Not long after her eldest son, Simon, made the horrific discovery, police pulled over the 55-year-old woman's car in St Peters in Sydney's inner-west on Monday morning.

Behind the wheel was her 28-year-old son Nathan White. Also in the car was a crossbow, a pitchfork wrapped in a towel and the family dog.

Police said the car's number plate was automatically detected by a passing police car, with an alert advising officers to pull the car over.

The officers arrested Mr White and took him to Newtown Police Station, where he was charged on Monday night with his mother's murder.

He was refused police bail and is due to appear at Newtown Local Court on Tuesday.

Friends and neighbours say the mother and two sons were a quiet family who kept to themselves.

However they raised concerns about Mr White's mental health, which they claimed had deteriorated recently.

One woman, who knew Mr White since he was a child, said he had started hearing voices in his head over the past year.

During the same time period he had also become withdrawn, rarely leaving his Florida Street home.

"Over the past 12 months he had just fully isolated himself," the woman, who asked not to be named, said.

"Before that he was fine, he had normal conversations and everything.

"He had always been a pretty good kid growing up. He has had a hard life, he only had his mum. It was only mum and the two boys."

Childhood friend Daniel Ikin-McKinnon said Mr White, who went to Sylvania High School, had a serious motorbike crash a few years ago that required him to have a full facial reconstruction.

He was on strong medication in the aftermath.

"He never seemed like the type to do anything like [this]," he said.

"[He was] just like a normal kid to me, we just did what most teenagers do ... hang out [and] do dumb shit that we found fun but nothing extreme. Just kids being kids.

"This would have never been who I thought would do something like this."

Neighbour Kerrin Willis used to live in the same townhouse complex as the family.

She remembered Ms Connors as a nice, quiet woman.

"I never had a problem with her," she said.

"She would get out the front of the house on the weekends and clean the front yard. She worked five days a week."

It is understood Ms White's body was wrapped in a blanket and found with a significant head injury and covered in blood.

Miranda Local Area Command Superintendent Michael O'Toole said the older brother was "very distraught" about what had happened.

"He is the one that came across the incident and called police to attend," he said.

Police could not yet say whether the woman died on Sunday or in the early hours of Monday.

/*

Florida Street, Sylvania, New South Wales, Australia<\/p>\n",color:"yellow", title:"Woman\'s body found", maxWidth:200, open:0}] ); } if (!window.gmapsLoaders) window.gmapsLoaders = []; window.gmapsLoaders.push(CreateGMapgmap201741585949); window.gmapsAutoload=true; /*]]>*/