Body of Murdered 8-Year-Old Autistic Boy Waits in Morgue As Family

[Guest guest]

http://dnainfo.com/20100212/manhattan/body-of-murdered-8yearold-autistic-boy-wai\

ts-morgue-as-family-feuds

Body of Murdered 8-Year-Old Autistic Boy Waits in Morgue As Family

Feuds February 12, 2010 5:18pm

By Bode

DNAinfo Associate Editor

MANHATTAN — The body of 8-year-old Jude Mirra lies in a refrigerated

room in the city morgue, zipped inside a tagged body bag, atop a three-tiered

gurney.

It is his second visit here.

The first time, Jude languished there unclaimed from the time he was allegedly

drugged to death by his mother in a Fifth Avenue hotel until his biological

father made the heartbreaking pilgrimage from California four days later to

verify the boy was his son.

The tragedy of the way Jude's body is being treated is matched only by the

chilling way in which he was allegedly murdered by his own mother, Gigi Jordan.

Jordan, a 49-year-old multimillionaire pharmaceutical executive, dragged the boy

across the country during his short life in search of a cure for his severe

autism, friends said.

She withdrew from friends and family and spent the last days of her life

allegedly holed up in the five-star Peninsula Hotel in Midtown, feeding an

overdose of prescription pills to her trusting child.

Police found Jude's lifeless body on the bed of the hotel room on Feb. 5, his

mother unconscious on the floor beside him.

The mother was rushed to the hospital, and remains hospitalized as she waits to

be arraigned on criminal charges.

The child was delivered to the morgue.

Workers from the E. Funeral Home on the Upper East Side picked up

Jude's body on Tuesday, the Medical Examiner's office said.

The next day, Jude's body was recalled to the Medical Examiner's office after a

feud erupted between the boy's father and maternal grandmother, according to

news reports. The Medical Examiner's office is required to retain a body until a

family agrees on funeral arrangements.

" It's not uncommon for this to happen, " said Ellen Borakove, spokeswoman for the

city's Office of Chief Medical Examiner. " Sometimes families have disputes over

where they want the body to be buried. "

" Now that we know that there's a dispute, we're just in a holding position. We

don't make a decision on who has legal standing. That's not our place, " Borakove

added.

Now the boy lies in a bag in one of four rooms in the Kips Bay morgue, the air

temperature hovering between 32 and 40 degrees, surrounded by other corpses.

So Jude's body waits for an end to the rift between his maternal grandmother –

who friends said was estranged from the boy's mother for years – and his

biological father, who has no legal standing over his son since reportedly

giving up custody rights years ago.