A woman who murdered her 2 children and left them in suitcases is jailed for at least 17 years

A woman in New Zealand who was convicted of murdering her two children and leaving their bodies in suitcases for years before they were discovered will spend at least 17 years in prison, a judge ruled Wednesday.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — A woman in New Zealand who was convicted of murdering her two children and leaving their bodies in suitcases for years before they were discovered will spend at least 17 years in prison, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Justice Geoffrey Venning told Hakyung Lee at the High Court hearing in the city of Auckland that she would begin her sentence as a patient in a locked psychiatric facility, under New Zealand’s compulsory mental health treatment law. Lee must return to prison when she is well enough, the judge said.

In September a jury found Lee guilty of the murders of Minu Jo, 6, and Yuna Jo, 8, rejecting a defense of insanity. Her lawyers argued Wednesday for a reduced sentence because of her mental illness, saying their client felt shame for her crimes and had been isolated and threatened in jail.

However, the judge told Lee that while she was undoubtedly experiencing severe depression when she killed the children in 2018, her actions were deliberate and calculated, the news outlet Stuff reported. In New Zealand, a successful insanity defense requires a murder defendant to prove they were incapable of understanding what they were doing or that it was wrong.

The children’s remains were discovered after Lee stopped paying rental fees for an Auckland storage unit when she ran into financial difficulties in 2022. The locker’s contents were auctioned online and the buyers found the bodies inside.