Trial begins for mother who fatally poisoned her autistic son in posh hotel room

A wealthy New York socialite and former pharmacy executive went on trial Wednesday for the poisoning death of her severely autistic 8-year-old son. Gigi Jordan, 54, admits that she force-fed her son a toxic mixture of crushed pills and vodka in a room at New York City's tony Peninsula Hotel in February of 2010, but insists that she only did so out of a mother's mercy.

According to CBS New York, Jordan flushed the toxic cocktail down her son Jude Michael Mirra's throat with a syringe, then balanced her checkbook and conducted financial transactions as he lay dying on the bed.

The next morning, Jordan ingested the same mixture of barbiturate drugs and alcohol in an apparent attempt to take her own life, but was rescued when law enforcement personnel burst into the room.

Jordan claims that her intention was to rescue her son from a life of suffering because of his disability and the years of sexual abuse inflicted on him by his father and stepfather.

Prosecutors say that Jordan is lying about the mercy-killing, maintaining that the multimillionaire only wanted back her life as a glamorous socialite, unencumbered by a child with special needs who required an intensive regimen of care.

On the night of Feb. 4, 2010, Jordan administered the overdose to her son, then reviewed her finances. She telephoned her financial advisor and transferred $125,000 from her dying son's trust fund into her own account. Before checking in to the Peninsula, she transferred $8 million from savings to checking.

She then emailed relatives explaining her plan to kill her son and herself, triggering a frantic search by police.

By morning, the boy was dead and Jordan took her own share of the alcohol and drug mixture. Police found her before she lost consciousness, babbling on the floor of her $2,300 per night suite.

According to officers on the scene, however, Jordan was lucid enough to tell them, "I want a lawyer" before anything else.

The Daily Mail reported that lead prosecuting attorney Matthew Bogdanos said to the jury on Wednesday, "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."

Jordan's defense team, however, said that the boy's father, Ray Mirra, is an associate of the Philadelphia mob who threatened to kill both her and 8-year-old Jude if Jordan revealed that he was a black market dealer of prescription drugs.

The boy's stepfather, Emil Tzekov, attorney Allan Brenner says, is a sexual predator who molested the boy from infancy onward.

In killing her son, Brenner said, Jordan "brought him the peace she couldn’t give him during his life. She protected him from the animals that she couldn’t keep from his door before then."

The trial is expected to continue into November.

Watch video about this story, embedded below via CBS NY:

[image of Gigi Jordan via screencap]