A mom in New Zealand has been convicted of killing her two daughters. Hakyung Lee was charged with killing the girls and putting their bodies into suitcases in 2018. Several years later, the bodies were discovered by a family member in an abandoned storage unit. By the time the bodies were found, the woman had already fled the country. She was extradited back to New Zealand and stood trial. Now, she is likely spending the rest of her life in prison.
On September 23, 2025, a jury at the High Court in Auckland, New Zealand, found 45-year-old Lee guilty of murder, NBC News reported. In June 2018, the woman killed her two daughters, 6-year-old Minu Jo and 8-year-old Yuna Jo. She stuffed their bodies into suitcases and left them in a storage unit.
Shortly after the time her daughters are believed to have been killed, Lee, a New Zealand citizen who was born in South Korea, fled to her home country and changed her name. However, she was extradited back to New Zealand in November 2022 after the bodies were discovered.
Lee pleaded not guilty to the murders, with her lawyers arguing that she was insane at the time. Although they did admit that Lee gave the girls an anti-depressant to kill them, lawyer Lorraine Smith claimed the woman had “descended into madness,” per NBC News. The mother had always allegedly been “fragile,” but things got worse after her husband’s death.
According to a report from the BBC, Lee was prescribed an anti-depressant in August 2017, months after her husband was diagnosed with cancer. The defense claimed Lee’s mental health got worse after her husband’s death. She believed it would be best if she and her daughters died, too.
Allegedly, Lee also took the medication with the intention to die, but she took the wrong dose, and only her girls died, per NBC News. That’s when she put them in the suitcases and took the luggage to a storage unit.
In 2022, Lee was in financial trouble and abandoned payments on the storage unit. A family bought the unit’s items in an online auction, RNZ reported. That’s when the bodies of Minu and Yuna were found. Another report from The Sydney Morning Herald stated that the family was not connected to the killings.
Lawyers for Lee tried to argue she was “not guilty of murder by reason of insanity.” But the prosecution countered, saying the killings were a “selfish act to free herself from the burden of parenting alone,” per the BBC. According to multiple reports, it didn’t take long for the jury to find her guilty of murder.
Hakyung Lee was ordered by the judge to remain in custody until she is sentenced in November. When the verdict was read, she didn’t react — she simply hung her head so her hair covered her face.
In New Zealand, a murder charge carries a mandatory life sentence. Judges are required to set a prison term of at least 10 years before the person can apply for parole.
