The haunting of Evelyn Sen
In 2015, a little girl was killed by her mother, who was having paranoid delusions. Despite reaching out to friends, her church and her doctor, Evelyn Sen wasn’t seen by mental health professionals until it was too late.
Aweek before Evelyn Sen made the 111 call and screamed ‘‘what have I done’’, before the police visited her in hospital and the headlines were made, she was circling Mt Roskill in Auckland, looking for an ATM. She had cornered her neighbour, a woman who actively hid from Evelyn, and pleaded with her: ‘‘My daughter is sick. I need to check I have enough money to take her to the hospital if I need to.’’
It was winter and Shannon reluctantly agreed to drive her to the bank, noting four-year-old Maggie didn’t seem sick at all. In fact she was chatty, sitting in the back seat and regaling Shannon with tales of her recent trip to Malaysia. After the Westpac machine refused to relinquish cash, Evelyn suggested they go to ASB. Shannon agreed, but drew the line when Evelyn suggested visiting another. How many banks did she belong to?
They went back to Moana Ave, the Onehunga suburb where they lived. The place where it all began and where, soon enough, it would all end.
To begin to understand what happened, it’s important to go back to the beginning. Back to 2008 when Evelyn, short with dark eyes and dark hair flecked with silver, moved to Auckland. She was from Johor Baru in Malaysia and aged in her mid-30s. She told everyone to call her Lyn.
On Auckland’s North Shore, Evelyn began studying hairdressing and working parttime as a beauty therapist. She didn’t have much money, though she bragged to friends her parents had given her hundreds of thousands of dollars. ‘‘Where had the money gone?’’ a friend later wondered, noting Evelyn’s spartan lifestyle. Did it even exist to begin with?
A North Shore flat was her first home. Evelyn took the upstairs room, her possessions few. She didn’t cook often, too busy with work and study, and her only bad habit was smoking. The woman she stayed with became a close friend, even visiting Evelyn’s parents in Malaysia.
Evelyn’s ensuing homes are haphazardly pinpointed through statements others later gave to police. There was Mt Eden, where she fell pregnant to an Englishman who didn’t stick around. Afterward, she became close to a beauty therapy client who insisted Evelyn move in with her motherin-law during her pregnancy.
Then, sometime in 2010, a pregnant Evelyn met Richard Watson, after also living with his mother. They began a relationship. Richard was there when Evelyn learned she was having a girl. Evelyn couldn’t hide her disappointment. She had hoped for a boy, Richard later told police, and she wished her child to have blue or green eyes.
On December 28, 2010, Evelyn gave birth at Middlemore Hospital to a brown-eyed Maggie Renee Watson. The Englishman’s name went on the birth certificate but Richard was the one to fall in love with Maggie. He loved her as if she were his own and he had no doubt Evelyn loved her too.
To his sadness, Evelyn ended the relationship. He texted her to check on Maggie, welcoming them back to his home, but never heard back. He didn’t hear anything more of Evelyn and knew nothing further of their lives. All he knew was that he loved Maggie very much.
Two years later, Evelyn first spoke about the demons in her mind. Visiting her Onehunga GP in December 2012, Evelyn relayed the following:
She believed police were following her and that her home was under surveillance through 3D technology. Someone was in her home during the day when she wasn’t there. A man with a strong odour, she said.
There was an evil presence in her house, possibly a demon. Her neighbours were involved in the police conspiracy. One neighbour told her Maggie would be killed by suffocation, and another said Maggie would try to hurt herself, Evelyn said.
She said her church group had performed rituals on her, leaving an imprint of an invisible cross on her forehead. She said there was strange sensation on her shoulders, which left through her mouth.
The doctor’s notes recorded the ‘‘symptoms’’ fluctuated, and noted she was depressed and possibly paranoid. The GP prescribed her Mirtazapine, an antidepressant.
The wait list for Housing New Zealand homes in Auckland in 2014 was critically long, second only to Christchurch where powerful earthquakes had displaced thousands. After years of uncertainty about where home truly lay, boarding in any home she could find, sometimes sleeping in her car, Evelyn secured a home on Moana Ave.
People there quickly wrapped themselves around her. Her nextdoor neighbours, South African couple Kim and Des Gilmore, went to the weatherboard house with the white picket fence armed with furniture and tools to fix things around the house. A green couch went into the lounge, and a single bed into Maggie’s room.
Years before Evelyn arrived in New Zealand, the Mental Health Commission ordered research into mental health in migrant Asian communities. Despite Asians being a fast-growing population in New Zealand, little effort at that stage had been made to address differences in culture and religion which could lead to a gap in their health care.
According to the subsequent research report, Asian cultures stigmatised mental illness, and were more likely to attribute symptoms as religious, karmic, or spiritual consequences. They were less likely to articulate or seek help for mental health problems, or might describe them in a different way- such as stomach problems due to anxiety.
People with language difficulties, lack of employment, and lack of family or social support networks had barriers to their adaptation in New Zealand, and thus their likelihood of reporting and getting help for mental health problems, the report said.
‘‘In these societies, some forms of mental illness such as schizophrenia or organic brain disorder are conceived of as supernatural punishments for wrong-doings, and as such entail intense shame and stigma.’’
Evelyn joined Faith Pointe church in West Harbour, which initially operated out of a home before moving to a hall. The congregation grew.
One of its first members was Dionne Tane, a dark-haired, greeneyed mother of three. She and her husband had just returned from Australia after being there less than a year.
Dionne’s first impression of Evelyn was that she was in need of some solid friendships. Dionne found the way Evelyn opened up about her life endearing. Evelyn talked about Maggie’s father, and being homeless.
Dionne took people as they appeared. She tried not to judge others, and quickly welcomed the pair into her family’s home. Evelyn and Maggie brought around curries to share and Evelyn spoke about her dreams of starting her own business, shipping materials in from Malaysia and selling them online. Dionne thought that was clever.
Their kids played together. Dionne’s husband delivered Evelyn firewood in winter and sometimes Dionne would take her out for lunch. Sundays rolled around and while Dionne’s husband was working Evelyn would ring and say, ‘‘can we go for lunch?’’ The answer was frequently ‘‘yes, please!’’ A chance to get out of the house to have some adult conversation was welcome for them both.
Now living in a large new home in Te Atatu, west Auckland, Dionne chats about her old friend while her three children loiter. Nearby her mother Sharon Tane hangs off her every word. Sharon knew Evelyn too, and both women were affected by what happened to Maggie. Sharon’s partner had mental illness, and he got the help he needed. Why didn’t Evelyn? Sharon wonders aloud, over and over.
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 noted Evelyn doted on Maggie, who was always impeccably dressed and wellmannered. In August 2014, Evelyn enrolled Maggie in tutoring. The enrolment 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.
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.
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.
James Anson draws in a deep breath hearing Evelyn and Maggie’s names. That splinter of pain he’d almost forgotten. The Faith Pointe pastor chats easily, but declines a meeting. Faith Pointe’s website reveals he has brilliant white hair and square black glasses.
‘‘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 Faith Pointe.
‘‘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,’’ 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 from the start to he, his wife and fellow pastor Anthony Beamish 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’’.
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.’’
At the beginning of 2015, Maggie and Evelyn visited Malaysia. To her grandparents, Cliff and Pat Sen, Maggie seemed particularly inquisitive and intelligent for her age. Specially gifted, they thought.
In contrast, her mother evidently needed help. Evelyn wasn’t living in this world, they later told police. Meaning well, they took Evelyn to a traditional healer, but Evelyn was adamant her parents were out to get her too. She accused them of shipping her off to New Zealand to be sacrificed.
Pat and Cliff won’t speak about their daughter, but they are happy to gush about Maggie and in a detailed letter they remember her well. Dinosaurs were Maggie’s favourite thing, and she tickled her grandparents by calling caterpillars ‘‘worm butterflies’’, insisting they not be squashed. Ladybirds were small bugs with a colourful knapsack, Maggie explained to them.
‘‘If she sensed you were really upset, she would say ‘I’m sorry Grandma’, then wait for Grandma to say something like, ‘What you did is not correct, so don’t do it again,’ and with a sorry face she would say, ‘Yes Grandma’, and give Grandma a hug,’’ Cliff says.
‘‘When she woke up in the morning, which was usually after I had left for work, she would ask Grandma where I was. When Grandma told her that I had gone to work, she would say ‘Grandpa [will] miss me’. And when Grandma told her that I would be too busy working to miss her, she would insist that I would be missing her.
‘‘When I arrived home after work, and she heard my car, she would run towards the gate and joyfully shout ‘Grandpa, I missed you Grandpa’. And when I gave her a hug and said, ‘I missed you too’, she would ... proudly say, ‘Grandma, I told you Grandpa missed me!’
‘‘Wow! If that didn’t melt my heart,’’ Cliff emails.
Not everyone in the neighbourhood liked Evelyn. One neighbour had angrily knocked on Evelyn’s door to ask her to turn down music, and the only time Evelyn spoke to Shannon it seemed she wanted something.
Shannon admitted to the police that she hid whenever she saw Evelyn.
The final time they spoke was July 2015, when they went to the ATMs.
The call came in at 4.04am on August 7, 2015. ‘‘She’s dead,’’ Evelyn told the 111 operator. ‘‘Oh my God I’m stupid. Oh my God. I cannot live without her.’’ When paramedics arrived Maggie was cold to touch, stiff, and lying on a bed in the lounge.
Evelyn explained to St John staff there were demons in her house and that she was possessed by them. Paramedics noticed shallow cuts on her wrists and Evelyn was taken to Auckland Hospital.
A pathologist later found antidepressant medication in Maggie’s bloodstream, more than 134 times an adult’s typical dosage. Evelyn had taken some too. After giving them both an overdose, Evelyn was horrified to discover in the middle of the night that she hadn’t died, and took more.
The sparse house with the girly four-year-old’s room was now a crime scene, and detectives began door-knocking neighbours. For a long time, Maggie’s death was a mystery, and people who were interviewed felt they were under suspicion.
The Gilmores were grilled about their access to Evelyn’s home, and what keys they carried. Members of the church were interviewed. After her stint in hospital, Evelyn was transferred to the Mason Clinic, a psychiatric care facility. All the while, she refused to speak to police.
Eventually, slowly, the police worked it out. A stranger hadn’t entered the home in the dark of night. It was Evelyn. She was arrested and charged with murder and at her first appearance at the Auckland District Court lawyer Stephen Bonnar QC unsuccessfully argued that fragile Evelyn should be released on bail.
Many months later, in October 2016, Evelyn was reunited with Cliff and Pat. They sat and watched quietly in the High Court at Auckland, watching as tears slipped down Evelyn’s cheeks as Justice Mathew Downs described the years preceding August 7, 2015. Quickly, he noted Evelyn’s sense of isolation, and her lack of mental health care.
Psychiatrists from the Mason Clinic described Evelyn’s motivations. She believed Maggie was being tortured for the purposes of evil and was at risk of possession. Evelyn heard her daughter screaming night after night, and could not bear her suffering.
‘‘She needed to save and protect her daughter and struggled to find any other solution. She feels she was turned away everywhere and increasingly came to realise there was nothing else that could be done,’’ Dr Mhairi Duff explained.
‘‘Overwhelmingly, she thought that the only solution was for her daughter and herself to die ... only hours later this no longer made clear sense to her.’’
Evelyn was found not guilty by reason of insanity of Maggie’s murder. She is receiving care at the Mason Clinic. Police declined to be interviewed, and the High Court at Auckland declined access to the court file.