A lawyer in Australia submitted two pleas of not guilty in the Auckland High Court on behalf of his client, a 42-year-old woman accused of murdering her two young children. Per CNN, the suspect was not present for the hearing, but she is in custody, capping an investigation that started in August when the children's remains were found inside two suitcases. According to the Guardian, a random family in a South Auckland suburb made the grisly discovery after purchasing the suitcases in a storage facility's online auction. Investigators determined that the victims were between 5 and 10 years of age, but they had been dead for several years. Their mother was soon identified as a suspect.
In mid-September she was located and arrested in South Korea, where she was born, though she has New Zealand citizenship. South Korea handed her over to New Zealand authorities for extradition in late November. Under court orders, her identity and those of her children have been released to the public. She made her only public statements to local media while being transferred between police stations in South Korea, replying "I didn't do it" to every question, per the Guardian, which notes that Korean police also handed over "important evidence" to their New Zealand counterparts. Per Stuff, immigration records show the woman left New Zealand for Korea in 2018, around the time the suitcases were abandoned in storage. Her trial is scheduled to start in April 2024. (More child murder stories.)
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