She spent $900 on a single hair salon visit, $188 at a laser treatment centre, $35 on her nails and $95 on lingerie.
In the month between Hankyung “Jasmine” Lee killing her two young children and flying business class to South Korea to start a new life, there was a noticeable increase in spending under the category of “female adult beauty expenditures”.
That’s what police forensic accountant Andrew Yoon showed jurors in the High Court at Auckland today as the second week of evidence began in Lee’s double-murder trial.
Standby lawyers for Lee, 45, began the trial last week by acknowledging that she did kill daughter Yuna Jo, 8, and son Minu Jo, 6, in late June 2018 – seven months after family patriarch Ian Jo succumbed to cancer.
The defendant also admitted through defence lawyers Lorraine Smith and Chris Wilkinson-Smith that she concealed the children’s remains inside plastic bags that were stuffed into suitcases and then put in a newly rented storage facility.
The main question for jurors will be whether she was so mentally ill at the time that she didn’t know what she was doing was wrong.
Prosecutors Natalie Walker, Jay Tausi and Jong Kim have suggested she was aware what she had done was wrong, given her steps to conceal the bodies, change her name (initially Ji Eun Lee) and move permanently abroad all within weeks of the killings.
Before Ian Jo’s terminal diagnosis and $330,000 life insurance payout, the couple’s bank accounts showed modest expenditures reflective of a single-income family, the forensic accountant told jurors today.
But in the immediate aftermath of her husband’s death through to her permanent departure from New Zealand in July 2018 there was what Tausi, the prosecutor, characterised as a “radical spike” in spending.
It included stays in luxury hotels and business-class fares on trips to Australia’s Gold Coast, South Korea, Queenstown and Taupō.
Lee’s mother told jurors last week the defendant had told her she would burn through the life insurance money then kill herself and her children. The mother said she didn’t take it seriously, but then decided to throw out garden chemicals from the shed of her daughter’s Papatoetoe home as a precaution.
Financial documents show Lee’s credit card spending increased by 1397% after her husband’s death. There was a 4966% increase in holiday and travel expenditures, and cash withdrawals went up by 5112%.
Before June 28, around the time of the children’s deaths, there were expenditures on things such as a visit to Rainbows End, McDonald’s Happy Meals and multiple trips to Chipmunks Playland. Then the spending on children abruptly stopped, while daily spending on food dropped by 58%.
The forensic accountant also showed how Lee continued for years to transfer funds to make sure there were always payments to Safe Store, where her children’s bodies were concealed.
The bodies were discovered in August 2022 when the contents of the shed were auctioned off several months after Lee stopped making payments.
Under cross-examination of the forensic accountant, Wilkinson-Smith emphasised that much of the spending spree included generous spending on Lee’s mother and children.
After the children’s deaths, the defendant did spend about $2600 on the “female adult beauty items” outlined by Yoon. But the expenditures weren’t at high-end stores, Wilkinson-Smith suggested, pointing out it included trips to Number 1 Shoes, Kmart and Cotton On.
And it doesn’t appear she lived an extravagant lifestyle after moving to South Korea, the defence lawyer suggested. He pointed out she transferred about $153,000 to Korean bank accounts, giving her about $3000 per month to live on during the roughly four years before she was extradited back to New Zealand.
Jurors also spent the day paging through receipts from before and after the children’s deaths.
On June 27, 2018, the day prosecutors believe the children died, Lee bought a courier envelope later used for an application to change her name. She then purchased rubbish bags at Mitre 10 before getting lunch at a bakery.
The next day, she paid $208 for her name change application and $109.50 for a driver’s licence application, followed by $512 on suitcases and her first payment of $497 to Safe Store.
The following day, a Friday, she bought a Lotto Triple Dip along with a petrol purchase then went to Vlgari Hair Salon in Albany, where it’s believed she paid for a $250 eyebrow tattoo, $250 for permanent eyeliner and $400 for a tattoo on her forehead to make her hairline look fuller. She returned two weeks later and paid another $160, likely for a hair colour change, the salon owner said in a written statement read aloud in court.
On Saturday, she returned to Mitre 10 to purchase more plastic bags and a padlock.
The Crown is expected to continue calling witnesses tomorrow when the trial resumes before Justice Geoffrey Venning and the jury.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
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