Alva Beach, located about an hour south-east of Townsville, is a sleepy beachside destination popular with families, fishers and kite surfers.

While many go there to get away from it all, that isolation also means this spot is far from help.

Watch never-before-seen footage of the Alva Beach stabbings above or watch the full Spotlight investigation on 7Plus right here.

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On the night of October 1, 2018, Candice Locke was injured when she fell out of a buggy on the beach.

She ran to a nearby house for help.

Less than an hour later, two men were dead on the front lawn, each stabbed in the heart.

Was this a case of a man protecting himself against home invaders or was there something more sinister going on?

The Tinder match

27-year-old aircraft engineer Tom Davy was a big man.

He stood 186cm and and weighed in at 133kgs.

“Tom was incredible...we really struggle without him,” Tom’s father Neil told 7NEWS Spotlight.

“He was a big strong man but he was our boy.”

He was also single until he met Candice Locke.

“They matched or something on Tinder,” Tom’s mother Heather told 7NEWS Spotlight.

“Then after that, they caught up on weekends and went fishing and camping together.”

Tom loved his fishing and the great outdoors and in the spring of 2018, he organised a perfect weekend away with his new girlfriend to Alva Beach in North Queensland.

While at the beach, Tom and Candice met two locals - father of three, Corey Christensen and local cane farmer Louie Bengoa.

They got on well, and were invited to watch the NRL grand final at a party later that night.

Family man

Corey Christensen, 37, was a family man and father to Chase, Cooper and Coby.

“I met Corey just out with friends,” Jaye Christensen, wife of Corey, said.

“Corey was a fun guy...a very fun guy.

“I was pretty out there myself, so yeah, I think we just really clicked and got along.”

“He was the best father - that was his pride and joy, was his sons.”

The party

“(Tom and Candice) arrived just after the sun had gone down,” Jaye told 7NEWS Spotlight.

“I don’t remember a lot about Tom, he was very quiet, but Candice...you knew she was there from the get-go.

“She was drunk...starting to lean, get very touchy-feely.”

“Tom was just sort of saying, ‘come on, it’s time to go’.

“It was more just Candice saying pretty much, ‘F you, F off. I’m not going’.”

“As the night wore on... I’ve always described it as hairs standing up on the back of my neck, the feeling that I was getting from her,” Jaye said.

As the game ends, Candice is determined to kick on with her new friends Corey and Louie.

"‘Thanks for the good time so far but I guess everything good comes to an end.’’"

Unable to get Candice to stop drinking or to leave with him, Tom decides to leave on his own and sleep in his car.

From the car, he sends Candice one final text message: ‘Thanks for the good time so far but I guess everything good comes to an end.’

A few houses away, 18-year-old Dean Webber also watched the grand final with friends before returning to the home where he lived by himself to get an early night.

The buggy incident

As the party winds down and people start heading home, Corey’s best friend Louie Bengoa offers to take Candice on a buggy ride.

Even with a carton of beer and an unknown number of Bundy and Cokes under his belt, Louie takes off towards the beach in the buggy with Candice.

Intoxicated and speeding, at some point Candice falls out of the buggy.

“She said ‘oh I hurt my shoulder’,” Louie later told police.

“I said ‘you’ll be right, it’s just a little thing’ and then she must have got upset or worried and just bolted.”

Instead of returning to the party, Candice knocks on a random door seeking help.

She knocks on Dean Webber’s door.

Knock on the door

It’s around 12am when Candice knocks on Dean’s door pleading for help.

“That lady was knocking on my door...as I got up, opened the door a little bit, she was like ‘you need to help me - these blokes have thrown me out of a buggy - they’re watching me now’,” Dean Webber told police in a walkthrough of the scene in 2018.

As Candice enters the house, Louie returns to the party to tell his friend Corey.

They decide to wake Tom, Candice’s boyfriend, still sleeping in his car.

All three get on the buggy in search of Candice.

As Louie, Corey and Tom approach the house, inside, Dean Webber is on the phone to Triple-0.

Dean tells the operator he fears for his safety.

An ambulance arrives in nine minutes flat - but there’s a problem.

It stops 500 metres from Dean’s home because of the threat of violence.

“If there’s a perceived threat, that there’s a possibility that there’s violence at the scene or anything like that, then (they) stand by until police get there,” Josh Davy, a paramedic and Tom’s brother, told 7NEWS Spotlight.

But on this night, the police were busy and Dean’s call was given low priority.

At a stand-off and with no assistance on the way, Tom starts calling out for Candice and looks for a way into the house.

Who’s the saviour?

It has to be considered that perhaps both sides believe they are saving Candice that night.

Not just Dean Webber, but Candice’s boyfriend Tom, and his new friends Corey and Louie, who know she’s injured and fear for her safety.

Whatever the case, the three men briefly leave the property.

"‘I need police now...I’ve got two blokes trying to break in, please’"

“I heard the buggy pull up and I took a quick look saw it was them again,” Dean told police during a filmed walk-through of the scene in 2018.

Thirty minutes after Candice first arrived at Dean’s front door, Dean makes a second call to Triple-0.

“I need police now...I’ve got two blokes trying to break in, please!” Dean tells the operator.

Around the corner, the ambulance has been sitting idle for 43 minutes.

Deadly encounter

It’s now 12.48am on the 1st of October 2018.

Outside Dean Webber’s home, the tension is rising while inside, there’s increasing terror.

“As soon as they came in, the three of them - I could see on foot, cause they got straight out and came over, and this is where they started (saying) ‘oh where are you, you d***head, don’t call the police you weak scum’,” Dean told police later.

“That’s where the threats really started going...I was fearful of my life cause they’re rattling the doors and he’s trying to get in.

“They were going around you know yelling out ‘you know we’re gunna come in and bash you...we’re gunna kill ya’.”

One of the men outside, local cane farmer Louie Bengoa is the only living witness to what happened outside.

In the heat of the action, he claims he wandered off.

“I could hear Thomas going, ‘Candice, come on’,” Louie told police during the taped walk-through.

“And then it (got) noisier and noisier and yelling and he started to get a bit annoyed at her for not responding.

“Then, I don’t know how long, it just seemed really quick, I heard a bang...it wasn’t glass breaking, I don’t know if it was a window getting forced open or a door.”

Inside the house, Dean says he and Candice feared for their lives.

“I remember being here with Candice...when the first male individual got the door unlocked like ripped it up over the latch and slid it open I just remember (hearing) ‘I’ve got you f**kin’ now’,” Dean told police.

“They ripped the door up and just (said) ‘come here you little f**kers and assaulted us...well, assaulted me.”

Dean told police he then grabbed a kitchen knife from a nearby bench.

“I was flipped 180 (degrees). I went from standing up to on my head and they just throw me down...I think I hit...me leg...on the chair or the bench, but then I must’ve injured them and once I was on the ground incapacitated, that’s when they left,” Dean told police.

“I think I stabbed him in the heart. I had it in (my) left arm...I was just trying anything I could to protect (myself).”

In the confrontation near the door, Dean Webber fatally stabs Corey Christensen in the heart - a single deadly wound.

Corey staggers backwards and collapses outside.

Candice’s boyfriend Tom Davy, receives two fatal stab wounds to the heart, as well as knife wounds to his left cheek, left hand, forearms and fingers.

“I’ve walked up and I saw Thomas...and (he) come out in a white shirt was all bloodied and he said ring Triple-0,” Louie told police during a filmed interview.

Inside, Candice is still badly injured - a dislocated shoulder causing her agonising pain.

At 1.17am the police arrive, nearly an hour after Dean Webber first called for help.

As paramedics frantically try to save the life of Cory Christensen and Tom Davy, police walk to the front door.

Dean Webber is still on the phone to Triple-0.

Dean read his rights and placed under arrest.

‘Daddy was hurt really badly’

For Jaye Christensen, Corey’s wife, the tragic news was delivered at three in the morning.

“The female police officer advised that Corey had been stabbed and it was a fatal wound,” Jaye said.

For Jaye, the hardest part was telling their three children.

“I just had to sit them down and say to them that something had happened, their daddy was hurt really badly, and that...he now had to go to heaven,”

‘Tom has been murdered’

Candice’s boyfriend, Tom Davy was also killed.

“I was at work the next morning...just making a cup of coffee and the local police came around and told me,” Neil, Tom’s father, said.

“They told me that Tom had been murdered up in Ayr.”

“We didn’t want to believe it,” said Heather, Tom’s mother.

“Especially when the policeman said that Tom had been murdered.

“We couldn’t comprehend why anyone would do that to our son.”

No charges laid

Although Dean Webber was initially arrested, police decided not to lay any charges.

“I didn’t see (Lead Detective) Gavin (Neal) till the next day, it was around this time that we’re then being told that charges weren’t going to be laid,” Jaye said.

“They’d made the decision it was self-defence, and I recall a comment that he made, if he was in that position, he’d do the same thing.”

The investigation

The families believe reports from the police investigation cast doubt on Dean Webber’s story.

The front door to Dean’s house is a sliding glass door with a latch onto two screws.

Dean is adamant the door was forced open, but the police report did not find evidence of ‘forced entry’, although it doesn’t rule out the possibility that the door was lifted off its hinges.

Also, Dean says the three men tried to gain entry to the house at multiple locations.

“That that’s not true,” Heather told 7NEWS Spotlight.

“There’s no forensic, there’s no fingerprints, there’s nothing on anything other than the door that they opened to go in.”

After Corey was stabbed, Tom Davy – Candice’s boyfriend – fought with Dean, leaving him battered.

But in that fight, Dean had a knife – and Tom’s blood, his DNA, is everywhere.

For Tom’s family, it suggests a frenzied attack rather than a defensive encounter.

“I believe Corey was murdered there and then at the doorway, and he staggered out onto the footpath and died,” Neil said. “Tom was behind him, and then Tom went in.

“I believe it was an ambush, I believe the bloke had decided what he was going to do before they went in.”

Dean claims the three men entered his house that night, but forensic reports disagree.

Corey was first to be stabbed, and his blood was only found outside Dean’s house, on the railing and the concrete.

“The evidence showed that there was not one single piece of DNA of Corey’s in that house,” Jaye said.

Louie Bengoa, the third man there that night, claims he was not part of any attack, and his DNA was not found anywhere.

But he’s never properly explained what happened on the drunken buggy ride that left Candice Locke so badly injured.

Where are they now?

Louie initially took Candice on the buggy ride and later brought Corey Christensen and Tom Davy back to the house where she’d sought refuge.

He was the only one of the three to survive.

When Denham Hitchcock tracked Louie down to find out what actually happened that night, he refused to answer any questions.

Candice Locke has since moved on from that terrible night.

She has a new partner and works at a bank. She also refused to speak to 7NEWS Spotlight about the events of that night.

Dean Webber still lives in the town of Ayr.

He hasn’t been able to return to work and a Coronial Inquest ruled that because he is suffering from acute PTSD, he doesn’t have to give evidence in person.

The decision that has angered and outraged the families of the two dead men.

“He’s the person that’s taken the lives of two people - he should have to give evidence,” Heather said.

“I believe Dean needs to be cross-examined properly,” said Jaye.

For this reason, 7NEWS Spotlight did not approach Dean for this investigation.

The right to defend

In this story there are many views and the questions raised are significant.

But how far can you go to protect yourself and your family.

“Well, you’ve got the right to defend yourself,” Gavin Neal, lead investigator on the case said.

“I would say that you do everything within your power not to have to resort to that type of thing, but if you honestly believe that it’s you or them, well you’ve got that protection from the law.”

For Neil and Heather, their son remains a hero.

“He just knew that Candice was in trouble - ‘I’ll go and help, I’ll go and get her.’

“To us, it’s as simple as that.”

Watch Denham Hitchcock’s full investigation 7NEWS Spotlight: Saving Candice on 7plus.