A millionaire drug company executive convicted of murdering her eight-year-old autistic son more than 10 years ago, was found dead in her apartment in NYC due to a suicide. On Wednesday, January 4, the medical examiner’s office confirmed that the woman placed a plastic bag filled with nitrogen gas over her head.
Gigi Jordan, 62, was found dead right after midnight on Friday, December 30.
Jordan committed suicide a few hours after US Supreme Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor gave an order that would have sent her back to prison.
Jordan had been convicted for murdering her autistic son, Jude Mirra, in February 2010 in a luxury suite at a the Peninsula Hotel in NYC. According to prosecutors, she killed her son using a combination of sleeping pills, tranquilizers, painkillers, orange juice, and alcohol. After she poisoned her son, she tried to commit suicide, but survived.
During the trial, her attorneys said that at the time of the murder, Jordan was distraught and under extreme emotional distress due to her fear that her ex-husband would kill her son.
However, according to the prosecutors, after she forced her son to take the pills, she withdrew $125,000 from his trust fund.
The 2014 jury acquitted Jordan on the first-degree murder charge but found her guilty of manslaughter. In 2015, she was sentenced to 18 years in prison, but her manslaughter conviction was overturned in 2020 due to an alleged procedural error during the trial.
In 2020, a US magistrate judge ruled that the sealing of the courtroom during the trial, which the defense team objected to, violated Jordan’s right to a fair trial, even though the sealing of the courtroom had not harmed the defense’s case.
Due to her conviction being overturned, Jordan was released from prison in December 2020 after having served more than 10 years. She was then ordered to remain confined to her home on $250,000 bond for the duration of the appeal of her case with electronic monitoring. She was also ordered to stay in New York City, avoid committing any other crimes, and to not be in possession of any illegal firearms or drugs.
However, on Thursday, December 29, Supreme Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor issued an order reversing the previous order that allowed Jordan to stay confined to her home, which meant that she would have to go back to prison.
According to Jordan’s lawyer, Norman Siegel, he spoke to her on the phone a few hours before she was found dead, but she seemed to be in a good mood.
The next news Siegel received about his client was on Friday morning when he was called from her home to tell him that police were there and that she was dead.
