By Catrin Owen

Copyright brisbanetimes

The bodies of Minu Jo, 6, and his older sister, Yuna Jo, 8, were discovered in August 2022 by an unsuspecting couple who won a Papatoetoe storage unit auction.

Their mother, Lee – formerly known as Ji Eun (Jasmine) Lee – admitted to giving them the antidepressant medication nortriptyline, before putting their bodies in suitcases, leaving them in the storage unit and flying to South Korea on a business class ticket in 2018.

But she claimed she suffered a “descent into living hell” that began with her husband’s cancer diagnosis in 2017. Her fragile mental health drove her to “descend into madness” and kill her children, the defence argued, and she was therefore not guilty by reason of insanity. But the Crown argued that Lee knew the moral wrongfulness of her actions when she killed her children.

On Tuesday morning, Venning summed up the case to the jury. “This case comes down to one main issue … whether she murdered the children or whether she was insane in terms of the Crimes Act,” he said.