A woman has been convicted of murdering her two children and hiding their bodies in suitcases for four years before they were found. The jury at the High Court in Auckland, New Zealand, dismissed a defense of insanity put forward by Hakyung Lee’s lawyers. Lee, who fled to South Korea after the killings, was brought back to face trial. The verdict was reached swiftly after jurors began deliberations on Tuesday.
Lee faced charges for the deaths of Minu Jo, six, and Yuna Jo, eight, in June 2018. The bodies of the children were discovered inside luggage at an abandoned storage unit in Auckland in August 2022. Originally a New Zealand citizen, Lee had traveled to South Korea and changed her name in 2018 after the alleged murders. She was previously known as Ji Eun Lee.
The 45-year-old woman was extradited from South Korea in November 2022. Despite denying the charges, her defense team argued that she was mentally unstable at the time of the murders. They acknowledged that Lee had administered anti-depressant medication to the children but claimed she had lost touch with reality due to deteriorating mental health following her husband’s death.
Prosecutors contended that Lee may have experienced depression but asserted that it did not meet the threshold for an insanity defense. They argued that Lee’s actions were premeditated and driven by self-centered motives to start anew without her children.
The discovery of the children’s remains occurred after Lee failed to pay rent for a storage unit in Auckland amid financial troubles in 2022. The contents of the locker were auctioned online, leading to the grim find by the buyers.
Following the jury’s decision, Justice Geoffrey Venning ordered Lee to remain in custody until her sentencing on November 26. In New Zealand, murder carries a mandatory life sentence, with a minimum 10-year imprisonment before eligibility for parole.
At the trial’s start on September 8, Judge Venning granted Lee permission to observe proceedings from a separate room in the courthouse to mitigate distress. However, she stood in the dock with her head bowed and face obscured by her hair when the verdict was delivered, as reported by New Zealand news outlets.