A jury in New Zealand on Tuesday found a woman guilty of murdering her two children and leaving their bodies in suitcases for years before they were discovered, the AP reports. The verdict meant the jury at the High Court in Auckland rejected a defense of insanity made by lawyers for Hakyung Lee, who fled to South Korea after the killings before being extradited to face trial. The swift verdict arrived hours after jurors were sent to deliberate on Tuesday morning. Lee was charged with killing Minu Jo, 6, and Yuna Jo, 8, in June 2018. The children's remains were found inside luggage at an abandoned storage unit in Auckland in August 2022.
Lee, who is a New Zealand citizen, had traveled to South Korea and changed her name in 2018, shortly after the children are believed to have been killed. She was born in South Korea and went by the name Ji Eun Lee previously. The 45-year-old woman was extradited from South Korea in November 2022. She denied the charges, with her lawyers arguing that she was insane at the time of the murders. Lawyers for Lee admitted she had killed the children by giving them an anti-depressant medication, but they said the deaths happened after their client "descended into madness," Lorraine Smith said. Lee had always been "fragile," said Smith, but her mental illness became worse after her husband's death.
Prosecutor Natalie Walker said Lee had killed her children out of selfishness and planned to begin a new life without them. The children's remains were discovered after Lee stopped paying rental fees for an Auckland storage unit when she ran into financial difficulties in 2022. The locker's contents were auctioned online and the buyers found the bodies inside. After Tuesday's verdict, Justice Geoffrey Venning ordered that Lee remain in custody until she is sentenced on Nov. 26. Murder carries a mandatory life sentence in New Zealand, with judges required to set a prison term of at least 10 years before an offender can apply for parole.
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