WARNING: This article contains graphic content
Graham Dickason said in the months leading up to his wife killing their three little girls she "was not in a good place" and many different stresses were getting her down.
But he could never have imagined what would happen just weeks after they arrived in New Zealand to start what was supposed to be a safe and exciting new life.
Lauren Anne Dickason has admitted killing 6-year-old Liane and 2-year-old twins Maya and Karla at their Timaru home on September 16, 2021.
Her husband, orthopaedic surgeon Graham Dickason, had left the house just 20 minutes before she took the girls’ lives.
While Dickason admits she killed the three children, she has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and infanticide.
She is on trial before Justice Cameron Mander and a jury of eight women and four men in the High Court at Christchurch.
This morning the jury started watching an almost-three hour video of Graham Dickason’s interview with police, conducted the day after the alleged murders.
They will hear further from the grieving father when he gives evidence this afternoon via audio-visual link from his home in South Africa.
Members of his and Dickason’s family are in court in Christchurch for the trial.
Graham Dickason’s police interview
In his video Graham Dickason talked to police about what was going on in his wife’s life before the alleged triple murder.
Alongside selling their home in Pretoria and organising a move to Timaru, the couple faced lockdown with three little girls.
"We had to pack up the house, pack a container and we moved into my mum’s house with the kids and our suitcases," he said.
"We were only supposed to stay for four or five days and then fly out to New Zealand, but Lauren also had a foot operation, which she would have had earlier but it was delayed also due to Covid restrictions at the hospital.
"And just prior to that we had severe riots in South Africa… where there was severe looting going on, political unrest and she was very scared.
"There was nothing close to our house but she was very, very scared…. I think it was a lot at one time.
"And then while at my mum’s we went for our pre-flight Covid test and my one daughter tested positive… and that forced us to be in isolation for two weeks at my mum’s place, which we didn’t anticipate.
"During that time she really struggled. She didn’t eat much, she didn’t have a lot of conversation with anybody, she was really stressed."
He said his wife became "distant".
"Lauren was not in a good place… it’s always been her personality to stress about things and to anticipate things are going to go wrong and to worry about them before they go wrong," he said.
"I’m totally opposite, I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy who waits ‘til things go wrong. I don’t anticipate problems, if something goes wrong I sort it out, so we’re different in that way but I understand after being married to her for 15 years and I supported her well.
"But there was obviously much more than I ever..."
He said Dickason sought professional help for her mental health - first when her oldest daughter was very young.
"But there was nothing major," he said.
"It was around the time that Liane was small I think and we were still dealing with the loss... the miscarriage of that little girl, it was 22 weeks [and] Lauren actually had to give birth to her... [it was] quite traumatic for her.
Graham Dickason told police said his wife had been through "a lot in her life".
"She had a lot of problems at school with teachers and friends. According to her she was not popular… she was in an all-girls school… she was never invited to a dance or the prom… she had a lot of social, traumatic memories from a young age.
"And you know when you’re young… you’re invincible but I didn’t think those things would ever add up for, to get to a point to be capable of what’s happened today."
Lauren Dickason ‘not a nurturing mother’, court hears
The police interviewer asked Graham Dickason to describe his wife as a mother.
"She would always make sure that there were clean clothes, food to eat, she always made sure the kids are where they needed to be," he replied.
"She was not a nurturing mother. The kids preferred me - not so much Liane anymore because she’s a big girl, but the twins definitely preferred me."
"She was struggling with motherhood and I think I compensated for that by giving the kids everything they, they needed on a social level," the court heard.
"She verbalised on multiple occasions that she doesn’t seem to think she’s a good mother. And I’ve always reassured her, maybe that was a mistake.
"I just never thought she could do something like this."
"She was not one that would like to pick them up or just be with them or cuddle. She’s very good in organisation, her organisational skills are exceptional but she could never just enjoy them.
"I always hoped that it could improve and I think I just tried to compensate for it. But it was never anything that I worried about in terms of being harmful to the kids."
He recalled his wife crying "a lot".
"I think it’s part of her depression that she’s struggling with. She was a very closed book, especially these last couple of weeks," he said.
"If I suspected that anything like this could happen I would never have even come here."
The couple almost put a stop to their move to New Zealand a number of times - but ultimately wanted a better life for the children.
Graham Dickason said South Africa was a "beautiful place" but there were many political and racial issues.
"The current situation in South Africa is that white people are heavily in the minority and it’s dangerous. There’s a lot of crime and a lot of people getting hijacked, killed, murdered - innocent people," he said.
"The country is going backwards in terms of infrastructure - electricity supply, the land value has dropped significantly over the last couple of years.
"There’s a lot of people emigrating from South Africa all over the place - especially people like us with, with young kids to try and secure better quality of, of life, safer life."
He said his job offer was "a good pulling point".
"She was always on board - in fact, she drove this immigration, she wanted it," he said.
"We could have stopped this process at many, many points, many times. There were multiple occasions where we could have said you know this, we’re not going to get through this, but we always did it and I thought it made us stronger.
"And there were days that were tough and I often tried to speak to her and ask her if she wants to proceed, and it was always a consensus.
"But something, something flipped... I cannot, I cannot imagine that it could cause what happened today.
"I didn’t see it.... my kids are dead.... It’s gonna destroy so many people... My mum’s not gonna be able to handle this. This will kill her."
The jury also heard Dickason was taking an antidepressant called Cypromol each day.
She had stopped taking it for a while but began taking it again when she could not cope.
"She went on a bit of a health quest and she started exercising and she followed the programme called Kaizen Wellness… like a weight loss support strategy," he said.
"And she did very well on that and she felt good and she stopped the Cypromol without me knowing about it… but there was no issues really."
After her foot surgery, Graham Dickason said his wife was "struggling" and he asked if she was taking her meds.
"She verbalised that she stopped it and we immediately started her back on it," he told police.
He asked his wife on a "semi regular" basis if she was taking her pills and she’d assure him she had been.
"To my knowledge at the moment she has been taking it for at least four or five weeks again," he said.
The trial so far
Crown Prosecutor Andrew McRae spent two hours outlining the case against Dickason yesterday.
He said she was frustrated and angry at the children because she could not control them - and resentful because they were affecting her relationship with her husband.
"The Crown says that the truth is that while the defendant was likely suffering from a major depressive disorder, she knew what she was doing before, during and after; she acted methodically and purposefully, perhaps even clinically," he said.
"She knew what she was doing was morally wrong, and continued on her course.
"It’s natural in a case such as this to look for the reasons why to find a palatable motive to explain the inexplicable. But the Crown says that the motive was simple here that she snapped. It was the straw that snapped the camel’s back, she was under pressure.
"And when the children misbehave, her anger at the children took over and she killed them - an action naturally, she now very much regrets.
"However, the cause of this was not a disturbance of the mind from childbirth. Nor was she insane."
Defence lawyer Kerryn Beaton KC rejected the Crown’s portrayal of her client.
"Lauren Dickason was a loving mother and wife she loved her children very much - and yet she killed them," she said.
"And as you’ve just heard it was violent and it was prolonged.
"But afterwards, she put her girls in their beds. She tucked them in with their soft toys. She covered them up with their blankets. And then she took an overdose of pills trying to kill herself. But she failed.
"This is brutal. It’s confronting. It’s difficult to hear and to imagine, we understand that you will be rightly shocked and horrified today. That’s understandable because what Lauren Dickason did was shocking and horrifying.
"And you might well be thinking what mother could do that to their children. A terrible person is what the Crown would have you believe, who resented her children and who wanted them gone.
"But the truth is that Lauren Dickason is a woman who longed to be a mother, who went through 17 rounds of IVF to have her three daughters. She wanted those children very much and she loved her family.
"The defence says this tragic event happened because Lauren was in such a dark place, so removed from reality, so suicidal, so disordered in her thinking that when she decided to kill herself that night, she thought she had to take the girls with her."
Beaton said Dickason was experiencing "a major depressive episode" when she killed her little girls.
"You’ll hear that by the 16th of September, she wasn’t communicating well with her husband, or her family," she told the jury.
"And she was very unwell. And while those close to her were worried about her, tragically, no one recognised just quite how unwell she was until it was too late."
The trial continues.
