A jury in New Zealand on Tuesday found a woman guilty of murdering her two children and leaving their bodies in suitcases for years before they were discovered.
With their verdict, the jury at the High Court in Auckland, New Zealand’s biggest city, rejected a defense of insanity that was argued for by the legal team of Hakyung Lee, who fled to South Korea after the killings but was extradited to face trial. The verdict was handed down just hours after jurors were sent to deliberate behind closed doors on Tuesday.
Lee was charged with killing Minu Jo, 6, and Yuna Jo, 8, in June 2018. The children’s remains were found inside luggage in an abandoned storage unit in Auckland in August 2022.
Lawrence Smith / AP
Lee, who is a New Zealand citizen, had traveled to South Korea and changed her name in 2018, shortly after the children are believed to have been killed. She was born in South Korea and went by the name Ji Eun Lee previously.
The 45-year-old woman was arrested in South Korea in September 2022 and extradited one month later. She denied the charges, with her lawyers arguing that she was insane at the time of the murders.
Lawyers for Lee admitted she had killed the children by giving them an anti-depressant medication called nortriptyline, but they said the deaths happened after their client had “descended into madness.” Lee had always been “fragile,” said lawyer Lorraine Smith, but her mental illness became worse after her husband’s death.
During the trial, a palliative care counselor said in a statement read to the court that Lee had said she “wanted it all to be over” and often mentioned ending both her and her husband’s life, the Australian national broadcaster ABC reported.
At one point, Lee thought it would be best if the whole family died, Smith said, but that she had got the dose wrong and when she woke up, the children were dead.
After Tuesday’s verdict, Justice Geoffrey Venning ordered that Lee remain in custody until she is sentenced on Nov. 26. Murder carries a mandatory life sentence in New Zealand, with judges required to set a prison term of at least 10 years before an offender can apply for parole.
Prosecutors said Lee had likely suffered from depression but that it was not severe enough to support an insanity defense. In New Zealand, such a claim requires a murder defendant to prove they were incapable of understanding what they were doing or that it was wrong.
There was a “cold calculation” to Lee’s actions, prosecutor Natalie Walker told the court. Walker said Lee had killed her children out of selfishness and planned to begin a new life without them.
The children’s remains were discovered after Lee stopped paying rental fees for an Auckland storage unit when she ran into financial difficulties in 2022.
The pair were found in separate peach-colored suitcases, wrapped in plastic, a police officer who first investigated the matter told the court. The grisly discovery came after an unsuspecting family bought a trailer-load of items — including the suitcases — at an auction for abandoned goods near Auckland.
Venning said when the trial began on Sept. 8 it would be distressing to Lee and granted her permission to watch the proceedings from another room in the courthouse. She returned to the dock for the verdict, and stood with her head bowed and her hair covering her face, New Zealand news outlets reported.