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Gigi Jordan May Have Staged Her Suicide Attempt, Prosecutors Say

By DNAinfo Staff on April 9, 2010 11:24am  | Updated on April 9, 2010 11:20am

Gigi Jordan is accused of killing her autistic son Jude Mirra. Photo from March 12, 2010
Gigi Jordan is accused of killing her autistic son Jude Mirra. Photo from March 12, 2010
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New York Post/Steven Hirsch

By Shayna Jacobs

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — Gigi Jordan was lucid after killing her son and may have faked her suicide attempt to mislead investigators, prosecutors said in court documents released Thursday.

When police broke down the door of a luxury room at the Peninsula Hotel in early February, they found the body of Jordan's son Jude Michael Mirra, 8, nearly 24 hours after she allegedly forced a prescription pill overdose on the child and then took some pills herself.

But Jordan immediately started asking for an attorney and would not answer questions about what had happened, prosecutors said, which they say reveals she was thinking clearly.

"Her response, although at first faint, was repeated to the officers numerous times: 'I want an attorney,' Assistant District Attorney Kerry O'Connell wrote in court papers this week.

The court papers said that if she had really wanted to kill herself, Jordan, a former pharmaceutical executive, had both the access to the medication and the knowledge of its effects.

Prosecutors also raised the possibility that Jordan "medically abused" the young autistic boy, who was unable to speak, by bringing him around the country to try a host of treatments. Prosecutors say the actions are consistent with a psychological condition called Munchausen Syndrome by proxy, in which caregivers dramatize the illnesses of their ward to elicit sympathy.

"It's a little early in the proceedings to be able to say, but we're certainly investigating that," O'Connell said at a bail hearing Thursday.

"It is unclear at this point whether [medical abuse] has occurred," she added.

Jordan's attorney Gerald Shargel rejected allegations that his client medically abused her helpless son.

"This woman wasn't suffering from Munchausen Syndrome [by proxy] because she was going around the country looking for ways to help her son," he said.

Jordan is due back in court April 19th. Her request to be released on $5 million bail to the psychiatric ward at St. Vincent's hospital has complicated her bail application, because the hospital closed its inpatient care facility this week due to financial problems.

Shargel has since requested as an alternative that Jordan be confined to her West 77th Street brownstone under guard.