A mother who killed her three young daughters believes she committed the murders “out of love” because she didn’t want to leave the kids behind.
42-year-old Lauren Anne Dickason from Timaru, New Zealand, smothered her three daughters – Karla, 2, Maya, 2, and Liane, 6 – to death at their family home on South Island back in September 2021.
According to the reports, the girls were found dead by their father after he returned from work and the mother was arrested and charged with three counts of murder.
Pleading not guilty to murder by reason of insanity, Dickason now appeared in court only to make shocking claims saying she believed she was saving her children through her cruel act.
“All of the defense experts agree that there was an altruistic motive… That means that Lauren killed her children out of love,” Dickason’s lawyer, Anne Toohey, said.
“In her mind, she was killing them out of love – she was killing herself and she didn’t want to leave the children… she was so sure this was the right thing to do she persisted.”
The attorney went on to claim that Lauren was in a “dark place” and that she felt her daughters were “better off dead” than without their mother.
Addressing the court was also Dickason’s mother, Wendy Fawkes, who claimed her daughter made her extremely worried because of the “bad mental state” she was in.
“I was extremely worried about her… I’ve never seen Lauren in such a bad mental state. (She) became more distant… in her messages to me she told me how broken she is,” she said.
Previously, in an interview with the police, Dickason seemingly admitted to the three murders saying she had “been thinking about it for sure” after she saw some cable ties in her garage and thought they could be used to do the deed.
“Last night something just triggered me,” she added before revealing she suffocated her children when cable ties didn’t work.
“Then I decided I had to do something with myself… and I ran through the house and none of the knives were sharp and then I just started drinking my medication that I could find. I wanted to die,” Dickason continued.
The trial continues.