Canadian True Crime - 22 Andrea Giesbrecht - Part 1

Episode Date: April 7, 2018

[Part 1 of 2] Employees of a Winnipeg self-storage facility were cleaning out an unpaid locker in 2014, when they made a shocking discovery.Support my sponsors! Here's where the discount codes are:www.canadiantruecrime.ca/sponsorsPodcast recommendations:The Fall LineImpact StatementInformation sources Please visit the episode page on www.canadiantruecrime.ca in the week after the episode is released. Join my patreon to get early, ad-free episodes and more: www.patreon.com/canadiantruecrime  Credits:Research, writing, narration and music arrangement: Kristi LeeAudio production: Erik KrosbyMusic credits:Music below is used under an Attribution License - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Podcast theme music: Space Trip. http://www.dl-sounds.com/royalty-free/space-trip/PC III 01 - Exit ExitChris Zabriskie - I need to start writing things downKevin McLeod - Lightless DawnLucky Stars - Podington PearChris Zabriskie - Mario Bava sleeps in a little later than he expected toChris Zabriskie - Cylinders 7Kevin McLeod - Echos of TimeChris Zabriskie - There's a special place for some peopleSupport the show. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My name's John Weir. You don't know me, but you're gonna, because I know the people that have been watching you, learning about you. They know you've done well for yourself, that people like you and trust you. Trust you. Now imagine what they're gonna do with all that information that you've freely shared with the whole world. Now imagine what they're gonna do with all the information you have at it. Yeah, I'll be in touch. Radical starring Kiefer Sutherland, new series now streaming exclusively on Paramount Plus. This is Christy, and welcome to Canadian True Crime, episode 22, Andrea Giesbricht.

There is a trigger warning for this episode. The themes of this case include multiple references to stillbirth, pregnancy termination, and deceased newborns. If you are sensitive to these topics, please use discretion. This story takes place in Manitoba, one of the southern provinces of Canada, right in the horizontal centre of the country. Together with the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta, Manitoba is part of an area of Canada commonly known as the prairies, because they're flat and partially covered by prairie or grasslands. When people generally think of the prairies, they think of plains, forest and wheat, because this area is well known for farming as well as mining and oil.

Manitoba's capital and largest city is Winnipeg, also the eighth largest city in Canada. Winnipeg has a nickname, Winterpeg. The city is known for being extremely cold. So cold that in the winter, the cold is so hard on a car's engine and battery that they have to be charged with a block heater to help them to start. At the end of 2013, there was a particularly bad cold snap, and the Manitoba Museum reported that Winnipeg's temperatures were actually colder than the surface of Mars. At the time, the official ground temperature was minus 29 degrees Celsius or minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit, and when you factored in the wind chill, it ended up being closer to minus 50 degrees Celsius or minus 58 degrees Fahrenheit.

My pal Jack Luna from Dark Topic Podcast lives nearby and told me that at the time he remembered that it physically burned to go outside. Their phone started shutting down, and even lighting a fire hardly kept them warm at all. The following year, on Monday, October 20th, 2014, another chilling discovery would be made in Winnipeg. When you rent a storage locker, you pay an ongoing fee, usually monthly. But what happens when you fail to make the payment? Most storage facility contracts state that a certain amount of time after the payment was supposed to have been made, the storage facility will try to contact you to rectify the account. If you pay, all is righted.

But if you don't or aren't able to be contacted, the facility can legally clean out your locker or unit after a certain period of time and try to auction your belongings to recoup the money they've lost in fees. This situation is commonly called a delinquent account, and this is what staff members at a U-Haul storage facility in Winnipeg's West Alexander neighborhood were going to do. They were given the task of cleaning out a delinquent storage locker that was way behind on payments. As they drilled open the lock on the storage locker on the second floor, they looked in and saw its only contents were five containers, two blue rubber-made tote bins, and three plastic pails with lids.

It was an anomaly that there would be so few items in a storage unit, even though it was called a locker, it was more like a little room. Five feet by five feet and eight feet high. One of the employees had a weird feeling and felt like something wasn't right. They opened all five storage containers and immediately were hit by a foul odor. They put on a glove and felt around one of the containers. They noticed a mixture of discolored liquid inside plastic bags and felt an object that they described as squishy. They realized it wasn't just rotting food that come across.

Straight away, they decided they were going no further and decided to call the police. One of the storage workers would later say that this discovery caused him to have many sleepless nights. The first police officer on the scene was Sergeant Cory Ford, an experienced officer who quickly detected the smell of decay when he opened the storage locker. As he started to examine the container with a flashlight, he was able to see what looked like the limb of a baby and a small head with hair. He immediately called his supervisor and later on, the police made a statement to the public. On October 20th, 2014, at approximately 1 p.m., members of the Winnipeg Police Service

were dispatched to a business in the 100 block of McPhilip Street for the report of suspicious circumstances. Human remains believed to be four infants were located within. The investigation is in its early stages. We are speaking with a number of individuals and are unable to comment further at this time. Autopsies are pending. Members of our child abuse unit are continuing with the investigation and they are asking anyone with information regarding this incident to contact them. The police went on to clarify that the remains were infants of a very young age, not children.

And the remains were in a state such that it wasn't yet completely obvious exactly how many bodies were there, but it was believed to be four infants. The police called the situation disturbing and tragic. Although the homicide unit was notified, the start of the investigation was primarily led by the child abuse unit. One of the first things they tried to find out was whether or not the infants had been born alive, which would impact whether the case was determined to be a homicide. Early forensic examination determined that it was actually six sets of human remains that had been found. The following day, October 22, 2014, the police announced they had pressed charges on the owner of the storage locker.

40-year-old Andrea Giesbrecht had been arrested at her North Winnipeg home, originally charged with murder, but these charges were changed to six counts of concealing the body of a child. The police clarified that these charges were appropriate for the time being, given what was known so far about the situation. They also said it would take a while to determine what relationship Andrea had with the infant remains, and this entire process would likely take months. Andrea was also charged with breach of probation, which was intriguing to the public, what had this woman been up to, and did this breach of probation charge have anything to do with the infants in the storage locker?

They would find out later. Andrea's lawyer, Greg Brodsky, told the press that, quote, she's in bewilderment. That same afternoon, members of the shocked community came together for a vigil near the U-Haul facility where the discovery had been made. Despite the fact that it was raining hard, they left teddy bears, ribbons, and other items to commemorate the babies. Organiser Jennifer Spence said that although she doesn't know Andrea Giesbrecht, she wanted to do something for the babies. Quote, in my spiritual walk as a traditional Aboriginal person, we try very hard to understand how we do things around loss, and when family members are lost and make their journey to the spirit world, we honour them. Vin Clark, another organiser, said, quote, we have to send these little ones off to that spirit place in a good, positive, and meaningful way.

The next day, Andrea Giesbrecht appeared in court for the first time in relation to these charges via a video feed from the jail. By this time, the police had started a two-day search of her property. Andrea sat hunched over with her hands in her lap, expressionless. She sometimes would look around the room and bite her fingernails. At one point, the judge told her what her next court date was going to be, and Andrea did not respond. Her lawyer repeated the date to her, and she still didn't respond. She was completely expressionless. In what was described as an unprecedented move, Andrea's lawyer Greg Brodsky requested that an independent pathologist observe and record the remainder of the autopsies. He said, quote, I'm very concerned about the autopsies that are done and are going to be done.

It's a complex case and determining the ages of the infants, their identities, and how they died will be difficult. He said he didn't think it was fair that the Crown would control the evidence, even though Crown Prosecutor Debbie Bures noted for the record that the provincial medical examiner uses independent pathologists anyway. After court, her lawyer said to the press that Andrea Giesbrecht likely wasn't the mother of the infants. Quote, come on. How would she explain how she was pregnant six times and nobody noticed it, and why would she then keep the remains? A legal battle begun, with discussions centering around whether a second forensic pathologist should be allowed to observe the remaining autopsies, even though the autopsies were 90% completed. Andrea's lawyer referred to the famous Australian case of Lindy Chamberlain and the death of her baby Azaria, which he said was caused by a wild dingo taking off with her. Lindy was originally charged with the murder of baby Azaria, but eventually exonerated. Andrea's lawyer Greg Brodsky said, quote, people looking at the same injuries saw different things.

He also referred to the remains as fetuses and said one of the critical points was determining whether they were more or less than 20 weeks gestation. If a fetus is less than 20 weeks, then under the law it is not considered a person. The provincial medical examiner wouldn't allow someone else to shadow him, saying the only way it would happen would be with a court order, so Andrea's lawyer filed a motion. There was more legal wrangling, some members of the public said the medical examiner's office needs to be trusted, and others said that incorrect expert testimony is a leading reason for errors in the justice system, so it can't hurt to have a second set of eyes, especially in the case of six dead infants. While this legal wrangling went on, the remaining autopsies were halted and the investigation stalled for two weeks, when finally the motion was denied. At the same time, Andrea Giesbrecht's bail hearing was postponed after her lawyer argued that he needed to see the full autopsy report first. In the meantime, the media had been working hard to figure out exactly who Andrea Giesbrecht was, how does a woman come to store the remains of several dead infants in a U-Haul locker? Andrea Giesbrecht was born around 1974 and was the only child of her parents.

She had a pretty unremarkable and ordinary upbringing, other than the fact that her parents had a gambling habit and would gamble frequently. When she was 23, she married her high school sweetheart, Jeremy Giesbrecht. Together they had two sons, aged 12 and 16 at the time of her arrest, and seemingly lived a suburban life in what was described by the National Post as an idyllic bungalow with all the outward trappings of normality. Andrea was described in the media as a normal sock mum type. She lived in Winnipeg all her adult life and had graduated from Red River College with a business administration diploma. She had been a home care worker for an organisation that supports people who have disabilities and she was known to volunteer frequently at local charities. But there was a dark underside to her seemingly normal life.

Early discovery of old court records showed that like her parents, Andrea was also a gambling addict. She had an addiction to lottery VLTs or slot machines, as well as card gambling, spending hours at casinos sometimes betting as much as $500 a day over several days of the week. She would end up losing thousands of dollars. Her marriage was not in a great place, thanks in large part to her gambling addiction and the financial burden it put on her family. She exhausted all her own finances and then moved to access the finances of her parents, including their credit cards and lines of credit. Then after they'd passed away, she spent their inheritance. Where was she going to get more money from? Two years before her arrest, Andrea had borrowed more than $7,000 from an elderly neighbour who was friends with her parents before they had passed.

She said she needed money to pay bills or else the house she'd inherited from her parents would be repossessed and she would pay it back when she got the money through from her father's life insurance policy. But unfortunately, Andrea repaid her kindly neighbour with checks that she knew would bounce. At court, she pled guilty, giving the excuse that her parents had gambled away all their savings before they had died and left her with debt and taxes to pay. The judge gave her a suspended sentence and two years probation, which included the provision that she wasn't allowed to gamble. At the time, her probation officer noted that she didn't seem to have any mental health issues. He described her as excitable and disorganised. That was just three weeks before she was arrested after the locker discovery. At the U-Haul Storage Facility, Andrea owed $276.20 in unpaid fees.

The locker rental was paid for with cash and a credit card and Andrea had booked it using her maiden name and a false address. But by May of 2014, the rental had gone into serious arrears. By the time the last payment of $50 cash and $50 credit was received on October the 3rd, the fees were 136 days overdue with a balance outstanding of $270. It would be just a few weeks before they decided to access the locker. But before that, the U-Haul facility staff had made numerous attempts to get Andrea to pay up. In fact, they tried to contact her more than a dozen times. She gave various excuses for not paying and often she would promise to come in after she received a warning but then not show up. She kept asking for them not to put her stored belongings up for auction saying the items belonged to her deceased father and she didn't want to lose them.

She didn't want people going into that locker no matter what. The contents of the storage locker were examined. This next part contains graphic details about what was found in there. So if you don't want to listen to this part, please fast forward about four minutes. We know that all that was in the locker were two large blue rubber made tote bins and three laundry pails. They were all sealed with their lids. When the lids were open, here's what was found. The first baby called baby number one was found to be a boy who was estimated to be at about 38 to 42 weeks gestation which is considered full term.

The average pregnancy lasts for 40 weeks. The baby boy and the placenta were inside a white kitchen sized garbage bag that had been knotted at the top. It was placed inside a knapsack which was put inside a larger duffel bag. This duffel bag and its contents were placed inside the blue rubber made tote bin. Also in the bin were tiny toy cars, a pair of socks and underwear, a beaded necklace and a coupon for a McDonald's Happy Meal. Baby number two was also a boy and also full term at 35 to 39 weeks. His remains were badly decomposed and he still had his umbilical cord attached. He was wrapped in a patterned towel which was wrapped inside another towel and again placed in a white kitchen garbage bag knotted at the top.

This bag was placed inside a black garbage bag which was then placed inside a black canvas duffel bag that was placed inside the other blue rubber made tote bin. Lots and lots of bags inside of bags inside of bags. Also in that same blue rubber made tote bin was the remains of baby number three with a similar story. Another little boy born full term umbilical cord attached and wrapped in towels inside a plastic kitchen bag knotted at the top. This was placed inside a maroon gym bag along with soiled and decomposing clothing and maggots. All that remained of this baby were skeletal remains. Also in the rubber made tote bin with the two infant remains were a stack of receipts, an infant shirt and socks and a woman's blouse. The police opened up one of the laundry pails.

This one was yellow and contained the remains of baby number four who was a girl and also born at full term. While most of the body tissue was intact, her organs had started to decompose. Similar to the others, she was also found inside a white plastic shopping bag that had been wrapped inside a brown bath towel and placed inside a kitchen sized garbage bag that had been knotted at the top. The bag had been wrapped in another towel and placed inside another garbage bag which was then all placed into the five gallon laundry pail. In the second laundry pail was the remains of baby number five, a boy gestational age of 34 to 37 weeks which would be considered slightly premature. But clearly the person responsible for this had decided to do something different. This baby was encased within a disk of concrete light material. The laundry pail and the concrete disk had to be cut open to access the remains.

The remains were mostly liquefied but the concrete had set on an impression of the body. In the third and last laundry pail was the remains of baby number six yet another boy 35 to 38 weeks gestation and again a new way of storing the remains. This baby boy was found at the bottom of the laundry pail covered in a large amount of white detergent like powder that had hardened. The baby's body had decomposed but with significant desiccation which is the state of extreme dryness or mummification. At the very bottom of the pail was a plastic shopping bag which contained the placenta. So the remains of five boys and one girl had been found in the storage locker. And we'll just take a quick break for a word from our sponsor. Confession time. I'm a pretty crappy cook. Don't get me wrong.

I can put a basic nutritious meal together without burning anything but my meals are pretty boring, uninventive and repetitive. So when Hello Fresh Canada said they were supporting my show I literally jumped for joy. I actually got a break for a few nights. I came home from work to fresh ingredients that had been pre-measured and easy to follow recipe card and I knew the meal would only take me around 30 minutes to cook which is pretty much all the time I have. Our favourite meal this week was south-western style pork fajitas with tomato lime salsa and cheddar cheese. The kids went nuts for this and I can confidently say the Hello Fresh meals have been a family highlight for us. We're getting a break from the same boring old meals and they give me a bit of a mental break which really means a lot.

Try Hello Fresh and you can get 50% off your first box. Just visit HelloFresh.ca and enter my special promo code when you subscribe. Crime50. That's HelloFresh.ca and Crime50. You won't be disappointed. And thanks to my sponsors for supporting me and the show. The next priority was to figure out who the parents of these babies were. Forensics specialists were able to build DNA profiles from the tissue, organ and bone samples taken from the infant remains. All they needed now were samples from possible matches to test in comparison. During the police search of Andrea's house they found a used sanitary napkin in a garbage bin which they were able to use for DNA comparison

and Andrea's husband also provided a blood sample. Test results concluded there was strong evidence that five of the babies were conceived by Andrea and her husband and moderately strong evidence that the sixth also belonged to them both. A forensic biologist determined that the odds of anyone else being the parents were in the billions if not trillions. Basically it would be extremely rare. So Andrea Giesbrecht and her husband of 17 years Jeremy were the parents of all six babies. How did they come to be in the storage locker? Did Jeremy know they were there? Was he in on it?

And if not where did he think the babies his wife gave birth to had gone? After seven months behind bars Andrea was released on bail for the amount of $15,000. The strict conditions of the bail detailed that she had to be under a 24-hour curfew and not drink alcohol or gamble. She had to attend gambless anonymous meetings four times a week and report any pregnancies to authorities. In January of 2016 Andrea Giesbrecht appeared in court again this time for her breach of probation charge and also a new fraud charge. She pled guilty to both. She admitted she had attended a casino after her probation order just three weeks before her arrest. And she also admitted she had defrauded Manitoba's Employment and Income Assistance Program of over $5,000.

In 2011 and 2012 she had provided the MEIA with information she knew was false in order to receive payment from them. She used a different lawyer for these charges who said her crippling gambling addiction had caused her to lose more than $650,000 so far. Her sentencing for this wouldn't take place until later on. Andrea Giesbrecht's trial began three months later in April 2016. This was the largest case in Canadian legal history involving so many charges of concealing infant remains. Andrea was charged under Section 243 of the Criminal Code which states that it is a crime to dispose of the body of a dead child with intent to conceal the delivery, regardless of whether the child died before, during or after birth. A couple of other cases in Canada have involved similar charges and legal experts questioned how these precedents might come into play with the case of Andrea Giesbrecht.

Let's take a slight detour and go over three of these cases. In January of 2010, 22-year-old Courtney Dawn Taylor gave birth to a baby boy in Surrey, British Columbia. She continuously denied that she was pregnant, even to her boyfriend and family. She finally gave birth to the baby boy at her boyfriend's house in his bathroom while he was asleep. Straight away she took a shower, leaned up the blood in the bathroom, then woke up her boyfriend telling him that the baby was stillborn with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. Courtney insisted that they should get rid of the baby's body before the remains would start to decompose and smell. Together they wrapped the remains in a towel and placed it in a garbage bag which they threw into a dumpster at a nearby school. Courtney then smoked marijuana and took a nap.

The crime was only brought to the attention of the police when one of Courtney's co-workers noticed that she'd suddenly lost a lot of weight, even though she'd only missed one day of work and seemed to be her normal sociable self. Police confronted her and her boyfriend and it wasn't too long before they found out what happened to the baby. After a three day long search of a landfill, police eventually found the remains of the baby. Police had originally recommended a charge of infanticide, which is the intentional killing of an infant, but investigators were never able to determine the cause of the baby's death. So Courtney was charged with disposing of a body which she pleaded guilty to. Her boyfriend wasn't charged.

At trial, the judge said she couldn't find within a reasonable doubt that Courtney knew she was pregnant before she gave birth, so she was only sentenced to six months house arrest, 50 hours of community service and two years probation. A pre-sentencing report said that Courtney showed no remorse for what had happened. In March of 2007, 27-year-old Becky Sue Morrow of Old Ridge, New Brunswick, tried to conceal the second of two pregnancies, claiming she was embarrassed about it. The first baby she gave birth to was not in her custody at the time. With the second baby, she went into labor while she was sitting on the toilet and then put the body of her baby son in a box. Later on, she set up a bonfire in her backyard with the help of gasoline, telling her sister that she wanted to roast some hot dogs.

The box containing the body of her son was also burnt in the fire. Becky's roommate had become suspicious of her behavior and sudden weight loss and with some friends inspected the backyard, which is where they made the grisly discovery. Becky pleaded guilty to charges of committing an indignity to a dead human body and disposing of the dead body of a child with the intent to conceal its birth. She said the baby was stillborn, but an autopsy wasn't able to confirm this because of the burnt state of the remains. The judge sentenced her to a 14-month conditional sentence, which is where the offender serves the sentence outside of jail under strict jail-like conditions. In the ruling, the judge said Becky might have been suffering from a mental disorder when she delivered the baby, but probably wasn't when she decided to burn the body and hide the remains, so she was criminally responsible for her actions. As part of her conditional sentence, Becky would spend the first two months under house arrest, and for the remainder of the sentence, she would undergo counseling, have parole authorities approve of where she was living, and she wasn't permitted to go out in the community without supervision. The year before that, 2006, saw a slightly different case from Mississauga, Ontario. 23-year-old Ivana Levkovic gave birth to a baby girl at approximately 36 weeks gestation.

Remember, a full-term pregnancy is 37 to 41 weeks. The body of the baby was found by the superintendent of her apartment complex, who found it wrapped in a towel inside a bag on the balcony of the apartment that Ivana had just vacated. The superintendent called the police, who announced the discovery through the media. Four days later, Ivana turned herself in, saying that she'd fallen inside her home, which caused the birth of a stillborn baby. According to witness testimony, Ivana had been trying to have her pregnancy terminated for a while, but no clinic would perform the procedure because the pregnancy was too far along. Ivana herself admitted that she'd taken a lot of drugs during her pregnancy. The medical examiner wasn't able to determine if the baby was born alive or not, but the criminal code section 243 prohibits concealing the body of a child who has died, whether the death occurred before, during, or after birth. Two key terms in this section would be a subject of legal wranglings that would last for over a decade and end up in the Supreme Court of Canada. When it came to a death that occurred before birth, what was the definition of the body of a child? What was the moment on the gestational spectrum when a fetus turns into the body of a child before birth for the purpose of that law?

Section 243 did not identify this moment. This is also the point where a miscarriage that is not captured by this section becomes a stillbirth, which is. So obviously it was important in Ivana's case to have that line defined, and it wasn't. Additionally, Ivana argued that the law was, in effect, an infringement of her right as outlined in Section 7 of the Charter of Canada. That's the right to liberty and security of a person, which protects every woman's right not to disclose a naturally failed pregnancy. Ivana's arguments held up and she was acquitted, but the Court of Appeal overturned that and ordered a new trial. Ivana appealed this decision and the case ended up in the Supreme Court of Canada in 2013, but it upheld the Court of Appeals decision. The Supreme Court ruled that in regards to a child that had died before birth and in relation to the charge of concealing the body of that child, quote, a conviction would only lie where the crown proves that the child to the knowledge of the accused would likely have been born alive.

So this ruling was intended to clarify that in relation to Section 243, the transition point between miscarriage and stillbirth is later on in a pregnancy. Although this is more information than was given previously, the situation proved to be extremely complex and still not clearly defined. The Supreme Court of Canada was being careful not to enter the abortion debate and in fact skirted around the issue completely. But regardless, Ivana's situation was still captured under this ruling because she maintained she'd had a stillbirth as a result of falling over, therefore meaning her baby was classified as a child, not a fetus, so she would go on trial again for concealing the body of that child. The following year, at Ivana's new trial, her conviction was completely overturned. Although in her statement to the police, Ivana indicated that she gave birth to a stillborn baby spontaneously after she'd fallen, Justice Tony Scarraca concluded that there was a reasonable possibility that Ivana had performed a self-induced pregnancy termination before concealing the remains.

And the termination of a pregnancy is not captured by Section 243. Remember, the Supreme Court of Canada had sidestepped the abortion debate. But the judge made it clear he was not happy with this new legal landscape. His judgement said, quote, The practical effect of the law, as I interpret it, is that any woman can destroy her near term or term fetus and can induce an abortion accordingly and do what she will with the remains without risking any criminal sanctions. He went on to say that while he found the conclusion, quote, deeply disturbing and disgusting at any moral level, he said that he was still bound by the law as per the Supreme Court's decision. So obviously, these case rulings would come into play with the trial of Andrea Giesbrecht.

The judge would need to decide whether the babies died before or after birth. If after birth, then the situation was clearer. Each baby would be considered a child for the purpose of Section 243. But if the babies died before birth, were they likely to have been born alive? And was there evidence to suggest they were stillborn, which would capture Andrea's case, or died via self-induced pregnancy termination, which would see her acquitted? As you can see, it's extremely complicated and there are a lot of grey areas. Do you have a passion project that you're ready to take to the next level?

SquareSpace makes it easy for anyone to create an engaging web presence, grow a brand and sell anything from your products to the content you create and even your time. When I launched this passion project six years ago, I needed some kind of online hub to manage all the non-podcasting tasks that come with podcasting. I chose SquareSpace because it's an all-in-one platform that seamlessly helps me achieve multiple goals. It's important to have a website that looks good and I was inspired by SquareSpace's wide selection of clean and modern templates. They can be easily customized with pre-built layouts and flexible design tools to fit your needs. And you can even browse the category of your business to see examples of what others have done. I use the built-in blogging tools to create a new page for each episode and there are so many intuitive options from embedding an audio player so listeners can stream episodes to scheduling posts to be published on a certain date, an easily moderated comment section and automatically displaying recent episodes on the home page.

Every SquareSpace website and online store includes SEO tools to help you maximize your visibility in search engines. And I love the powerful insights I can get from the analytics tools, helping me better understand who's visiting the site, where they came from and how they're interacting with it. Do you have a passion project or business idea or something to sell? Go to squarespace.com.ctc for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, use offer code CTC to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com.ctc with offer code CTC and get your passion project off the ground today. Back to the case of Ivana Levkovic. Curiously, the abandoned body of the infant on the balcony wasn't the only deceased infant that she'd gone to court about. In 2010, in the middle of all the other legal wranglings, Ivana was acquitted of concealing another deceased baby, although this was alleged to have happened in 2002, several years before the balcony incident. The situation only came to light after Ivana's former partner decided the police needed to know, likely after he saw her later legal struggles.

He said she gave birth on the toilet to a baby that wasn't full term, waited for the baby to pass away naturally, and then put the body in a garbage bag in their freezer. After three years, the witness said he then asked a friend of his to toss the remains into a creek. The remains weren't ever found. Ivana told a different story, saying that she suffered a painful miscarriage and the baby wasn't moving when it was born. The judge acquitted her this time too, with the ruling stating that the evidence showed that Ivana had a miscarriage, not a stillbirth. And as we now know, miscarriage refers to a fetus and not a child, so Ivana couldn't be accused of concealing the body of a child. Back to the trial. Now 42 years old, Andrea pleaded not guilty to hiding the remains of six babies inside the storage locker. There had been a publication ban in the lead up to the trial, so the wider community was eager to finally have answers to their many questions.

What were the circumstances behind the deaths of the babies? How long had they been there for? Were they alive when they'd been born? What sort of mental state was Andrea Giesbrecht in? And why didn't she just pay the overdue storage bill, since she would have known it was close to being declared delinquent, cleaned out and her secret discovered? Andrea opted for a judge only trial, meaning she decided against being judged by a jury of her peers. She sat quietly in the front row, stoic, with her dyed red hair pulled into a bun. A neonatologist at the Children's Hospital and the University of Manitoba, Dr Michael Navi, testified that the infant bodies were so decomposed that he wasn't able to confirm their cause of death. He said that the babies were all, quote, structurally normal, without genetic abnormalities, and had been born between 34 to 42 weeks of pregnancy, which is full term or close to full term. Dr Sharon Nogla, the head of obstetrics at the Health Sciences Centre, testified that medically it would be, quote, extremely improbable for a mother to bear six stillborn children, with the odds being 1.5 in 100 trillion. In fact, when you take into consideration that all six of these babies were born close to or at least full term, the odds increase exponentially. Dr Nogla said, quote, any way you look at it, it is astronomically small. I would say medically impossible, just impossible, that they were all stillborn.

This meant that it was likely at least some, if not all, of the babies had been born alive. What happened to them? Dr Nogla went on to say that lab records from Andrea's pregnancy with her second son in 2002 said there were no signs she would have any problems with a future pregnancy. She also clarified that it's impossible for anyone to kill an unborn full term fetus without causing major harm to the mother. This was in reference to the possibility of a late term self induced pregnancy termination. The court heard from the employees of several different storage companies. The employee of another storage company testified. This storage company had rented a locker to Andrea before she rented the one at the U-Haul. The employee, Kate, said she first started dealing with Andrea in 1999. She kept up the rental of that locker for eight or 10 years, but only accessed the locker several times during that entire period. Kate testified that Andrea had begun making late payments from the first month she'd rented the locker and was continuously late. But obviously, she'd kept up with just enough payments so that her locker wouldn't go into delinquency.

Kate said she saw the contents of the locker once. It was two rubber-made totes with lids on and one laundry pail. Remember, at the later time the U-Haul locker contents were discovered, there were three laundry pails. Kate said that it was unusual to need that much space for so few items. Andrea had no explanation, but did tell several staff members that the bins were full of things she couldn't keep at home, like jewellery. Andrea moved her items out of the locker in 2008 and came back to the same place to rent a locker again in 2010, presumably until she moved her possessions to U-Haul, where their contents were eventually discovered. Also to testify were two employees from U-Haul. They said Andrea had rented a heated second floor unit in March 2014 under her maiden name, Andrea Nawanski. They did have unheated units for sale for less expense, but Andrea chose the pricier heated one. Then she went on to default on all of her rental payments for seven months until it was declared a delinquent account and the shocking discovery was made. And that's where we're going to leave things for Part 1.

Part 2 is not far behind this time and will be released in just a week's time, so you won't have to wait as long. In Part 2, we'll continue the trial and hear what Andrea's friends, husband and oldest son have to say about her behavior and state of mind. We'll also find out whether there was an explanation for why those babies were kept in the storage locker. A huge, huge thank you to my good friend Justie for helping me untangle the legal minefield related to the case of Ivana Levkovic. I am definitely not a lawyer and for good reason. If you wanted to discuss the case so far, feel free to join me in the Facebook discussion group. Just search for Canadian True Crime. A huge thanks to my wonderful moderators for helping me out, Karen R, Karen S, Maggie D and Kim A. You guys rock. Also on the next episode, I'll be making an exciting announcement, so make sure you tune in for that.

Thanks for listening and special thanks to Taylor for recommending this case to me quite a while ago now. This week's podcast suggestion is from my friends Laura and Brooke at the Fall Line, who are doing important work in bringing awareness to crimes that happened within marginalized communities in the U.S. state of Georgia. The Fall Line is a true crime audio serial that investigates cold cases in marginalized Southeastern communities. Our first season, which has just been re-recorded, edited and re-released, covered the case of missing Augusta Georgia twins Danette and Jeanette Milbrook, who disappeared in 1990. In season 1.5, we covered the 1989 disappearance of Brunswick Georgia siblings Monica and Michael Bennett. Our second season, premiering in spring 2018, is our biggest yet. The story of multiple infants stolen from an Atlanta hospital, Grady Memorial, a facility that has been identified as having the highest newborn abduction rate in the nation. Two of those children are still missing today. We hope you'll join us as we search for answers in the cases of Tavish Sutton and Raymond Greene and cover the stories of the babies who were eventually found and discover why so many have disappeared from Grady in the first place.

Our season preview drops February 20th and we hope you'll tune in. There's a couple of ways to support this podcast if you want to. Tell a friend, leave me a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app, or support my sponsors. And if you'd like to receive an early ad-free version of my episodes, it costs just $2 a month on Patreon. Head to Patreon.com slash Canadian True Crime. Thank you so much to everyone who's taken the time to leave a review or send me an encouraging message lately. It means so much to hear from you. And thanks also to this group of patrons. This episode of the Canadian True Crime Podcast was researched and written by me with audio production and scoring by Eric Crosby.

I'll be back soon with part two. See you then. Thank you for watching.