Appeal hearing Wednesday for Winnipeg woman convicted of hiding infant remains

An appeal hearing was held Wednesday for a Winnipeg woman who was convicted of hiding the remains of six babies in a rented storage locker.

Andrea Giesbrecht was sentenced in July to 8.5 years in prison for concealing the remains.

Her trial was told she had conceived the babies over many years and put the remains in plastic bags and containers inside a U-Haul storage locker.

They were discovered by workers who opened the locker in October 2014 after Giesbrecht fell behind on her payments.

The hearing lasted some six hours, with a brief recess early in the day and a 1.5 hour break for lunch.

Following closing remarks, the judges reserved their decision until a later date.

WATCH: The Crown and Defence share arguments in the appeal hearing Wednesday

1:57 ‘I don’t think she’d keep the bodies on her mantel’: Lawyer argues preservation in Giesbrecht case

• ‘I don’t think she’d keep the bodies on her mantel’: Lawyer argues preservation in Giesbrecht case
• Defence argues for consecutive over concurrent sentencing in Giesbrecht case
• Crown Attorney slams defence argument that Winnipeg woman guilty of hiding infant remains may have wanted to ‘visit’
• Crown Attorney cites ‘overwhelming evidence’ that babies in Giesbrecht case were born alive

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Giesbrecht never testified and the trial never heard a motive for her actions.

Giesbrecht’s lawyer, Greg Brodsky, argued she was saving the bodies of the fetuses, not disposing of them.

Provincial court Judge Murray Thompson called her moral culpability extreme and said Giesbrecht knew she had medical options but chose not to access them.

The trial was told she made an effort to hide her pregnancies from everyone, including her husband, and that the babies would have been at or near full-term.

Medical experts testified during her trial that the infants were likely to have been born alive, but the remains were too decomposed to determine how they died.