A New Zealand mother who murdered her two children and hid their bodies in a suitcase inside a rented locker has been sentenced to life imprisonment.
Hakyung Lee, a New Zealand citizen originally from South Korea, was found guilty earlier this year of murdering her children in a crime known as the “suitcase murders.”
High Court Judge Geoffrey Wenning sentenced Lee to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years, saying he had murdered children who were “particularly vulnerable”.
Lee killed her children Minu Jo and Yuna Jo, aged six and eight, in 2018 by giving them overdoses of prescription drugs. The bodies were not found until 2022, when an unsuspecting family opened the contents of an abandoned storage locker purchased at an auction.
Lee, who had long since fled the country for South Korea by changing her name, was extradited to face trial in New Zealand.
The sentencing hearing on Wednesday heard how the murders had left deep emotional scars on Lee’s family.
“If she had to die then why didn’t she die alone?” Lee’s mother, Choon Ja Lee, said in a statement read in court.
The trial depended not on whether Lee had murdered her children – which she confessed to – but on whether she knew that her actions were morally wrong. Her lawyers had argued that she was not guilty by reason of insanity and that her husband’s death in 2017 had sent her into a depressive spiral.
A forensic psychiatrist testified for the defense about Lee’s mental state – describing depression, suicidal thoughts, guilt, and a belief that killing her children was the right thing to do.
But prosecutors had argued that she knew what she was doing, pointing to her efforts to hide the bodies before fleeing the country.
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