MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT — A multimillionaire pharmaceutical executive charged with murdering her autistic 8-year-old son was described as a conniving, cash-crazed killer by prosecutors during opening statements in her trial Wednesday.
Little Jude Mirra was discovered unresponsive by police inside a 16th-floor room in Fifth Avenue's Peninsula Hotel in February 2010 with dozens of pills and alcohol bottles nearby.
His mother, Gigi Jordan, left a suicide note claiming her son’s death was the only way to protect him from his abusive father. She then unsuccessfully tried to kill herself, police said.
“There were enough [drugs] in that room to fill a pharmacy shelf,” lead prosecutor Matthew Bogdanos said.
“In that room were the instruments of death... a pill crusher, a syringe, not the type with a needle but the type you use to force liquids down someone’s throat.”
Bogdanos said what Jordan did next showed what little regard she had for her son.
“Ms. Jordan is so distraught, so emotional, so emotionally disturbed that she balances her checkbook in that room on her bed with her dead child only a few feet away,” Bogdanos said.
Police found the dead boy and his semi-conscious mother when they forced their way into the room in February 2010.
But defense attorney Allan Brenner said Jordan went to every extreme to get Jude treatment and took him to doctors across the country with little success. She then began experimenting with pill combinations.
“Her child was suffering, couldn’t speak, couldn’t control his movements,” Brenner said. “Who wouldn’t try to bring some degree of calm, peace and happiness to her child?”
In addition, Brenner said Jordan learned that her first husband, Ray Mirra, had been swindling money and that her second husband and Jude’s biological father, Emil Tzekov, had been sexually abusing Jude.
“He had victimized their son, time and time and time again,” Brenner said.
Jordan said she also received a phone call from Mirra, threatening to kill her and Jude out of fear she would turn him in to authorities, Brenner said.
“He knew Jude was her soft side, her weak link,” Brenner said. “He said, ‘I’m done with you. You will never see your son again.”
“My client… believed he was going to kill her,” he added.
“Why would this adoring, caring mother take her son? She brought him the peace she couldn’t give him in his life.”
