Giesbrecht’s son says he never saw mom pregnant

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This article was published 18/07/2016 (3398 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A courtroom outburst Monday briefly delayed the trial of a Winnipeg mother accused of concealing infants’ remains in a storage locker.

Just before the afternoon session of court was about to begin with testimony from one of Andrea Giesbrecht’s teenage sons, the boy’s father, Jeremy Giesbrecht, became upset with Crown prosecutor Debbie Buors, who asked to speak to the 18-year-old witness before court resumed, and argued loudly until a court sheriff was called. Outside the courtroom, standing near Andrea Giesbrecht, he alleged the witness was being “bullied.”

Defence lawyer Greg Brodsky spoke to the family privately and lawyers were eventually able to settle the matter and call the witness to the stand as the trial resumed Monday after being on hold since April.

Giesbrecht, 42, was charged with six counts of concealing a child’s body after the infants’ remains were found inside a U-Haul storage locker on McPhillips Street in October 2014. Her oldest son, who cannot be named due to a publication ban, testified about his family life and said he had never seen his mother pregnant.

Giesbrecht’s son said he couldn’t remember his mother being pregnant at any time, not even with his younger brother, and said he never noticed her weight fluctuate or change significantly. He told court he now lives with his father and brother, but his testimony centered on his parents’ master bedroom in the childhood home he lived in until 2014.

Under cross-examination from Brodsky, Giesbrecht’s son said it was not uncommon for guests, including female friends, to use the master bedroom’s ensuite bathroom because the only other bathroom in the house had faulty plumbing.

He testified that his parents would sometimes have arguments and spend time apart for a few days, but he said he never saw his father bring home any girlfriends. In response to Brodsky’s questions, he said Giesbrecht was the type of mother who sent him to school appropriately fed and clothed, sent him to summer and hockey camps, bought him video games and took him to church two or three times a month.

As he was leaving court after his son’s testimony, Giesbrecht’s husband said he had nothing negative to say and that he thought it “went well.” He is expected to testify later in the trial, which is set to continue Tuesday.

Years before Giesbrecht was criminally charged following the discovery of babies’ remains in a storage locker, staff at a different storage facility noticed there was something peculiar about her storage unit, court heard Monday.

Karen Bodoano, operations manager at Sentinel Self Storage, from which Giesbrecht had rented a locker on and off between 1999 and 2014, told court police had requested records of Giesbrecht’s dealings with her company following the discovery of six infants’ remains.

Bodoano said Sentinel Self Storage staff had noticed Giesbrecht’s locker “stood out” as “an anomaly” because it contained so few items – a photo entered as an exhibit in court showed only two stacked totes and a couple of small pails in the heated locker, which measured five feet by five-feet wide and eight-feet high. Staff had asked her why she needed so much storage space.

“The response to me once was that she had things that she couldn’t keep at home, like her jewelery,” Bodoano said, noting it was unusual for people to rent out a storage locker for jewelery.

Habitually late on her monthly payments, Giesbrecht moved out of the heated storage unit in 2008 and rented a non-heated storage locker with the same company from May 2010 to March 7, 2014 before moving out of her Sentinel Self Storage unit.

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Brodsky questioned why Giesbrecht would have rented a storage locker that was larger, heated and more expensive than the other options available — a question Bodoano couldn’t answer — and that there was no photo or video surveillance of Giesbrecht accessing the locker at Sentinel Self Storage.

Bodoano said the company’s security system relied on unique passcodes provided to customers, door alarms on the lockers and individual padlocks on each locker. She said she believed she had met Giesbrecht once, but couldn’t be sure, and said she wouldn’t be able to pick her out in a photo or in the courtroom.

The trial is expected to continue Tuesday and Wednesday with testimony from several witnesses before adjourning until August, when the Crown expects to hear from medical experts.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay

Katie May
Multimedia producer

Katie May is a multimedia producer for the Free Press.

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