{"id":6468,"date":"2023-07-17T08:53:38","date_gmt":"2023-07-16T20:53:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=6468"},"modified":"2023-07-17T09:07:40","modified_gmt":"2023-07-16T21:07:40","slug":"court-case-begins-for-mother-accused-of-killing-her-three-daughters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=6468","title":{"rendered":"Court case begins for mother accused of killing her three daughters"},"content":{"rendered":"

The trial of a woman accused of murdering her three daughters at their Timaru home begins in the Christchurch High Court today.<\/p>\n

Lauren Anne Dickason allegedly killed her 2-year-old twin daughters Maya and Karla, and their older sister Lian\u00e9, who was 6, on the night of 16 September, 2021.<\/p>\n

Her husband Graham, an orthopaedic surgeon, found them dead when he arrived home about 10pm after dining with colleagues at a restaurant.<\/p>\n

The family had moved into a property in Timaru’s Queen Street only a week earlier, having arrived in New Zealand from South Africa a month before.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Woman<\/p>\n

Lauren and Graham Dickason with their three daughters.\u00a0<\/span>Photo:\u00a0Supplied<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Dickason appeared in the Timaru District Court two days after the alleged murders.<\/p>\n

Judge Dominic Dravitzki remanded her to Christchurch’s Hillmorton Hospital for a mental health assessment.<\/p>\n

The deaths sparked an outpouring of grief in the South Canterbury town with hundreds gathering for candlelight vigils.<\/p>\n

With her signed consent, Dickason’s lawyer entered pleas of not guilty to all three murder charges.<\/p>\n

Having been held in custody at a psychiatric unit at Hillmorton Hospital, she appeared in the High Court at Christchurch for the first time last month, after the case was transferred from Timaru.<\/p>\n

Dickason’s lawyer, Kerryn Beaton KC, confirmed her client was to rely on an insanity and infanticide defence.<\/p>\n

Under New Zealand law, infanticide functions as both a stand-alone offence, and as a partial defence to murder or manslaughter.<\/p>\n

Graham Dickason was expected to be called to give evidence in the trial, in front of Justice Cameron Mander.<\/p>\n

The Crown was applying for him to give evidence from South Africa via audiovisual link, but this was opposed by the defence.<\/p>\n

Suppression orders also remained in place on the details of the alleged crime.<\/p>\n

Timaru-based prosecutor Andrew McRae was to lead the Crown case.<\/p>\n

The trial was set down for two weeks.<\/p>\n

RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The trial of a woman accused of murdering her three daughters at their Timaru home begins in the Christchurch High Court today. Lauren Anne Dickason allegedly killed her 2-year-old twin daughters Maya and Karla, and their older sister Lian\u00e9, who was 6, on the night of 16 September, 2021. Her husband Graham, an orthopaedic surgeon, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":6471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6468"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6472,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6468\/revisions\/6472"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}