I can't cope but won't give up kids to another mom: Control and anger drove Lauren Dickason, says expert

A suicidal Dr Lauren Dickason said she wanted to take her children with her as she did not want them to be raised by another mother nor by her husband Graham alone.

This is according to the first psychiatric expert who assessed Dickason after the deaths of Liané, 6, and twins Maya and Karla, 2, in September 2021. 

Dr Simone McLeavey said Dickason had decided to “end the suffering” and after that “there was no turning back”.

The 42-year-old from Pretoria emigrated to New Zealand with the children and her husband, an orthopaedic surgeon who secured a job at the hospital in the town of Timaru. The killings took place less than a month after they arrived there.

Dickason told police and other experts how she struggled to cope with the children, especially the twins' high energy levels, and felt like a bad mother, which compounded the depression she has suffered from since a teenager. The twins had spent much of their lives in isolation due to the Covid-19 lockdowns and the family was cooped up in a small apartment on arrival in New Zealand for two weeks of compulsory quarantine. The move to Timaru was another adjustment and her husband was preoccupied with preparing to start his new job.

She felt overwhelmed and just snapped. After strangling the children with cable ties and smothering them in their beds, she swallowed pills in an unsuccessful suicide bid. 

Two forensic psychiatrists have already testified at the court in Christchurch. Dr Susan Hatters-Friedman supported Dickason’s defence of insanity and infanticide, but Dr Erik Monasterio supported the prosecution case of murder.

News outlets Stuff and the NZ Herald are reporting on the testimony of McLeavey, a consultant psychiatrist at Hillmorton Hospital where Dickason was admitted.

On the insanity defence, McLeavey said in her opinion, Dickason likely was experiencing a disease of the mind at the time of killings due to her recurrent major depressive disorder. However, she did not appear to have psychotic features in the lead-up to the killings.

Her motive for her suicide attempt was one of “self-destruction” she said, and the killing of the children was an extension of that. They were intertwined.

McLeavey said there was no indication Dickason killed her children “out of love”, but more that it was a manifestation of “control” and not wanting them to be mothered by another woman.

“It was quite clear that the defendant did not want her children first to be without a mother ... but more the case that she did not want her children to be mothered by another mother”.

On the day of the killings, which came just as the children had begun attending new schools, Dickason felt Liané appeared sad after being picked up, and Karla threw a tantrum. The children tested even their father’s patience and he went into another room. 

Dickason formed the opinion that their family life was too much even for Graham.

Though the children “always wanted to be with their father over me”, she did not want to leave them behind in his sole care.

On that night, after her husband left for a work-related dinner, Dickason said she had impulsively decided to harm the children and kill herself after they had started acting up again.

The psychiatrist said, however, Dickason’s previously deleted searches about how to overdose children may indicate premeditation rather than the killings being impulsive.

Any altruistic motivation was formed by “control” and “anger”, in regards to the prospect of another mother raising her children, McLeavey said.

“I am of the opinion that the defendant would not be eligible for an insanity defence.”

McLeavey said she could not be sure that at the time of the killings, the balance of Dickason’s mind was affected by the consequences of childbirth that would provide an infanticide defence.

“There is no evidence that the defendant has an infanticide defence available.”