SYDNEY (AP) — A judge on Tuesday sentenced a Sydney taekwondo instructor to life in prison without the possibility of release for the murders of a 7-year-old student and the boy's parents.
Kwan Kyung Yew, 51, sat with his head down as Judge Ian Harrison said he would never be eligible for parole.
Harrison said Yoo was motivated by the envy he felt about the family's financial success.
“I am satisfied that the level of culpability in these offenses is so great that the public interest in retribution, punishment, protection and deterrence can only be served by imposing a life sentence,” Harrison told the NSW Supreme Court.
Harrison said Yu had no reason to kill the boy or his parents last February.
State law prohibits the identification of child crime victims, so the boy's parents also cannot be named.
Yoo and his victims were born in South Korea.
Yu pleaded guilty to three counts of murder at a previous court hearing. He had no previous convictions.
Yoo strangled the boy and his 41-year-old mother at his Lion Academy of Taekwondo and Martial Arts in western Sydney. At the time, he owed tens of thousands of dollars and owed rent on the academy.
He took his mother's Apple watch and drove her luxury BMW car to the family home, where he stabbed the boy's 39-year-old father to death.
Yu was injured in a domestic fight and went to the hospital, where he told medical staff that he had been attacked in a supermarket parking lot. The police arrested him at the hospital.
After his arrest, Yu was unable to explain how he intended to obtain the family's money, and later detailed his remorse.
The former instructor, whose students called him Master Lion, did not look at the victims' families and other supporters as they sobbed in the court's public gallery after the verdict.
“These murders were horrific and violent acts, senselessly cruel and cynical, carried out without a trace of human compassion,” the judge said.
Although the crimes were planned—Yu surveilled the family's home beforehand—he made no attempt to hide his crimes from the security cameras at his academy or try to hide the bodies.
At his sentencing hearing in November, the judge heard Yoo lied about meeting Australia's richest woman, Gina Rinehart, who qualified for the 2000 Sydney Olympics, owned a luxury Lamborghini and lived in Sydney's wealthy eastern suburbs.
To impress his wife, he sent himself emails pretending to be important people. He sometimes used the title of professor.
Harrison noted that Yu told the psychologist that his lies became bigger and bigger as his wife and students asked more questions.
The judge noted that Yoo had been burdened since childhood with unrealistic expectations from his parents and South Korean culture regarding the level of success he needed to achieve.
Yu was handed a box of tissues and the judge described his deep remorse for the hurt and pain he had caused.
In a letter to the judge, Yoo said he was a “prisoner of sin” and that he wanted to give himself to Jesus Christ.
“I wish I could turn back time so this wouldn’t happen,” Yu wrote. “I pray every day for the people I hurt.”
Yoo's lawyers argued that he should be given a minimum non-parole sentence rather than life in prison without the possibility of release. The maximum penalty for a person convicted of murder in New South Wales is life imprisonment, with a standard non-parole period of 20 years for the murder of an adult and 25 years for the murder of a child.
