New Zealand woman guilty of murdering 2 children, hiding bodies in luggage

A woman was found guilty by a New Zealand court of murdering her two young children and keeping their bodies in suitcases for years until their unintentional remains were found.

After just two hours of deliberations, a jury at the Auckland High Court on Tuesday rejected her lawyers’ claims that she was insane and guilty of the double murder.

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In June 2018, Lee’s six-year-old son Minu Jo and daughter Yuna Jo, both eight years old, were found guilty of killing them, several months after their husband, who had recently passed away from cancer.

Justice Geoffrey Venning placed a warrant for Lee’s confinement until her November 26 sentencing.

In New Zealand, murder is a mandatory life sentence, with parole applications required from both parties.

After Lee stopped paying rental fees for the unit because of financial difficulties, the children’s remains were discovered inside luggage at a worn-out storage facility in Auckland in 2022.

mother of children found dead in suitcases after a terrifying trial has been found guilty of murder co/M1UXLO9JYx

When the storage unit’s contents were auctioned online, the buyer discovered the bodies inside suitcases.

Lee, who had two standby attorneys to her credit, had claimed she was insane at the time of the killing.

Lorraine Smith, Lee’s standby attorney, claimed the death of her husband had caused a “deep descent” into utter nonsense and the killing of her children.

According to Crown Prosecutor Natalie Walker, Lee knew what she was doing after the death of her children, and that she had “calculated” her actions, according to RNZ.

After the killings in 2018, Lee, who is a citizen of New Zealand, changed her name to that of her country. In November 2022, she was detained and extradited from South Korea after finding the bodies of her children.

According to RNZ, Walker said, “I suggest that this suggests her thinking rationally, even clinically, about taking her children’s lives and then covering up her heinous crimes.”

She claimed that her decision to let herself be free of the burden of her own parenting was selfish.

She continued, “It was not a mother’s altruistic act of kindness who had lost her mind and held the thought to be morally right. It was the opposite.”

Justice Venning had informed her that the trial would be distressing for Lee when it first started the proceedings, and she had authorized her to observe it from a different court room.