WARNING: This story contains graphic content. Discretion is advised.
WINNIPEG — The trial resumed Monday for 42-year-old Andrea Giesbrecht: the Winnipeg woman accused of concealing the bodies of six dead infants in a storage locker.
On Monday, court heard graphic details from Dr. Raymond Rivera, a pathologist who performed the autopsies on all six babies in October 2014, shortly after they were discovered.
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Rivera, who has performed around 1,200 autopsies, said placentas and attached umbilical cords were found with most of the remains but some had deteriorated so much it was impossible to determine the gender.
The first baby, one of the least decomposed, was found in a white plastic bag within a blue backpack.
“Within the bag was the body of a male infant,” said Rivera. “As well as an umbilical cord and a placenta.”
The doctor said while the baby was full term, it was unclear if the child was stillborn or born alive because of the level of decomposition.
“A lot of the tissue had started to collapse on themselves or fall off,” Rivera said, adding that the the brain had liquefied.
The second baby, also a male, was described as having “total tissue disintegration of the tissues from the head with the skull bones coming completely apart from each other.”
Rivera described the third baby as being skeletal remains for the most part and unable to determine its gender or “even assess for life after death.”
The fourth baby, a female, was near full term, at 35 weeks, with a lot of missing tissue and disintegration.
“Although there was no evidence to indicate life after birth my assessment was severely hampered by the decomposition of the body,” said Rivera.
The sex of the fifth baby was unable to be determined and there was extreme disintegration.
The sixth baby, and third male infant found, was also described as full term and was found in a pail with powdery material. According to Rivera, the powder halted decomposition but dried out the body and left it rock hard.
READ MORE: Winnipeg woman accused of concealing 6 dead infants likely the mother: Forensic biologist
The trial has already heard that Giesbrecht had nine legal abortions over the years, as well as one miscarriage. She also is the mother to two teenage boys with her husband, Jeremy Giesbrecht.
Defence lawyer Greg Brodsky has raised the idea that Giesbrecht may have had a medical issue that prevented her from carrying a baby to term in the years since her last child, now a teenager, was born.
“You can’t say in any of these cases that there was a live birth or a stillbirth,” he posed to Rivera.
“That’s correct,” the doctor replied.
“I can’t tell definitively…if the infants one to six were still born or live born due to the degree of composition of the bodies,” Rivera said during cross examination.
He said the gestation age of the remains was determined by measurement, and had to call in an anthropologist to examine the remains because there was nothing to autopsy.
That anthropologist, Dr. Emily Holland from Brandon University, testified she examined four out of the six remains and helped to determine their age at time of death.
She said they appeared at or near full-term based on the development of teeth and the way the skull bones had fused.
The Crown has yet to suggest a motive for the alleged crime.
The remains were discovered by employees of the storage company after fees went unpaid on the locker where they had been kept.
READ MORE: Gruesome details emerge of infant bodies in Winnipeg storage locker
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