Ann Marie Smith was surrounded by privilege but died in squalor and her life remains a mystery – ABC News

Most of Ann Marie Smith's neighbours knew she was there, but reports of when they last saw her vary wildly.

A couple several houses down said it had been at least a decade since they'd seen her outside, taking in the sun in her wheelchair in her home's driveway.

Another said it was more recent, but still at least five years ago.

Whoever you talk to, it's safe to say the residents of Bradman Court, in suburban Adelaide, hadn't seen the woman from number one in several years.

It was only when their street turned into a scene from a television crime show they realised something terrible had been going on behind her closed doors and drawn blinds.

"Virtually the whole day there were about four or five police cars, plain cars, forensic vans, people in full protective suits, booties and the lot," is how Bram Fynnaart described the scene when police came to the home.

"They were very friendly as we walked past but they spent a lot of time there."

What police knew, and neighbours were learning, is that Ms Smith had been living in horrific conditions for at least a year.

She had cerebral palsy and was unable to walk, eat or bathe for herself.

Despite having a carer at her house every day, police believe she'd been left in the same chair day and night and wasn't even moved to go to the toilet.

When she was rushed to the Royal Adelaide Hospital on April 5, she was malnourished, in septic shock and in need of surgery to remove rotting flesh caused by severe pressure sores.

She died the following day.

It was more than a month before the wider public learnt of Ms Smith's fate, when police held a press conference, calling for people with information on the last year of her life to come forward.

Head of SA Police's Major Crime branch, Detective Superintendent Des Bray, delivered the details.

"Ann died in disgusting and degrading circumstances and her death was likely preventable," he said.

"It was a nice house from the outside, it was in a nice suburb but sadly Ann was living in disgusting conditions inside."

A manslaughter investigation is now underway to find out how that happened, and other agencies are also looking into the matter.

Thanks to the police statement, the public know the details surrounding Ms Smith's death, but her life remains largely a mystery.

A photo released by police shows a slightly smiling, young, blonde woman another person behind her is cropped from the frame.

But the photo is decades old, and unlikely to resemble what she looked like at 54, shut in her house for years.

Police say she has a brother who she hadn't been in contact with for some time, and a friend who she considered her next of kin, living in regional South Australia.

By 2009, both her parents had died and she was living alone.

Ann Smith's house sits on the corner of the street, which curves into a short cul-de-sac in Kensington Park, a cosy corner of Adelaide's privileged eastern suburbs.

Most of the residents have lived there for a decade or more and are well acquainted with each other's comings and goings.

They saw her house go up 15 years ago and said her parents built it for her.

There are stories on the street that there had been live-in carers, but they were sacked years ago, leading to a dispute at the property.

"They refused to move or they claimed squatters' rights after a certain number of years and then there was a security detail out front 24 hours a day for about three or four months," Mr Fynnaart said.

The neighbour directly next door to Ms Smith said that for the past few years, a carer had been coming to the house three times a day to look after Ms Smith.

The Fynnaarts, who live down the road, said they saw her small sedan parked out the front every day at 9:00am.

Ms Smith's carer, Hectorville woman Rosa Maione, has been interviewed by police as part of their investigation.

She was working for Integrity Care, an agency that is now being audited by the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) Quality and Safeguards Commission, and has been fined for failing to report Ms Smith's death.

Police said Ms Smith also had a gardener, but it appears Ms Maione was the only person she had regular, physical contact with.

South Australia's state-appointed disability advocate Dr David Caudrey is now heading up a taskforce looking into the case.

He believes Ms Smith's isolation posed the biggest risk.

"It's not just one pair of eyes or one person who knows what's going on in somebody's life, it's multiple eyes, it's multiple people," Dr Caudrey said.

"How this poor woman became so isolated that it effectively looks like there was no-one else in her life other than this one carer you could see that would be very, very unusual."

He said the disability community is reeling from the revelations, particularly parents who have children with disabilities.

"I've been in the business of disability and mental health for about 45 years and I think in all of that time I haven't heard of anything as hair-raisingly awful as the experiences that Ann Marie went through," he said.

"It's every parents nightmare to think that when you're no longer around or you can no longer look after your son or daughter with a disability that somehow or another they will not be looked after properly. It pervades your worries."

She might not have been checked on, but authorities did know Ms Smith existed.

Her care was provided by the state run agency Disability SA until 2018 when she transitioned onto an NDIS plan, where she was funded for six hours care a day.

Dr Caudrey, who was once head of Disability SA, said while the NDIS gives people more freedom and choice, it also opens up more gaps in the system.

"There are multiple players and when there are multiple players, if you're not careful you find each player defines what they do and everybody thinks that somebody else is taking responsibility," he said.

The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission is investigating what happened to Ms Smith, and since the police press conference, there have been 16 calls to Crime Stoppers with information about the case.

Until they yield answers, Ann Smith's neighbours, and the rest of the community, are left wondering how a woman living in such a nice house, on a well-kept street, could have been so terribly neglected.

"It's not even good to think about it but we just didn't know the details of it. We assumed that the carers were caring," neighbour Klara Fynnaart said.

Ms Smith was cremated at the Centennial Park Cemetery on May 13, and her remains returned to a funeral home.

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Ann Marie Smith was surrounded by privilege but died in squalor and her life remains a mystery - ABC News