A mother has been found guilty of murder after admitting killing her two young children and storing their bodies in suitcases in an Auckland lockup. Yvonne Tahana attended much of the trial and reflects on the harrowing evidence heard in court room 6.
Warning: This story contains details about mental health and suicide that may disturb some readers.
For three years, the existence of little Minu Jo and his older sister Yuna had been reduced in the public consciousness to the awful mental image of small bodies in suitcases.
Almost as if they hadn't been here, except for the mere fact of their horrifying deaths.
But when the court heard for the first time just how much they loved going to primary school some jury members in the Auckland High Court sobbed quietly.
I don't think I'll ever forget the sound.
It was a teacher from Papatoetoe South School's emotional testimony in the cramped courtroom that brought the court to that palpable state of sadness.
Mary Robertson taught at the school for 41 years. She met the whole family in 2014.
Yuna was five then, Minu was three. They were with their mother Hakyung Lee – then known as Ji Eun 'Jasmine' Lee – and their father Ian Jo, who would die of cancer three years later.
"They were just so interested in doing everything they could do for their little girl to succeed at school," the teacher told the court. "Minu, he was just a beautiful joyful bubbling boy when he started school.
"He was excited, and he loved to show you what he knew. He was so happy."
His older sister Yuna, who was eight when she died, was doing well in school too.
"Yuna was... she was very serious and had a smile that lit up the world. When she was at school, she was beautifully behaved – really respectful – and had a very tight group of friends and... their teachers [were] drawn to both of them."
Robertson knew Lee as Jasmine.
"They were actually two of my favourite parents to work with."
The trial was the first time since their bodies were discovered in 2022 that New Zealand had been given any sense of who these two siblings were and the family dynamics.
Later the court would see a picture of Minu's chubby little face in his living room with his sister sitting close by on the floor, as well as a series of Yuna's baby pictures.
The lawyers representing each side had a cordial relationship. There seemed to be genuine regard between prosecutor Natalie Walker and her two-man bench for the Crown, and Lorraine Smith, who for 30 years has helmed some of our most high-profile murder cases, and her second Chris Wilkinson-Smith.
In the small moments between breaks the two lead lawyers had an easy manner with the media. Chatting about other stories of the day, fashion, Māori current events – anything other than the facts of this unrelentingly sad case.
Smith and Wilkinson-Smith were assisting Lee, who was representing herself but who didn't say a word during the whole trial.
In a short but powerful opening Smith told the jury early on that Lee's "descent into madness", culminating in her killing her children, began in 2017 when her husband Ian died. While other people may have been able to cope, she could not.
Lee accepted that she gave her children the antidepressant nortriptyline which led to and caused their deaths.
Still, Smith asked the jury to find Lee not guilty by way of insanity.
For the prosecution, Walker methodically set out the case that it was the Crown's job to prove Lee's guilt beyond reasonable doubt, that the 45-year-old was innocent until proven guilty.
But she also said something we hear less often.
"For now, I simply say that as a matter of law, everyone in New Zealand is presumed to be sane until the contrary is proven."
Her job – to prove murderous intent.
"Although Ms Lee's actions in killing her children are unfathomable, the Crown says the steps she took in the hours, days and weeks after she killed her children – such as hiding them in the way she did, changing her name and leaving the country – were the actions of someone who not only knew what they were doing, but who knew that they were wrong."
There was lots of evidence about Lee wanting to kill herself and her children, centred on statements Lee made to friends, family, and a crisis mental health nurse prior to and after her husband's death.
Justice Geoffrey Venning ran a tight ship for this trial, keeping lawyers to schedule. He was warm but no-nonsense, his interruptions as witnesses gave evidence were infrequent and always served to make what was meant crystal clear to the jury.
For her part Lee cut a bedraggled figure, sitting with her head bowed for much of the trial, long hair acting like a curtain to a closed face. It was a far cry from her happy wedding photo or the family selfie jurors saw, four faces crammed in one lighter moment in time.
Jurors heard Ian Jo, who loved to play basketball with his brother, worked at Auckland International Airport and was the family's sole financial provider. His wife had worked in hospitality but gave up work when she got pregnant with Yuna, concentrating on the family's wellbeing.
Lee sat in the dock for minimal time, enough to hear Justice Venning enter a plea on her behalf because she did not answer the routine plea question.
For all the evidence over the weeks of the trial she sat in another High Court room watching on via video link.
The lawyers assisting her were old trial hands.
Family's concerns
Her Hamilton-based mother Choon Ja Lee went to the Auckland Central Police Station in December 2018 telling them she hadn't heard from her daughter in a year.
An immigration check was done, and the mother was told she had left New Zealand.
The timeline was revealed in court. Lee accepts she gave her children the anti-depressant in late June 2018. The Crown took the jury through the timeline of Lee applying to change her name from Ji Eun Lee to Hakyung Lee, getting a new passport, signing a contract for Safestore storage where she took the suitcases containing her children's remains and then leaving for South Korea business class in July 2018.
Detective Sergeant Ryan Singleton said no checks were done on the children.
"This was possibly because their dates of birth were not provided or available and also that their names were not spelt quite correctly or given correctly."
Four days later Choon Ja Lee tried again. This time at a Hamilton station.
"On both dates Ms Choon Ja Lee did not specify any specific safety concerns with police regarding Ms Lee or her children's safety that would cause them to report her as a missing person," he told the court.
It's one of the pieces of this terrible story that's always been troubling. The family's growing isolation, how the siblings became ghost-like after their father's death and before their own deaths sometime in late June 2018. The children did not attend school that year. It not clear if their absences were ever followed up.
Messages between Lee and a close Australian friend reveal one-sided inquiries where the friend urges her to keep in touch, tells her she misses Lee, asks her if she changed her name and, finally, in 2018 when she hasn't received any response, tells Lee she is starting to get worried.
The breakthrough
Lee resurfaced in a psychiatric ward in South Korea. The hospital tracked her mother down via a Hamilton-based pastor in 2022.
Her mother was suspicious – she didn't have a daughter named Hakyung. Still, she called the hospital and asked the woman where her grandchildren were.
On that phone call she answered Choon Ja Lee: "Mum, I don't have kids."
Choon Ja Lee flew to visit her in Korea, and a ticket was bought for Lee's return to New Zealand. But Lee never got on the plane.
Events were moving at pace.
Later that same year, in August, the bodies were found by a man who had bought some unclaimed items from a storage unit. By November 25, police were on a plane to South Korea, extradition warrant in hand.
Detective Sergeant Sung Kyu Hwang was in charge of getting Lee back to New Zealand safely. On November 28 he sat next to her down the back of the plane. Lee had the window seat. Over the course of the 11-hour flight, Lee told him she "volunteered" to come back to New Zealand, that her first priority was to hold a funeral for the children, and that she had left the siblings at an institution.
They arrive back on November 29, and a day later she was charged with the double murder of her children.
Desperate sadness
The bodies of Minu and Yuna Jo were found in suitcases nearly four years after their deaths in 2018. (Source: 1News)
In court, psychiatrist Dr Yvette Kelly – the defence's only witness – described Lee as coming from a family with "unconventional relationships".
"The family had very little contact with one another and became estranged without any apparent trigger," she said.
"Ms Lee's distant familial relationships likely contributed to her depressive features not being identified and followed up."
Kelly found that Lee had a "disease of the mind" – an important first step in any jury making a not guilty finding by way of insanity.
She found in favour of a critical second part as well.
"My assessment was that Ms Lee did not know the act was morally wrong at the time of the offending.
"So, due to her depression she wanted to suicide, and she believed her children would suffer a fate worse than death if they had to live without both their parents or if they discovered her dead body."
Kelly's chirpy manner on the witness stand at times seemed discordant with what was a child double murder case, the likes of which New Zealand has never seen before.
The psychiatrist was accused of being glib under cross-examination and had to apologise for several errors in her evidence. At one point, she gave a cheery laugh on the stand.
That was to a question from the Crown about whether she ever contemplated that Lee might've been lying.
"Yes," she said through laughter as she nodded.
"Yes."
Later Kelly would say she'd done tests and relied on the clinical picture. "We're not lie detectors, right? And psychiatrists, as much as we like to think it evidence, is we're not really much better than the average person at detecting lies."
It felt like a savage, albeit polite, cross by the Crown.
Now, almost three years later, the trial has concluded. But the desperate sadness of the case remains and the lost lives of little Yuna and Minu can't be brought back.
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