Hakyung Lee gets life sentence with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years for murdering her two children and hiding their bodies in suitcases at a storage facility.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n A New Zealand woman who murdered her two children and hid their bodies in suitcases at a storage facility has been sentenced to life in prison.<\/p>\n The sentencing of Hakyung Lee on Wednesday came after she was convicted in September for the grisly murders of the two children, aged eight and six, in 2018. The case was dubbed the New Zealand \u201csuitcase murders\u201d.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n Lee, who was born in South Korea, admitted to killing the children, but pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. The murders took place a year after the children\u2019s father had died of cancer.<\/p>\n Judge Geoffrey Venning rejected calls by Lee\u2019s lawyers for a lesser penalty, sentencing the 45-year-old to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years.<\/p>\n He said she had killed children who were \u201cparticularly vulnerable\u201d.<\/p>\n But he approved compulsory treatment at a secure psychiatric facility, with the condition that Lee would return to prison once deemed mentally fit, according to the New Zealand Herald newspaper.<\/p>\n \u201cYou knew your actions were morally wrong \u2026 perhaps you could not bear to have your children around you as a constant reminder of your previous happy life,\u201d Venning said.<\/p>\n Lee showed little emotion as she sat in court, bowing her head with eyes fixed to the floor as the judge handed down the sentence.<\/p>\n Life imprisonment is the harshest punishment available in New Zealand, which abolished the death penalty in 1989.<\/p>\n Lee, who said she was stricken with grief following her husband\u2019s death, killed her son Minu Jo and daughter Yuna Jo by lacing their fruit juice with an overdose of prescription medication.<\/p>\n Lee said she had planned to kill herself alongside the children, but got the dose wrong.<\/p>\n She wrapped her dead children in plastic bags before stuffing them into suitcases that were then hidden at a suburban storage warehouse on the outskirts of Auckland, New Zealand\u2019s largest city.<\/p>\n The bodies sat in storage until 2022, when an unsuspecting family pried open the contents of an abandoned storage locker they bought at an auction.<\/p>\n Police used DNA and other forensic evidence to piece together who the children were, how long they had been dead, and ultimately who had killed them.<\/p>\n Lee, who had long since changed her name and fled the country for her native South Korea, was eventually tracked down and arrested in the port city of Ulsan.<\/p>\n She was extradited to face trial in New Zealand.<\/p>\n Lee represented herself during the trial, supported by two lawyers.<\/p>\n The trial hinged not on whether Lee had murdered her children \u2013 which she had confessed to \u2013 but whether she knew her actions were morally wrong.<\/p>\n The lawyers told the court that the death of Lee\u2019s husband, Ian Jo, in 2017 triggered a \u201cdeep descent\u201d into mental illness that made her believe the only answer was to kill the children and then herself, Radio NZ reported.<\/p>\n A forensic psychiatrist testified for the defence about Lee\u2019s mental state, describing depression, suicidal thoughts and a belief that killing her children was the right thing to do.<\/p>\n But the prosecution argued Lee\u2019s behaviour was calculated, pointing to her efforts to hide the bodies before fleeing the country.<\/p>\n The sentencing hearing on Wednesday heard how the murders had left deep emotional scars on Lee\u2019s family.<\/p>\n \u201cIf she wanted to die, why didn\u2019t she die alone?\u201d Lee\u2019s mother, Choon Ja Lee, said in a statement read to the court. \u201cWhy did she take the innocent children with her?\u201d<\/p>\n Lee\u2019s brother-in-law said the children\u2019s other grandmother was sick with cancer and still did not know about the murders.<\/p>\n Sei Wook Cho said his \u201cdaily existence is a time bomb of fear\u201d that the grandmother would find out, according to a statement read to the court.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was my late brother\u2019s will that I protect them,\u201d read the statement. \u201cThey were our hope for the future. This is an ongoing sentence from which I can never be paroled.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Hakyung Lee gets life sentence with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years for murdering her two children and hiding their bodies in suitcases at a storage facility. A New Zealand woman who murdered her two children and hid their bodies in suitcases at a storage facility has been sentenced to life in prison. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3392,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-pacific"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
![\"New](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/AP22230207624121.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C514&quality=80\")
\u2018Deep descent\u2019 into mental illness<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"