{"id":603998,"date":"2026-04-13T11:48:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T11:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/603998\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T11:48:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T11:48:17","slug":"troubled-man-overdosed-before-alleged-smoothie-murder-by-mother-maree-mavis-crabtree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/603998\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Troubled man’ overdosed before alleged smoothie murder by mother Maree Mavis Crabtree"},"content":{"rendered":"

A man had an overdose and took drugs in the years prior to his mother allegedly murdering him by hiding prescription medication in a fruit smoothie, a jury has heard.<\/p>\n

Maree Mavis Crabtree is alleged to have killed her 26-year-old son Jonathan with an overdose of painkillers on July 19, 2017 in the family’s home north of the Gold Coast<\/a> before making a $125,000 insurance claim.<\/p>\n

The 59-year-old has also been accused of attempting to murder her son in January of the same year.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/Maree Crabtree, pictured here leaving the Supreme Court in Brisbane on February 7, 2024, has been accused of killing her 26-year-old son Jonathan with an overdose of painkillers on July 19, 2017 (AAP)<\/p>\n

Crabtree’s defence counsel last week told the jury Jonathan might have accidentally or deliberately given himself too much medication.<\/p>\n

The Brisbane Supreme Court jury today heard testimony from Rebekah Millard, who started a relationship with Jonathan in 2012 that lasted 18 months.<\/p>\n

“About eight months into the relationship with you he had an overdose of drugs?” defence barrister Angus Edwards asked Millard.<\/p>\n

Millard said Jonathan always had the prescription drug tramadol but never mentioned another painkiller called oxycodone.<\/p>\n

The jury previously heard a pathologist determined the cause of Jonathan’s death was an excessive amount of the drug oxycodone in his bloodstream.<\/p>\n

Edwards asked if Jonathan said he had taken the overdose as he “could not handle it anymore”.<\/p>\n

\"JonathanJonathan Crabtree was a “troubled man” with abusive behaviours who used drugs and had been charged with robbing a chemist, the jury heard. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

Millard said she could not recall but agreed she had told a previous court hearing that Jonathan gave that explanation.<\/p>\n

She agreed Jonathan had wild mood swings and always threatened to kill himself.<\/p>\n

“When around friends he was the happy-go-lucky Jonathan but when it was just us it was a different story,” she said.<\/p>\n

Jonathan was a “troubled man” with abusive behaviours who had been charged with robbing a chemist, the jury heard.<\/p>\n

A car crash in 2015 had left him with permanent injuries requiring physical care.<\/p>\n

Crabtree lived in a house with Jonathan and his sister Tara.<\/p>\n

Crabtree had said before Jonathan’s death that he was “eating her out of house and home” and had the “brain capacity of a six-year-old,” the Crabtrees’ neighbour Vicki Inglis testified today.<\/p>\n

“Jonathan had ownership of the house and she could not get him out of there,” Inglis said Crabtree had told her during conversations between the car crash and his death.<\/p>\n

Inglis was the latest of multiple witnesses to testify that Crabtree talked about giving Jonathan drugs.<\/p>\n

“Marie said ‘I should put something in one of his syringes?'”crown prosecutor Caroline Marco asked.<\/p>\n

“Yes. On a number of occasions over a number of months,” Inglis said.<\/p>\n

Crabtree made the remarks while talking about seeing Jonathan shooting up drugs in his bedroom, the jury heard.<\/p>\n

“Did she say the reason to put something in his syringe was to harm him or do him some harm?” Edwards asked.<\/p>\n

The trial is due to run for another four weeks before Justice Martin Burns and hear from dozens more witnesses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man had an overdose and took drugs in the years prior to his mother allegedly murdering him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":603999,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":{"0":"post-603998","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/603999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}