A mother in New Zealand, who murdered her two children and hid their bodies in a suitcase, has been sentenced to life imprisonment.
Hakyung Lee, who was found guilty in September of the heartbreaking murders of eight-year-old Yuna Jo and six-year-old Minoo Jo, will spend a minimum of 17 years behind bars before being eligible for parole.
Lee, 45, argued that she was insane at the time of the murders in 2018, which occurred shortly after her husband’s death. High Court Judge Geoffrey Venning said Lee’s mental health played a role in the case, but his actions were calculated.
The children’s remains were discovered in 2022 by a couple who won an auction of the contents of an abandoned storage unit in Auckland.
During a trial that lasted more than two weeks, Hakyung Lee’s defense lawyers told the court that his mental health deteriorated after Jo’s death, and he came to believe it would be best if the rest of the family died together.
Her lawyers said Lee tried to kill herself and her children by giving them a dose of the antidepressant nortriptyline in juice, but got the dose wrong and when she woke up to find her children were dead.
Prosecutors argued that Lee “had a selfish act to free herself from the burden of single parenting”.
After the murders, Lee changed his name and left New Zealand. He was arrested in September 2022 in South Korea – where he was born, and extradited back to New Zealand later that year.
The court on Wednesday heard how deeply Lee and her husband Ian Joe’s families were devastated by the killings.
In an emotional statement read by prosecutors, Lee’s mother Choon Ja Lee said she regretted not taking her daughter to a counselor, adding that Lee had “no will to live” after Joe died of cancer in November 2017.
“If she had to die then why didn’t she die alone? Why did she take innocent children with her?” According to New Zealand media reports, Choon Ja Lee wrote.
Joe’s brother Jimmy said he “never thought such a great tragedy would befall our family”.
His own mother – Yuna and Meenu’s other grandmother – still doesn’t know he is dead, he said.
Jimmy Joe said, “It was my late brother’s wish that I protect him.” “This is an ongoing sentence from which I may never get parole.”
According to a psychiatric evaluation conducted before sentencing, Lee was likely suffering from “extraordinary depression” and prolonged grief reaction at the time of the murder, local broadcaster RNZ reports.
Justice Venning ordered that Lee be treated as a “special patient” during his imprisonment due to his mental condition.
“When (your husband) became seriously ill you could not cope and perhaps you could not bear to have the children around you to be a constant reminder of your formerly happy life, which was cruelly taken away from you,” the judge said.
<a href