Millionaire Mom Gets 18 Years for Killing Son

Gigi Jordan says she killed 8-year-old Jude Mirra to save him from dad's abuse
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted May 29, 2015 9:40 AM CDT
Millionaire Mom Gets 18 Years for Killing Son
In this Aug. 11, 2011, file photo, Gigi Jordan, the multimillionaire mother charged with killing her autistic 8-year-old son, appears in Manhattan Supreme Court in New York.   (AP Photo/File, Mary Altaffer, File)

Gigi Jordan, a pharmaceutics entrepreneur worth millions, had a variety of options at her disposal in handling her developmentally disabled son, Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Matthew Solomon said yesterday at her sentencing. Instead, she drugged 8-year-old Jude Mirra to death with Ambien and Xanax in 2010, leading Solomon to sentence her to 18 years in prison, the AP reports. Jordan had argued that Jude's death was a mercy killing to keep him away from his biological father, who she said had sexually abused Jude, and that she had also planned to kill herself. Solomon didn't buy that story, claiming her reports of abuse weren't credible. He apparently believed prosecutors, who asserted that Jordan simply couldn't handle the special needs of her son. "All of her money, all of her resources, she decided to kill him," Solomon said during the sentencing.

During her trial last fall, Jordan said that she was trying to save Jude from sexual abuse at the hands of her second husband, Emil Tzekov, because she believed her first husband, Ray Mirra, was trying to kill her and take all her money—which might have left Jude in Tzekov's custody, the Washington Post reports. And the alleged murder-suicide plan was actually Jude's idea, she claimed. "I need to be dead. I need a lot of drugs to die peacefully. That's all," is what she testified Jude had written to her, per the New York Times. She says her nonverbal son typed messages to her on his electronic devices and had told her about the abuse he suffered—not only sexual abuse, but also being forced to drink blood and kill animals, CBS New York reports. "I died the night Jude died," she told CBS in an October jailhouse interview from Rikers Island. Both Tzekov and Ray Mirra deny her claims. (More New York City stories.)

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