The longtime pal of a pharmaceutical exec on trial for killing her own son testified Wednesday that the troubled millionaire had talked openly about her desire to end the severely autistic boy’s life — just three years before she force fed him a fatal dose of prescription drugs.
Rita Cristman had an ominous phone conversation with killer mom Gigi Jordan in 2006, she told Manhattan jurors.
“She said that if the procedure didn’t work, she was going to end it,” Cristman testified, referring to a stem cell transplant Jordan’s son Jude Mirra was about to undergo in Chicago in a bizarre effort to cure his autism symptoms.
“She said, ‘I’m going to give myself an overdose’ and I said, ‘What about Jude?’ and she said, ‘I’m going to take him with me and give him an overdose, too. I can’t leave him behind. No one would ever be there for him.’”
In another phone conversation, Jordan made a disturbing admission to her ex friend.
“Gigi said to me, ‘You know parents of autistic children that die are better off than those that live,’” Cristman recounted.
“ ‘I said, ‘Why?’ and she said, ‘Well one morning you wake up and the child is gone. It’s like they’ve been kidnapped and when your child is kidnapped you’re forever looking for them and wondering where they are and you can’t mourn.”
Jude MirraPhoto: Gregory P. Mango
The former best friends had a falling out when Jordan began blaming Cristman for her troubles with Jude, she said.
“We had been arguing a lot,” she said of the last phone conversation she remembered having with Jordan in late 2006.
“I said, ‘Why are you angry?’ She said, ‘Because it’s all your fault, you told me to have Jude and I’ve never been more miserable in my life!’”
Cristman said she didn’t report Jordan’s bizarre ranting because she didn’t believe she meant it.
“I didn’t take her seriously at the moment. She was a very dramatic person,” the witness said. “She got angry easily she was emotional all the time. I never knew how she was going to behave.”
Although Cristman said Jordan was erratic, she said she was often very caring and generous.
Jordan had taken her friend on at least five vacations, paid off her credit card debt and even set up trusts for her children. She is godmother to Cristman’s daughter.
Jordan has argued that she poisoned her son at the Peninsula Hotel because she feared her ex-husband was planning to kill her.
Jude would then be handed over to his biological father, Emil Tzekov, who she believed had physically and sexually abused him, she said.
But prosecutors have countered that Jordan killed her son after years of experimental treatments had failed to cure his autism.
Jordan was discovered semi-conscious on the floor of her room within arms length of her 8-year-old’s corpse amid thousands of pills and an empty bottle of Grey Goose February 5, 2010.
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