BRISBANE - The Australian man who murdered and cooked his Indonesian transsexual wife before committing suicide worked as a male prostitute, not a chef as believed by his family, according to friends.

A friend of Marcus Volke told Daily Mail Australia that Volke had never worked as a chef but used it as a cover story to avoid telling his family and close friends the truth about his life.

"They were leading double lives because of the lives they were leading," said interior designer Alex Devantier, who claimed that he knew the couple well.

"Marcus wouldn't even tell his closest friends of the life he was leading,"' Devantier told the Daily Mail.

The media had earlier reported that Volke, 28, was a chef who met his wife Mayang Prasetyo, 27, on an international cruise ship.

In an online advertisement under the name Heath XL, Volke describes himself as a "young sexy Australian boy, very friendly and easy going". The ad says "I can be your companion for an hour or as long as u want, for a dinner, a hot session, holidays or more", according to the Courier Mail.

A brothel owner in Melbourne, claiming to have hired Volke and Prasetyo years ago, said the couple met as colleagues in the sex industry, not on a cruise ship.

Ivan Gneil, who runs the Pleasure Dome in Melbourne, told news.com.au that Prasetyo had worked for him for about five years and Volke about two-and-a-half years before they left together to strike out on their own as private sex workers in 2012.

Describing Volke as a seemingly "nice guy", Gneil said: "I didn't know much about him, I knew he did martial arts, but he was typical of the kind of working boy who did it purely because he liked having sex with transsexuals.

"I knew he had assaulted her. I just thought to myself that if I was wise I could have seen that (the murder) coming."

On the night of Oct 4 when Volke was butchering and cooking his wife's body, he called in an electrician to fix his stove at his Teneriffe home in Brisbane's inner city.

As soon as the electrician, Brad Coyne, entered the couple's apartment which they had moved into just weeks earlier, he was overwhelmed by a strong smell.

"He said I'm cooking pig's broth at the moment," Coyne told Ten Eyewitness News.

Prasetyo's mother said she had forgiven her son-in-law and reached out to Volke's family in Australia, asking for forgiveness for both Volke and Prasetyo's deaths, Australian media reported on Wednesday.