Police standing in a guard of honour as the bodies of the three dead children were removed from their Timaru home. [Source: NZ Herald]

Murder-accused Lauren Dickason googled various methods of overdosing children in the two months before she killed her three little girls, a jury has heard today.

More messages have been read in court painting a picture of the troubled woman’s mental and emotional state in the lead-up to the alleged murders.

And the video Dickason gave to police where she outlined how she killed her three young daughters in their Timaru home is set to be played at her High Court trial

Dickason, 42, is on trial in the High Court at Christchurch charged with murdering her daughters Liané, 6, and 2-year-old twins Maya and Karla.

She admits to smothering the children to death but has pleaded not guilty to the murder charges by reason of insanity or infanticide.

While the Crown acknowledges Dickason suffered from sometimes serious depression, it maintains she knew what she was doing when she killed the girls.

Last week Crown Prosecutor Andrew McRae alleged Dickason was an angry and frustrated woman who was “resentful of how the children stood in the way of her relationship with her husband” and killed them “methodically and purposefully, perhaps even clinically”.

The defence refutes that and says the woman was “very unwell” and while those close to her were worried – no one recognised how unwell she was “until it was too late”.

“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,” Dickason’s lawyer Kerryn Beaton KC told the jury.

During the first week of the trial, the jury heard extensive evidence about Dickason’s life before the alleged murders, including her gruelling fertility journey and devastating loss of a baby daughter at 18 weeks’ gestation and her family’s move to New Zealand from South Africa in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Jurors heard two days of evidence from Dickason’s husband, who came home from a work function to find his three children dead in their beds.

A video of his police interview was played and then Graham Dickason gave lengthy evidence and faced cross-examination by the defence.

The court also heard from those first to the scene after Graham Dickason found his children dead and from people who met the Dickason family after they arrived in Timaru, including the girls’ teachers.

Liané had been at school for two days and the twins just one when they died.

And hundreds of messages sent to and received by Dickason in the lead-up to the alleged murders were read by police in court.

In many, Dickason speaks about having “rough” days with her children, being depressed, anxious, overwhelmed, emotional, stressed and tired – and often crying for long periods or being on the verge of tears.

The messages span from 2016 to several hours before the children were killed – through the pandemic, lockdowns and growing political unrest and violent crime in South Africa, the family’s emigration process and a number of delays to them moving to New Zealand including having to reschedule flights twice due to the children testing positive for Covid.

She described having three young children as “a hard hard season”, saying there was “no time to just sit and talk” with her husband because “there is always a kid in the middle”.

There were also a number of positive messages sent by Dickason talking about how much she loved her children and how she was happy and “super excited” about their “new adventure” in New Zealand.

“We want to give our three little princesses for whom we have prayed so long and hard, the adventures of a lifetime,” Dickason told a friend.

This morning defence lawyer Anne Toohey questioned whether police had left out context in its selection of messages – including “cute” photos and videos of the little girls.

For example, she said, in one message where Dickson tells a family group chat her kids are “crazy” she also sent a video of the children in a paddling pool.

Police confirmed that not all content was presented.

“There are hundreds of photos and videos of three kids playing and doing fun things – and that is not noted anywhere in the evidence,” Toohey said.

The defence then presented its own messaging evidence attempting to paint what they say is a more accurate picture of a dedicated and loving mother.