Hakyung Lee, the New Zealand mom of two who was convicted of killing her two daughters and stuffing their bodies in suitcases, has been sentenced to life in prison. In 2018, Lee, reeling from the death of her husband the year before, gave her daughters juice laced with medication. After the girls died, she put their bodies in suitcases. She then put those suitcases and other personal items in a storage facility before moving back to South Korea. The only reason anyone found out about the girls’ deaths is because payment lapsed on the storage unit.
In September 2025, Lee was found guilty of murdering 8-year-old Yuna Jo and 6-year-old Minu Jo. In November, she was sentenced to life in prison, the BBC reported. She must serve 17 years before being eligible for parole. During the trial, Judge Geoffrey Venning said that Lee’s mental health played a part in the case but her actions were calculated.
Over the trial’s two weeks, Lee’s lawyers tried to argue that her mental health deteriorated after the death of her husband, Ian Jo, from cancer in 2017. She believed that she and her daughters were better off dead than living without him.
Lee tried to kill herself and the girls by mixing the antidepressant nortriptyline into juice. She got the doses wrong, however, and only the girls died. Prosecutors called the mother’s decision “a selfish act to free herself from the burden of parenting alone,” per the BBC.
A psychiatric assessment of Lee was done before sentencing, and it was determined she was dealing with “atypical depression” and prolonged grief at the time of the killings. As a result, Venning ordered that she be treated as a special patient under the Criminal Procedure Mentally Impaired Persons Act, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.
“You relied heavily on him during your marriage, you could not cope when he became seriously unwell, and perhaps you could not bear to have the children around you as a constant reminder of your former happy life, which had been cruelly taken from you,” he said.
Choon Ja Lee, the woman’s mother, told the court that after Jo’s death, her daughter had “no will to live” and stopped eating.
“I told her, if you really want to follow your husband, go by yourself, and I’ll take the kids,” the older woman said. She shared that she had been introduced to a counselor and expressed regret for not making her daughter go. “I keep thinking that if I had taken her at that time, this tragedy might have been prevented.”
She also described how horrible it was to hear about what happened to her granddaughters. “It felt like a pain that cut through my bones, or as if someone were gouging out my chest,” she said, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Despite the pain, she did say that she hoped her daughter would eventually be released on parole.
Jimmy Sei Wook Jo, Lee’s brother-in-law, also shared a statement during sentencing, expressing his own pain at losing his nieces.
“This situation is something I would expect to read about in a novel or watch in a TV series,” he said. “I never imagined such a profound tragedy would ever befall our family.”
He shared that he’s never told his mother — the girls’ paternal grandmother — that they’re dead. Jo believes that telling her might kill her.
“It was my late brother’s will that I protect them,” he said. “This is an ongoing sentence from which I can never be paroled.”
Note: If you or any of your loved ones are struggling with suicidal thoughts, you can always reach out to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling 988. They are available 24/7 by phone or online chat.
