CBS2: Gigi Jordan Gives One-On-One Interview As She Stands Trial For Murder
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – A mother who confessed to killing her 8-year-old autistic son in a Manhattan hotel is now breaking her silence as the jury deliberates her faith.
CBS2's Dave Carlin visited Gigi Jordan in jail on Rikers Island where she told him she killed her own child, named Jude, by giving him a fatal dose of prescription drugs, out of "a mother's love."
"There's no freedom for me, really, at the end of the day," Jordan said. "I hope God can forgive me for what I did."
"I died the night Jude died. My soul died that night," she said.
Today, she wears a Department of Corrections jumpsuit instead of designer clothes.
She took Carlin back to Feb. 5, 2010, when she ended her son's life in a luxury suite at the Peninsula Hotel.
"I gave Jude, yes, an overdose of medication yes," Jordan told Carlin.
Jordan said she tried to commit suicide afterward.
"That was my intent, was to die that night," she said. "I had no reason to live after Jude's death."
She says her one regret is that she didn't die that night, but makes no apologies for what she did to her son.
"I wanted him to be safe and at peace at any cost," she said.
Jordan claims her son, a child who barely spoke, told her he was being repeatedly sexually assaulted. By typing on devices, including her cell phone, she says Jude accused his own father.
"He was typing, 'I'm afraid.' 'I'm scared.' 'I'm having the memories of him raping me,'" she said.
Jordan's ex-husband, who denies it, has no parental rights and was never charged.
Carlin: "You know people are skeptical about the typing, the communication."
Jordan: "Very."
Carlin: "They said you might have done it yourself."
Jordan: "Correct."
At the time of the killing, Jordan says she believed her ex-husband would somehow get custody of Jude, even though he was out of the picture.
"The last thing I ever wanted in life was lose Jude, but the choices that I was faced with meant that he would endure a life of unimaginable suffering," she said.
As Carlin reported, Jordan traveled the world with Jude to try and cure him of his autism. Herself being worth at least $50 million, she says she could have sent him away but wanted to fix his problems.
"Jude was never a burden to me," she said. "Whether people will ever understand all of the steps I took to try to protect them or not, I know I did everything I knew how to do."
"Anyone can stand there and judge -- I could've done more I could've done this, I could've done that. They still were not in my shoes," she added.
Carlin: "When you stop and take some time to think about him, what is the mental image?"
Jordan: "Jude's free. Jude's at peace. I know that."
"People have an understandably impossible time understanding I could take the life of my child," Jordan said.
"I'm always in prison. I'll be in prison for the rest of my life, wherever I go," she told Carlin.
The seven men and five women of the jury are still deliberating on whether to convict her of murder, or the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter.
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