Ana Maria Salazar de Rouz worked for an in-home kids’ tutoring programme, and door knocked Evelyn a year before everything fell down.

Ana explained the programme and later returned with bedding and books that had been donated to the organisation for families in need.

Ana was struck by the home’s impeccable state. Normally when she door knocked parents she caught them unawares, before they'd had a chance to straighten the house. Evelyn's house was extremely clean.

Ana noted Evelyn doted on Maggie, who was always impeccably dressed and well-mannered. In August 2014, Evelyn enrolled Maggie in tutoring. The enrollment form asked: What is something about your child that makes them special? Evelyn wrote: "She is all I have in the world. Makes me keep going."

"Evelyn was totally dedicated to Maggie," Ana later told police.

"To the point that, when Maggie needed a cream for a skin condition, Evelyn spent $30 on a small tube of this, even though it was hard to put the money aside for this. She lived for Maggie."

Maggie's tutor was Jasmine Here. The tutelage was to prepare children for primary school, and Jasmine met Evelyn and Maggie for an hour a week. Jasmine found that Evelyn and Maggie were both keen learners.

A mother herself, Jasmine is happy to share her time with Evelyn and Maggie. It's a subject she holds close to her heart, she says.

"Maggie was a very bright and intelligent, beautiful child," Jasmine says.

"She was such a delight to be around. Whenever Evelyn spoke to Maggie it was very soft and clear.

I believe Evelyn loved and cared for Maggie a lot. They both had such a lovely nature. It's very unfortunate it's all come to this.

Jasmine recalled Evelyn saying she had asked to swap tutors.

"The reason why she no longer wanted the tutor was because she was Tongan and she had a Tongan neighbour who she was worried about. I think she said the neighbour was stalking her and that they had had an argument."

Evelyn felt like people were watching her all the time, including the police. They were in a conspiracy with her neighbours, she told Dionne one day. By this point, Dionne noticed Evelyn was very tired. She stopped eating, she had dark circles under her eyes and she smoked all the time. Dionne noticed the way Evelyn sucked on the cigarettes was like someone dragging deep, cathartic relief.

At some stage, Evelyn pursued deliverance ministry, which Dionne tries to explain.

"It’s for people that want to be close to God. It's not just superstitious - you have to have the gift. People that work in that area break off curses, unblock things that have a hold on you. That wasn't the first time she'd been."

Her final ministry tipped Evelyn over the edge, Dionne says. Evelyn believed people were filming her. She had gone to the therapy for help. Now she believed the women there were in on the conspiracy.

"All the stress was on her shoulders. I used to say to her, you've got to eat or your body gets all out of sorts. It can cause you to be a certain way, and lack of sleep brings on anxiety."

Dionne was struggling herself. She had just given birth to her youngest and was trying to keep her family together. While she empathised with Evelyn, she had her own life going on and she increasingly found less time to spend with her friend, instead opting for the occasional phone call.

She offered to pray for Evelyn, listened patiently and offered advice as best she could. She was blunt. She told Evelyn to leave bad things in the past, encouraged her to talk to her parents, and echoed advice members of FaithPointe gave to Evelyn, suggesting she visit her doctor.

Evelyn asked what Dionne thought about going to the doctor again. Evelyn was frightened she would lose Maggie and their home if authorities became involved. She'd worked so hard to get that house, to get Maggie the tutorage, to get her a family.

"She said, 'the church told me I need to go and get mental health help, but what's going to happen to Maggie?' She was very paranoid about that,” Dionne says.

"She didn't want to go into the mental health system, did she mum?"

“To be perfectly honest, there’s an element of truth in that, particularly in relation to her child,” Debra Lampshire says.

Although Evelyn’s fears of losing her home and her child dissuaded her from seeking further help, it wouldn’t be out of the question for a friend or support person to accompany her to the doctor, she says.

“I’m just surprised that people weren’t curious enough to explore it further with her, and then to actually make that call.

“When people are expressing thoughts that don’t seem to fit with what's going on in their world, you don’t need any specialised knowledge of [mental health]. What you need to do is be curious, and care.

“I would go with her (to the GP). When you care about someone and something is going on, you take it to the next step. Say, ‘I feel concerned and worried. I will come with you and support you’. They need to know someone is on their side. [That] I actually give a damn about you and I’m going to support you through this.”

Lampshire says mental health groups need to start contacting the obvious alternative places of support for people who are reluctant to self refer, or visit their doctor.

“We really need to be reaching out to the churches because that’s exactly where you go when you’re stricken. Our faith seems an obvious place to go, the same as your GP, and close friends.”

James Anson draws in a deep breath hearing Evelyn and Maggie's names.

That splinter of pain he'd almost forgotten. The FaithPointe pastor chats easily, but declines a meeting. FaithPointe's website reveals he has brilliant white hair and square black glasses.

"The signs that we saw with her were paranoid, delusional type behaviour,” Anson says.

“She was particularly suspicious of the police, from what I understand … it was either her husband, or partner … but he had a close friend in the police and she would say to us that he was using his relationship with his friend to get information on her.”

He's been in full-time ministry for about 30 years, the website says, and has served in many churches with wife Viv. In 2013, the pair established FaithPointe.

"I'm a little bit guarded over the whole thing. You know, simply because the police gave us the once over. We were interviewed extensively, separately, with key people. So we've kind of been through the whole thing with the police," he says.

"And you know, we really loved little Maggie, and it was really, really difficult for all of us when we found out what had happened. And shocked."

It was clear to he, his wife, and fellow pastor Anthony Beamish from the get-go that things weren't right with Evelyn.

"We knew that she was already seeing her GP, and from what I understand he prescribed her antidepressants. That's what she told us. And because we could see that she was struggling with her thoughts, and what was perceived, what was real or not real ... we said you've got to go back and get reevaluated with your medication."

The advice wasn't welcomed by her, he says, and he was horrified to later learn she was seeking deliverance ministry, though that wasn’t necessarily people pushing that onto her since Evelyn frequently spoke about evil spirits, he says.

"That was what she used to regularly talk about. This evil spirit is bothering me, or that's happening to me, or I'm hearing a voice.

"When she started saying that they'd sent a car to watch her place, that's when I thought of she's actually gone into full paranoid delusion there."

Once, Evelyn said someone had watched her through her ceiling while she showered. Terrified, she had called the police. Flabbergasted, Anson questioned her. Did they catch him? What happened? Evelyn reported that nothing had happened, the man had scarpered.

"So, I don't even know if this took place," Anson says.

Eventually, Evelyn broke herself off from the church and as far as the pastor and its members were concerned, what became of her “was out of our hands”.

"We no longer had an ongoing relationship with Evelyn because she was … you know, stuck on her path and didn't want any input from us. Which happens a lot, by the way, in church communities. When somebody has a mental illness they will often be very stubborn and rebellious about taking their medication or whatever, and if you really put your foot down with them then they just disappear off the radar.

"I think at one stage, my wife had rung mental health to see what they could do. Because obviously our main concern at any given point of time with Evelyn, was Maggie going to be alright? So yeah, it's pretty hard to talk about that side of things."

Evelyn was fed up with the church but one night she turned up unannounced at Anthony Beamish's door. The pastor's wife was a counsellor. Beamish later told the police Evelyn walked in unannounced after several months of no contact.

"[Evelyn] begged us to take her in. She wanted to stay here for a week… as she wanted support and prayer and love. We didn't feel comfortable letting her stay.”