Hakyung Lee, 44, was extradited from South Korea after the bodies of her two children, Yuna and Minu, were discovered hidden in suitcases that were later bought at a storage unit auction
A mother has been found guilty of murdering her two children and hiding their bodies in suitcases, which were later bought at auction by another family.
The bodies of Yuna Jo and Minu Jo, who were aged eight and six at the time of their deaths, were discovered inside suitcases bought at a storage unit auction in August 2022. Authorities believed they had been dead for three to four years by the time their bodies were found.
Their mum, Hakyung Lee, 44, had pleaded not guilty to their murders, but was convicted by the jury after just two hours of deliberations. She now faces a maximum sentence of life in prison with a non-parole period of at least a decade
Lee – a New Zealand citizen originally from South Korea – was extradited from her home country in 2022, after a police investigation identified her as the mother of the two dead children. She was convicted of murder at Auckland High Court on Tuesday, after a trial that lasted about two weeks.
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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.
A post-mortem report said it was difficult to determine the siblings’ 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’
It was concluded that they died by homicide by unspecified means, including the use of Nortriptyline, an antidepressant, the prosecution said.
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The court heard that Lee picked up her prescription for the drug from a pharmacy in August 2017, which was five months after her husband, Ian Jo, was diagnosed with cancer. The defence claimed Lee’s mental health deteriorated after her husband’s death and that she had come to believe it was best if they all died together.
As a result, she tried to kill herself and her children with the antidepressant, but she got the dose wrong, the defence said. When she woke up, her children were dead.
The defence argued that while Lee did kill her children, she was “not guilty of murder by reason of insanity,” her lawyer said.
But the prosecution argued that Lee had demonstrated rational thought by hiding the children’s remains, changing her name and moving back to South Korea.
Crown prosecutor Natalie Walker said: “I suggest this shows her thinking rationally, even clinically, about taking her children’s lives and then covering up her heinous crimes.
“It was not the altruistic act of a mother who had lost her mind and believed it was the morally right thing to do, it was the opposite.”
Walker further suggested the killings were a “selfish act to free herself from the burden of parenting alone”.
Lee hung her head and gave no reaction when the jury delivered the verdict. She is set to be sentenced in November.