A mom in New Zealand has been discovered responsible of killing her two youngsters and hiding their our bodies in suitcases, in a high-profile case that shocked the nation.
Hakyung Lee, 44, was convicted of homicide at the Auckland Excessive Courtroom on Tuesday, after a trial that lasted about two weeks. She had pleaded not responsible.
Lee’s legal professionals argued that she was insane on the time of the killing, which occurred months after her husband died of most cancers. However prosecutors argued that her actions have been calculated.
The stays of her youngsters have been found in 2022 by a household who had bought the contents of an deserted storage unit at an public sale in Auckland.
The our bodies have been believed to have been saved there for a number of years.
Lee was arrested in Ulsan, South Korea, in September 2022 and extradited to New Zealand later that 12 months.
Through the trial, the courtroom heard that the youngsters’s our bodies had no signal of trauma, although it was clear that they had been killed by somebody.
A pathologist discovered that they had died by murder by unspecified means, including the use of Nortriptyline, an antidepressant, the prosecution mentioned.
The courtroom heard that Lee picked up her prescription for the drug from a pharmacy in August 2017 – 5 months after her husband, Ian Jo, was identified with most cancers.
The defence claimed Lee’s psychological well being deteriorated after her husband’s dying and got here to imagine it was finest if all of them died collectively.
This led her to attempt to kill herself and her youngsters with the antidepressant, however she received the dose improper – when she wakened, her youngsters have been useless. Whereas she did kill her youngsters, she was “not responsible of homicide by purpose of madness,” her lawyer mentioned.
However the prosecution argued that Lee had demonstrated rational thought by hiding the youngsters’s stays, altering her title and transferring again to South Korea, the prosecution mentioned.
The killings have been a “egocentric act to free herself from the burden of parenting alone”, the prosecution mentioned.
On Tuesday, Lee had her head down and gave no response when the jury delivered the decision, which got here after round three hours of deliberation.
Lee is about to be sentenced in November. She faces a most sentence of life in jail, AFP reported.
