Traces of Antidepressant Found in Bodies of Two Children Killed by Their Mother, Trial Opens in Auckland

Auckland, New Zealand — A jury has been told that traces of an antidepressant drug were found in the bodies of two children who are alleged to have been killed by their mother and then hidden in suitcases within a storage unit in Auckland. The trial of Hakyung Lee, who is representing herself with the assistance of two lawyers, has opened in the High Court in Auckland.

The bodies of Minu Jo and Yuna Jo, who were six and eight years old at the time of their deaths, were discovered nearly four years after they were killed. The children were found inside suitcases after a family purchased the contents of an abandoned storage locker during an auction in Auckland.

The Crown prosecutor, Natalie Walker, opened the trial by taking the jury back to August 11, 2022, when a couple from Clendon won an auction of the contents of a storage locker that included furniture and white goods. After opening a foul-smelling suitcase, they discovered the body of a clothed child.

Ms. Walker stated that the deaths of the children would not have been discovered if Lee had not run into financial difficulties and stopped paying for the storage unit, leading to its auction. The Crown's case is that Lee killed the children in the middle of 2018, about a year after her husband died of cancer.

Toxicology tests on the children revealed the presence of an antidepressant drug in their bodies. Walker said the pathologist concluded that the children died by homicide, with the cause being unspecified but associated with the antidepressant drug. However, the pathologist could not determine whether the children died directly from the drug or were incapacitated by it and then killed by other means. The levels of the drug in their bodies could not be determined due to the passage of time.

The court heard that Lee was prescribed 60 Nortryptiline tablets in August 2017 after telling her GP that she was struggling with sleep. Walker said that Lee accepted having caused the children's deaths and placing their remains in the suitcases in the storage unit. However, the jury’s task is to decide whether she was insane at the time the children were killed.

Ms. Walker argued that Lee's actions following the deaths of her children—such as hiring a storage unit, moving the bodies, changing her name, and returning to Korea in late July 2018 in business class—showed that she knew what she was doing and understood that her actions were wrong.

Lorrainne Smith, who is assisting Lee in her self-representation, told the jury that the loss of her husband in 2017 drove Lee to insanity. She asked the jurors, “At the time Hakyung Lee killed her children, was she sane or was she insane?”

Smith said on behalf of Lee that it would be submitted that at the time she killed her children, she was insane and that this should be the verdict in the case. “She has killed her children, but she is not guilty of murder, by reason of insanity,” she said.

The trial continues with both sides presenting their arguments, and the jury will be tasked with determining whether Lee was legally insane at the time of the alleged killings.