The Tragic Story of Gigi Jordan, her son, and FC

Last week, one of our readers sent me a note saying that Gigi Jordan committed suicide. I find this one of the most gut-wrenching FC stories I’ve ever followed.

Our readers may know that, in 2014, Jordan was convicted of manslaughter for force feeding her 8-year-old son, Jude Mirra, an overdose of pills. Jordan had used Facilitated Communication (FC) with her son, believing the messages they typed together revealed abuses the child had suffered and, in Mirra’s final hours, that he wanted her to kill him.

Jude Mirra and his mother, Gigi Jordan. (Daily Mail, 2023)

In 2020, Jordan was granted a retrial due to a technicality (see below), but in late December 2022, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sotamayor reversed the decision yet again and ordered Jordan to be brought back into custody while the judges further reviewed her case. Jordan died on December 30, 2022, the night before she was to report to prison.

Based on documented reports of the case, it appears highly likely that Jordan experienced significant mental health struggles which likely played a role in her son’s and her own death. However,  the FC-generated messages likely provided her with validation of her paranoid, suicidal and homicidal thoughts and may thus have provided the fuel that spurred her to act on such thoughts, as well as justification for doing so. (Facilitators are taught to believe in the FC-generated, written output without question.)

I can’t help but wonder if the trajectory of Jordan’s and her son’s lives might have been different had Jordan not been introduced to FC by “master trainer” Marilyn Chadwick (Auerbach, 2015).

Gigi Jordan using hand-over-hand-type FC with her son, Jude. (CBSNews, 2015)

Here is the original blog post from April 6, 2020.

“Will FC be Discussed at Gigi Jordan’s Retrial?”

In 2020, a magistrate judge in New York granted Gigi Jordan a retrial. Since 2015, she has been imprisoned for first-degree manslaughter in the killing of her 8-year-old autistic son, Jude. The judge ruled that a closed meeting during the original proceedings violated Jordan’s Sixth Amendment right to a “speedy and public” trial. The prosecutors in the case disagreed with the decision and likened the closed proceeding to a sidebar or a discussion in the judge’s chamber typically seen at trial. The judge’s decision overruled the findings of a state appellate panel on the same issue.

Image by Myriam Zilles

At the original trial in 2014, Jordan’s defense lawyers argued that she killed her son, Jude, to protect him from alleged on-going abuses. They called it a “mercy killing.” According to the defense team, Jordan believed the messages typed using Facilitated Communication (FC) accusing the child’s biological father of sexual abuse and other satanic acts were true. The defense wanted jurors to believe that she acted “out of love” in a state of extreme emotional disturbance. The prosecution argued that Jordan’s story was far-fetched and lacked evidence. To them, her decision to give her son an overdose of drugs was premeditated and intentional. In November 2014, a jury found Jordan guilty of first-degree manslaughter. She was later sentenced to 18 years in jail.

By the time Jordan started using FC in 2008 with her 6 ½ year old son, Jude, the following organizations in the United States had already come out with statements opposing its use, citing lack of scientific evidence, facilitator control, and false allegations of abuse as the major reasons not to use FC: American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, American Association of Mental Retardation (now American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities), American Psychiatric Association Council of Representatives, American Psychological Association, American Speech-Language and Hearing Association, Association for Behavior Analysis, Behavior Analysis Association of Michigan, and the New York State Health Department. (See a current list here).

One of Jordan’s friends (a teacher) testified at trial that Jude could not speak, read, or write and that she never saw Jude using the letterboard without Jordan’s help. But Jordan, like so many other people who fall victim to FC, believed it could help her child and, remarkably, Jude’s first facilitated message appeared the first night he was introduced to the technique: “I want to aggressively punish God.”

Jude seemed to be healthy until around 18 months when, according to his mother he “began displaying extreme emotional distress.” He was diagnosed with autism, but this was not a diagnosis his mother wanted to accept. She flew with him around the country to different doctors searching for a way to cure her son of autism, including subjecting him to a stem-cell transplant. Eventually, these trips lead to a physician in Mississippi who treated Jude with electric shocks and believed the boy’s symptoms “might have been a psychosis caused by persistent sexual abuse.” To Jordan, her son was not autistic, but suffered “immune-system abnormalities, post-traumatic stress disorder and other problems.” 

It is important to note here that the source of the abuse allegations was typed, facilitated messages generated with Jordan holding onto the child’s hand. According to news reports and court records, there was no evidence of abuse from either Jude’s biological father or Jordan’s ex-husband. In fact, both men had given Jordan full custody of the child and had little contact him. In contrast, Jordan reported she was with him nearly 24-hours a day. Eventually, 20-30 other people were also accused via facilitator-controlled messages (depending on the news reports). Among the accused were several babysitters, the boy’s grandfather, an uncle, one of Jude’s playmates, and one of Jordan’s ex-husband’s employees. Eventually, Jordan’s story expanded to include details about the Philadelphia mob, large-scale financial fraud, death threats, and a satanic cult that tortures children.

Blackberry messages allegedly typed by Jude. (HLN, 2015)

In the time leading up to the killing, Jordan attributed the following typed FC messages to her son:

• I need to be dead I need a lot of drugs to die peacefully. 

• So let’s get out while we can. We r going to die anyway let’s do it ourselves instead of them. 

And then, in February 2010, when she took Jude to a Manhattan hotel room with the intent to force-feed him an overdose of pills:

•  I feel so bad. I want to be done with life.

• We need to leave in a way we want to, not their way. Get the pills and try to do it. I wish you do it soon. 

• I’m scared u r too chicken. Jesus know u r sorry he forgave u along time ago it’s not murder…I think if you r doing it to save me from them it is ok. 

Jude died a horrific death. As the prosecution put it, “Don’t think minutes. Think hours.” A forensic pharmacologist found levels of Xanax in the child’s blood that was 19 times what an adult would take. He also had Prozac and another sedative in his bloodstream that was 20-40 times that of an adult dosage. Jordan testified to giving him Vicodin mixed in vodka and orange juice, saying she fed him about 50 pills at one time. As one juror told reporters, Jordan gave the boy enough pills “to kill Alaska.” Jordan claimed her son took the medication willingly. However, Jude had fresh bruising on his nose, mouth, and chest. Detectives also found in the hotel room a syringe used to force liquid down someone’s throat. Jordan claimed, the bruising on her son’s body occurred when she tried to revive him with CPR after he died.

The details of the case are haunting. This blog post only briefly touches upon what happened. As the trial judge noted, with all of Jordan’s resources and money, she had many options. But, instead, she chose to kill her son. 

Equally tragic is the fact that Jordan based her decisions, in large part, on typed, facilitated messages attributed to her son but belying her own thoughts that she expressed aloud to a friend several years earlier. If the stem-cell transplant doesn’t work, she told her friend, “I’m going to give myself an overdose. I’m going to take him [Jude] with me and give him an overdose, too. I can’t leave him behind. No one would ever be there for him.” 

As of this posting, a retrial date for Gigi Jordan has not been announced.

References:

Anonymous. (2014, September 10). Mom on Trial in Autistic Son’s Death in NYC Hotel. USA Today.

Anonymous. (2014, October 10). Mom on trial for murder says 8-year-old son wanted to die. CBS/AP.

Anonymous. (2014, October 15). At Murder Trial, Gigi Jordan Testifies About Abuse She Believed Son Suffered. New York Times (Online).

Anonymous. (2014, November 4). Gigi Jordan, Charged in Her Son’s Death, Wages Publicity Blitz as She Awaits Verdict. New York Times (Online).

Anonymous. (2014, November 5). Gigi Jordan Convicted of Manslaughter, Not Murder, in Son’s Killing. New York Times (Online)

Auerbach, David. (2015, November 12). Facilitated Communication is a Cult That Won’t Die. Slate.

Bashan, Y. (2014, September 10). Trial begins for Gigi Jordan, accused of murdering her son with pills. Wall Street Journal (Online).

Bashan, Y. (2014, October 8). Gigi Jordan Testifies at Trial; Former Pharmaceutical Executive Charged with Kill Her Son, Jude Mirra. Wall Street Journal (Online).

Bashan, Y. (2014, October 9). Gigi Jordan Describes Last Moments with her Son; Testifies about Details in a Peninsula Hotel Room, says She tried to Revive Jude. Wall Street Journal (Online).

Bashan, Y. (2014, October 29). Gigi Jordan says trial left out evidence. Wall Street Journal (Online).

Bashan, Y. (2014, November 6). City news: Gigi Jordan found guilty in son’s death. Wall Street Journal.

Bashan, Y. (2014, November 6). Gigi Jordan Found guilty of Manslaughter in Son’s Death; Manslaughter Charge Conviction Carries a Prison Term of Between 5 and 25 Years. Wall Street Journal (Online).

Dienst, Jonathan and Miller, Myles. (2023, January 4). Death of Pharma Millionaire who Killed 8-Year-Old Son in Manhattan Hotel Ruled Suicide. NBC New York.

McKinley, J.C.J. (2014, September 10). Trial to begin for a millionaire who calls her son’s death ‘altruistic filicide.’ New York Times.

McKinley, J.C.J. (2014, October 30). Deliberations begin in trial of woman who killed son. New York Times.

McKinley, James C., Jr. (2015, May 28). Gigi Jordan Receives 18-Year Sentence for Killing Her Son. New York Times (Online).

Parascandola, Rocco. (2023, January 4). Pharma Millionaire Gigi Jordan died of suicide on eve of return to prison for autistic son’s killing, says NYC medical examiner. New York Daily News.

Rosenberg, R. (2014, October 10). Kill me, too, Mommy Gigi’s twisted tale of death pact with son. New York Post.

Rosenberg, R. (2014, October 11). Gigi’s horror story ‘ignored’ dying son. New York Post.

Rosenberg, R. (2014, October 23). Gigi’s ‘06 ‘death’ shocker. New York Post.

Rosenberg, R. (2014, October 28). Gigi loved her son to death: defense. New York Post.

Rosenberg, R. (2014, October 31). Gigi rapped for plea lie. New York Post.

Rosenberg, R. (2014, November 6). Gigi hit with just 5+ yrs. Jury goes easy on son-slay mom. New York Post.

Sharma, Shweta. (2023, January 2). Pharma executive found dead hours after Supreme Court weighs in on sentence for killing autistic son. Independent.

Siemaszko, C., Jacobs, S., & Brown, S.R. (2014, November 6). Killer mom Guilty of manslaughter in autistic-son slay. New York Daily.

Slotnick, Daniel E. (2020, September 25). Judge Orders New Trial for Gigi Jordan in Son’s Killing. New York Times (Online).