The woman, who has not been identified, was arrested in early hours of Thursday local time in the southeastern city of Ulsan, a South Korean police official told CNN.
The police official confirmed that the arrested woman is the same woman believed to be the children’s mother, according to earlier police reports, who arrived in South Korea several years ago and had not departed the country since.
New Zealand police said in a statement they requested an arrest warrant for the woman under the country’s extradition treaty with South Korea and have applied to extradite her to New Zealand to face charges.
“To have someone in custody overseas within such a short period of time has all been down to the assistance of the Korean authorities and the coordination by our (New Zealand) Police Interpol staff,” said New Zealand Detective Inspector Tofilau Fa’amanuia Vaaelua in a statement Thursday.
The woman will remain in custody while awaiting the completion of the extradition process, Vaaelua added. The woman’s identity is being withheld to avoid potentially identifying the children.
South Korean authorities confirmed last month that the woman was born in South Korea and acquired New Zealand citizenship a “long time ago.”
Seoul High Court will now decide within two months whether to extradite the woman to New Zealand.
New Zealand police launched a homicide investigation last month after a family in South Auckland reported finding human remains in suitcases they bought in an online auction from a storage facility.
The children — likely to have been between ages 5 and 10 — may have been dead for around three to four years, according to New Zealand police.
At the time, police stressed the family who bought the suitcases were not under investigation.
The official said the woman, a New Zealand citizen, arrived in South Korea in 2018 and there was no record of her subsequently departing the country.
According to the official, the woman held Korean citizenship before acquiring New Zealand citizenship a “long time ago.” The official did not name the woman or give any other identifying details and could not confirm whether she was born in South Korea.
Her whereabouts are unknown, the official said. South Korean police have not opened their own investigation into the case, but are cooperating with New Zealand authorities through Interpol.
New Zealand police launched a homicide investigation earlier this month after a family from South Auckland reported finding human body parts in several items they bought in an online auction from a storage facility.
The children — likely to have been between ages 5 and 10 — may have been dead for a number of years, perhaps three or four, according to New Zealand police.
The family who bought the suitcases at auction are not under investigation, New Zealand police have said.
New Zealand police on Monday told CNN they were unable to confirm the details provided by South Korean police at this stage of the investigation.
On a Thursday afternoon this month, a family returned to their home in New Zealand with a trailer-load of stuff they had scored at an auction. But as they were unpacking the items in a southern Auckland suburb, they noticed a putrid odor.
Inside two suitcases they had bought online in the auction for abandoned goods, the family found human remains.
The Aug. 11 discovery quickly prompted an investigation. A week later, Detective Inspector Tofilau Faamanuia Vaaelua of the New Zealand Police announced that the remains belonged to two children. They are believed to have been between the ages of 5 and 10, according to a post-mortem examination.
“These children may have been deceased for a number of years before being found last week. We also believe the suitcases have been in storage for a number of years,” Vaaelua said at a news conference Thursday.
The discovery has stumped authoritiesand the public. Myriad questions remain — chiefly, who are the children, and how did their bodies end up in a suburban storage unit?
Foul play is suspected, Vaaelua said.
“We are determined to hold the person, or persons, responsible for the deaths of these children to account,” he said, adding that members of the family who made the discovery are not suspects.
Third set of human remains recovered at shrinking Lake Mead, park says
Police are still working to identify the children and hope to notify their relatives, who may not be aware of their deaths, Vaaelua said. The suitcases, he said, had been left in the storage center for three or four years before being purchasedby the unsuspecting family.
The family got hold of the bags through a “Storage Wars”-type auction. Participants in the events buy the contents of a storage locker without knowing what’s inside. In this case, the family received a slew of items from a unit at Safe Store’s facility in Papatoetoe.
Safe Store didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post. However, the company’s director told local outlet Stuff that the business is cooperating with police.
At Thursday’s news conference, Vaaelua said he couldn’t confirm whether police had spoken with the storage unit’s previous owner. He said New Zealand’s national police department is working with overseas agencies and Interpol, an international network of police forces in 195 countries.
“This is no easy investigation,” Vaaelua added. “And no matter how long or how many years you investigate horrific cases like this, it’s never an easy task.”
Residents on New Zealand’s northernmost island — known in English as North Island and in Maori as Te Ika-a-Maui — were shocked by the grim discovery. Neighbors in Clendon Park, an area with about 9,000 residents, told the New Zealand Herald they saw the family that bought the suitcases unloading strollers, baby walkers and toys.
Soon after, a “wicked smell” began to emanate from their home, another neighbor told Stuff. The man told the outlet he used to work at a crematorium and knew how bodies smelled.
“I knew straight away [what it was] and I thought, ‘Where is that coming from?’ ” he said.
In a statement, police said they were alerted to the case last week when the family from the South Auckland suburb of Manurewa reported finding human body parts in several items they bought from a storage facility.
The family is not connected to the children’s deaths, police said, and they are “understandably distressed.”
The children — likely to have been between ages 5 and 10 — may have been dead for a number of years, perhaps three or four, Detective Inspector Tofilau Faamanuia Vaaelua said at a news conference on Thursday.
A postmortem examination is being conducted to try to determine the children’s identity, Vaaelua said. Investigators are also looking for clues as to how, when and where the children died.
Vaaelua said police were working with Interpol and have opened inquiries with overseas agencies, but initial inquiries suggest relatives of the victims are in New Zealand.
“I really feel for the victims or the family of these victims. And, you know right here, right now, there are relatives out there that aren’t aware that their loved ones have deceased,” he added.
The case was “extremely upsetting news for the community to hear,” he said.
Police are trying to view closed-circuit television footage that may offer some clues, though they acknowledge that it may be difficult to obtain given the significant amount of time that has passed.
The storage company is assisting police with their inquiries, and other household and personal items sold from the storage facility are being examined to establish a link to the suitcases, police said.
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Charles’ judgement under fresh scrutiny over bags of cash
The cartoon image of Prince Charles rubbing his hands with glee while chucking shopping bags stuffed full of banknotes into the back of his wine-powered Aston Martin like something out of the irreverent British comedy The Windsors is on the Royalist’s mind today.
The image follows the astonishing revelation that the heir to the throne was personally handed a suitcase containing €1m (just over $1.05m) by a politician representing a rich oil-producing Arab statelet.
“It was one of three lots of cash, totaling €3 million ($3.2m), which Prince Charles personally received from Sheik Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, the former prime minister of Qatar who is nicknamed ‘HBJ,’ between 2011 and 2015,” the London Sunday Timesreports.
The story, described as “truly shocking” by a senior ethics official, will cement in many minds Charles’ reputation for financial indiscipline. While it may be a little too much to say it jeopardizes his succession, it certainly poses urgent and new questions about the judgement of the heir to the throne when it comes to money matters.
Late last year, Charles lost his key aide Michael Fawcett, who was forced to stand down from Charles’ foundation after it was revealed he arranged an honor for a billionaire Saudi donor, explicitly in return for donations. Charles denied any knowledge of the transactional arrangement but a reported police investigation into the matter has provided no answers, being discreet to the point of invisibility. Prince Harry pointedly accused his father of being involved in what he described as a “scandal” over the affair.
In the latest self-inflicted disaster to hit Charles, the Sunday Times has revealed that Sheik Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, personally gave Charles bags of cash on three separate occasions between 2011 and 2015.
On each occasion, HBJ is said to have given the prince €1 million in €500 notes—sometimes dubbed ‘bin Ladens’ because of their use by terrorist-linked organized crime gangs. One time the money was stuffed into plastic shopping bags from the luxury Chelsea grocer and department store Fortnum & Mason, which holds a royal charter from the prince. Another time the money was in a suitcase, and the third time it was in a holdall.
Clarence House insisted to the Times that it makes no difference that the money, which was deposited into an account at exclusive bankers Coutts, just happened to arrive in cash and that “all the correct processes were followed.”
However a source described as “one of Charles’s former advisers who handled some of the cash,” told the Sunday Times that “everyone felt very uncomfortable about the situation,” adding that the, “only thing we could do was to count the money and make a mutual record of what we’d done. And then call the bank.”
HBJ, a member of Qatar’s ruling al-Thani family, is a hugely controversial figure, with an estimated personal wealth of $12 billion, having served as Qatar’s prime minister between 2007 and 2013, during which time he cultivated close links with the U.K., which saw the country’s vast sovereign wealth fund invest in Harrods and the iconic London skyscraper the Shard.
Charles was believed to have used his influence to get the Qataris to pull out of the redevelopment of a high profile site in Chelsea called Chelsea Barracks. The High Court said Charles’s involvement in the matter was “unexpected and unwelcome.”
Sir Alistair Graham, former chairman of the committee on standards in public life, told the Sunday Times the revelations were “truly shocking,” saying: “I wouldn’t make a distinction between a politician and a member of the royal family. If the Qatari government wants to make a gift to his foundation, then there are proper ways to do these things rather than handling large sums of cash.”
Beatrice’s card reportedly declined at Glasto
At the other end of the financial scale, Princess Beatrice’s bank card was apparently declined three times at a bar at British music festival Glastonbury. A spy told the Daily Star: “She tried to pay by card but it got declined three times.”
Good news for her dad, Prince Andrew, on the money front, however. The Mirror reports that Author Ingrid Seward told True Royalty TV’s The Royal Beat, “They’re not going to cast him out because he will be more trouble and start talking and giving TV interviews and writing books. They don’t want that again. He will be financially secure, but I would be very surprised if he kept the Royal Lodge.”
Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images
Andrew smiles away
If Prince Andrew is worried about losing his Duke of York title—after 80% of that town said they wanted to cut their link with him—he wasn’t showing it Saturday. The Daily Mail showed him riding a horse cheerily around the Windsor Castle estate.
As The Daily Beast reported, York Central MP Rachael Maskell, has brought forward the “Removal of Titles Bill,” after polls showed that 80 percent of its citizens want to be freed of their link with the shamed royal, who has refused to stop using the title, which was given to him as a wedding present in 1986.
Maskell told the Daily Mail: “Back in February, when we had the focus on the court case, which was being brought against Andrew, my constituents responded that 80% of people wanted the association with the current Duke of York to be broken. And therefore, I met with the clerks here in the Commons to see how it can be achieved.”
She discovered there were “no mechanisms in place, even for the monarch, to remove the title. The only real way it could be done is for Andrew to no longer call himself, by choice, the Duke of York.”
She added: “Using a title like the Duke of York is an ambassadorial role, it carries the name of our city across the world.
“And it’s a city, which is a Human Rights City, the only Human Rights City in England. We are already in a culture clash when we are talking about violence against women and girls and the issues that we are really working hard on in the city, about making York a very safe place.”
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Epstein victim: Andrew photo made me “shake” in terror
Annie Farmer, a victim of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, tells the Sun that the picture of Andrew with Maxwell, his arm around Virginia Roberts Giuffre, makes her shake. Farmer, speaking in advance of Maxwell’s sentencing on Tuesday, said in an impact statement: “I remember sitting at my desk in a Houston hospital physically shaking after seeing the photo of Maxwell with Virginia Giuffre and Prince Andrew because it became clear to me how their scheme had continued.”
“I never would have met Epstein if not for you,” Farmer, who claims the abuse at Epstein and Maxwell’s hands occurred when she was 16, writes. “You opened the door to hell. And then, Ghislaine, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, you used your femininity to betray us, and you led us all through it.” The pair did “unthinkable things” to her, Farmer says.
Royals rethink colonial legacy
A sign that the royals are at least trying to address the many horrors of Britain’s colonial past comes with the news that Prince Charles wants slavery to be accorded public recognition, in a similar vein to the annual remembrance of the Holocaust.
Charles expressed “personal sorrow” at the U.K. links to the slave trade during a visit to Rwanda last week, no doubt encouraged to speak on the issue by protests about the legacy of slavery on William and Kate’s recent tour of the Caribbean, which was criticized in some quarters as “tone-deaf.”
A senior royal source told the Sunday Times: “He is patron of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and he notes that in the U.K., we now know and learn at school all about the Holocaust, so it is something that is acknowledged and learnt at a national level. That is not true of the transatlantic slave trade, and maybe that is something that should be.
“So, just like the Holocaust Memorial Day, is there some way of doing that? Having a moment, having a way of remembering that?”
Queen Elizabeth II crowns her son Charles, Prince of Wales, during his investiture ceremony at Caernarvon Castle.
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
This week in royal history
July 1 is one of the strangest dates in the royal calendar, marking the birth of Princess Diana on that day in 1961, while on the same day eight years later in 1969, Prince Charles became the Prince of Wales at an investiture ceremony at Caernarvon Castle in north Wales.
Unanswered questions
If someone turned up at your house with a million dollars in cash on three separate occasions, might you not think you ought to call the authorities? This provokes the question: will the latest mystery-cash scandal prove merely embarrassing for Prince Charles, or could it get worse and wind up threatening his actual legitimacy as monarch?
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It’s unclear why the renovations are taking so long, said one administration official, but it’s a situation that has left Harris increasingly and understandably bothered, according to several people who spoke to CNN about her situation. “She is getting frustrated,” said another administration official, noting with each passing day the desire to move in to her designated house — a stately, turreted mansion two-and-a-half miles from the White House — grows more intense.
The second couple continues to live in temporary housing at Blair House, the President’s official guest quarters, just across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House.
The administration has provided no official explanation for the delay, and a spokesperson for Harris did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.
CNN has looked at various government contracts, awarded for myriad issues at the vice president’s residence over the last few years, many of which detail intensive foundational work. From recently wrapped projects on a retention pond to a replaced tank system for $164,000 from last September, repairs and upkeep appear constant. There’s also an ongoing $3.8 million contract for “plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors,” according to the contract on the United States government spending website.
The contracts, while substantial, aren’t overtly egregious in terms of cost and expectation, considering the home is 9,000-plus square feet and was built in 1893. Tax records from 2018 indicate $119,000 in expenses were used to provide updates and improvements in and around the grounds of the residence, for example. However, the current contracts do not address specifically why the vice president is still not living there, which is leading to growing questions — and agitation — about the pace of the work.
Harris has recently been spotted at her future home, popping in for an hour-long visit three weeks ago, per CNN. Two administration staff with knowledge of the ongoing updates told CNN that Harris — who likes to cook — requested work be done on the kitchen.
It is not unusual for there to be at least a couple of weeks between residents, so the Naval staff who operate the home can refresh, said Elizabeth Haenle, who served as vice president residence manager and social secretary for former Vice President Dick Cheney. “From time to time, the Navy will ask the vice president and their respective families to delay moving in so that they have time for maintenance and upgrades that are not easy to perform once the vice president takes up residence,” Haenle said.
Shortly after inauguration, a Harris aide told CNN the vice president wouldn’t be immediately moving in, citing the need for some repairs to the home “that are more easily conducted with the home unoccupied.” A move-in date was still to be determined at the time. Another administration official told CNN some of the work included renovating the home’s chimneys — there are seven working fireplaces — as well as other updates.
Lacking the comforts of home
Although Blair House provides comfortable, even luxurious, accommodations, Harris and Emhoff’s current surroundings lack the creature comforts of a home. Antiques and museum-quality pieces of American history deck each of the 100-plus rooms, which include a gym and a private hair salon. And although the professional, full-time staff of more than a dozen provide amenities as accommodating as a luxury hotel, Blair House does not offer the laid-back vibe Harris and Emhoff are said to prefer when they are home. The couple enjoy a more casual, West Coast informality, with frequent visits from family and large Sunday suppers, the former California senator has said.
The main bedroom suite at Blair House was redecorated by celebrity interior designer Thomas Pheasant, brought on in 2012 to make updates to overall décor, and includes a massive, canopied bed draped in luxe fabrics and furnishings that are more reminiscent of Mount Vernon than a California modern mood. Her condo in Washington, DC, which she moved out of to live at Blair House, was inside a sleek, eco-chic, minimalist building in the city’s West End neighborhood.
When the second couple does finally move into One Observatory Circle, where the vice president’s residence is located on the grounds of the Naval Observatory, they will find a home quite unlike their city condo or Blair House, but also very different from the White House. There are far fewer formalities, fewer staff and more freedom.
“The White House is office and home to the President so there is that feeling of living above the ‘shop’ at the White House,” said Haenle. “For the vice president and his or her family, the Vice President’s Residence — or VPR — is calm in the midst of a stormy Washington, both politically and logistically. At the end of the day, the vice president can travel a short distance northwest and find respite in a country-like setting.” Deer often roam the property, though in reality it is a stone’s throw from DC’s downtown office buildings and city traffic.
‘You’re gonna love the pool’
The dozens of acres that make up the grounds of the Naval Observatory offer privacy and the ability to move about with more leisure than can the President and first lady at the White House. Biden last month at a CNN Town Hall referred to the White House as a “gilded cage,” and lamented not having the same accoutrements at his disposal as when he lived at the vice president’s residence for eight years.
“You’re on 80 acres, overlooking the rest of the city,” said Biden. “You can walk out, and there’s a swimming pool. … You can ride a bicycle around and never leave the property, and work out — but the White House is very different.” (The vice president’s mansion actually sits on 13-gated acres of the land, not 80 — the entire Naval Observatory compound, with several separate buildings and offices unrelated to the residence, is 72 acres.)
It was former Vice President Dan Quayle who had the heated pool installed, and it became Biden’s treasured refuge. While vice president, Biden would throw raucous summer pool parties for staff and their families, bringing out water cannons and partaking in drenching shoot-outs with the children who attended. In 2017, shortly after moving in, then-second lady Karen Pence shared in an interview Biden’s parting words to her just after her husband, Mike Pence, was sworn in: “That’s the thing that Joe Biden said to us as he got into the limo and left the Capitol on Inauguration Day — he said, ‘You’re gonna love the pool.'”
Harris, who early in her vice presidency was spotted running up and down the steps at the Lincoln Memorial for her workout, Secret Service agents nearby, will have the outdoor space to jog, swim and workout at her new home — without the public spotting her and posting videos on social media. Harris has said she works out every morning, and swimming can sometimes be a part of her routine — another reason the vice presidential pool is a perk.
A vice president who likes to cook
Should she wish to add her personal signature to the residence or its grounds — such as Quayle did with the pool or George H.W. Bush did with an outdoor horseshoe pit or the Bidens did with a garden where the names of all the home’s occupants, pets included, are engraved — updates and tweaks can circumvent the elaborate process of approvals that any changes at the White House must go through.
However, as with the White House, a separate foundation has been established to cover most updates with government-provided funds. Also like the White House, the vice president has at her disposal roomfuls of historic furnishings and decorative arts from which to choose from as part of a private collection reserved for the President and vice president to make their temporary homes feel homey and to their personal tastes. Karen Pence once said she left the residence rooms set up in much the same way as the Biden’s had it before them, since the Pences liked the layout and saw no reason to upend it.
“It is a home with a lot of history and character, but over the years the Navy has kept it well-maintained and upgraded it,” Haenle said. “During my time with the Cheney’s, we logged the inventory of the house and restored furnishings and art going back to the Rockefellers and Mondale’s.”
Harris is known to derive satisfaction from cooking, and she’s no doubt hungering for the personal space to do that. She once said in an interview with New York Magazine’s “The Cut,” “If I’m cooking, I feel like I’m in control of my life.” Harris and Emhoff are fond of their nights in, and enjoy sharing time in the kitchen and good food. The couple, separately and together, are frequent patrons of Stachowski’s Market, a butcher shop and mini-gourmet provisions store located on a quaint corner in Georgetown.
For at-home entertaining, the residence offers “a wrap-around veranda that faces away from the busy streets of Northwest Washington,” notes Haenle. “It is a special place and makes for great Sunday afternoon family gatherings,” while still being formal enough to welcome heads of state.
Last May, Harris told Glamour magazine she was getting Emhoff more involved in cooking; her schedule can no longer handle the hands-on approach she likes to take in the kitchen. “It takes him about four hours to do what I do in an hour, but it is delicious so I just have to be quiet and let it happen,” she said.
But it’s the meditative and relaxing quality of cooking up family meals that Harris has cited in multiple interviews as therapeutic, and it’s something she’s still waiting to do in her official residence.
