Prosecutors say the pharmaceutical executive accused of killing her eight-year-old son in a botched murder-suicide in a Midtown hotel had been diagnosed with Munchausen by proxy syndrome—a form of child abuse in which parents induce real medical symptoms in their kids or make their kids appear to be sick. Before being accused of feeding her autistic son a deadly concoction of prescription medicines, Gigi Jordan allegedly brought Jude Michael Mirra from doctor to doctor, constituting a kind of "medical abuse" according to Assistant District Attorney Kerry O'Connell. "She was seeking unnecessary treatment of her child."
According to the Daily News, Jordan was involuntarily placed in a psychiatric ward in Wyoming in 2008 where she was diagnosed with Munchausen by proxy syndrome. Jordan's attorney discredited the diagnosis, and said his client had her son's health in mind when she brought him on cross-country trips in search of care. "It was devotion; it was dedication, and it was love," Gerald Shargel told the Post. Shargel said the Munchausen by proxy syndrome diagnosis was later withdrawn, and claimed that prosecutors "are cherry picking the medical records."
Discussion of Jordan's diagnosis arose as prosecutors and defense attorneys debated if Jordan should continue to be held in the psychiatric ward of Elmhurst Hospital—where she been detained since her son's death last month—or if she should be released on $5 million bail to live in her Trump International condo under constant guard. The judge hasn't yet ruled on the issue, though he recently rejected Jordan's request to attend the boy's funeral. Jordan has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder charges, and her legal team might use "a psychiatric defense."
