A New Zealand mother who was accused of killing her two children and putting their bodies in suitcases left inside a storage unit for four years has been found guilty.
Hakyung Lee, 43, faced the High Court in Auckland, New Zealand, on Tuesday and was found guilty of murdering her two children.
In June 2018, Lee gave her two children, eight-year-old Yuna Jo and six-year-old Minu Jo, an overdose of prescription medicine.
The 43-year-old stuffed their bodies into two suitcases, which she ditched at a storage facility in Auckland.
The children’s remains were found inside luggage at an abandoned storage unit in Auckland in August 2022.
Lee, who changed her name shortly after the deaths of her children, had flown to South Korea after committing the murders.
Lee, who is a New Zealand citizen, had travelled to South Korea and changed her name in 2018, shortly after the children are believed to have been killed.
Despite admitting to killing her children, Lee’s assistant counsel argued she was not guilty by reason of insanity.
Hakyung Lee, 43, faced the High Court in Auckland, New Zealand, on Tuesday and was found guilty of murdering her two children
Counsel told the court that the mother-of-two had spiralled after her husband died from cancer in 2017 and that she believed the ‘morally right’ thing to do was to kill her children.
Following a more than two week trial and about three hours of deliberation, the jury returned a unanimous verdict and Lee was found guilty on both counts of murder.
Justice Geoffrey Venning remanded Lee in custody until her sentencing on November 26 and also ordered a mental health report be prepared before the hearing.
In New Zealand, murder carries a mandatory life sentence, with a minimum of 10 years behind bars before a convicted offender is eligible to apply for parole.
Earlier this month, Justice Venning said the trial would be distressing to Lee and granted her permission to watch the proceedings unfold from another courtroom via videolink alongside an interpreter.
The bodies of Yuna and Minu were discovered after Lee stopped paying rental fees for the Auckland storage unit when she ran into financial difficulties in 2022.
The locker’s contents were auctioned online and it was when the buyers took the suitcases home that they found the bodies inside.
The court heard both children were fully clothed and individually wrapped in multiple layers of plastic bags.
The bodies of Yuna Jo, eight, and Minu Jo, six, were found inside suitcases left in an abandoned storage unit in Auckland, New Zealand, four years after they were murdered
Their bodies were found after the contents of the storage locker was auctioned off online and the family opened the suitcases inside their home
A post-mortem report revealed it was difficult to determine the pair’s exact cause of death due to the four years which had lapsed between their murder and the discovery of the remains, RNZ reported.
A forensic pathologist said he was unsure if the children had died due to an overdose or if the medication was used to incapacitate them before ‘death by another means’.
In late June, 2018, Lee – formerly known as Ji Eun (Jasmine) Lee – applied to change her name and moved her belongings, including the suitcases into the storage facility.
Cutting contact with friends and family, Lee fled to South Korea but was found by her mother at a hospital after being admitted for mental health treatment in 2022.
Lee’s mother and her mother’s pastor asked her about the whereabouts of her children, to which she replied: ‘I have no children’.
She was arrested in September 2022 in South Korea and extradited to New Zealand following a formal request she return to the country to face trial.
Lee’s defence team argued, the mother-of-two was afraid she would take her own life and her children would find her inside their home.
Her husband, Ian Jo, died more than six months before Lee murdered their two children.
Lee had fled to South Korea after murdering her children and was arrested in September 2018 and extradited two months later back to New Zealand to face trial
Lee claimed she suffered a ‘descent into living hell’ following her husband’s cancer diagnosis in 2017.
The defence argued Lee’s mental health was fragile which drove her to ‘descend into madness’ and kill her children.
However, Crown Prosecutor Natalie Walker told the court the steps Lee took after killing her children was consistent with wanting a new life on her own.
Crown prosecutor Natalie Walker told the court, ‘the thought of a life parenting her children alone’ may have been too much for Lee.
‘The Crown suggests that when she gave her two young children nortriptyline, it was a selfish act to free herself from the burden of parenting alone,’ Walker said.
‘It was not the altruistic act of a mother who had lost her mind and believed it was the right thing to do; it was the opposite.’
The prosecution also argued that Lee’s actions around the time of her childrens’ murders were organised.
‘However unthinkable her actions and killing her children were, you may think there was a cold calculation in them… showing ruthless rationality of action,’ Walker said.
‘There is no evidence other than her own self-serving accounts. Ms Lee deliberately, and in sound mind, deliberately murdered Minu and Yuna and the right verdict is guilty of murder.’
Lee will face court again on November 26 for sentencing.
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