Crabtree family partied on a Pacific cruise as Erin died alone at home

What police believe Maree Crabtree did to her three children for money is horrifying. And it appears she struck it lucky before.

The Crabtree family, with Jonathan and Erin to the right of Maree.

Wearing a coconut bra and hula skirt over his footy shorts, Jonathan Crabtree was the life of the Pacific Dawn party.

It was September 2012 and Crabtree was on a scheduled 12-day P&O Cruise of the Pacific Islands with his family, entertaining guests under multicoloured lights at the ship’s open-air bar.

At that moment, back home on the Gold Coast, his sister Erin was allegedly already dead in her bed from an oxycodone overdose.

A jotted drawing in her notebook appeared to support the case for suicide, depicting a gravestone with the words “RIP Erin”.

Police now believe it was written by her mother, Maree Mavis Crabtree, to throw them off the scent in a twisted tale of murder for money.

According to police, Erin was already dead or dying when her family set off on their holiday, with her mother either administering the fatal dose or dangerously leaving her to her own devices with the drugs.

Almost five years later, Jonathan would die in strikingly similar circumstances, overdosing at home on the same drug. Again, it would be his mother accused of administering the oxycodone, this time in a cup of Sprite from McDonald’s, the soft drink disguising the painkiller’s sweet ­aftertaste.

As shocking are alle­gations involving Crabtree’s surviving daughter, now 25, who since an early age has been in and out of hospital. Crabtree told non-profit organisations and witnesses this daughter had leukemia; medical records listed ailments as diverse as autism and cerebral palsy.

Jonathan Crabtree dancing during his cruise trip in September 2012. Source: Facebook

Police now say the daughter’s condition was almost entirely a figment of her mother’s imagination. When she stopped living with Crabtree, her health allegedly returned.

It was akin to being raised in a religious cult, police will allege, where the girl was dominated by her mother and left with no ability to make informed decisions.

Her mental and social age of a child could be attributed only to her home environment and condition, police say.

From 1995 to 2010, a tube was inserted into this daughter’s stomach so she could be fed formula as a meal substitute. From 2010 to last year she was prescribed 677 bottles of oxycodone-based medication, equating to 169 litres of the drug.

All of it was “completely unnecessary”, police will allege — this systematic poisoning and physical and mental abuse, also extended at times to Jonathan and Erin, was apparently for Crabtree’s financial gain. Medical conditions were caused, fabricated or exaggerated for money or gifts.

Erin and Jonathan Crabtree both died in eerily similar ways.

After an intense investigation involving detectives from Queensland’s Homicide Investigation Unit and the Gold Coast Criminal Investigation Branch, Crabtree was arrested this week and charged with the murders of her two adult children and the torture of her surviving daughter. Multiple counts of fraud were also brought against the 51-year-old, after she cashed in or attempted to cash in on insurance policies worth more than $900,000.

Erin’s death at the family’s home at Plantation Court in Maudsland should have raised red flags. Severely impaired, with some witnesses saying she was mute, she was dependent on her mother’s care. Yet she was left at home when her mother, brother and sister went on their cruise.

Disability service Lifestyle Solutions had funded the trip so that Erin could have a holiday, but some weeks earlier her mother had advised the travel agency Erin would not be going; she was too scared to make the journey.

Crabtree provided varied and conflicting stories to witnesses about the arrangements in place to care for Erin while they were away, saying a carer or specialist nursing team would be with her 24 hours a day. In reality, nothing was ­arranged, police say.

When it came time to leave, Crabtree is alleged to have discouraged her children from saying a proper goodbye to Erin, and went around the house closing doors, windows, blinds and curtains. She dropped the family’s dog, Tinkerbell, with a neighbour.

Three days into the cruise, Jonathan asked a family friend to check on Erin. Her decomposing body was found under a doona, with empty oxycodone packets lacking any tell-tale fingerprints, police say. Her family cut short their holiday and returned home.

Despite the unusual circumstances, police put the death down to suicide. A coroner was not convinced, sending the file back for further investigation, The Weekend Australian has been told.

Maree Mavis Crabtree.

It remained an open file until Jonathan last year wound up dead.

On July 18, the day before his body was found in the family’s home at Fig Court in Maudsland, he had gone with his mother to see a psychologist in connection to an insurance claim from a serious car crash in which he’d been involved.

His mother had spoken of being weighed down by these injuries, police say, telling a friend earlier in the year: “Jonathan’s like a potato, he has no life. I just want to put something in his drink so he would not be here.” She is said to have separately told her doctor she “would not mind if Jonathan were to overdose and die”.

Crabtree’s said when she went to bed at 11pm, her son was sitting up listening to music on his iPod. Police say the device was last used almost 24 hours earlier.

The next morning, Crabtree went to a bank and withdrew Jonathan’s fortnightly Centrelink disability pension of $840. After returning home, she called 000 to report the discovery of his body. When the operator asked her to start resuscitation, she is alleged to have said she had a bad back and couldn’t get on the bed to do CPR.

Police footage of Maree Mavis Crabtree’s arrest.

After this death, local detectives joined forces with homicide squad counterparts and a major investigation was launched, which led police to probe the family’s past life at Peakhurst in Sydney’s south.

Crabtree appears to have struck it lucky financially with the death of an uncle, Milne Graham, who left her his property there upon his death in December 1990.

In January 2003 fire tore through the property, damaging it extensively. In March that year, Crabtree’s mother, Sylvia Mavis Graham, living in a granny flat at the residence, died at the age of 80.

The fire and deaths piqued the interest of Queensland investi­gators, who travelled to NSW to brief colleagues in that state’s homicide squad. Because the events occurred in NSW, it was up to the local police to decide whether to re-examine the deaths. It is understood no investigation has yet begun.

Crabtree’s lawyer Dave Garratt, from law firm Howden Saggers, last night said she would defend the charges and seek bail.