the police well I can't really find the words to describes how bad it makes you feel it's it's a dreadful feeling the question that we were asking ourselves was the offender keeping an eye on the police investigation all I wanted to know is how the Killer looks like I think that this is going to be a suspicious one foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] the first few weeks of April 1999 were a busy time for police in Adelaide one of the biggest events on the car racing calendar was on and thousands of people from around Australia flocked to the capital as crowds began to dwindle to police officers hoped their shift would be a little more routine but it wasn't to be the patrol officers found a note on the windscreen and this note directed them to the old paint and pulley station and that they may find the body of a woman there and that it was no joke they immediately it went down and in the bushes they did in fact find the body of a young woman it looked like the body had been there for some time because it was in an advanced state of decomposition tonight a body dumped at an old police station but unnoticed for days the grizzly Discovery was made just before 11 last night the woman's badly decomposed body was partially hidden by bushes in the front yard of the old station police say she'd been murdered because of the arrangement of the clothing her jeans had been pulled down and her panties had also been removed there was a distinct suggestion that there had been some sexual offense committed prior to her death [Music] when you go to a scene basically what the investigating police want to know is the manner of death and when I looked at that case it was immediately apparent that it was a homicide they were dealing with it was a sexual assault homicide from behind and the reason I say that is the upper clothing that remained on the body included a quilted shirt and the Quilted shirt had been Twisted tightly around the neck and that indicated that the cause of death was strangulation by her own clothing strangulation by ligature apart from how just needed answers to two questions who the victim was and could they get any estimate on when she died Pathologists are quite good at identifying intervals since death in that first 24 hours but in this case the death was obviously a long time before that the body was heavily infested with various forms of insect activity so I knew that I couldn't help them I knew it was important but I couldn't help them so I asked them to get an entomologist out of the seat establishing the time of death is critical and on this particular occasion there were maggots on the body which is a rather gruesome part of any murder investigation but from a scientific and forensic point of view the maggots can determine pretty much the exact time of death when I took the maggots that I'd collected from the murder victim's body back to the laboratory I went about in the first place identifying the species of flies that they represented to determine how long I thought those maggots had been in the body of the victim based on the likely temperature conditions that the maggots had experienced the warmer it is the quicker maggots will develop so here are related Bond temperatures from the body as well as temperatures from the Bureau of meteorology about the weather conditions in the area during the likely time that the body had been lying there I estimated that the body had become Infested by flies sometime during the morning of the 13th of April it meant that the victim had been murdered the night before on Monday the 12th of April some five days before her body was found [Music] with regard to who the deceased was she had no personal effects we didn't know other than the fact that she was obviously a young adult female with blonde hair we didn't know who she was but when I did the postmortem she had three missing teeth in the upper jaw and she had a number of gold Restorations and they were sufficiently odd that they would identify the deceased providing someone reported her missing the victim is described as approximately uh 162 centimeters five foot four inches tall she had shoulder length fear hair there were a number of females reported missing and similar in description but because of the approximate age and the general description that narrowed down to a lady who had been reported missing Maya jacking apart from her age height and hair color the missing persons report also indicated that the 30 year old lived nearby to the crime scene and more importantly she wore a dental plate to hide three missing teeth the experts examined the actual dental records and they were able to say that positively it was magic but Maya had been missing since the 6th of April six days before the entomologist believed she had been murdered so where had she been it was important to try and track her movements where it may have been in in the previous week who would she be mixing with because any of those people might have been suspects could provide a motive for the murder what police were yet to realize was that on the same night she was strangled to death the murderer had contacted them a body of some sort in the bushes they are not sure haven't gone near it where are you ringing from when the decomposed body of a young woman was found hidden among bushes the manner of death was clear she had been sexually assaulted and then strangled to death with her own clothing but her identity was only made possible because of three missing teeth I just cooked my dinner and I was putting a dinner on the table we watched the news and what I saw was a huge shock to me mayor jackix body was discovered on Saturday night after a note was left on the windscreen of a patrol car at the Norwood Police Station I just couldn't believe I almost died of shock because I spoke to her mom just a few days ago we're looking for her month was a couple of times a day passing the place where her body was covered with the branches without knowing that her daughter's body was lying on the ground according to the forensic entomologist Maya's body had been lying there for five days her mother however had reported her missing six days before that time so it was vital for the detectives to piece together her last movements shortly after we'd established who the victim was investigation went to trying to obtain any information we could about Maya jackica background who knew her it was very difficult because the more we tried to find out the less information we were getting there were dozens of people who actually knew her but when it came down to who in fact she was or what they knew about her they really knew nothing about her and all the information we were getting was that she was wandering between Glenelg the city and her home at all times of the day and night Mayo was well known to Proprietors at the Martin shopping center where until about a month ago she was seen almost every day they've spoken of a quiet but polite girl who always kept it herself I don't know exactly what she was doing around here but I think only once in the past 10 months I'd seen her with with a friend she didn't have many friends I was like her last resort for everything she didn't mix much with other people no deep down I think she was lonely I think that maybe she had a little depression or something and she didn't want to talk about that I used to call her you know Maya talk to me oh she just didn't want to talk all I wanted to know is who killed her and how the Killer looks like how how somebody can do such a thing so far the identity of the killer like Maya's last days remained a mystery the note on the police car revealed no fingerprints detectives hoped the post-mortem would lead them to a suspect the importance of a sexual assault homicide these days is the DNA data bank with DNA technology the ability of a particular piece of evidence to show that one person and no one else was responsible is highly specific so our expectations at least at that stage were that we might find seminal fluid or hairs or fibers or any other contact trace evidence but all the smears and swabs that I'd collected at the post-mortem came back negative no DNA was found in other words no seminal fluid was identified now the reason for that can be many and varied perhaps that there was no sexual contact although we suspected that it was unlikely to be the case but perhaps the advanced state of decomposition can impact on that but at the end of the day we were not able to get any DNA the killer it seemed was totally without Trace he could be anyone and be anywhere and at the time of the murder there was a race in town he's going to get a rousing reception [Applause] the Adelaide 500 racing Carnival brought people from all over Australia indeed from all over the world it was the gutsy V8 Supercar race the crowd had come to see visual programs in the place is electric so this complicated investigation given that we really didn't have any idea as to who might have been the the offender but then a breakthrough police learned that a call had come through on their hotline on the night the entomologist believed Maya had been murdered don't say hello hello [Music] that particular person was very very important to the investigation because he certainly knew or saw something and then lo and behold the short time later we had information that came forward in relation to another triple o call where the ambulance was called [Music] also made on the Monday night in both instances the police and paramedics went to the old police station mentioned by the caller but there was no break and Enter or a body and the calls were dismissed as hoaxes [Music] five days later the note appeared and fortunately they didn't go to the old police station but came here to the old patrol base where they found Maya's body in the bushes I think that we were in little doubt once we'd learned of the two triple o calls and the note that they were all the or the one person was responsible for all of them and it was fairly unlikely in our view that that person was an innocent bystander we suspected that that person was in fact the offender because we can track the triple o calls the first was made from a phone box quite near to where Amaya's body had been located [Music] the other AAA call was made from a phone box near the Royal Adelaide Hospital there's a body there about half an hour ago all right now you didn't stop to see what was happening there no all right we'll uh what's your name [Applause] the question that we were asking ourselves was the offender keeping an eye on the police investigation was he waiting and watching for the police 30-year-old Maya jakitch had been strangled to death her body left in the bushes outside an old police patrol base the killer had called police twice on the night he murdered her and then five days later police believed the same person placed a note on their patrol car but while he left the note he left no clues to his identity except his voice and there seems to be a body we had to try and get that voice on the triple o call out to the public it's not something we've done before release a call from from Crime Stoppers but it was so important on this occasion we believe that was the correct cause seven Nightly News with graham Goodings and Jane Doyle tonight the tape police hope will help catch a killer police are asking you to watch and listen to our first story very carefully we're going to show you a note sent to police and play an audio tape either of which may lead to the killer of Mayor jacking whose body was found at paynam last month station it seems to be uh probably uh the voice of the man police believe holds vital clues in the mayor Jack murder case major crime detectives have taken the extraordinary moves of releasing the tapes and note in a desperate attempt to get Public Health well we're certainly hoping that someone perhaps recognizes the boys anyone with information is asked to call Bank sa Crime Stoppers on 1-800-33-000 hundreds of calls came in but there were no solid leads we had hundreds of calls in respect of those two areas people saying that the caller was someone they went to school with next to our neighbors a variety of reasons why they thought the voice was someone in the author of someone else but unfortunately it got us nowhere two weeks later they tried again with information drying up detectives have again appealed for a mystery Triple O phone caller to make contact with them and tell them what he knows even a reward for one hundred thousand dollars couldn't do the trick unfortunately some of these investigations that do reach a stage where you've followed absolutely every possible line of inquiry any schlein of inquiry becomes a dead end the case remained open but was scale down two years on from Maya's murder the team were now occupied with another mystery The Disappearance of 18 year old magumi Suzuki megumi had left her residence on Friday August the 3rd at 7 41 am [Music] she headed to school and the security video showed her leaving at eight minutes past three in the afternoon air initial information was that the last time that megumi was seen alive was on the Friday afternoon down the Rundle Mall having some coffee with some friends and the last person who she spoke to she said that she believed that Mega me was going to Grateful Street to catch the Auburn back to the place where she was living but it appeared magumi never made it home on that Friday night I did phone her residence and asked if they could see if she was there they said no she wasn't in the room and they said nothing had been touched the bed hadn't been slept in and also it had been the sense this weekend I don't know if you remember when everybody was counted and the census form was still there from the Friday night so I was a bit concerned and I had emailed the parents as well by then her mother had said that she never went anywhere without her teddy bear and I knew then that there was something very wrong I telephoned her boyfriend her ex-boyfriend to find out if he'd heard from her and he said no he hadn't and he had been worried about her as well because it was unusual for him not to hear from her so I was quite convinced by that time that I needed to contact the police which I did first thing on Thursday morning megumi Suzuki was last seen by a friend at a city bus stop police began Distributing missing person posters outside the Maya Center late this afternoon at this stage we didn't really know whether we had a homicide investigation or simply a missing person with posters publicity and appeals in full swing a man rang in with crucial evidence [Applause] home each weekday afternoon and in the bushes nearby he found her bag [Music] it was an identification card with her picture on there there were numerous books with her name on it and also a lot of her personal items I think the finding of her school books was the first step we had to say I think that this is going to be a suspicious one it raised Our concern that magumi may have met with our play SES and Mounted Police Scout the scrub the police helicopter was also called in there were a number of things actually missing from her possession and one was her mobile phone she also had a CD Walkman which she always took with her and that was also missing but what they did find was her credit card and a bus ticket and those two items took her to one place a BP service station in the opposite direction of her home so that alerted the investigators to the fact well why had she been traveling down there who might have she seen down there and and how might that information assist us in our investigation the BP console operator could pinpoint from his records what time and exactly what she purchased she had purchased a SIM card for her telephone that alerted us to her mobile phone we were able to then do some some checks on the call charge records megumi made 12 calls that night the last a text message sent to her ex-boyfriend who lived only a stone's throw away from the BP station it was fairly obvious now as to what was motivating mcgumi to be at that particular location at that time it was to go and see the boyfriend the Gumi Suzuki was at a BP station where she had bought a phone card the records showed her last call was a text message to her ex-boyfriend we knew at that stage that he lived in the very near vicinity of the BP service station we actually spoke to him and he was with friends at another location that night I think it was the picture show he was very very helpful in our investigation he was a distraught and was making every attempt to assist the police in trying to locate megumi it was about a week later that he contacted police with a piece of underclothing in fact a pair of pants that he suspected may have belonged to magumi so it was important to determine and confirm were they magumis and residents detectives found underwear of similar styles the distinguishing factor that did Stand Out was the fact that all her underwear or the majority of her underwear were all matching sets the bra that matched those pants wasn't located but through subsequent to forensic testing we were able to get a DNA match and confirm positively that they they were her clothes it was a worrying sign more so as her pants had seemed to appear out of thin air just like the note on the patrol car it was interesting as to how did those pants get there were they placed there did they blow there by the weather no real evidence that magumi had met with Foul Play all the police could do was keep asking the public for their help police will begin targeting City nightclubs as part of their search for missing Japanese student megumi Suzuki police will hand out the posters this weekend to the city's dance and karaoke clubs where magumi was a regular although we have great fears at this stage I think that there is still a glimmer of hope we will continue to work his parents have flown from Tokyo they've released a statement thanking police and appealing for more information to help find their daughter we love our daughter very much we pray that in the coming hours there will be some positive news and it appeared their prayers were answered witness Andy's wife claims there were only meters away from the missing student outside the arcabar hotel at 11 30 this morning a dozen police patrol cars converged on the area streets surrounding the Howard Flory Reserve were blocked off as the dog Squad and uniform patrols thoroughly checked homes and questioned residents this particular sighting was from a person who knew my gaming and was associated with her accommodation I actually spoke to him myself and other particularly who spoke to him we were satisfied that he believed the person he saw was Mega me and as a result of that we thought well hello yes she's still alive I'm just glad that she's been cited because she's not there that's a main thing that's good news good for her parents to know that she's okay and safe and sound you wouldn't want to be in that position yourself the parents of missing teenager magumi Suzuki have made an emotional plea to their daughter to come forward to police Mega me music foreign can't sleep every day don't worry about anything please come forward as soon as possible father in the mother will protect you from now on please come forward but magumi never made contact and there were no more sightings at the one moment we thought that she might still be alive then those hopes were dashed it was a roller coaster ride to us we can only try and imagine the roller coaster ride at the parents were on at that particular point in time eight weeks after magumi had gone missing her photo was put onto a new Police website that had just been developed and on that same website we were able to place the unsolved murder of Mayor Jack the police are also making a new bid to solve the murder of 30-year-old mayor jackich whose body was found over two years ago detectives have turned to the internet trying to identify the man who made two emergency calls on the night of her murder [Music] people could dial onto the internet and listen to that call from indeed anywhere in Australia or perhaps anywhere in the world so that wider exposure we thought was both the Innovative and critical in trying to get that breakthrough that we needed the strategy would work police were about to find out the long-needed identity of the caller and Maya's killer I listened to it about half a dozen times I close my eyes and listened to it and I could see Mark talking to me police knew that the killer of Maya jokic was most likely the same person who made two emergency calls on the night that Maya was murdered who he was had eluded them that was until the internet pulled him into its web the following is a typed voice of a male person who contacted police and ambulance facilities during the and one particular person heard his voice places seeking your assistance to identify the caller I looked on and found the tape and listened to it and listen to it and listen to it and I listened to it about half a dozen times I close my eyes and listen to it seems to be a body and I was 90 sure that it was my brother perhaps Mark was involved with his crime that soon rather out of character for Mark he'd never been violent as far as I knew so I listened to the type began I remember I walked up the passageway a little bit and closed my eyes so there was some distance from The Voice box [Music] and I could see Mark talking to me when I could hear that voice so I sort of decided then that I had to ring Crime Stoppers and if I'm wrong I'm wrong it's um there's no damage done but if I'm on if I'm right well they need to know about it Stephen rust said that he'd been away for a number of years and had just come back he's seen the publicity he heard the voice station and I could see the Dilemma he was going through because here he was identifying the voice as being that of his brother Mark Rust Mark Rust was certainly known to us we had his name in our files for more minor sexual offenses it was um a rather sickening feeling to realize that perhaps Market stepped Over The Line because he'd been in trouble for such a long time with the police and going to jail and parole the family knew that he was building up and getting worse each time and that eventually he would do something really terrible and end up in jail for the rest of his life but at the same time we'd always hope that you know he wouldn't go go that way so when it was fairly certain that it was Mark who was involved it was it was a nasty feeling it was left a very unpleasant taste while the police were convinced the triple o caller was Mark Rust it wasn't enough to make an arrest they would also need to prove that the note left on the patrol car was his handiwork and Stephen rust had provided them with a letter from his brother for comparison this our task was to look at the um the handwriting and see if it had been written by the person one of the more outstanding features was the double cross on the T which was a um a feature of both the specimen letter and the the question note another feature was the way that the letters were spaced in the word for example in the word good they were very tight and overlapping and all of the words particularly where they could be directly compared was like the and of and these were very similar in their appearance in general every single letter every single word that could be directly compared showed very close similarities in both their form and in their appearance I was convinced that the same person had written both the letter that was found on the patrol car and the the specimen letter so after assessing all of the evidence we were satisfied that we had a reasonable case and as a consequence of that the detectives went out and made the arrest a 37 year old man has been arrested and charged with the murder of Mayor jackich two years after she died late yesterday afternoon in Port Augusta detectives arrested and charged a man they had found Mark in jail his minor sexual offenses had progressed to rape and he was currently on remind in a prison some 300 kilometers away from where Maya was murdered police don't believe there was any relationship between Miss jackich and the accused her parents in Croatia have been contacted by detectives and say they're very pleased about the arrest shortly after Mark Rust was charged and went back to the prison at Port Augusta he obviously needed someone to confide in because he was probably shocked that he was eventually arrested this resulted in an informant contacting us who passed on some very valuable information Mark had remained silent when he had been questioned and then charged with Maya's murder it was a different story back at the prison [Music] the informant said that Mark had told him that he saw a tall blonde girl walking along payneham Road he spoke to her the struggle ensured and he pulled her into the bushes hopefully he had sex with a and he eventually ended up strangling her the informant told the police next that was totally unexpected as a result we had to move very quickly and make a search of Mark Russ cell on his belongings what they were looking for and found was a CD player a CD player similar in shape and color to the one that missing school student magumi Suzuki had with her on the day she disappeared the contact of the mother in Japan and she was in a situation where she could produce all the relevant document dating back and tracing that sailed with the serial number to her and mega me in Japan of course finding a rusting possession of some of magumi's property didn't in itself mean that he'd committed the murder so whilst it was an important part there was still a lot more work to be done by the team of investigators 37 Eur o Mark Rust had been arrested with the murjukich his brother had identified his voice as that of the Triple O cooler and a sample of his writing matched exactly that of the note left on the police car now Mark was a suspect in the murder of 18 year old magumi Suzuki her CD Walkman had been found in his cell after an informant contacted the police the informant also said in relation to Suzuki that he approached it [Music] he had sex with her and he said to her don't look at me whatever you do she looked at him saw his face and as a result he attempted to Strangler and then he actually killed her by hitting her on the head with a rock we were also told that that Mega me have been murdered on a vacant panic and that he had burnt clothing or something there as a result of the information we went back to the BP service station directly opposite was a vacant block of land who made a search of the vacuum block of land and we found the seat of a fire the fire brigade was contacted they confirmed they had put out a small fire on that vacant lot on the very night magumi had disappeared near the far we found a rock which could possibly have been used in the offense we found bits of burnt clothing and arm bracelets and we knew that these were jewelry worn by Megami Suzuki but magumi's body had yet to be found the only clue from the informant was that Mark Rust had dumped her into an industrial bin we combed the area based on some directions that were provided and we did in fact find a bin at the rear of some premises on Goodwood Road the circumstantial evidence against Mark Rust was stacking up but before they could make an arrest the investigators needed to be absolutely sure that this was the bin where Mark had placed megumi after he killed her and they turned to the rust family for help this must have been an enormous dilemma for them to assist the police in effect to establish and clarify whether Mark Rust was responsible nevertheless they did provide that assistance and they were able to confirm that the waste bin had a hippo on the side the bin that we were looking at had similar markings and that was the final lead that we needed to satisfy that we had a reasonable case to invest rust I was shocked about the my jacketch thing because it just came out of the blue and really sort of you know knock the wind out of our sails um and then when Jerry told us about nagumi Suzuki it just fitted together very nicely with what mark had been doing so I I sort of believed it pretty much straight away magumi's body hasn't been found but it's understood it may have been dumped in an industrial bin and later at the Winfield Rubbish Tip we have been praying for our daughter to be alive under any circumstances for the last three months but this week we received the saddest news we could have had when they arrived out in Australia Jerry felters took them down to the rubbish dump and I think that that was obviously a very very traumatic moment for the parents to sit on the side of a radish tip knowing that somewhere amongst literally hundreds of tons of rubbish it was the body of your daughter so we certainly felt obligated to try and do everything possible to recover magumi's body and that was the next challenge for us but first the grizzly search for the murder Japanese student 18 year old magumi Suzuki has begun at a Wingfield landfill site foreign was dumped at the site nearly four months before so numerous layers of bailed rubbish were discarded until the level they believed she would be in was located then those Bales were broken apart and searched we had to go through every Bale we were looking for things that related back to the particular date we had to go through newspapers invoices everything with dates on it to ensure that we're in the correct area we weren't moving out of it you were going through trying to find things which kept you on track and after 11 days and have been tens tons of rubbing up exact spot and magumi's body was found there was a mixture of relief and and sorrow to think that someone could meet such an untimely death in the way that magumi was murdered and then to have a body dumped in the location that it was done was absolutely horrific the amazing thing about finding the body of Mega Mississippi is that she still had her boots on she still had clothing on and the Braille that she was wearing was an identical match to the pants which her ex-boyfriend had found in the laneway months earlier near the vacant block of land our daughter was found it was a very difficult task considering the circumstances it is no exaggeration to say it was a miracle to find her so quickly but Russ's confession to murdering megumi didn't come quickly he maintained his innocence as he did for the murder of Maya jackic then exactly one year after magumi's body was found he changed his plea there's been a shock development in the murder of Japanese student magumi Suzuki a 37 year old man from the northeastern suburbs has pleaded guilty I know that you've done this you know you've done it and you need to put your hand up for it so that there's not a big court case these poor families aren't dragged through this muck and we can all get over it as best we can and bring some closure to everyone's life six months later Mark Rust also admitted to the murder of Maya jackic on the 12th of April 1999. the families of two young women brutally murdered by a homicidal Predator have given harrowing accounts of the loss of their loved ones on behalf of the family's friends gave hard-breaking accounts of how the murders have totally devastated dozens of ascribed the Suzuki family's anguish quoting magumi's mother it makes me insane when I think of her being treated like rubbish either gregov why would anyone want to kill Maya like an innocent bird and cover her with branches and cover his dirty crime with all my heart and I did call Maya's mom and I said this is what I'd done I actually spoke on your behalf and I saw the Killer and it's done I said it's finished Mark Rust was sentenced to life in jail without parole for both murders the judge ruled that the 39 year old was incapable of controlling his sexual urges and would be detained until further order you ask yourself why has he done that how could he have done that because we all grew up together in the same house it's emotionally quite devastating to realize that someone's so close to you and your immediate family can commit such a crime it's really devastating it's it's um I don't know I can't really find find the words to describe just how how bad it makes you feel it's it's a dreadful feeling the Suzuki family up still very distressed they are really feeling it at the moment because they had great expectations for their daughter [Music] Maya's mother took her daughter's body back to Croatia where she visits the grave every day we both lost a very very special person lovely daughter and the most beautiful friend I ever had for one she can rest in peace [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Australian Crime

Views: 318,058

Keywords: Australia, Australian Crime, Australian crime documentary, Australian crime series, Gangs & Mobs, Stalkers, child crime, cold case, con artists, crime, crime documentary, crime series, disappearances, family crime, ivan milat, murder, podcasts, police, renae marsden, revelle balmain, roger rogerson, serial killer, true crime, true crime documentary, true crime series, mark rust, australian crime, aussie crime, aus, crime stories, crime documentaries, easy, listen to

Id: 2p8fqK6NEfs

Length: 43min 38sec (2618 seconds)

Published: Fri May 12 2023