Autistic Boy, 8, Found Murdered in the Peninsula Hotel, Mom Next to Him February 5, 2010 2:25pm
An 8-year-old autistic boy was found dead in a five-star hotel room on Fifth Avenue Friday, police said, possibly murdered at the hands of his mother who was discovered unconscious on the floor next to him.
Authorities found the lifeless body of the boy — identified by friends as Jude — lying on the bed of a room at the Hotel Peninsula about noon Friday. His mother, identified by police sources as Gigi Jordan, 49, was found unconscious beside him.
Prescription pills and papers were found littered around the hotel room, according to police sources.
"That poor baby, poor Jude," said a distraught Lisa Battaglia, whose husband Victor used to work for Jordan at one of her many pharmaceutical companies.
"He was autistic. He was her life. She did everything for him. Everything was around this child, she was doing research constantly, she was a nurse by trade and she had doctor contacts all over."
A relative in Belgium apparently called the police after the mother sent a terrifying email threatening to kill herself and the child, which led the NYPD to track him to the hotel room after first looking for the pair at their apartment at the Trump International Towers, on Central Park South.
Authorities had to force their way into the hotel room through a double-locked door and a chair that had been propped against it, police sources said.
"This is not the Gigi I knew," said Battaglia, who said she had not spoken to Jordan in years.
"She was so devoted to her son. Somehow she must have been overwhelmed. All I can think of is that she couldn't take it anymore and she thought no one could take care of her child. Knowing Gigi, I don't think that it was over a man or a divorce. I think this was over her child."
Jordan, a Belgium native who had lived all over the U.S., went to great lengths to become pregnant, succeeding in 2001 at age 40, friends said
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