A Minnesota woman accused of torturing her three young children now faces an additional charge of attempted murder after investigators uncovered a message she sent to a friend saying she was planning the death of the one of the children because they couldn’t be treated by medical professionals.
Jorden Nicole Borders was initially charged on November 21, 2022, with child torture and stalking. The charges indicated that Borders tortured the children by withdrawing blood, forcing them to wear casts and neck braces despite having no injuries, and inflicting physical abuse as a punishment, according to the Brainerd Dispatch.
In the amended complaint filed on Friday, prosecutors said that Borders claimed her son was at the end of his life and needed hospice care, although none of her statements “are supported by [the child’s] medical records.”
“Despite a clear understanding regarding the risk to (the child’s) life if he were to experience a serious blood and/or central line infection, (Borders) engaged in conduct which repeatedly introduced these infections,” the amended complaint says. “In May, 2022, during (the child’s) final hospitalization prior to being placed in court ordered foster care, (Borders) demanded medical procedures that, if performed, would have created an increased risk of more serious infection, which may have resulted in (the child’s) death. Medical care providers repeatedly refused (Borders’) demands.”
Borders reportedly messaged several people regarding making plans for the child’s end of life decisions and even claimed he “was on a ventilator and that they wouldn’t know the cause of his medical issues until after completion of an autopsy.”
It was around this time that medical professionals began seriously questioning what was going on with Borders’ children, particularly the 9-year-old boy, who was subjected to a number of surgeries, procedures, and test over three years, none of which clarified his condition. Doctors from several health care systems began pooling their information and began to suspect that Borders was causing or fabricating his illnesses.
The concerns were not limited to the 9-year-old. According to complaint, Borders had self-diagnosed two other children — an 11-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl, with osteogenesis imperfecta, known as brittle bones disease. According to the complaint, the 11-year-old was in a cast for two years of his life, KMSP reported.
In interviews with autorities, all three children described multiple types of physical and emotional abuse. Crow Wing County put the 9-year-old into protective custody in May 2022, while authorities monitored the other two children before they were removed from the home in July. Borders was only allowed supervised contact with the children after that time.
After the charges were filed in November, she was barred contact with anyone under 18. Two weeks after the charges were filed, Borders and her husband, Christopher Martin Badowicz, terminated their parental rights during a hearing.
The attempted murder charge is the second amendment to the complaint against Borders. in March, prosecutors added four counts of theft related to fraudulently obtaining money for medical costs from the state of Minnesota.
Although authorities have not mentioned it, the doctors who were handling the cases of the children were concerned about a potential diagnosis of Munchausen syndrome by proxy for Borders, a rare mental health condition in which a caretaker makes up symptom or causes symptoms to create the appearance of illness in a child, the Dispatch said.
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[Featured image: Jorden Borders/handout]
