The jury for Lauren Dickason's trial has heard she told her children, "Mummy's very sick and going to die, I can't leave you girls behind", before she killed them.
Warning: This story contains content some readers might find distressing.
The 42-year-old denies murdering her three daughters, 6-year-old Liané and 2-year-old twins Karla and Maya, in Timaru in September 2021. She's using the defences of infanticide and insanity.
It's day nine of her trial at the High Court in Christchurch, and the jury's heard from the first of the five psychiatrists being called to give evidence.
Defence witness Susan Hatters-Friedman, who's an international expert on parents who kill their children, spent 10 hours interviewing Dickason earlier this year.
The forensic psychiatrist's written a 66-page report on the defendant and read excerpts from that in court.
A global expert on parents who kill their children has given evidence for the defence in Dickason’s trial. (Source: 1News)
The jury heard that Dickason told her: "She felt that the children would be better off in heaven and that she was the worst wife and mother, damaging her kids.
"She felt that she was doing Graham a favour because, 'we were disturbing him'."
At one point, Hatters-Friedman became emotional as she shared the defendant's own description of her children.
"She 'felt rejected some days when Graham walked through the door after I'd given them everything I had'."
After killing her girls in September 16, 2021, she told the psychiatrist she tucked them into bed, hugged their bodies, then tried to kill herself.
She said "that she was 'thinking, I want this to be over, I'll be in heaven and be safe'".
Lauren Dickason recounted to her that waking up in Timaru hospital was "just hell".
"I thought I got my family to safety and I was left behind," she told Hatters-Friedman.
"She said that her thoughts upon awakening in the hospital were that Graham, 'mustn't be affected by what's happening, he's got to start work on Monday'."
The defendant told the psychiatrist that she felt she had done her husband a favour.
The court heard that two years after killing her children, she told Hatters-Friedman, "she wished that she could have a lethal injection because her children were dead".
The defence witness will deliver her final assessment of the triple-murder accused's state of mind in court on Friday.
By Lisa Davies and Laura James
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