A woman charged with murdering her 8-year-old son in a luxury Manhattan hotel was once detained by police in Wyoming after claiming the boy was being molested by devil worshipers.
Cheyenne Detective Tom Hood told the New York Post that Gigi Jordan wrote letters to a sex crimes investigator more than two years ago saying that her autistic son was being abused by a cult.
Hood says that when she flew to the area, they detained her for psychiatric evaluation but then released her. An examination of the boy showed no signs of abuse.
Cops found the dead boy and his mother, with pages of a suicide note fluttering around her, in a room at the five-star Peninsula Hotel off 55th Street around noon Friday. Law-enforcement sources told NBCNewYork Gigi Jordan gave her child a fatal dose of prescription medication, then took the pills herself. Jordan survived the alleged suicide attempt and was being treated at Bellevue Hospital, where she was listed in stable condition and in police custody.
The boy could have been dead for a day or more, police sources say. He was found in his pajamas on the bed in the Peninsula with foam coming out of his mouth and hundreds of prescription pills, including Xanax and Ambien, were scattered on the floor. The door was bolted shut. The officers, with the help of security, opened the double-locked door only to find that a chair had been positioned to block entry. After forcing their way in, they found the boy on the bed and his mother on the floor beside him.
Inside they found Jordan's would-be suicide note, which said, in part, "I've had a tortured life ...," law-enforcement sources said.
Jordan, 49, who lives in the Trump International Towers on Columbus Circle, checked into the swanky Peninsula a few days ago, law-enforcement sources said. Police sources say Jordan last used her keycard to access her apartment at Trump Plaza on Wednesday. She and her son, identified as Michael Jude Mirra, checked into the hotel at about 8 p.m. that night.
Police said a relative of the woman in Belgium called an NYPD precinct Friday morning to report that she had received an e-mail from the woman "indicating that she was going to kill herself and her son,'' said New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne.
Cops raced to check Jordan's home at 1 Central Park West, but found the apartment empty. Law-enforcement sources say Trump staff helped authorities call around to various luxury hotels, which led them to the Peninsula, where cops found the boy and his mother.
Hotel security guards allowed only guests to enter the hotel, a Beaux Arts building with a rooftop pool and routine celebrity guests near designer boutiques, while police investigated on the 16th floor.
"I asked the hotel people what happened and they said, 'nothing,''' said Jack Morse, who emerged from lunching with friends at a hotel. "Then I saw all the cameras on the street.''
Jordan has been twice divorced and the biological father of the dead boy, who is out of state, did not know about the investigation, law-enforcement sources said. Authorities have yet to track him down. The father of the boy is not Jordan's first husband, pharmaceutical millionaire and real estate bigwig Raymond Mirra, although the boy carries his last name, law-enforcement sources said.
Law-enforcement sources say Jordan and the boy's father were divorced some time ago. Michael Jude would have turned 9 years old in July.
