Dickason murder trial: What children’s father told police

The High Court in Christchurch, New Zealand, has heard how South African orthopaedic surgeon Graham Dickason found his children strangled with cable ties in their beds.

His wife, Lauren, is on trial for murdering the couple’s three small daughters, six-year-old Liané and two-year-old twins Maya and Karla, on 16 September 2021.

According to New Zealand publication Stuff, Dickason’s first interview with police, which took place hours after the children were murdered, was playout in court on Tuesday morning.

Dickson testified via audio-visual link from Pretoria.

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Graham Dickason’s police interview

He recalled the day’s events, including helping his wife with school preparations on the morning of their deaths.

But when Dickason returned home from a meeting with colleagues, he found Lauren standing in the kitchen.

“She looked strange, she looked wobbly. Like she wanted to fall over. I asked if she was okay. She didn’t really reply. I asked what’s the matter, and she told me ‘it’s too late,’” reports Stuff.

He first went to their bedrooms, where he found the girls in bed, covered in blankets. When he lifted the covers he discovered they had been strangled with cable ties. He then cut the ties off his daughter’s neck with scissors and checked their pulses, but they were already dead.

Detectives had also heard that Lauren, who had suffered from depression for a long time, had seen a psychiatrist. She also suffered from postpartum depression after the twins’ birth but recovered.

He also told police that while Lauren always ensured the girls were provided for, she wasn’t particularly nurturing.

“She wasn’t someone who would pick them up and cuddle them often, but she also didn’t spank or harm them. She cried a lot, and often couldn’t say why,” he said.

ALSO READ: SA’s mum of three, Lauren Dickason, to use insanity & infanticide defence in murder trial

What he told the court

In the days leading up to the triple murder, Dickason noted that Lauren had grown more “quiet”.

He also revealed how the couple struggled with infertility, but eventually concieved all three children with the help of IVF.

While she was excited about the twins’ birth, she did suffer a series of anxiety attacks and reportedly twice mentioned that she “could do something to their children”.

On one occasion, Lauren said she could “make an end to it all” by sedating the children and cutting their arteries “so it could all be over”.

Lauren was sobbing in court as she listened to parts of her husband’s testimony.

Dickason’s evidence supported the prosecution’s case, which appears to lean towards premeditation.

On Monday, the court heard damning evidence about Lauren’s anger towards her daughters, which was detailed in several messages to friends and family.

ALSO READ: SA children murdered in NZ were strangled with cable ties – report

Another New Zealand publication, RNZ, reported that a number of messages she had sent to friends in the months before her children’s deaths referenced murder.

Prosecution lawyer Andrew McRae told the court that messages between the mother of three and a friend revealed unhappiness with the size of the quarantine room allocated to the family when they immigrated to Timaru, during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“She said ‘He, as in God, knows that we might commit murder in that small room over those two weeks’.”

The messages continued right up until the night before the girls died,” McRae continued.

Lauren’s Google searches were also damning. She had searched for lethal medication doses in children, as well as “most effective overdose in children”, “drugs to overdose kids” and “common culprits of medication overdose in children – what you need to know”, a month before the girl’s death.

Lauren’s defence lawyers are expected to cross-exam her husband on Wednesday.

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