By: Natasha Archary
South African mother Lauren Dickason has been found guilty of the murder of her three daughters in New Zealand.
Dickason, a medical doctor, suffocated her three daughters, Liane, 6, and twin girls, Maya and Karla, who were only 2-years old in September 2021.
Dickason, her husband Graham and their 3 girls relocated to New Zealand, from Pretoria, a few weeks prior to the 42-year old admitting to killing her children, claiming she was severely depressed.
The mother first tried to kill her daughters using cable ties, but then suffocated them with pillows, thereafter placing them in their beds, and attempting to take her own life with a concoction of pills.
She did this while her husband was at a work dinner on 16 September, 2021.
Her husband, an orthopedic surgeon, returned home to find his children were all dead.
Lauren Dickason pleaded insanity, and while she admitted to killing her daughters, attempted to defend her actions by claiming infanticide.
Infanticide, is when a woman fatally harms her child due to an imbalance of her mind from the effects of childbirth, or breastfeeding.
However, a New Zealand jury found that Dickason killed her children from a depressive episode that stemmed from preexisting mood disorder which she was diagnosed with as a teenager, and this was not brought on by childbirth.
Her mental condition was present a decade and a half prior to her becoming a mother, and was in no way linked to post-natal depression which she claimed, had caused her to take the lives of her daughters.
In an interview with police shortly after her arrest, Dickason said she killed her daughters because they had been misbehaving, and she was angry.
“The first twin, Karla, was being really, really, really horrible to me lately. That’s why I did her first.”
Lauren Dickason who admitted to killing her daughters in New Zealand
The court heard how Dickason had on a number of occasions told her husband and friends that she wanted to smack, suffocate and kill her children.
Dickason had also made searches online, whilst still in South Africa, on how to overdose children.
Her actions were deemed calculated and deliberate.
“Crown witnesses argued it was a depressive episode stemming from the mood disorder Dickason was diagnosed with as a teenager. While severe, they believed she could tell the difference between what was morally right and wrong.”
Dickason now faces a life sentence for the murder of each child, but Justice Cameron Mander, the presiding judge in the 5-week long trial, will decide whether to send her to prison or detain her as a special patient under the Criminal Procedure (Mentally Impaired Persons) Act 2003.
If he makes that order Dickason could spend the rest of her life as a patient at Hillmorton Hospital’s psychiatric unit.
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