Three years ago, an Auckland family purchased two suitcases at a garage feed. Probably they didn’t think that the content of the packages would be articulated for years. When the two bags were opened, they found the body of two children. They had been dead for quite some time, so it was difficult to identify them. The police, on the other hand, managed to decipher who had the two suitcases and who the killer was: the mother of the kids.
Since then, Ji Eun Lee has changed its name since 2018 in South Korea, and no one has known anything about his children for years. The New Zealand court trial could begin in September 2025 after South Korea issued the woman. Details of the incident were finally revealed.
Looking behind the child murder, a sad story emerged during the courts. Harmonic family life was broken by the head of the family and died in a few months. The relatives tried to help in vain, the mother was isolated, and in the end it was not cruelty but the untreated mental state that led to the crime. The jury has to decide whether the woman was offset at the time of the murder.
The teacher was a favorite parent pair
The South Korean-born but New Zealand citizen Ji Eun Lee and his husband Ian Jo met in their temple community around 2006. They were born in 2010, Yuna, and in 2012 their son minu. According to the families of the family, the parents were careful and the children were well -educated and cheerful.
“Actually I liked to work with them the most
Said Mary Robertson, a children’s elementary school teacher, among the first to be heard by the Auckland court. “She was beautifully behaved, she was very respectful, and she belonged to a cohesive group of friends,” she said of her, but she also described the boy as a smart, smiling kid. He said Lee and Jo did their best to make their kids feel good.
According to the teacher, there was a big change in the child’s state of mind when their father was diagnosed with stomach cancer in early 2017. The man traveled to South Korea to treat his illness there, while his wife remained in New Zealand with the children. The head of the family only returned to the island country when he was sure his illness was incurable.
Father’s brother, Jimmy Sae Wook Cho, said the kid’s mother never took Yuna and Minu for a hospital visit. “He didn’t want to know their father was dying,” Cho said. Only when he was dying, he managed to convince Leet to bring the kids to say goodbye to his husband. Ian Jo died of his illness in November 2017. It was not a year between his diagnosis and his death.
Friends reported that at that time Lee deactivated his social networking sites and could not be very contact with it. Some did not notify some of the time that her husband was buried, but even the then -eight -year -old Yuna and six -year -old Minu did not take part in the farewell. In fact, their mother didn’t tell them for a while that their father was dead. At that time, Robertson last met Lee and the two children. The mother went to school to inform the teacher about her husband’s death and indicated that the children would not go to school for a while.
At their last meeting, Robertson offered that the school would help the family in anything. “I just warned the kids that they needed friends, family and the usual routine to cope with the situation,” he said, but the mother told her she was doing well. Lee planned to take Yuna and Minut on vacation to Australia to make them feel a little good, and then tell them that their father was dead. He also considered that they would not return to New Zealand after the vacation, but move to South Korea. Lee and Jo came from there, and the woman’s family would have supported them.
According to Robertson, Lee was crying and seemed to be shaken, but also noted that he was treating the situation well in relation to the circumstances. The teacher did not forget her two students. In September 2018, he looked at the education system to enroll them somewhere in New Zealand, but could not find them. On this basis, he assumed that the family eventually started a new life in South Korea.
In April, Cho spoke with his sister -in -law about why he didn’t go to school half a year after their father died. “He said he had no energy to carry the kids to school and pay attention to what they needed there. I asked me what I could help, but he said he just wanted to be alone,” said the kids’ uncle. Relatives saw that Lee was depressed, but this was recorded as a natural part of mourning. In addition, she said she was always a fluctuating spiritual. Nevertheless, he urged him to seek the help of a specialist, but Lee rejected it. Cho assured him that if he had anything, he would call them, they were next to him.
Cho and his wife last met the children and Lee in April 2018. In June, when they wanted to organize a family gathering again, she was no longer open to it, but she promised to apply soon. When Cho went to his house a few weeks later, to his surprise, he found another family there. By this time, the South Korean relatives had not reached itself. By then, she killed her children and moved to South Korea under the pseudonym.
The neighbor immediately recognized the smell
In August 2022, an Auckland family made a creepy report to the police. An online storage setting was purchased by the contents of a smaller, deserted warehouse. The prey was two bikes, some items and two stinky suitcases. The family father thought he could be a dead rat in the packages, so when he returned home, he opened one of the baggage. When he pulled the bag, the stench became even more terrible, so much that even one of the family’s neighbors felt it. Since he had previously worked in a crematorium, he immediately recognized the smell.
Police immediately got out on Kertváros Street and began examining the content of the suitcases in a tent pulled in front of the family house. The neighbor’s perception proved to be true, with the bodies crouched in the fetus pose in the two bags. Based on their size, it was immediately known that the remains of children aged 6-9 were found. Based on the condition of the bodies, it was clear that the two children had been dead for years, but it was not possible to immediately determine what caused their death.
As we wrote in our article at the time, the police managed to decipher where the suitcases came from. On the one hand, the two packages included a address where a South Korean-born but New Zealand national was announced. On the other hand, the small warehouse from which the two suitcases came from. The storage was rented by Safe Storage to the same South Korean woman whose name was also found in connection with the address. However, since it did not pay the rent for 48 days, the contract, which could not be inspected, was auctioned under the contract. This is how the two packages came to the Auckland family.
Although the police had not yet been disclosed, it soon became clear that the two victims were Yuna and Minu Jo. Interpol issued a red category against the children’s mother. One month after the remains appeared, Ji Eun Leet was arrested in South Korea, who in the meantime changed his name. The New Zealand authorities requested the woman’s extradition and charged with murder. Lee was still denying the murder. He said he was willing to return to New Zealand only to bury his children.
Mother’s mental state is the main question
The Auckland General Court began negotiations against Lee on Monday. She decided to represent herself at the trial. At the same time, two defense lawyers are with him at the time of the proceedings and address the details of the case.
Lee did not declare himself guilty – so he listened to when the judge asked about it. But he acknowledged that he caused the children to die. They defend themselves that he was not offset at the time of the murder. According to New Zealand Herald, this is the first time that such a major case has been made at a public hearing for mental disorder. According to his family and friends, he may have indeed unstable at the time of the murder, but it was not certain that it was not possible.
According to one of Lee’s girlfriends, during the months before the head of the family, Lee said several times that if her husband dies, he and the children will die. Ian Jo also behaved quite unpredictable in the last days. The man once escaped from the Hospice class and stepped with his wife’s car when he went out to the bathroom. Lee did not reach him on the phone for a while, and the nurses said he was completely broken. He and the hospital staff feared that he would commit suicide.
“If you die, I will die with the two kids,” Lee wrote in an SMS. Her husband applied for that. Later, Lee said to psychiatric nurses who treat her husband that she had no serious suicide thoughts, only the situation brought out this reaction. He is aware that the children’s lives are not owned and would not want to kill them, he said to the experts with him. But by the lawyer next to Lee, by the time her husband got into palliative care, she slipped into crazy slowly, and the belief that it would be best to kill herself and her two children.
The kid’s maternal grandmother also remembered her daughter was crying on the phone and said she would die if she lost her husband. Lee allegedly told her mother that after her husband’s death she had received insurance money, she wanted to die with the kids. “I understand that you feel like this, and why you think so. But if you want to die, do it alone. Leave them to me. I take care of them,” said the mother’s Lee. “You don’t even know how you want to take care of them?” Lee replied.
About seven months passed between her husband’s death and killing the children, during which she had already detached the children from relatives. Meanwhile, he spent a lot, went on vacation with the kids, and then they were in South Korea. He finally killed Yun and Minu in June 2018 when they returned to New Zealand.
During the autopsy, it turned out that the children were probably not a violent death because there was no sign of injury on their bodies. However, both children’s organizations have discovered the remains of nortriptilin-containing antidepressants. It cannot be determined that the antidepressant was killed by the children, or they were just stunned by the drug and were killed in other ways. There is no excluding strangulation. Nortriptilin can also cause dizziness, seizures and death in the event of an anesthetic, and children under the age of 12 cannot take such medicine.
According to the prosecutor’s office, Lee was prescribed an antidepressant in 2017 during her husband’s illness because she couldn’t sleep. According to his general practitioner, at that time, Lee did not say that he had spiritual problems, and even talked about her husband’s fine. But at the Australian vacation, he told a friend that he would be easier to death with his children than to be widowed. He also said that on a plane to Australia he wanted they would fall, because they would all die together.
According to the defense, Lee really killed his children with the antidepressant. They claim to have overdose the antidepressant himself, but he misunderstood the dose, did not take a large dose and lost consciousness. By the time he recovered, his children had already died.
However, according to the prosecutor’s office, it cannot be inconceivable who does so much to get away with a crime. Lee, for example, admitted to put the bodies in three nylon bags, glued them with an insulating tape, and then wrapped them in a suitcase. He then sprinkled the remains into the warehouse and changed his name. Before he went to South Korea with his new identity, he went to a hairdresser, made his hair for a horribly sum, and made a final visit to the warehouse where he hid the remains of his children. According to the prosecutor’s office, it is rightly assumed that the woman knew very well that what she was doing was bad and tried to get away with the crime.
Until April 2022, Lee also paid the rental fee without any problems. Then it was left with the salary because it was included in psychiatry in South Korea. Then the warehouse was auctioned and the packages were discovered.
Meanwhile, the children’s maternal grandmother also contacted the Auckland police and the New Zealand Consulate in South Korea. She tried to find her daughter and her grandchildren, but she didn’t get anything. He didn’t even know that his daughter had returned to South Korea, and it only came to her after the woman was on psychiatry.
“What are you talking about? I never had kids”
Lee replied to his mother when asked about Yuna and Minu. Shortly afterwards, the news came that the children’s body had been found.
Lee’s trial can last for another four weeks. His guilt-that is, whether or not he has committed murders in a state of mind-will be decided by a jury of twelve.
