Husband didn’t know Giesbrecht likely carried six fetuses to term

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This article was published 20/07/2016 (3396 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The husband of a Winnipeg mother accused of hiding the remains of six infants in a storage locker testified Wednesday he didn’t know the contents of his wife’s rented storage unit or that she had possibly carried the six fetuses to term.

Andrea Giesbrecht, 42, is charged with six counts of concealing a child’s body. The remains of five boys and one girl were found inside a McPhillips Street storage unit in October 2014.

The Crown has yet to suggest a motive for the alleged crime.

Giesbrecht watched as her husband of 17 years testified in court Wednesday that he didn’t know about the unit.

During lengthy testimony that touched on his wife’s alleged secret pregnancies and alleged affair, Jeremy Giesbrecht, 43, told court he believed Andrea had been raped and blackmailed by a man — the same man another witness said was involved in an affair with Andrea Giesbrecht. The accused’s former friend testified earlier that the man got Andrea pregnant.

The man, a casino employee named Gerald Morrissey, visited Jeremy Giesbrecht at home several years ago, Jeremy testified Wednesday.

“It was very traumatic,” he told court.

“When he attended my house, he told me what their relationship was. And I don’t believe it is even a relationship. Someone who is raping, blackmailing and threatening someone, I don’t believe is a relationship,” he told court, adding that he saw Morrissey walking by, “hovering around the house,” after that first visit.

Those allegations have not been proven in court, and when asked by the Crown whether they had ever been reported to police, Jeremy said he and his wife “did go when he kept threatening us,” but he said he never reported a rape or blackmailing until he made a statement to police after his wife’s 2014 arrest. He said he believed Andrea had contacted police to complain about being harassed.

Jeremy first testified he knew about nine abortions his wife underwent, but when referring back to the statement he gave to police, he contradicted himself, saying he was only aware of two.

He told court he remembered driving her to appointments for two abortions, including one “that took place after the rapist came to the house,” about nine years ago.

Court has heard the accused had 10 legal abortions, as well as two children. She is believed to be the mother of all six infants whose remains were found in the storage locker, based on DNA taken from a used sanitary napkin in her home.

Jeremy Giesbrecht was found to be the father after he submitted a DNA sample. He testified Wednesday that police told him his children would be put in the care of child welfare authorities if he didn’t give a sample.

To counter any suggestion from the defence that the sanitary napkin did not belong to Andrea, who was not ordered to submit a DNA sample, Crown prosecutor Debbie Buors asked Jeremy whether he’d had sex with anyone besides his wife during the period of their marriage, from 1999 to 2014. The defence objected to the line of questioning, but the judge allowed it, apologizing to Jeremy for the “intrusive nature of the question.” Jeremy answered no, he hadn’t, and that to his knowledge he had not fathered a child with anyone besides his wife.

Jeremy testified his wife never told him she was pregnant with their oldest son, and he only found out via a call from the hospital on the day he was born. “But in retrospect,” he testified, he had a “small suspicion” about two weeks before their son was born, when he noticed her stomach looked a bit bigger while they were having sex.

“Was I shocked 10 out of 10 when I got to the hospital? Close, it was nine out of 10,” he said of the surprise birth. Andrea did tell him when she was pregnant with their second son, he told court.

Questioned by the Crown as to how he would not have known his wife was pregnant, Jeremy was repeatedly asked to describe the way she dressed.

“Boring,” was his only response.

Jeremy testified he only found out about the storage unit Andrea had rented for years at Sentinel Self Storage on Inkster Boulevard when his father phoned him about a newspaper notice that mentioned Andrea’s arrears.

“I believe he called me and said she owed money or something,” Jeremy told court, saying he never knew about the U-Haul storage locker or its contents. When Crown prosecutor Buors showed him photos of some of the locker’s contents — not including the babies’ remains — he said he didn’t recognize the items.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca