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.
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"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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Such a devastating and heartbreaking story. Raising children with special needs such as autism (particularly when it is severe) is very isolating. My family are essentially housebound because of the social issues our two children experience and we often feel very alone. People around families such as ours just don't know how to help - but all it takes is a hug and a cup of tea, a shoulder to cry on, and perhaps some practical help, like making meals for the tough days when we are just too exhausted to even prepare dinner. Just reach out, to prevent another tragedy like this. Please!
Kia kaha .. stay strong .. I admire your strength
Thanks for sharing Cassandra. I hope that you have some good people around you. It is often difficult to know how to help especially when some people show such a composed public persona. It almost feels like you would be insulting them if you offered to help. But I will now definitely make more of an effort when I see an opportunity. I like the idea of cooking for people and have done this when there is sickness in the family. Even then I get worried about embarrassing them, cooking something they will like etc etc.
Why is this article so focused on the struggles of this mother? By all accounts she provided exceptional care for her children with special needs. Why don't we focus more on the father, who evidence directly links to the apparent method of violence. As a society this is what we should get talking about - his struggles, avoidance, failures, lack of supports. Where is our system that asks men if they are coping and questions their mental health - across all contexts and particularly in stressful times. Where do we vigilantly watch to ensure men are connecting with their children and are showing at all times they are emotionally stable, and if not are we checking they aren't likely to respond in a way harmful to others. Where are we interviewing his colleagues and quoting statements about his difficulties with his daily life. Society is pointing the finger at this mother simply by avoiding this father.
I totally agree however men are often such closed books while women tend to reach out and communicate. Time and again in these cases, the people around a man say that they had no clue. There needs proactive intervention in these cases. Clearly any person with two high needs children is going to be experiencing difficulties. Not sure if it is true but I read that he was in the armed services.... Surely the band of mental health professionals should have been keeping an eye on him knowing his situation. The message here is, if you wait until people fall apart to provide assistance, then it is too late.
Part of the reason may be seen on this site at least, if a man does say anything and share experiences with similiar issues, the response is overwhelmingly accustions of manjacking, mansplaing, MRA's and what about the menz. This is something I have experienced first hand when where I thought this was a safe spot because I can't talk about it anywhere else so I commented about the effect of DV on children using my own experience as a survivor, it received some support and even a supporting comment directly from Mia herslef. Then the accusations and mockery rolled in so I'm not doing that again.