27.11.2001 By TONY STICKLEY The founder of a Mt Roskill church says a woman he is accused of strangling during an exorcism last December will return to life next month.

Pastor Luke Lee, who has gone on trial for manslaughter, told the High Court at Auckland yesterday that the woman would return a “total human being in the flesh”.

The Crown alleges he strangled her while trying to dislodge a large demon from her throat. A church member raised the alarm after five or six days of intense prayer over her decaying body.

Lee, also known as Yong Bum Lee, faces two alternative counts of manslaughter by causing death by assault or by having undertaken an exorcism, omitted to use reasonable knowledge, skill and care on or about December 9 last year at his Mt Roskill home. The 38-year-old Korean national has chosen to represent himself, and addressed the jury through an interpreter.

The woman who died was another Korean, Kum Ok Lee, also known as Joanna Lee, though no relation of the accused.

In his opening address, crown counsel Aaron Perkins told the jury that the defendant founded a church he named the Lord of All.

Mr Perkins described the pastor’s belief in God as so intense and passionate that it was all-consuming. Lee believed he could heal the sick, drive demons from possessed individuals and resurrect the dead.

By December last year he was regularly performing exorcisms. He considered Joanna Lee was possessed by many demons.

Mr Perkins said it appeared that the exorcism started on December 8 and intensified the following day, the day the Crown said she most likely died. The defendant’s exorcisms involved the application of “considerable force” to the body in an effort to physically drive out demons.

Mr Perkins said Lee believed that they were most usually found in the stomach area. They had to be driven from the stomach, up through the chest, through the throat and out the mouth.

“This meant that on occasions he would apply force to the neck of an individual in an effort to physically expel the demon from the person’s body – and that, says the Crown, is what happened to Ms Lee.”

The accused believed that the last of the “numerous” demons that were in her body was very large and pugnacious and had lodged in her throat.

He believed that the demon was talking to him and he applied prolonged and intense force to Ms Lee’s neck.

“He killed her, says the Crown, by strangling her.”

The accused had lost touch with reality and become dangerous.

Mr Perkins told the jury that it was five or six days before one of Lee’s less-committed followers raised the alarm.

During that time Ms Lee lay in the accused’s house, decomposing.

Despite the fact that she was clearly decaying, Lee spent many hours over her body praying for her resurrection, convincing his followers that she would be resurrected even though maggots had started to appear in her body.

Mr Perkins told the jury they would hear evidence that Lee set up his church three years after graduating from a ministry training course. He was said to be autocratic in running his church, expecting complete submission and blind obedience to his ideals and philosophies.

The Crown did not dispute that Lee was committed to his God and wanted to save others by bringing them to God. “What this trial is really about is that, tragically, the accused became so zealous, so consumed by his beliefs that he in fact became dangerous to those he was trying to save.”

The church’s all-night prayer-chanting sessions involved followers screaming at the top of their lungs and using horns, trumpets and drums. Committed followers had whistles to keep demons at bay.

Mr Perkins told the jury that Joanna Lee was a small woman and the accused bounced on her stomach to remove the demons.

After the woman’s death, Lee is said to have told his followers that her soul had left her body but would return and she would revive.

On the fourth day, despite the stench of decay, Lee told them that Ms Lee’s heart was beating and her blood circulating.

He ordered his followers to photograph the dead woman and bought a video recorder to film her resurrection.

Lee allegedly appointed one of his followers to handle the media when the woman revived because it would be worldwide news. When the police arrived, they too were filmed.

Speaking to his followers in Korean, Lee is said to have told them to say that the woman had suddenly stopped breathing in the middle of prayer.

It was difficult to reconcile Lee’s deeply held religious beliefs with his willingness to lie and to have his followers lie to the police, said Mr Perkins.

The trial continues today.

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