Mom who killed son with autism in New York City hotel room gets 18 years

NEW YORK (WABC) -- Gigi Jordan, the mother convicted of killing her 8-year-old autistic son in a Midtown hotel room, was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in prison with five years post-release supervision.

Jordan faced up to 25 years behind bars after the 53-year-old was convicted first-degree manslaughter in November, with jurors agreeing with defense attorneys that she acted in the throes of an "extreme emotional disturbance." She avoided the second-degree murder charge that prosecutors requested.

Jordan killed Jude Mirra by forcing him to ingest a toxic mix of painkillers, other drugs and vodka back at the Peninsula Hotel in February 2010. She then transferred money out of his trust fund.

"No one - and particularly no child - deserves the type of death that Jude Mirra suffered at the hands of his mother," District Attorney Cy Vance said. "The poisoning and killing of an 8-year-old boy is a premeditated act of child abuse. After five years, justice has finally been served with today's sentence of 18 years in state prison."

Jordan's lawyers claimed she was driven by fear and desperation to kill the boy and then try to kill herself. They argued she believed her life was in danger because of a financial conflict and that her son was vulnerable to men in his life who abused him. They say she felt murder-suicide was the only solution.

But Manhattan state Supreme Court Judge Charles Solomon would have none of that, saying she showed an "absolute lack of any remorse."

"She decided to kill Jude in order to protect him from a lifetime of sexual torture, but there was no credible evidence he was the victim of sexual abuse of any kind," he said.

The judge seemed to suggest she was delusional, although she clearly believes otherwise.

"I feared for my son in every way you could imagine," she said. "I wanted to bring to light what happened and hoped that somehow I could get justice for him."

Prosecutors argued Jordan, former nurse who made an estimated $40 million as a medical entrepreneur, deliberately killed her son because she couldn't handle his disabilities and sought the maximum sentence.

The jury came back after five days of deliberations in a trial that had about 40 witnesses and 5,000 pages of evidence.

"The jury, by its verdict of guilty to manslaughter in the first degree, has finally held the defendant accountable for killing her non-verbal, autistic child," Vance said after it was read. "Gigi Jordan showed no mercy to her son, and should receive none at the time of her sentencing. I would like to thank the jurors, who sat through weeks of horrific testimony, as well as my office's tireless prosecutors, who over a period of four and a half years ensured that justice would be done in this matter."

At the time, Solomon told jurors that "this was a hard case, a very difficult case."