Maree Mavis Crabtree has been sentenced for fraud after spending six years on remand while facing allegations that she murdered her son and attempted to kill him with a drug-laced smoothie.
The 59-year-old pleaded guilty in Brisbane District Court to two counts of obtaining a financial advantage by deception, after continuing to claim carer payments for her daughter Tara despite the pair no longer living together.
She also admitted defrauding disability care organisation Lifestyle Solutions of almost $140,000 over four years by failing to declare that she had moved interstate.
Crabtree was sentenced to one month in jail for the carer payment offences and ordered to repay more than $12,200 through her disability support pension. She was convicted of the state fraud offence but not further punished.
Having already spent more time in custody than the sentence imposed, Crabtree was released immediately. She declined to comment as she left court.
Mother cleared of murder allegations
In May, a Brisbane Supreme Court jury found Crabtree not guilty of murdering her son Jonathan, 26, and attempting to murder him at the family’s Gold Coast home in 2017.
She had been accused of crushing prescription painkillers and anti-anxiety tablets into Jonathan’s fruit smoothie while he was unconscious in bed, before making a $125,000 insurance claim.
In pre-recorded evidence, Tara said she watched the hallway and kitchen as her mother prepared the drugs. The defence challenged Tara’s credibility, citing her diminished intellectual capacity and the possibility that she could benefit from Crabtree being jailed.
The defence also suggested Jonathan may have taken his own life or accidentally overdosed. The jury took nearly two and a half days to return not guilty verdicts on murder, attempted murder and fraud.
A separate allegation that Crabtree murdered her daughter Erin, 18, in 2012 was dropped during a review of the case in June.
Crabtree’s first trial ended in a mistrial in 2024, after which she was granted bail. She had been held in custody for six years before that point.
Fraud offences
Crabtree claimed carer payments for Tara from shortly after she was taken into care in August 2017 until shortly before Crabtree’s arrest in January 2018.
Commonwealth prosecutor Sunny van den Berg told Judge David Kent KC that the offences represented a more serious example of social security fraud.
Crown prosecutor Zachary Kaplan said Crabtree had repeatedly lied to Lifestyle Solutions, telling the organisation that she was temporarily in Queensland.
Her barrister, Susan Anderson, argued that her time on remand had been particularly onerous because she spent it in protective custody and was imprisoned during Covid lockdowns.
“She has had to deal with the (deaths) of her two other children and had to grieve their loss while in custody,” Ms Anderson said.
Crabtree said “no” when asked whether she had anything further to say after entering her guilty pleas.
