Lauren Dickason trial: Father of suffocated girls to give evidence at murder-accused wife’s trial

WARNING: This article contains graphic content

The husband of a woman accused of murdering her three children at their Timaru home will give evidence today at her High Court trial about how he found his daughters dead and the harrowing aftermath.

Lauren Anne Dickason allegedly killed 6-year-old Liane and 2-year-old twins Maya and Karla at their Timaru home on September 16, 2021.

Her husband, orthopaedic surgeon Graham Dickason, found the three children dead in their beds and his wife in a serious condition when he arrived home from a work event.

The little girls were killed just 20 minutes after their father left the family home

Dickason has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and infanticide.

Her trial, scheduled for three weeks, started on Thursday before Justice Cameron Mander and a jury in the High Court at Christchurch.

Today, that jury will be played Graham Dickason’s evidential interview with police, which took place soon after his wife’s arrest.

The court will then hear from the man himself via a video link from his home in South Africa.

Graham and Lauren Dickason with their daughters before the alleged murders. Photo / Facebook

The family had emigrated to New Zealand from Pretoria, South Africa, and had been in Timaru only two weeks - after a stint in managed Covid-19 isolation - when the children died.

Lauren Dickason has admitted killing the three children, but she denies it was murder and is mounting a defence of insanity and infanticide.

The details of the alleged murder were suppressed until yesterday when Crown prosecutor Andrew McRae outlined the case for the jury.

He said Dickason was “calculated, lucid and deliberate in her actions” and that she intended to kill the little girls because she was angry, frustrated and resentful that they were “getting in the way” of her relationship with her husband.

The court heard Dickason and her husband emigrated from South Africa after he accepted a job at Timaru Hospital.

Dickason had suffered from a mood disorder, anxiety and “perfectionism” for many years and was on medication.

The couple underwent a significant amount of fertility treatment to have their children - and lost a baby along the way - which had put even more stress and pressure on them and exacerbated Dickason’s mental anguish.

However in early 2021 - after having the twins - she was doing so well at managing her health through lifestyle and exercise that she had stopped taking the meds.

McRae said the months leading up to the family’s move to New Zealand was, naturally, stressful.

And while he acknowledged Dickason was “suffering from a major depressive episode” when she killed the girls, she was not so disturbed she did not know her actions were wrong.

“There is no doubt in this case that the defendant was responsible for killing her own children - the issue is whether she intended to kill the children in anger … frustration … or resentment for how they were getting in the way of her relationship,” said McRae.

“She knew what she was doing before, during and after - she acted methodically … even clinically.

“There is no medical evidence here.”

McRae outlined the day the children died for the jury.

Dickason sat with her eyes closed as the facts were presented in open court - where members of her and her husband’s family sat listening.

The morning of the alleged murders Dickason and her husband took their oldest daughter to school then dropped the twins at their first day of preschool.

Graham Dickason went to work and his wife stayed home organising the family’s new life.

She picked the children up just after 3pm and took them for a walk through the Timaru gardens and to the playground.

At 7pm Graham Dickason left home to attend a work function.

“That left the defendant at home with her three children, she knew that Mr Dickason would be out of the house for at least two hours or longer,” said McRae.

“Around 20 minutes later the defendant went into the garage and retrieved a packet of cable ties.

“The defendant got the children together in a bedroom and told them that they were going to make necklaces.

“The defendant attached the cable ties together and tightened them around the children’s necks.

“Realising that the cable ties were insufficient to cause suffocation, the defendant placed a towel over the children’s heads and smothered them.”

She killed Karla, then Liane and Maya.

6-year-old Liane and 2-year-old twins Maya and Karla.

She then tried to take her own life by ingesting pills and trying unsuccessfully to cut her wrists.

When her husband came home he found his wife in the kitchen acting strangely.

He ran to check on the children and was confronted with his three little girls unresponsive in their beds.

He tried to cut the cable ties and revive the children and in a panic, called his colleague for help.

When the colleague arrived he found Graham Dickason in considerable distress and called 111.

Dickason was rushed to hospital and McRae said when she woke up later she was “in shock and horror and surprised to be alive”.

When interviewed by police Dickason said the children were wild and did not listen to her.

“Last night something just triggered me,” she said.

“I had been thinking about it before but I was trying to find a way to ease the pressure.”

McRae also referenced a number of messages Dickason sent in the lead-up to the alleged murders.

“The number of these messages and the type of messages … along with internet searches and her statement to police … ultimately what she has admitted to the children shows a relationship with the children was loving at times and fraught at others,” he said.

“The message shows Mrs Dickason harboured resentment and anger towards her children when they were misbehaving.”

In a number of messages, Dickason spoke of “murdering”, “taking out” and harming the girls.

“It feels like my fuse is so short ... I want to explode over the smallest things,” she said.

“I regularly want to smack mine but Graham stops me.”

McRae said messages to her best friend the night before the girls died were “revealing” and “a chief indicator” of what was running through Dickason’s mind.

“Our kids are driving us crazy, they are wild, cheeky and disobedient. Graham and I are run down.

“I wish I could give them back and start over, I would decide differently.”

McRae said ultimately, the “unpredictable nature of children clashed strongly” with Dickason’s anxiety and need for perfection.

“The pressure she was under made her snap - the anger was bubbling over … she was resentful at the way the children got in the way of her relationship with her husband.”

Defence lawyer Kerryn Beaton, KC, told the jury a full defence opening would occur later in the trial, but she wanted them to know Dickason was a loving mother and wife who went through 17 rounds of IVF to have her daughters.

“And yet she killed them … and it was violent and it was prolonged.

“But afterwards she put them in their beds, tucked them in with their soft toys.

“This is brutal and confronting. You will be rightly shocked and horrified … But the truth is that Lauren Dickason … wanted those children very much and she loved her family.”

Beaton said that when Dickason killed the girls she was suffering a severe breakdown in her mental health.

“She was very unwell ... but tragically no one realised how unwell she was until it was too late,” she said.

Beaton rejected the Crown’s portrayal of her client.

“If she just wanted more time with her husband, then why try and kill herself?” she said.

“Lauren was in such a dark place, so removed from reality, so disordered in her thinking ... that when she decided to kill herself that night she thought she had to take the girls with her.”