Defense Seeks Manslaughter

Verdict in Trial of Woman Who

Killed Her Son, 8
By James C. McKinley Jr.

Oct. 27, 2014

A defense lawyer made an impassioned plea to jurors on Monday that a woman on trial for
poisoning her son should be convicted of manslaughter, not murder, because she believed she
was saving the boy from torture and sexual abuse.

“She did it out of love, because she was afraid if something happened to her, he would be
returned to the tormented life he had had,” the lawyer, Allan Brenner, said in his summation
at the murder trial of Gigi Jordan in State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

But a prosecutor, Matt Bogdanos, responded that Ms. Jordan’s actions on the day she killed
her son, Jude Mirra, who had autism, did not show she was in the throes of a violent emotional
disturbance as the defense has claimed. Rather, he said, her actions seemed “deliberate,
planned, calculated — in other words, business as usual.”

“Mr. Brenner said she did it out of love,” he added. “We have a word for that under the law.
It’s called murder.”

Ms. Jordan, 53, a wealthy medical entrepreneur, admitted on the witness stand that she
intentionally gave her 8-year-old son a fatal overdose of drugs at the Peninsula Hotel in
February 2010, but she described it as a mercy killing.

She said she had planned a murder-suicide because she believed her first husband intended to
kill her. If she died, she said, she feared Jude would end up with her second husband, who she
was convinced had raped and tortured the boy for several years. Both men have denied the
allegations.

Mr. Brenner said those two beliefs warped Ms. Jordan’s state of mind and became an
“extreme emotional disturbance.” That is a defense under state law that allows the jury to
convict her of voluntary manslaughter rather than murder, which would reduce her sentence.

“You have to put yourself in her place, knowing what she knows, believing what she believed,”
Mr. Brenner told jurors. He reminded them that Ms. Jordan said her first husband had
threatened her life in early 2008 after she accused him of stealing millions from their joint
accounts.
“She was in danger,” he said. “He was going to get rid of her, and that would leave Jude
alone.”Mr. Brenner argued there was independent evidence, beyond Ms. Jordan’s testimony,
that Jude had been abused. He noted that two pathologists hired by the defense had
concluded from post-mortem photographs that the boy had injuries consistent with sexual
abuse. “Why would she pretend he was abused when he wasn’t?” he asked. “Who would want
that?”

But Mr. Bogdanos tried to cast doubt on Ms. Jordan’s narrative. Dozens of physicians at some
of the country’s top hospitals had examined Jude as Ms. Jordan crisscrossed the nation looking
for a cure to his condition, he said. None found evidence of abuse. The prosecutor asserted
that Ms. Jordan herself had planted the idea of sexual abuse in the child’s mind. She admitted
she had shown him notes asking him if his father, uncle or grandfather had sodomized him.

Mr. Bogdanos also ridiculed Ms. Jordan’s contention that Jude communicated about the
alleged abuse by typing notes on a laptop and, later, on mobile telephones. None of the
defense witnesses could testify they saw the boy write messages on his own without his
mother’s help, he said.He asked jurors how Jude, on the first night Ms. Jordan said he learned
to type in March 2008, at age 6, could write sentences like “Why did she hate me
sadistically!!!” and “I want to aggressively punish God.”“If someone told you this somewhere
else, it would get a belly laugh,” Mr. Bogdanos said.Even if the abuse allegations are true, Mr.
Bogdanos argued, the notion that Ms. Jordan was so fearful and distraught that she rashly
killed her son and tried to kill herself does not fit the evidence.

He said she had not seen her second husband — the alleged abuser — for two years. She had
not seen her first husband, who had allegedly threatened her, for six months, and she was on
good terms with him until early 2010, even listing him as an emergency contact at Jude’s
school. Furthermore, both men had legally waived their parental rights to Jude.

Mr. Bogdanos noted that Ms. Jordan testified she had thought about the murder-suicide for
several days. He noted, according to her testimony, that she made the decision to kill her son
hours before she checked into the Peninsula. Even after her son was dead, she interacted with
hotel staff, mailing letters and paying for an extra night’s stay, he said.

“Where is the emotion?” Mr. Bogdanos asked. Then he gave the jury an alternative theory: Ms.
Jordan killed her son because she could not accept there was no cure for his condition.

“Instead of focusing on the gift that was Jude Mirra, instead of focusing on the laughter and
the happiness, all she could see was the disability and the challenges, and she couldn’t accept
it,” he said.