A mother who murdered her two children and stuffed them into suitcases stashed inside a storage locker has been sentenced to life imprisonment in New Zealand.
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Hakyung Lee, a New Zealand citizen originally from South Korea, was found guilty in September of killing her children — eight-year-old Yuna Jo and six-year-old Minu Jo — in a grisly crime dubbed the country's "suitcase murders".
High Court judge Geoffrey Venning today sentenced Lee to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years, saying she had killed children who were "particularly vulnerable".
The 43-year-old gave Yuna and Minu orange juice laced with prescription medicine in mid-2018, before placing their bodies, clothed and in plastic bags, inside two suitcases.
Lee then moved the suitcases, along with her belongings, into a rented storage unit in Auckland, changed her name and left for South Korea.
Their remains were discovered four years later, in August 2022, when payments to the facility lapsed and the items inside were auctioned off.
Killing the children a 'selfish act', jury told at trial
Lee was extradited to face trial in New Zealand and admitted to killing her children, but argued she was not guilty by reason of insanity.
Her assistant counsel said Lee had spiralled after her husband's death from cancer in 2017 and claimed she believed killing Yuna and Minu was "morally right".
Lee's husband, Ian Jo, was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in 2017 and died in November of that year.
Following his diagnosis and during his treatment, Lee told multiple people she was going to kill herself and her children if he died.
After his death, Lee's mother, Choon Ja Lee, said her daughter stopped eating and had "no will to live".
"I told her, if you really want to follow your husband, go by yourself and I'll take the kids,'" Choon Ja Lee told the court.
The family went on multiple holidays, where Lee spent large amounts of money and booked luxury hotels.
Sometime in April 2018, Lee admitted to giving her children a dose of nortriptyline, mixed in juice.
"[Ms Lee] said she gave the children the medication," Crown prosecutor Natalie Walker said, referencing testimony by defence witness Yvette Kelly.
"The children drank the juice and then they became drowsy from the medication and they toddled off to their own beds … and went to sleep there and then."
The medication had been prescribed to Lee the previous year after she told her GP she was having trouble sleeping.
Ms Walker described Lee as isolated and dependent on her husband.
"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," Ms 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."
After just over two weeks of trial, the jury deliberated for about three hours before returning a guilty verdict on both counts of murder.
Under New Zealand law, the mandatory sentence for murder is life imprisonment, with a non-parole period of at least 10 years.
Court hears of impact on family
The sentencing hearing heard how the murders had left deep emotional scars on Lee's family.
"If she wanted to die, why didn't she die alone?" Lee's mother, Choon Ja Lee, said in a statement read to the court.
"Why did she take the innocent children with her?"
Lee's brother-in-law, Sei Wook Cho, said the children's other grandmother was sick with cancer and still did not know about the murders.
He said his "daily existence is a time bomb of fear" that the grandmother would find out, according to a statement also read to the court.
"It was my late brother's will that I protect them," read the statement.
"This is an ongoing sentence from which I can never be paroled."
ABC/AFP
