Giesbrecht talked often about desire to self-abort: friend

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This article was published 22/04/2016 (3486 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Winnipeg woman accused of secretly giving birth to six babies — then storing their remains for years in a locker — would often talk about how she hated being pregnant and wanted to self-abort, court has heard.

Danielle Devereaux took the witness stand Friday to discuss her relationship with Andrea Giesbrecht. The two women met in 1996 while working at Pioneer Grain and developed a close friendship that lasted until 2000.

Devereaux described a bizarre series of events around 1997 which began with Giesbrecht phoning to say she wouldn’t be coming into work because she’d just suffered a miscarriage while walking down the street.

“She said there was blood on the sidewalk,” said Devereaux. Months later, Giesbrecht disclosed that she was pregnant once again — but didn’t want to keep the baby.

“She talked about how to abort the baby,” Devereaux told court. This included “punching herself in the stomach or using a coat hanger to self-abort,” she said. Giesbrecht also discussed throwing herself over a chair to do it.

Giesbrecht also begged Devereaux not to tell anyone she was pregnant, including her then-boyfriend who would go on to become her husband.

“She was hiding it from Jeremy. She never said why,” she said. Devereaux said she now regrets staying silent.

“I thought if I did tell she’d say ‘I would never do that, you’re crazy Danielle’,” she said. “I was 18, 19 years old. This was all very unusual. I didn’t know how to handle it.”

Devereaux said Giesbrecht would wear sweaters to conceal a small baby bump, but that she only gained one clothing size during that pregnancy and it wasn’t obvious to anyone.

Devereaux said she next heard from Giesbrecht on Dec. 30, 1997. She had just gone into labour and delivered a boy in hospital. At that point, her boyfriend had been called to notify him of a pregnancy he apparently had no idea about.

Devereaux said Giesbrecht was prepared to give the baby up for adoption and spoke with social workers in hospital about her options. She eventually decided to keep the boy after discussing the issue with her boyfriend and parents. That boy is now her 18-year-old son. Giesbrecht would go on to give birth to another boy five years later.

‘She talked about how to abort the baby (including) punching herself in the stomach or using a coat hanger to self-abort’– Danielle Devereaux, friend of Andrea Giesbrecht

Devereaux was asked if there were any other pregnancies she knew about. She told court there weren’t, but that Giesbrecht would often call in sick during the four years they worked together. She also said Giesbrecht had major gambling and financial issues which included her pawning off her engagement ring for cash.

Giesbrecht’s husband appeared in court Friday under subpoena from the Crown and is expected to be the next witness. There were initially concerns he may not show up. However, his much-anticipated testimony won’t occur now until later this summer, as the trial was only set for five days but they’ve run out of time. Additional days in July or August are now going to be set.

The trial has previously heard all six babies found in the U-Haul storage locker rented by Giesbrecht could have been alive when born. Dr. Michael Narvey, a neonatologist at the Children’s Hospital and the University of Manitoba, testified that he came to this conclusion after examining autopsy reports and photos of the bodies.

Narvey said the bodies were so decayed he could not determine the cause of death. He testified that from what he could see the babies were “structurally normal” and they were all born between 34 to 42 weeks into pregnancy. He did not find any genetic abnormalities.

Dr. Sharon Naugler, the head of obstetrics at the Health Sciences Centre, has also testified that the odds of Giesbrecht having six stillborn babies was “1.5 in 100 trillion”. But Naugler added that because all six babies — five boys and one girl — were almost full-term babies, “the actual chance is one in 500 trillion.

“Any way you look at it, it is astronomically small. I would say medically impossible. Just impossible,” she said. Naugler also said laboratory records of Giesbrecht from a 2002 pregnancy showed no signs that she would have any problems with a future pregnancy. Naugler also said it is impossible for anyone to kill an unborn, full term fetus without doing major harm to the mother.

Giesbrecht, 42, is charged with six counts of concealing a child’s body. Police had originally said they may charge her with murder, but that never occurred.

Court has heard the official causes of death have been listed as “undetermined.” DNA profiling matched the human remains of all six bodies to a sample taken from a used sanitary napkin seized from Giesbrecht’s home and a voluntary blood sample provided by Giesbrecht’s husband, suggesting they are the parents of the babies.

Defence lawyer Greg Brodsky has previously said he believes the remains are likely more than a decade old. He is challenging whether the state of the infants meets the legal requirement to prove the charges against his client.

Brodsky revealed in court earlier this week that his client’s medical records show she had 10 legal abortions between 1994 and 2011. The relevance of mentioning those abortions isn’t clear at this time, but may emerge later once lawyers get into final arguments. There is no suggestion the remains in the storage locker are connected to those procedures.

www.mikeoncrime.com

U-Haul surveillance video

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