Welington, New Zealand (AP) -A process that was opened on Monday in New Zealand for a woman who is accused of killing her two children and left their bodies in suitcases for years before they were discovered.
Hekyung Lee is accused of killing minute Jo, 6, and Yuna Jo, 8, in June 2018. She was extradited from South Korea to face the charges that she denies.
The remains of the children were found in luggage in an abandoned storage unit in Auckland in August 2022. Lee, who is a Burger van Nieuw -Zeeland, had traveled to South Korea and changed its name in 2018, shortly after the children were killed.
She was born in South Korea and was previously called the name Ji Eun Lee.
A jury was chosen on Monday for the Lee process in the High Court in Auckland, which is expected to take four weeks. Officers of Justice will outline their business on Tuesday and said they would call 40 witnesses.
New Zealand news shops reported that Lee represented himself, although two lawyers were standing to help her if necessary. She did not spoke during the hearing on Monday and shook her head, instead of answering an interpreter, when he was asked how she argued for the charges.
No culprit begging were introduced by Justice Geoffrey Venning, who is chairman.
The cause of death of the children remains unknown. Judicial documents said they may have been killed by prescribed sleep medication prescribed to Lee and detected in their bodies by forensic researchers, but another cause of death is not excluded, according to Radio New Zealand.
Lee's husband died in 2017 after a period of deteriorating health, according to RNZ. Justice Venning told the jury on Monday that they would probably be asked to consider the issue of Lee's common sense at the time of the alleged murders, news result reported.
Venning said that the process would be painful for Lee and has given her permission to view a procedure from another room in the courthouse, Stuff said.
The remains of the children were discovered after Lee stopped paying rental prices for the Auckland storage unit when she encountered financial difficulties in 2022, RNZ reported. The content of the cupboard was auctioned online and the buyers found the bodies in.
Lee, who is in the forty, was arrested in South Korea in September 2022 and delivered two months later. She had given written permission to be extradited after a formal request from New -Zeeland to return to process, said the South Korean officials at the time.
The Ministry of Justice of South Korea said that the new -Zeeland in the case had not provided 'important evidence'.
