WARNING: This story contains graphic content. Discretion is advised.
CALGARY – Graphic confessions in a video-taped undercover sting operation were shown in court on Monday in the first-degree murder trial of stepmother Marie Magoon and father Spencer Jordan. The two are accused in the Nov. 2011 death of six-year-old Meika Jordan.
An Oct. 2012 video targets Magoon in an undercover police operation, and shows her meeting with someone she believes to be a “crime boss” who will help her deal with the criminal charges she would end up facing. In reality, it’s an undercover police officer.
“I burnt her with a lighter,” says Magoon in the video. “Not proud of it, but that’s what happened.”
Magoon had previously told police Meika had burned her hand with a flat iron.
In the video, the undercover officer tells Magoon she needs to come clean if she wants his help, and she slowly reveals graphic details—sometimes admitting her actions, and sometimes blaming Meika’s father, Spencer Jordan.
“She wasn’t doing what she was told and it was upsetting Spencer and Spencer pushed her, pushed her pretty hard,” says Magoon in the video.
“I was just standing over top of her, holding her hands and kind of—more of a getting mad and shaking, you know what I mean?” she says later.
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In the video, Magoon admits to tripping and kicking Meika down the stairs, telling the undercover officer she hit her head.
“She would run up the stairs and I’d-I’d I would do it on purpose to trip her when she was running from first set to the other set…and when she was running up and down the stairs but she didn’t want to, I’d kick her…she fell down the stairs, right, because of me a couple of times and it was my fault.”
“Okay, and did she hit her head?” asks the undercover officer.
“Oh, yeah,” says Magoon.
Meika died of blunt force trauma to her head after four days of abuse. Magoon was arrested and charged the day after this undercover interview was recorded.
Magoon ended the video by saying she didn’t hate her stepdaughter.
“It bugs me that people perceive it as uh, the Cinderella syndrome…the mean, evil stepmother who hated Meika and I beat her until from the day she died until the end because she wasn’t mine. And it wasn’t like that.”
The video obtained through the undercover operation is part of a voir dire; the judge has yet to rule if it will be submitted as evidence. The trial is expected to continue for another three weeks.
READ MORE: Stepmother denies killing Meika Jordan in police interrogation video
With files from Erika Tucker
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