The woman found guilty of murdering her two children and hiding their bodies in suitcases inside a storage locker will be sentenced at the Auckland High Court today.
Hakyung Lee – also known as Ji Eun ‘Jasmine’ Lee – was convicted in September on two murder charges over the deaths of her children, Yuna, 8, and Minu Jo, 6.
Today’s sentencing caps off a years-long legal proceeding. A previous trial in 2024 was adjourned for fair trial reasons.
The murder investigation into the children’s deaths was launched four years after the children died in 2018. Their bodies were discovered compacted into suitcases into suitcases at a storage facility in Auckland’s Clendon Park on August 11, 2022.
The remains were found by a family who had bought the contents of the abandoned locker in an online auction.
Just over a month later, Lee was arrested by the authorities in South Korea and later extradited to New Zealand to face murder charges.
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At her trial earlier this year, Lee’s counsel said the murders were a culmination of a “descent into madness” that began with the death of her husband, Jo, from cancer in 2017. Lee represented herself, with the support of two lawyers.
She had already admitted to causing the children’s deaths and hiding their bodies, but argued she was not guilty by way of insanity.
The court heard that in the months after her husband’s death, Lee fell into a deep depression, becoming isolated and suicidal.
Her counsel argued Lee believed it was best if the whole family died together. Using the anti-depressant Nortriptyline, which she had been prescribed in 2017, Lee attempted to kill herself and the children, feeding it to them in juice.
But she got the dose wrong, and she woke up to find the children dead. She then wrapped and hid their bodies inside suitcases, leaving them in a storage locker.
Lee changed her name to Hakyung and left New Zealand for South Korea on a business class flight.
In December 2018, Lee’s mother went to the Auckland Central Police Station, telling them she had not heard from her daughter in a year. An immigration check found she had left New Zealand – though the full facts of why she left would not be clear until the horrible discovery years later.
She resurfaced at a psychiatric ward in South Korea, and the hospital helped track her mother down via a Hamilton-based pastor in 2022. She tried to buy a ticket for Lee to come home, but she never got on the plane.
Later that year, the bodies were found, and Lee was extradited to New Zealand.
Prosecutors argued Lee’s actions in the wake of her children’s deaths showed she knew what she was doing, and that it was wrong.
The jury agreed, and Lee was convicted of the murders. Her sentence will be delivered in court today.
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