{"id":37989,"date":"2025-09-23T04:41:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T04:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/37989\/"},"modified":"2025-09-23T04:41:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T04:41:10","slug":"mother-found-guilty-of-murder-after-bodies-of-children-found-in-suitcases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/37989\/","title":{"rendered":"Mother found guilty of murder after bodies of children found in suitcases"},"content":{"rendered":"

A woman has been guilty of murdering her two children, whose bodies were found in suitcases years after their deaths. <\/p>\n

Hakyung Lee \u2013 also known as Ji Eun ‘Jasmine’ Lee \u2013 faced two murder charges over the deaths of her children Yuna and Minu Jo in 2018.<\/p>\n

The bodies of Minu and Yuna, aged six and eight at the time of their deaths, were found in suitcases almost four years after they were killed, when a family bought the contents of an abandoned storage locker in an online auction.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A family photo of Ian Jo, Hakyung Lee, Yuna Jo and Minu Jo. (Source: Supplied)<\/p>\n

Lee’s standby counsel argued she was insane at the time following a “descent into madness” that began with the death of her husband Ian Jo from cancer in 2017.<\/p>\n

The 45-year-old had admitted she caused their deaths and hid their bodies. <\/p>\n

The prosecution argued that her actions in the wake of their deaths showed she knew what was doing, and that it was wrong. <\/p>\n

The jury began deliberations earlier today, and returned two guilty verdicts shortly after 2pm.<\/p>\n

Lee has been remanded in custody until November 26 for sentencing.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman has been guilty of murdering her two children, whose bodies were found in suitcases years after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2300,51,67,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-37989","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-asia","9":"tag-auckland","10":"tag-crime-and-justice","11":"tag-headlines","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-top-news","14":"tag-top-stories","15":"tag-topnews","16":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}