In the 11 months between the killings and charges being laid, he was out clubbing. His main concerns were thoughts of an impending singing career, having been a singer in an a cappella band (Definite Vibez), and was free to indulge his vanity, collecting more than 15 bottles of aftershave. He also sent persistent emails to his aunt, Annie Paraan, in the Philippines, who managed the Sef family affairs there - asking for money. He even created false death certificates on a computer to speed up the process.

But his plan to kill had begun in a different way. In February 2001 Sef had begun searching for poisonous plants on the internet and ordering lethal seeds. Searches he thought he had deleted from his computer were later traced.

He told police he did this because he wanted to kill himself, so distraught was he over losing this girl he adored. He said he had told his friends that he had cancer as a way of preparing them for his death. Just weeks before the murders, Sef received the seeds, shelled them and mixed them with warm water. He kept the prepared potion in a film canister under his bedside table.

Realising then that if he was to poison his family, he would need some kind of explanation as to how it had happened, he typed a letter to a major food company: "Three of your products have been poisoned. By now they are on supermarket shelves. This is what you get for treating employees like garbage. Good luck finding infected cans before someone dies. Go to hell!!!"

The letter arrived on July 2, just over a week before the murders. He also wrote letters to the Federal Police and the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service. Traces of the letters were found on his laptop and his fingerprint was lifted from one of the envelopes.

The next day, his mother reported violently ill at the Sydney Adventist Hospital, saying she believed she had food poisoning. Sef also feigned a minor stomach upset, telling people he believed there might have been something in the tap water at a restaurant in which the family had dined.

But his mother recovered and returned home. Realising he could no longer continue with the poisoning plan, he tried to cancel one of his orders for seeds on July 5. It seems likely he threw the remaining seeds into the backyard, because three years later a poisonous plant was found growing there.

After the killings, Sef appealed for help to find the killer and told anyone who would listen he wanted justice and was setting up a foundation in memory of his family.

In a police media conference he said: "It is difficult to explain the love and ties in my family . . . but if you were to picture the four corners of the world, in my world we were the four. The three corners of my world are now gone."

By December, detectives in Strike Force Tawas had told Sef that they didn't believe his story. Through a friend, they leaked the fact there were the two recorded sightings of his car on the murder afternoon, and he began to panic. He needed a new alibi.

He knew that his new story had to accommodate the two car sightings that afternoon and a reason why he had lied to police for so long. Not realising his phone was being tapped, Sef desperately called brothels. Did they have surveillance cameras? How long had they been opened? Did they keep copies of their rosters?

Choosing as his alibi witness a woman he had been with before who worked at a Chatswood brothel, Sef told police that he had been too ashamed to say it earlier. He said he was also embarrassed to admit to his extended family that he had been with a prostitute. They all believed Sef, a former altar boy and singer in a liturgical choir, was a good, Catholic virgin.

Walking with a friend in Hyde Park he revealed his new alibi, telling him he was worried it would "blow up in my face again".

When it turned out the woman he had chosen had taken that week off work, he had no choice but to stick to his plan, as he had already changed his story once. He paid a taxi driver $50 to write and sign a dictated statement saying he drove him to Chatswood that day, asking him to backdate it.

He also began fabricating emails which he handed to police. One said a wealthy Filipino businessman had been responsible for the deaths of his family and he should lie low and search through his father's business records.

Before all of this, police had no murder weapon and not enough evidence to charge him, but he was grasping, desperately trying to force people to give him statements and creating scenarios. All of it was taped.

The farrago of lies collapsed as police approached his friends. Not only was it a lie that he had cancer, but many of his other stories also proved to be hollow. He did not own a television production company, he was not training for the Olympics, he did not have a black belt in *** kwon do and was not attended by bodyguards. His story that he had been offered a record deal after his moving rendition of One Sweet Day at the funeral was also fabricated.

When he met the prostitute he would later try to use for his alibi, he told her he was a gang member. He bragged to a girlfriend later that the prostitute had said his ***ual prowess was so incredible he didn't need to pay for her services.

He claimed he had flown to a funeral in New York after the collapse of the World Trade Centre and paid for the air fare of a victim's mother. Sef also bragged he was launching a "Sef-G street kids on stage" project and after the murders would call organisations such as the Starlight Foundation, telling them he was Sef Gonzales and expecting to be on their A-list for functions.

He created a website, pretending a friend had set it up in honour of their friendship, dedicating it to him. In truth, it was all Sef's work. Most of the messages on the site were fabricated.

Desperate for the approval that he had not received from his parents, he treated his friends generously. Some even felt motivated by how much he had supposedly achieved. "I always respected him for his dedication and motivation, so I thought keeping in touch with him will help me learn something and mature a bit more," said one. "He was a really good influence on me and always kind."

Another detailed how kind he had been to her. "He was very affectionate and had a way of making me feel special. We had good conversations and he was really fun to talk to and a good listener when something was wrong. He would get along with everyone we met."

While his claims were extremely outlandish they seemed genuine to all who heard them until they had reason to believe otherwise. "He seemed very genuine," said a friend who had known him for some years. "When I think of it now he fooled so many people and I remember the shock I felt when I found out about all the lies. He was a master of deception. That's why he was able to fool so many people. The things he said came out so genuinely it was hard to question them ... even when he was boasting he seemed modest."

One of the many stories about his father that he would repeat was this one: "My father would always say to me," Sef would begin. "There's no softer pillow when you sleep at night, as when you have a clear conscience."