The Crown Prosecutor Andrew McRae and Defence counsel Kerryn Beaton KC address the High Court at Christchurch as the trial of Laura Dickason begins. Video / NZ Herald
WARNING: This article contains graphic content
A jury has heard some of the messages Lauren Anne Dickason sent to friends before she smothered her three young daughters in their Timaru home.
Cellphone records obtained during the police investigation have provided insight into Dickason’s anger towards her kids, Crown Prosecutor Andrew McRae told the court today on the opening day of the trial in the High Court at Christchurch.
“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,” McRae said during his opening address.
“The message shows Mrs Dickason harboured resentment and anger towards her children when they were misbehaving.”
The 42-year-old Dickason has admitted killing 6-year-old Liane, and 2-year-old twins Maya and Karla on September 16, 2021.
But she denies it was murder and is mounting a defence of insanity or infanticide, claiming that at the time she killed the children, she was severely mentally disturbed and did not know what she was doing was morally wrong.
McRae told the court one message from Dickason to a friend said she was going to start Liane on augmentin because she was keeping her awake at night.
“She moans all the f**king time,” Dickason before referencing strangling the child.
In another message, she said: “I’m afraid one day I will smack her too hard”.
In a number of other messages, Dickason spoke of the difficulties she had raising the twins and how she often had no time for her older daughter.
On one occasion a friend asked her what Netflix show she was watching and Dickason replied, and said it was “very good - otherwise I’m just trying not to murder the twins”.
She also spoke of murdering the twins or all three children in various other messages including:
“It feels like my fuse is so short... I want to explode over the smallest things.”
“I regularly want to smack mine but Graham stops me.”
In a photo from Facebook, Graham and Lauren Dickason are pictured with their daughters before the alleged murders.
McRae said the 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.”
They spoke about a couple they knew who had separated as a result of stress with their children.
“I would rather divorce my children,” Dickason wrote.
“I wish I could give them back and start over, I would decide differently.”
The jury also heard how Dickason searched the internet while still in South Africa about drugs that could be used to overdose children.
McRae said that was evidence Dickason “had thoughts about killing her children” long before the fatal act.
Dickason and her husband emigrated from South Africa after he accepted a job at Timaru Hospital.
In a short opening statement, defence lawyer Kerryn Beaton KC said told the jury 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 an horrified … But the truth is that Lauren Dickason … wanted those children very much and she loved her family.”
Beaton said when Dickason killed the girls she was suffering a severe breakdown in her mental health.
“Not only did she think she had to kill herself, she thought she had to take the girls with her,” she said.
Beaton said Dickason had raised fears with her husband and health professionals about thoughts of killing the girls.
“But tragically no one realised how unwell she was until it was too late,” she said.
Dickason’s trial is scheduled to run for two weeks and the jury will hear from a number of experts about whether they believe she was insane at the time of the killings, as well as her husband and other family members.
The jury will also see videos of Dickason and her husband being interviewed by police shortly after the girls died.
Members of both Dickason and Graham Dickason’s families have travelled to Christchurch from South Africa for the trial.
Lauren Anne Dickason allegedly killed 6-year-old Liane, and 2-year-old twins Maya and Karla at their Timaru home on September 16.
