A jury convicted Jianchun Li of killing Monica Moon Lee and Hee Sook Park and rejected his insanity defense.

POMONA, Calif. — A former caregiver who murdered two elderly women less than an hour apart at a Diamond Bar residential care home has been sentenced to two consecutive terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole, closing the criminal case more than three years after the women were found dead.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mike Camacho imposed the sentences on Jianchun Li, 44, after a jury convicted him Aug. 20 of two counts of first-degree murder and found true a special circumstance alleging multiple murders. Jurors later rejected Li’s plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, finding him legally sane when he killed Monica Moon Lee, 75, and Hee Sook Park, 83, on June 24, 2023. The sentencing means Li will not be eligible for parole on either murder conviction.

The hearing brought the case back to the central fact prosecutors emphasized at trial: Li was the overnight caretaker responsible for residents at Happy Homes Care when he killed two women who depended on the facility for assistance. Before imposing sentence, Camacho said there was overwhelming evidence of Li’s guilt and noted that he had accepted a duty to care for Lee and Park. The judge denied a defense request for a new trial on the sanity issue before ordering the two life terms to run consecutively.

Family members described the consequences of the killings at the sentencing hearing. Lee’s son, Robert Lee, recalled learning that something had happened to his mother after a sheriff’s detective contacted him and asked him to come to the station. He told the court he had believed his mother was living in a safe place. Park’s son, Yun, described his mother as small in stature but strong in spirit and said she had been moved into the home so that she could receive more care around the clock. He said she had been there only about a month before she was killed.

The murders occurred near the end of Li’s overnight shift on June 24, 2023. Prosecutors said he led Lee, who used a walker, into a bathroom shortly before 7 a.m. He killed her there by asphyxiation using a plastic bag secured with electrical tape. About 30 minutes later, prosecutors said, Li brought Park into the same bathroom and killed her in the same manner. The method is relevant to the criminal case, but authorities have not publicly identified a motive that explains why Li chose the two women.

Firefighters and other emergency personnel later responded to the residential facility on Sapphire Canyon Road and tried to save both women. Lee and Park were pronounced dead at the scene. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department opened a homicide investigation, and Li, who was then 40, was taken into custody later that day. Early public reports about the deaths were confused, with some accounts suggesting that the women had been shot. Sheriff’s officials said at the time that no shooting had occurred, while investigators initially withheld the precise cause of death as the case developed.

Li was formally charged with two counts of murder within days of the deaths. At the time, he was held in county jail in lieu of $4 million bail. The case, numbered KA133243, was prosecuted by the Elder Abuse Section of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office’s White Collar Crime Division and investigated by sheriff’s homicide detectives. The prosecution eventually established a far more detailed sequence than was available when deputies first arrived at the home, including the timing of the two killings and the fact that they occurred in the same bathroom.

Prosecutors also presented evidence about Li’s conduct surrounding the murders. According to a prosecution trial filing cited in reporting on the sentencing, Li called 911 and admitted that he had killed people. Prosecutors also said investigators found internet searches on his phone related to choking, punishment for murder in California and whether people convicted of first-degree murder could receive treatment for illnesses. Those details became part of the evidence jurors were asked to consider along with the physical circumstances of the killings and Li’s statements.

The case did not end with the Aug. 20 guilty verdicts. Because Li had entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, the trial moved into a separate sanity phase. On Aug. 27, the same jury rejected that defense and found that he was legally sane at the time of the murders. At sentencing, Camacho acknowledged evidence that Li had experienced depression, was overworked and had been struggling as a recent immigrant. Those circumstances did not change the jury’s finding on the legal question of sanity.

Defense attorney Ivonne De La Cruz sought a new trial on the sanity phase, arguing that questioning by the judge during testimony from a defense expert had substantially weakened that witness’s presentation before the jury. Camacho denied the motion. According to reporting from the hearing, the judge said the verdict would have been the same even without his intervention and then proceeded to sentence Li on both first-degree murder convictions. The consecutive life-without-parole terms followed the jury’s multiple-murder special-circumstance finding.

The setting made the case particularly significant to prosecutors. Happy Homes Care was a small residential facility serving elderly women rather than a large institutional nursing home. Reporting from the days after the killings described the property as a state-licensed residential care home with room for up to six residents. Four other residents were reported unharmed after the June 2023 killings. California social services officials also opened an investigation into the facility after Lee and Park died.

Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said after the verdicts that the two women had been killed by the person expected to keep them safe. He thanked the jury for holding Li responsible and said prosecutors hoped the outcome would bring some measure of closure to the women’s relatives and the Diamond Bar community. His office also highlighted the work of Deputy District Attorneys Michael Matoba and Stephanie Chavez and the Elder Abuse Section, which handles cases involving older and dependent adults.

The sentence completes the principal trial-court proceedings against Li more than three years after the deaths. No parole hearing is contemplated under the punishment imposed by Camacho, and the defense’s request for a new sanity trial was rejected before sentencing. Lee and Park’s deaths, first investigated as unexplained fatalities inside a quiet residential care home, ultimately resulted in two first-degree murder convictions, a finding that Li was legally sane and two consecutive sentences of life without the possibility of parole.

Author note: Last updated October 20, 2026.