(Picture: AFP)
A mum-of-two has been jailed for all times after she murdered each of her children and kept them inside a suitcase left in a storage unit for 4 years.
Hakyung Lee, 44, murdered eight-year-old Yuna Jo and six-year-old Minu Jo in 2018, but their stays weren’t discovered until August 2022.
She had stopped paying rental fees on the unit, meaning the contents of the locker were auctioned online.
It was only when the buyers took the suitcases home did they discover the bodies, with each children found fully clothed and wrapped in several layers of plastic.
Lee might be seen looking down at her feet as she is sentenced to life imprisonment at Auckland High Court.
A post-mortem examination was unable to find out their exact reason for death attributable to the period of time between their death and the invention of their stays.
The pathologist found the youngsters had died by homicide by unspecified means, including the usage of the antidepressant Nortriptyline.
Lee, a Recent Zealand citizen, modified her name from Ji Eun (Jasmine) Lee and flew to South Korea shortly after the murders.
She went undiscovered for years, cutting contact with family and friends, but was found by her mother at a hospital in 2022 after being admitted for mental health treatment.
Lee’s mother asked concerning the whereabouts of her children, to which she chillingly replied: ‘I even have no children.’
She had pleaded guilty by reason of insanity. Her lawyers argued she spiralled after her husband died from cancer in 2017 and Lee believed it could be best in the event that they all died together.
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The defence said she tried to kill herself and her children with the antidepressant, but she got the dose incorrect, and when she woke up, the youngsters were dead.
Crown prosecutor Natalie Walker told the court: ‘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.
‘It was not the altruistic act of a mother who had lost her mind and believed it was the precise thing to do; it was the alternative.
‘Nonetheless unthinkable her actions and killing her children were, you might think there was a chilly calculation in them… showing ruthless rationality of motion.
‘There isn’t a evidence aside from her own self-serving accounts. Ms Lee deliberately, and in sound mind, deliberately murdered Minu and Yuna and the precise verdict is guilty of murder.’
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