Judge To Rule If Grandmother Was Insane In Baby Murder Trial

OAK LAWN, IL -- A Cook County judge is set to rule Wednesday if an Oak Lawn woman was legally insane when she allegedly bludgeoned and slit the throat of her infant granddaughter in October 2013. Testimony wrapped up in the two-day bench trial of Alfreda Giedrojc, 67, who is charged with the first-degree murder of 6-month-old Vivian Summers. Experts for the defense painted a troubling portrait of Giedrojc’s slow descent into mental illness up until the day when she allegedly murdered the Bolingbrook infant.

Looking frail and wearing a blue Cook County Jail uniform, Giedrojc sat listening to a Polish interpreter translate testimony during a two-day bench trial before Cook County Judge Colleen Hyland. According to prosecutors, on Oct. 6, 2013, while the baby was left briefly in her grandmother’s care, Giedrojc laid the sleeping infant on the living room floor before taking a sledgehammer and bringing it down on the baby’s head. When her granddaughter would not stop moving, prosecutors said that Giedrojc used a knife to slit the baby’s throat. Giedrojc allegedly described the horrific acts in an emotionless videotaped statement to Oak Lawn police after she was arrested. Her assistant public defender, David Dunne, argued that because of her mental illness, Giedrojc could not have appreciated nor recognized that what she was doing was dreadfully and tragically wrong.

Dr. Mathew Markos, director of forensic clinical services for the Circuit Court of Cook County, testified for the defense that Giedrojc had an extensive history of psychiatric illness, including two psychiatric hospitalizations. Beginning in the fall of 2011, her family noticed Giedrojc becoming increasingly withdrawn. Giedrojc stopped cooking, a hobby she had always enjoyed in the past, and going to church. When Giedrojc’s mother in Poland became ill, Giedrojc began “expressing delusions” that her mother’s medical bills weren’t being paid. Giedrojc feared she would be jailed by Polish authorities, despite reassurances by her family that her mother’s medical bills were being taken care of.

Giedrojc also made a serious suicide attempt in February 2012, when she drank an entire bottle of Polish moonshine and was found unconscious on the floor by her husband. Her blood-alcohol-content was .356, Markos said. Giedrojc was hospitalized in the psychiatric unit at Advocate Christ Medical Center. A month later, her family because alarmed when she asked her son if he could get her a gun so she could commit suicide. She was admitted to Lakeshore Hospital for psychiatric treatment.

In early 2013, Giedrojc quit her job at Walmart where she had worked for ten years. She believed the government would take away her house. Spending the days watching television, her daughter described her mother as a “lump on a log.” Giedrojc also stopped showering and taking care of herself. Giedrojc allegedly began hiding weapons around the house, including an axe which she hid behind the furnace. The night before her granddaughter’s death, she went to the garage and retrieved a sledgehammer which she hid in her bedroom closet, according to the charges.

On Oct, 6, 2013, when Giedrojc’s son-in-law, Joel Summers, brought baby Vivian to his in-laws’ Oak Lawn home, the infant was put down for a nap on the living room couch. Summers went across the street to his brother-in-law’s house to help with a home improvement project. Because the baby was sleeping, Boleslaw thought it would be okay to leave the house for a few minutes while he went across the street, even though it was the family’s practice not to leave Giedrojc alone with Vivian or another grandchild. It was during this “ten-minute window of opportunity” when Giedrojc is said to have murdered her granddaughter.

Markos said he interviewed Giedrojc three times during her incarceration at Cook County Jail as she awaited trial, as well as reviewed her medical records and Oak Lawn police reports. She reportedly told Markos that she wasn’t mad at the baby, that her granddaughter was a good baby. Giedrojc didn’t know why she put the the sledgehammer in her bedroom. She is said to have told Oak Lawn police that there were “bad thoughts” in her head.

“It was important for me to find an explanation for her irrational behavior and collection of weapons around the house,” Markos said. “I could not come up with a rational reason for her to do this. It was very bizarre.”

Upon his third and final examination of Giedrojc in December 2017, Markos said there was no change in Giedrojc’s demeanor, whom he described as “stuffing her feelings.”

“It’s well known that major depression is associated with aggressive impulses turned inward,” he said. “Sometimes aggression can be turned outward and the risk increases with the progression of the illness.”

Based on his evaluations, it was Markos’ recommendation to the court that Giedrojc was legally insane when she murdered her baby granddaughter.

Dr. Christofer Cooper, chief of psychology for Cook County Forensic Clinical Services, described his interviews with Giedrojc as “arduous.” Cooper said that while cooperative in interviews with the aid of a Polish interpreter, Giedrojc’s responses were “brief” and “vague.”

“I asked very pointed questions,” Cooper said. There was no indication that she was feigning illness or malingering. I asked her hundreds of questions. She was in a severely depressed and compromised state at the time of the incident.”

In his closing arguments, Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Michael Deeno said the evidence showed that Giedrojc knew that what she was doing was wrong; that if she tried to hurt Vivian or her other grandchild, the men in the house that morning -- Boleslaw, Summers or her son -- would have stopped her. So she waited until they left and she was alone with the baby.

“Why did she have to hide the sledgehammer,” Deeno said. “She didn’t put it out in the open knowing the next day Vivian would be coming with her father. She told doctors she knew she’d be arrested. She knew what she was doing was criminally wrong.”

Dunne, the assistant public defender, said he was in the unusual position of having to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Giedrojc was legally insane when Giedrojc allegedly killed her granddaughter. As Giedrojc was seen washing the bloody knife, to her thinking, it was a dirty knife.

“What happened was awful, there’s no getting around it,” Dunne said. “She didn’t run away. Dr. Markos said she was struggling with aggressive impulses and without any warning those aggressive impulses erupted.”

Hyland is expected to rule Wednesday if Giedrojc is guilty or not guilty by reason of insanity.