Soccer mom stoic in court

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This article was published 19/04/2016 (3488 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When a woman is accused of hiding the remains of six babies in a storage locker, one would expect the first day of her trial would be a bit of a scene.

But when 42-year-old Andrea Giesbrecht appeared in court Monday before a judge alone, it was a strikingly neutral affair. Of the 14 people who were there, 11 appeared to be media. I expected to see right-to-life protestors congregated on the sidewalk, but there were none. Nor were there any emotional breakdowns in court.

Giesbrecht, with dyed red hair pulled tightly into a bun, remained expressionless throughout the tesitimonies of three of the people who made the discovery on Oct. 20, 2014.

After months of Giesbrecht promising and then failing to pay her rent on the storage locker, court heard, U-Haul employees finally opened the locker to do an inventory, and came across five large containers. Ryan Pearson, an executive assistant at U-Haul, was the first witness to take the stand. He said something seemed not right. As he and manager Kristina Lekei began opening the containers, they were hit with a rancid smell.

“Can you describe it?” the Crown asked. He paused. “Not really,” he responded. Pearson said he’s lost sleep over the discovery.

“This is not a victim impact statement, is it?” defence lawyer Greg Brodsky interjected.

Lekei testified about the smelly, squishy bags found in the containers. “It wasn’t just rotting food to us.” She said there were no personal goods in the locker. The court learned from her testimony that the last time Giesbrecht would have had access to the locker would have been in March or May — the last time her account carried a $0 balance.

Winnipeg police Patrol Sgt. Cory Ford described shining a flashlight on one of the garbage bags. “I was able to see the limb of what looked like a baby and a small head with hair.”

There are so many questions raised that, hopefully, will be answered during the course of the trial. We’re expected to hear, finally, who justice officials believe the mother of the babies is, as well as how long they’ve been kept. But what were the circumstances around their conception, birth and death? Were they alive when they were born? Why were they kept in the first place? What was Giesbrecht’s mental state at the time? Why would she allow her bill for the storage locker to go into arrears if she knew the remains were inside? These are grim questions to ponder, to be sure.

But perhaps the most fascinating question is, on the surface, the most basic one: who is Andrea Giesbrecht, who also goes by her maiden name Andrea Naworynski? She’s been described as a suburban soccer mom with two children, a woman who volunteers and takes care of those living with disabilities. She’s also a gambling addict who faces a number of unrelated fraud charges.

So many of these questions could likely be answered by the stoic and silent woman in the front row. Giesbrecht held her head level. She met people’s gazes in the courtroom. While all three witnesses seemed rattled by what they discovered on that day in October, her face was unreadable.

Who are you, Andrea Giesbrecht? And what happened to you?

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @JenZoratti