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"She felt completely alone": Tragic details emerge on Davidson family's day-to-day life.

As the Davidson community struggles to come to terms with their deaths, tragic details continue to emerge about the day to day life of the Lutz family.

Maria Lutz, 43, Fernando Manrique, 44, and their two autistic children Elisa, 11, and Martin, 10, and the family dog, were discovered dead inside their Sydney home on Monday after a suspected murder-suicide.

Friends of Maria Claudia Lutz now say the mother-of-two barely spoke to her husband, as she was often left to care for their two children as he increased his trips overseas for work.

Images: Facebook

"Maria was doing everything alone. How she found the time to keep the house spotless with ­everything else she was doing was beyond me," a friend told The Daily Telegraph.

They said she was struggling to cope with the complex needs of her autistic children alone.

"Maria was so anxious and depressed that if [the Family of Community and Services] called to change an appointment or cancel [then] it threw her," the friend said.

"She would ring them sometimes nine times a day to confirm they had cancelled or changed things - or to ask for extra help. She felt completely alone and was a broken woman and depressed."

Mia Freedman says she feels "sick" about it. Listen to the Mamamia Out Loud Podcast here:


One of Lutz' friends spoke anonymously to Bogota's The City Paper earlier in the week claiming the 43 year old wanted to leave Australia.

"With a marriage struggling over constant worries of the future of their severely autistic children, Maria Claudia wanted to return to Colombia," they told the Daily Telegraph.

"The children could not travel due to their health issues on a 14-hour flight and in order to comfort Maria Claudia, her family would visit Australia once a year. She was going home this year, she decided."

The alarm was raised when the mother-of-two failed to show up for her regular tuck shop duties at St Lucy's School, which Elisa and Martin both attended.

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When police entered the family's closed-up Davidson home, they found their bodies in three different rooms.

Maria Claudia Lutz and children. Image: Facebook.

There was no sign of visible injuries to the family. Police believe they died from an elaborate gas network discovered in the ceiling enabling poisonous gas to be ­filtered into different rooms.

Several neighbours claim they witnessed Manrique working on the roof over the weekend before the family's alleged murder-suicide.

"He was right up on the roof replacing tiles and using power tools of sorts," one neighbour Ofik Thomassian told the News Corp.

"He was cutting and banging and making all sorts of noise and pulling up tiles but I don’t really know what he was doing."

The neighbour described Lutz as a careful and caring mother.

"She looked after them but I have to say she never looked happy. She always had a very serious look on her face. Thinking back now, she looked like she was in pain. She probably had been for a very long time," he said.

The Australian reports that police have not said whether the 44-year-old gassed his family with his wife's knowledge or not.

On Tuesday police said that during post-mortem examinations "extensive forensic testing" would be carried out on the bodies to establish exactly what the cause of death was.

It is believed the Colombian Consulate is currently making arrangements with relatives to fly to Sydney to identify the bodies and make funeral arrangements.

Feature image: Facebook

If you or anyone you know is suffering, don't suffer in silence, you can reach Lifeline on 13 11 14 any time.