Mum accused of murdering her three daughters because ‘one threw a tantrum’ | World News

A mum who smothered her three daughters has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

Lauren Anne Dickason, 42, is charged with murdering six-year-old Liane and her two-year-old twins Maya and Karla at their home in New Zealand in September 2021.

She has admitted killing the girls, but denies murder, MailOnline reports.

Dickason appeared at Christchurch High Court today (August 9) and she cried as the horrific details of the girls’ final moments were revealed publicly for the first time.

Ghazi Metoui, a forensic psychologist giving evidence on Dickason’s mental state, said a tantrum by Karla ‘pushed her over the edge’, convincing herself it would be a ‘happy ending’ for the whole family, including husband Graham, if she killed herself and her children.

The family had moved to Timaru, on New Zealand’s South Island, from South Africa a month earlier. On the day of the killings, Dickason became panicked when the family’s immigration advisor asked for more detailed information about her mental health history.

Dr Metoui said Dickason knew she was ‘so acutely unwell’ and the prospect of having to be assessed by a doctor in New Zealand for her visa was ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’. 

Dickason told him she lay in bed for hours ‘feeling nauseous and unable to move’, adding that she felt like her world was ‘falling apart’ and she didn’t know how she would keep living if her mental issues denied her family residency.

The court heard she told Dr Metoui: ‘I was so out of control trying to figure out in my head how to get back to South Africa. My thoughts were so disordered, everything was unravelling.

‘I didn’t want to hurt my children – I wanted them to be with me. I was feeling we’d make a huge mistake … impossible to extricate from … I felt helpless and hopeless.’

Graham left the house to attend a dinner with colleagues at around 7pm. Minutes after he left, Karla threw a tantrum and started biting Dickason’s clothes, the court heard.

Dickason said she got ‘tunnel vision’ and decided she could not live another day and that everything was ‘totally out of control and finished’.

‘I felt like I was going to explode. I wanted everything to end,’ she said.

‘Everything was failing.’

Dickason said she gathered the girls in a bedroom to ‘contain them’.

She told Dr Metoui: ‘I didn’t want to leave them without a mum, I loved them too much’.

She put cable ties around each of the girls’ necks to choke them, but when that didn’t work so she smothered them with blankets.

As Dr Metoui read out the events, Dickason sat in court with her head in her hands, bereft and audibly crying, prompting her lawyer to ask if she needed a break.

After the girls had died, she tucked them into bed and covered their faces with blankets so Graham wouldn’t have to see them.

She changed into her pyjamas and then tried twice unsuccessfully to take her own life with medication.

She told Dr Metoui: ‘I didn’t want to remember those images – too traumatic.

‘It was meant to be a happy ending for everyone, but it’s not a happy ending.

‘The last thing I remember doing is lying down with Liane.

‘I was just glad it was all going to end.’

Although Dickason knew what she was doing was wrong, Dr Metoui said her thinking had been distorted by severe depression.

‘I do not consider that Miss Dickason’s mental state at the time of the alleged offending precluded her from understanding the nature and quality of the acts,’ he explained.

‘To the contrary, I consider that she was purposeful and deliberate throughout her offending and acted with full conscious awareness of her actions and with great determination to pursue her aims, the killing of her three young children.

‘However, such was the severity of her depressive illness and associated distorted thinking at that time, that ultimately she thought she and her three children were better off dead.

‘It is my opinion that she did not know that the alleged acts were morally wrong to the commonly accepted standard of right and wrong. She has a defence of insanity.’

He said the depression was ‘ongoing’ and she was on a downward slope well before the family moved to New Zealand.

Dr Metoui’s evidence continues tomorrow.

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