Appeal hearing Wednesday for woman convicted of hiding infant remains

EDITORS NOTE: Some details in this story are disturbing and may not be suitable for all readers. 

WINNIPEG – The lawyer for a Winnipeg woman convicted of hiding the remains of six babies in a rented storage locker says she was keeping them so she could possibly visit them.

Greg Brodsky told the Manitoba Court of Appeal that the trial judge was wrong to find Andrea Giesbrecht guilty because she was not trying to dispose of the infants.

Giesbrecht, 44, was arrested in October 2014 after the heavily-decomposed bodies of six infants were found in a storage locker rented under her name. Employees at the U-Haul facility opened the locker up to clear it out after Giesbrecht failed to provide payment. Staff was set to auction off the contents of the locker, but noticed a strange smell and called the police.

Court heard during her original trial she put the remains in plastic bags and containers after she had conceived and delivered the full-term or near full-term babies and hid them in the storage container.

Giesbrecht never testified and the trial never heard a motive for her actions, though provincial court Judge Murray Thompson called her moral culpability “extreme” and ruled the sentence needed to be strong enough to denounce her behaviour. She was convicted on all six counts–each count carries a maximum two-year jail sentence–in February 2017.

READ MORE: Judge finds Winnipeg woman guilty of concealing dead babies in storage locker

“These were newly delivered infants, our most vulnerable,” Thompson said at the time. “She knew she had medical options and chose not to access them.”

The trial was told she made efforts to hide her pregnancies from everyone, including her husband.

“Giesbrecht knew these children were likely to have been born alive and she wished to conceal the fact of their delivery and existence,” Thompson said in his ruling.

The judge said investigators, who could not compel Giesbrecht to supply a DNA sample, retrieved a sanitary napkin from her bedroom with a search warrant. Tests showed she was the mother of the six children — five boys and one girl. Witnesses testified she hadn’t told anyone about the pregnancies.

Thompson noted that Giesbrecht knew about being pregnant and delivering babies. She had her two living children in hospital. She also had 10 legal abortions. The judge also noted during the trial there were no medical records of the pregnancies relating to the charges.

READ MORE: Winnipeg woman convicted of hiding remains of babies files appeal

On Wednesday, Brodsky told the Appeal Court that Giesbrecht took steps to preserve what he called the “products of conception”, and the Crown could not prove she was trying to conceal or dispose of them.

“We contend that her actions do not constitute disposal. Rather, the products of conception were stored, kept and saved,” Brodsky said at the hearing.

“Why would anyone want to store six bodies?” Justice Chris Mainella asked at one point.

“She may have had a facetious or a not realistic expectation. She may have wanted to visit. She may have wanted to preserve … she doesn’t have to explain,” Brodsky said.

Giesbrecht is entitled to the presumption of innocence and it’s on the Crown to prove she intended to dispose of the remains rather than simply store them, Brodsky added.

The argument was challenged by Mainella.

“I didn’t see an … authority in your casebook that says that you don’t commit this offense by being good at hiding dead bodies. Because essentially, that’s what you’re saying is that you can defeat this charge by burying a body in your backyard (and) you’re still in possession of it.”

Brodsky had made the argument that Giesbrecht was saving the babies during the original trial but Judge Thompson didn’t believe that.

-With files from the Canadian Press

Top Stories

Top Stories

Most Watched Today