Lauren Dickason trial: Psych expert reveals killer’s last words to daughters

WARNING: This story contains graphic and sensitive content.

A global expert who “literally wrote the book” on how to carry out psychiatric evaluations of mothers who have killed their children is giving extensive evidence in support of triple murder-accused mum Lauren Dickason’s defence of insanity or infanticide as her High Court trial continues today.

She spent 10 hours interviewing Dickason across four days and this afternoon revealed the killer told her she frequently had thoughts and images in her mind about killing her children.

But she told no one of these thoughts in the weeks before the girls died.

Dickason is accused of murdering her three little girls at their Timaru home in September 2021 but claims she was so mentally disturbed at the time she cannot be held responsible for the deaths.

This morning, Dr Susan Hatters-Friedman began giving evidence as a defence witness.

Yesterday, defence lawyer Anne Toohey told the jury what it could expect from her.

“This case is not just about depression, it’s about postpartum depression and a mother who killed three children,” she said.

“The leading world expert on this phenomenon is Dr Susan Hatters Friedman. She is a world-renowned forensic psychiatrist. She is also a reproductive psychiatrist.

“And that means she is an expert on mental disorders flowing from all things from infertility to childbirth and beyond.

“She has published numerous peer-reviewed articles on why parents killed their children. It’s called filicide.

“She literally wrote the book on how to do psychiatric evaluations of mothers who have killed their children.”

Lauren Anne Dickason appears in court on the first day of her two-week trial for the murder of her three children.

Dickason, 42, is on trial in the High Court at Christchurch charged with murdering her daughters Liané - who was a week from her 7th birthday - and 2-year-old twins Maya and Karla.

The sisters were found dead in their beds by their father Graham Dickason when he returned home from a work function.

The family had only been in New Zealand for a matter of weeks after emigrating from South Africa.

Dickason admits smothering the children to death but has pleaded not guilty to the murder charges by reason of insanity or infanticide.

While the Crown acknowledges Dickason suffered from sometimes-serious depression, it maintains she knew what she was doing when she killed the girls.

Last week, Crown Prosecutor Andrew McRae alleged Dickason was an angry and frustrated woman who was “resentful of how the children stood in the way of her relationship with her husband” and killed them “methodically and purposefully, perhaps even clinically”.

The defence refutes that, saying Dickason was a loving mother who had spiralled deep into postpartum depression and was in such a “dark place” that she felt her only option was to commit suicide and take her children with her.

“All of the defence experts agree that there was an altruistic motive … That means that Lauren killed her children out of love,” Toohey told the jury yesterday in the defence opening address.

“In her mind, she was killing them out of love - she was killing herself and she didn’t want to leave the children… she was so sure this was the right thing to do she persisted.

“This is about postpartum depression and a mother who killed her children. She did not want to leave her children without a mum… she also did not want her children to suffer from having such a bad mother.”

Hatters-Friedman is based in the US but worked at the Mason Clinic in Auckland as a forensic psychiatrist for seven years and at Auckland Women’sRegional Correctional Facilty.

She has given evidence in court in both New Zealand and America and works most days treating patients, particularly in maternal mental health and women with forensic issues - those before the courts.

Frequent thoughts of killing the girls - what Lauren Dickason told the expert

Hatters-Friedman spoke to Dickason about the times in the past she had told her husband she’d had thoughts of harming the children.

The court has heard about these incidents earlier in the trial but Hatters-Friedman gave further insight.

“I want to make the twins quiet,” Dickason told her husband in 2019.

He asked her how.

“Maybe put a pillow over their heads,” she replied.

Lauren Dickason during her police interview. Photo / Pool

She told Hatters-Friedman she never had any intention of doing that to the children - she “just wanted peace and quiet for 30 minutes”.

Dickason was upset when her husband - who she felt she could tell anything - reacted in anger and called her mother to come over to the house.

She went to see a psychiatrist the next day.

Dickason approached her husband again - twice - about “scary” thoughts of hurting the girls.

The first time Graham Dickason “asked if she could promise not to hurt them”. She promised, and told him she “had a feeling but not a plan”.

In early 2021 she told Hatters-Friedman the thoughts intensified.

“An image flashed into my head of sedating the girls, putting them in bath, cutting their femoral arteries … and putting them to bed,” she said.

She was “horrified” and went straight to tell her husband

“Do you realise what you’re telling me?” Graham said to her, angrily in her opinion.

“I’m very scared, that’s why I’m telling you,” she replied.

She said “everything was unravelling” and claimed her husband told her “if anyone could hear her they would lock her up and would never see the girls again”.

He told her “put on your big girl panties” and pull herself together for him and the girls.

She told Hatters-Friedman that the images were going through her head “the entire night”.

She was undergoing a foot surgery the next day and hoped that the anaesthetic would help to reset her mind.

It did not help and she woke up from the operation panicked and anxious.

Graham Dickason asked her if she wanted to be taken to a psychiatric ward and she said no as she worried it would “mess up” the emigration plan.

She kept having thoughts of killing the children - but told no one.

She had images in her mind “still shots of each of the girls lying in the bath” and of her “putting them in their beds to rest forever”.

She told Hatters-Friedman she “tried to push [the thoughts] away into a box because they scared her so badly”.

When the family were packing to leave South Africa the children were playing with a packet of zip ties - purchased to keep suitcases securely closed.

She had the thought “this is another way children could get hurt”.

She told the expert she put the zip ties away, scared of what she might do.

She did not tell her husband about the thoughts.

Due to his previous reaction, she was too afraid and kept everything to herself.

Hatters-Friedman said Dickason had thoughts and plans of suicide but worried deeply about leaving her children behind.

In the weeks leading up to the move she had a “total communication shut down”.

She “just wanted to cry” and did not speak to her friends, messaging them so they could not see her.

“I just lost control of everything,” she said.

The Dickason girls. Photo / Supplied

Dickason spoke about the day she killed her children. The family were relieved to get to Timaru after a long flight that Dickason was anxious throughout.

But things did not get better.

“Anxiety was eating a hole in my stomach, I couldn’t think straight,” she told Hatters-Friedman.

She told no one how badly she was struggling, sending messages to family and friends “as if everything was alright”.

The day of the alleged murders she felt alone, helpless and “so far away from everyone”.

“I don’t know how I am going to do this,” she thought.

Things felt “too big” and she “had no reserve left at all” and she worried her husband was “tired” of her and “irritated”.

When Graham Dickason left for a work function she touched his arm and said “goodbye”.

“It felt so surreal, almost like I wasn’t in my body,” she told Hatters-Friedman.

The children started to play up and bicker and Dickason went to the bathroom.

“There was so much noise,” she said.

She was scared for the children and about what she might do.

Hatters-Friedman said Dickason was thinking “I just can’t do another day of this”.

“I just can’t do this one more day - I just want this to end,” Dickason remembered thinking.

She then remembered there were zip ties in the garage and “her mind flashed back” to her thoughts in South Africa of using them to kill the girls.

Dickason on killing girls: ‘I thought I was doing the right thing’

Dickason talked through the killings at length with Hatters-Friedman.

She said she told the children “mummy’s very sick and is going to die”.

“I can’t leave you behind because I don’t know who’s going to look after you,’ she said.

She had planned to take her own life with zip ties as well but changed her mind when she “saw how long it took”.

She then took other measures to try and end her life.

“I want this to be over,” Dickason said she was thinking.

“I’ll be in heaven and I’ll be safe.”

When she woke up the next day in hospital she had no memory of her husband coming home and finding the children.

She said she was “in hell”.

“I thought I got my family to safety but I’ve left them behind,” she thought.

Specialist police spent days at the Dickason's Timaru home after the three children were found dead. Photo / George Heard

The court heard Dickason had no thought of the consequences of her actions because she “didn’t expect to live”.

She thought she was “doing a favour for Graham”.

“I wasn’t meant to wake up,” she said.

“She thought the children would be better off in heaven because she was the worst wife and mother,” said Hatters-Friedman.

Dickason said: “I just wanted us all to be together”.

“I loved them so much that I couldn’t leave them behind if I was to leave this world.”

She said that she felt she was doing “the right thing” and “the children would be better off dead in my mind because I am such a bad mum”.

Dickason thought Graham would understand what happened to his family given she had mentioned in the past her thoughts of hurting the girls.

Expert tells jury about postpartum depression and motives

Before discussing Dickason’s specific case Hatters-Friedman explained a number of things to the jury including definitions of terminology she would use.

She also gave a detailed description of postpartum depression and its causes, noting symptoms could start to occur a year after a woman gives birth and can last for a long time and reoccur if there are multiple pregnancies.

“The time of highest risk in a woman’s life for the development of mental illness is in the postpartum,” the court heard.

“Women with certain personality traits may be at higher risk.”

Having obsessive-compulsive tendencies was one trait - and the jury has heard from two witnesses that Dickason was “OCD” about her children.

Hatters-Friedman said common symptoms included feelings of worthlessness or excessive guilt, fatigue or low energy, decreased concentration and suicidal thoughts.

“Women who have experienced severe depression at any time in their lives including in the postpartum may also have associated psychotic symptoms sucha s mood-congruent delusions in which content includes maternal inadequacy, nihilism or feeling deserving of punishment.

She also expanded more on the “altrustic motive” the defence mentioned yesterday.

Hatters-Friedman said in such cases women wanted to end their lives and were of the belief that their child was “better off in heaven with their mother than remaining alive and motherless in what the depressed mother sees as a cruel uncaring world”.

She also told the jury it was common for mothers battling depression to experience recurrent thoughts of harming their children which they were “hesitant to share with family”.

Five motives for child murder - expert explains why parents kill

The jury were shown a table explaining the five “motives for child murders by parents” that experts refer to around the world.

Hatters-Friedman said fatal maltreatment was the most common and was when a parent killed a child through abuse or neglect.

The second was “unwanted child” - where a parent kills a child because they are seen as a hindrance. This generally happened after hidden and unwanted pregnancies or when a woman starts a new relationship and her partner did not want children.

Partner revenge was third and often occurred in the context of “acrimonious custody dispute, infidelity or relationship issues.

The last two, Hatters-Friedman said, were “psychiatric motives”.

The altruistic motive - also described as an “extended suicide” - is generally related to a parental “suicide plan or beliefs about preventing or rescuing the child from a fate worse than death”.

Hatters-Friedman said those parents loved their children but were delusional in their fears about what could happen to them if they remained alive.

And the “acutely psychotic” motive that involves a parent killing their child “in throes of psychosis, for example, because of command hallucinations”.

“The parent might hear the voice of ‘God’ telling them to kill their child,” she said as an example.

She said in altruistic cases a parent “can also be psychotic”.

Expert interviewed killer for 10 hours after arrest

Earlier, Hatters-Friedman became teary at one stage as she recalled Dickason speaking about her young daughters.

She told the court her job was to give an objective opinion looking at the whole picture.

She considered a large amount of information including witness statements, photographs, the messaging and internet search evidence presented to the jury and the interviews Dickason and her husband gave to police.

Dickason’s historic psychiatric and medical records were also provided to her and all notes and reports made about her mental health from the day she killed the children - including from the other experts engaged to give opinions at trial.

Hatters-Friedman was then able to speak to Dickason in person - four times and for about 10 hours in total - and prepared her own 66-page report.

She questioned the accused about her family, education, employment and cultural history.

Dickason spoke at length about her fertility journey, having her children and the family’s decision to emigrate to New Zealand.

She also spoke about the covid pandemic, lockdowns in South Africa and the family’s time in managed isolation when they arrived here - after a number of frustrating delays.

Dickason told the expert:

“I just wanted to wrap [the children] up and protect them from everything that the world was throwing at them.”

Before the lunch break, Hatters-Friedman began canvassing Dickason’s psychiatric history.

She will continue her evidence this afternoon.

Hatters-Friedman is one of three experts that will give evidence for the defence.

Two others will give evidence for the Crown.

“If you find that Lauren’s mind was disturbed at the time this happened due to postpartum depression - then this is not murder it’s infanticide,” Toohey said yesterday.

“And if she didn’t know what she was doing was morally wrong that night then she is not guilty of murder or infant that is insanity.”

The trial, before Justice Cameron Mander, is expected to run for at least one more week.