A New Zealand court has sentenced Hakyung Lee to life imprisonment for murdering her two children and hiding their bodies in suitcases, closing one of the country’s most disturbing recent criminal cases.
Justice Geoffrey Venning imposed a minimum non-parole period of 17 years on Wednesday, according to DW. Lee, a South Korean-born New Zealand citizen aged 45, had earlier been convicted of killing her children, who were eight and six when they died in 2018.
The court heard that Lee gave the children an overdose of prescription medicine before wrapping their bodies in plastic bags and placing them in suitcases. The remains were found in 2022 after a family bought the contents of an abandoned storage unit at auction. By then Lee had changed her name and fled to South Korea, where she was later extradited back to New Zealand to stand trial.
The case turned not only on what Lee did, but on whether she understood the moral weight of her actions. Her defence argued she was not guilty by reason of insanity, while prosecutors said her efforts to conceal the bodies and leave the country showed she knew what she was doing was wrong. The judge agreed with the prosecution’s view and rejected calls for a lesser sentence.
Venning said Lee suffered from depression after the death of her husband, but still understood the conduct was morally wrong. He ordered that she begin her sentence in a secure psychiatric facility before being transferred to prison once she is mentally fit. That approach reflects New Zealand’s sentencing framework, where a prisoner can begin in treatment if mental health concerns need to be addressed before conventional incarceration.
The discovery of the bodies in an abandoned storage unit had already shocked the public when the case first surfaced. The court proceedings then revisited the family’s history, including the death of Lee’s husband from cancer a year before the children were killed. But the sentencing focused on the deliberate concealment of the murders and the permanent loss suffered by the children’s extended family.
Lee showed little reaction as the sentence was handed down, DW reported. The verdict leaves her facing decades in custody even before any parole review becomes possible, reflecting the seriousness of the crimes and the court’s conclusion that the killings were planned and hidden rather than impulsive.
For New Zealand, the sentence closes a case that has drawn attention because of the grisly way the victims were concealed and the long gap between the killings and discovery. The ruling also leaves in place the court’s finding that the defendant knew her actions were wrong, a key factor in determining both culpability and the severity of the punishment.
