A Less Than Genius Murder Plot - Gulfport, Mississippi

This week, in Gulfport, Mississippi, it's a race to find a woman who was snatched from her home before it's too late, as her husband takes ransom calls and the police set up roadblocks everywhere, but will any of it matter, or will this seemingly bloodthirsty kidnapper jump right to murder if he gets impatient? Welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yay! Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petrogallo. I'm here with my co-host.

I'm Jimmy Wissman. Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today. You did it. An absolutely crazy edition of Small Town Murder. As usual, this one is just wild. Great. I love when it's like a moment-by-moment narrative. That's fun stuff. So we're going to get into all of that and more. First, though, definitely head over to ShutUpAndGiveMeMurder.com. You need to get your tickets for live shows. The live shows are amazing. It is a comedy show with a murder story. I have no idea what you're missing out on. Tons of pictures. It's amazing. We're so proud of the live shows. We can't wait for you to come out. You can come out in Milwaukee on September 18th at the Pabst. You can come to the next night at the State Theater in Minneapolis on the 19th. It's going to be amazing. It's going to be amazing.

Amazing stuff. Pabst, not a lot of tickets left there for me. Milwaukee. Then we got Dallas in October. We got San Jose, Sacramento, Tarrytown, and Boston in November. So get in there, get your tickets. Shut up and give me murder.com. Also all the merch and everything like that is there as well. So do that. It's going to be great. Also listen to our other two shows, Crime in Sports, which we promise you, you don't have to like sports. We promise. You just have to like hearing us make fun of a person who completely screwed their life up and didn't have to. That's all. It's a lot of fun. That's it. And then also your stupid opinions is just amazing.

You never thought you'd want to hear what someone's deep, dark opinion of a laundromat was, but you do for some reason. It's crazy. So check that out. Then get yourself Patreon. You need Patreon. Patreon.com slash crime in sports is where you get all the bonus material. All you have to be is $5 a month and you get everything we put out. Every last little thing, including as soon as you subscribe, almost 400 back bonus episodes. So much. Immediately upon subscription, then you can binge that whole feed. Then you get new ones every other week, one crime in sports, one small town murder, and you get them all, everybody. All of it, sure. This week, which you're going to get. It is time again. I'm so excited. Love after lockup time. God.

It's back, everybody. It's been amazing these seasons. Even if you haven't watched them, we will describe them in beautiful, colorful detail for you. So you might not even have to. But check it out. It's on Peacock now. And it's great. Thank God for Peacock. The cock has come through for us on this one, thankfully. So we're excited for that. It goes hand in hand with the prisoner dating game and everything. So why not there? Patreon.com slash crime in sports. And in addition to all the stuff you get, you also get everything we put out. Crime and sports, your stupid opinion, small town murder. All ad free with that Patreon as well. Not bad at all. And you get a shout out at the end of the show. Can't beat it, everybody. So that said, I'll tell you what. Disclaimer time.

It's a comedy show, everybody. This is a comedy show. We're comedians. We're going to make jokes. And as you can tell by the title of the show, people are going to die. That's how it works here. There's really no other way to do it. And you go, well, how does that work? Pretty easily. Pretty easy. There's plenty of stuff to make fun of.

Plenty of stuff. That's right. Plenty of stuff to make fun of. We make fun of a small town because we're all from somewhere that deserves to be made fun of. Nobody's above that. We'll make fun of a police force that lets a murderer just go free so they can kill more. We'll make fun of murderers because- Why not? Why not? What recourse do we have? That's all. We can't go down to the jail and take their commissary away. I can make fun of them. Sure would love to. That's all we can do. So that's it. And that's how it works. But the thing we don't do, what we never do, is we don't make fun of the victims or the victims' families. Why, James? Because we're assholes. But- But we're not scumbags.

See how it works? It's pretty simple. I'll tell you. It's a pretty simple formula here. But if you think true crime and comedy should never, ever go together and this is super weird, maybe we're not for you. But maybe we are. What I would say is check it out. Give it a chance. And then either way, no complaining later. How's that? Because we warned you. There you go. That said, I think it's time, everybody. All right. What do you say? Let's sit back here. Clear the lungs. Arms to the sky. Let's all shout.

Shut up and give me murder. Let's do this, everybody. Okay. Let's go on a trip, shall we? Yeah. We're going to Mississippi today. Fuck. We're going complete opposite of where we were last week in the Pacific Northwest and going to the southeast and as southeast as you can get pretty much as south anyway because it's Gulfport, Mississippi, which is on the Gulf. It is down there. The mud.

It's a muddy one. It's a muddy one. Down in the big muddy here. It is. This is in coastal Mississippi, obviously, Gulfport. It's about an hour and 20 to New Orleans if you go west, and about an hour and 10 to Mobile, Alabama if you go east. So that's where it is. It's about four hours and five minutes to Starkville, Mississippi, our last Mississippi episode, episode 677, Worse Than Murder. That was the episode where the people had gone on the Montel Williams show. It was memorable. It was very memorable for that. I'll tell you. This is in Harrison County, area code 228, and it has a motto. We have a town motto here, quote, anchored in excellence.

Oh, I thought you were going to say something about ankle deep. That's the mud. I was going to say the alternate one is anchored in shitloads of mud, but that's not as popular. Can't move because we're stuck in the mud. Ankle deep. Get ankle deep in. Get ankle deep in Gulfport. That's a good. That's a good advertising campaign, but much better than a great place to live, work and play. So Gulfport, Mississippi had two villages that predated the founding of Gulfport here. One was Hansborough and one was Mississippi City.

Okay. There you go. That's too many syllables. That's a lot. That's a lot of syllables there, man. A lot of syllables. It was founded in the 1800s along the northern bayous. The Mississippi City was born out of the Mississippi City Company that was formed in 1837 to build a town to serve as basically the little headquarters for the railroad there. So it's another one of these railroad things. But then they were like, hey, people like sitting by the water too. There is that. And that's what they get. You have to be in the city at least beyond the water. Yeah, why not? So then they were later, there's another company later was organized and they wanted to connect the railroad from the town of Hattiesburg to the coast.

And this one guy steered away from Mississippi City because there wasn't a lot of deep water there. Right. And selected the site of Gulfport and the town was founded that year. Then the project went bankrupt and the town was a ghost town. This is in 1893. There was nobody here anymore. It was over.

Gulfport was over. Then some Philadelphia oil tycoon purchased the company and built it all up here. So there we go. In 2005, Gulfport was hit by the eastern side of Hurricane Katrina with wind speeds of 100 miles an hour and 19 feet of storm surge, which will bury your shit if you're at sea level. 9,571 houses were damaged or destroyed and completely screwed up the economy of the town. 19 feet of storm surge, no matter how high your Ford is jacked up, it's coming. It's coming. The city got over $300 million in federal aid, which it used to repair infrastructure and fix the roads and the sewers and everything.

that got destroyed, basically. Whole town, all it cost was $300 million. $300 million. Whole city, fix it all back up again after it was destroyed. That couldn't rebuild a bridge in New York. No, no, that couldn't build anything down there. Up here, actually, I should say. So reviews of this town, five stars. Here we go. I mean, people make living wages. That might help, too. They're not like three guys they picked off the fucking, they were skimming through the dump sites looking for bottles and cans and said, hey, you guys want to fix some roads?

I'll rebuild the whole thing about 300 million. Yeah, 300, 310. I've got three or four buddies out here this weekend. We'll get it done. We always do. So five stars here. Working as a healthcare professional in Gulfport has given me multiple growth opportunities as well as extracurricular activities such as movie theater. They have a movie theater. Big extracurriculars have the movie theater. Wow, the beach, car shows, and shopping. Gulfport has a little bit of everything with a wide variety of restaurants. It's a tourist place, yeah. Three stars. Gulfport is a tough place to describe. No, it's not. But I'm going to give it a shot, this person said.

Because while it is in the heart of the coast, Gulfport is troubled with unkempt neighborhoods fueled by poverty and unlivable wages. Well, there you go. I would love to see a shelter for our extensive homeless population and more resources for those living in poverty of all aspects. I thought, never mind. Who knows? One star. Gulfport, Mississippi is for people who's looking to go to jail. You can hear the person saying it. Gulfport, Mississippi is for people who's looking to go to jail.

They have bars, but not enough of them close by to bar hop. That means you're drinking and driving or blowing your money on an Uber. No, it doesn't. Or blowing your money on an Uber. Just pissing it away so you don't kill people out in the streets. You know, pissing it away. Budget that as part of it. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Or stay in one bar. Yeah. Or budget that as part of the night or else you can't afford to go out that night. That's bullshit. I don't go out unless I go to three, four in a night. And I got to drive. I have to have my car. If you're single, lived in more than three other states, been outside of the country, Gulfport is not the place for you. Mississippi education suck, period. Suck.

No comma and singular suck. Mississippi education suck period. It sucks periods. Without the comma, that really makes it gross. I'll tell you that right now. Singular suck is fantastic. It's so bad it can't suck so it has to just suck. So if this person is sniping about their education system, that is hilarious. That's a beautiful irony right there is what that is. That's hilarious. Or maybe they went to Mississippi schools and this is the result of it. Either way, if you're a couple, you might like it because the casinos are full of couples losing their money.

That's what couples do once they get together. You have just an inner desire to lose all your money once you hook up with someone. Residents here, conversation sucks and is very limited. It sucks. They're limited. You can't come up with a better word than sucks for everything. It is my favorite in a review as a descriptive word. It's fucking so perfect. Because you can tell they're so frustrated they lost their vocabulary. All they can come up with is this place sucks. I'm just so mad. It sucks.

You just lose it. If you don't know anyone here, forget about meeting them. Everyone here has kids. I mean, everyone. So if you're a single guy like that, a lady, if you're a single guy that like a lady, if you're a single guy that like a lady, that's what he's saying. Wow. And want to be with her. Be prepared to open your wallets. What does that mean? I don't know what they're talking about. It's a lot of it's a lot of haters here.

Poverty is at its best, even though people act as if they are wealthy here. You can Google for a house here. There's plenty. Biloxi, Gulfport and Ocean Springs are connected. Drugs are amazing to people. It shows.

Yeah, drugs are amazing. I'm going to hang out with this guy so bad. He is just fucking swatting at flies, man. He has no idea what he's doing. This guy is like just shooting into everywhere. Pow, pow, pow, pow, pow over here, over there. You don't give a fuck. There's not a scenario that he can think of in this town that's positive. Nothing. And then my favorite is the last sentence because it has nothing to do with Gulfport, apparently. Prostitution all over the USA is high.

All over the place. Very expensive is what he's getting out there. Not that it's available, just that it's out of his price range. People in this town, currently there's $72,468. Wow. About $40,000 when the murder happened, so a much smaller place. It's grown a lot here because it's by the water. People like the water. More women. James, it's the last bastion of Southern sun that you can buy. And it's almost gone now because the secret got out that it was cheap. Yeah, people don't. It was cheap because it's...

Ankle deep in fucking mud. Yeah, but people have definitely bought in Mobile and places like that. They have those houses on stilts on the beach that they buy, and those have become very popular. More women than men, 51.8% women. That's a lot more, actually. Wow. For a big place like this with population, that's a lot more. So really, that guy shouldn't have to open his wallet that much because there's a lot of gals. Way more women. And it's only 42% married, which is below the national average. She's saying, he's saying everybody's got married. But the children party might be right because 29% are single with children, which is like three times the national average. So everybody has kids. That's great. Yeah, at least they're single. You just want to raise somebody else's kids. I guess not.

Race here, 53.2% white, 36.7% black, 1.5% Asian, and 5.7% Hispanic. Religion here, 50-50 is the average normally here. It's 51.2. So not that high. It's probably as low as you're going to get for Mississippi. You know what I mean? And the highest one is Baptist, as we know. Oh, how about that? Baptists are the Catholics of the South. South as fuck. But there's a lot of Catholics, too, because there's a lot of transplants. Well, there's also Catholicism in, like, New Orleans and shit. It's a very, very popular thing. So that spread to some of those coastal cities. If you go up 20 miles away from the...

the C, you're not going to get any of that, but right on there, because tons of Italians came in New Orleans. That was one of the first places they came, or we came, I should say. 0.1% Jewish. Not quite going to sing a song there. Unemployment here is a little bit high, and the median household income is very low. Rest of the country, it's almost 70,000. Here, it's 41,250 bucks. Wow. That is really not great. Cost of living, 100 being regular average. Here, it's 82.6.

It's not that great. No, the housing is the lowest, actually. The housing median home cost here, $172,600, which is like 20 years ago prices. That's not too bad. So if we've convinced you, hey, that doesn't sound too bad. I like the water. I don't mind mud. Well, we have for you the Gulfport, Mississippi Real Estate Report.

All right, average two-bedroom rental here, actually much cheaper than the national average, $900 a month, which is three and change under the national average. House one is described in the listing as, quote, a true blank slate. In other words, this place is fucked up and you're going to have to completely redo it. A true blank slate, that means fucking level it, right? Pretty much. It's a three-bedroom, one-bath, 1,550-square-foot house.

Small lot, not big. Built in 1935 and looks like it hasn't been touched since 1945. It is a mess. The front porch roof is collapsing. No. Yeah, inside it's just old carpet and it's not good. You need a total redo, but you can hopefully afford it. Just had a $2,500 price cut. It is now $38,500. It used to be $40,000. It was $40,000 they started out and they're like, ah, it's a lie. Hilarious, $2,500. Yeah, off a house. You can get that knocked off a car at a dealership if you want. That's crazy.

That's a rebate. Wow. Here's a three-bedroom, one-bath, 1,414-square-foot house. It's a decent house, this house. It looks nice on the outside. Nothing's collapsing. Nice front porch. Inside is decent. I guess it's not terrible. It's fine. Built in 1960, so it's old. It's definitely been kept up with a little bit and refurbished. $105,000 for that. Not bad. Three bedrooms, 1,400 square feet. And next up, you've done very well for yourself, and you want to live on the shore, and you're going to do it.

This is on East Beach Boulevard, this house says. Three bedrooms, four baths, T-bowl for each and every B-hole, and one left over 5,008 square feet. Big indoor pool in the backyard. You have these gates that go down to the water. It's pretty amazing. It's not bad at all. 0.48-acre lot, too. Big house is next to you. $2,490,000 to live in Mississippi. Oh, my God. That's insane. For half an acre.

That's insane. And you're probably paying whatever your mortgage is. It's the same price for hurricane insurance. If they even insure you. That's the other thing. Yeah, that house could be completely taken away in a swell. No problem. And then you're fucked. Things to do here. Well, besides rebuild every once in a while when the hurricanes come through. Cruise in the coast. Oh, boy. 30th anniversary this year, by the way, of cruise on the coast. Lots of entertainment. There's a lot of like old car shows and things like that. It's the main cars and bikes. They've got a little road there, a main drag that's on the coast like PCH in California. Exactly. Yeah, it's on that boulevard. So we have, let's see here. We have.

Here are the bands that are playing. Razu. R-A-Z-Z-O-O. Sure. Ratsu? I don't know. Never heard of it. The Barlow Brothers. Sure. Okay. You have an idea of what they're saying. It sounds Creole country. Sure. Yeah. Escalade Past Christian.

Oh. Escalade Pass Christian. I don't know. Scott Hinson. Yeah. Vince Vance and the Valiants. Vince Vance. And the Valiants. Vince Vance. That's a crazy name. Jesus Christ. Keith Burns. Okay. The Tip Tops, which sounds like a Motown group. They're bringing back a bunch of 80-year-old men. That's the guy from PBS.

Ken Burns. Ken Burns. Yeah, and he's got a brother named Rick that also made stuff, but neither of them are Keith. No Keith. This is their other brother, not quite as successful. My favorite here, at the Edgewater Mall at 11 a.m., the coveted 11 a.m. slot at the mall, Gary, quote, Elvis Wesley will be playing. That's what it says, Gary, quote, Elvis Wesley. That's my nickname. Why, Gary? Yeah, I don't get it. Hit Pocket, and then Na Na Sha instead of Sha Na Na. They just reversed it. It's Na Na Sha.

Oh, boy. Do they have enough songs that you would care to see a cover band of them? I mean, they must. They play their own shows for years, so they must have enough songs. We'd have to learn all the ones that weren't on the radio. None a shot. None a shot. Eclectic with a K where you wouldn't expect it every time. Wherever there's a K sound, it's a K in there. We have Cool Rays with a Z. Cool Rays. So five guys named Ray, probably. They're not just playing Ray Charles songs. Another coveted 11 a.m. spot. Brandy. Not that Brandy. Brandy IE. You can't do that.

There's already a fucking brandy. No, I won't accept it. She doesn't even play anymore. No. Six-piece suits will be there. Six-piece. Three is enough. It's not enough. It's only a three-piece suit. How many pieces are you putting on that thing? A lot more. Three more. Double. We're twice as good as regular suits. Modern Eldorados. Black velvet. Trigger-proof. And then there is, what the hell is this? Rumble on the Gulf. I don't know what that is. I don't know if it's a fight or something. Motorcycles. Oh, yeah, there you go. Rumble. There you go. I'm thinking Royal Rumble. I think my head's stuck in wrestling. That's it.

Crime rate in this town, what we're interested in. Property crime, not surprisingly high because it's a tourist town. So every tourist town, it's high because they piss in the streets and do dumb shit. Yeah, because we're on vacation. What's the broken window between pals? It's double the average. Plus, I'm not going to be here to go to court, so fuck it. Once I go home, I'm home. I'm not going to be here until the cops get caught. And then violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course, assault. The Mount Rushmore of crime is actually about 20% beneath the national average. So it's actually lower than the national average here with the property crime high. That said, let's talk about some murder.

This is a wild ass story, man. Okay. It's a wild town. Let's start out with a man here. Let's talk about him. Richard Gerald Jordan. Yeah. Jordan like Michael. So Dickie Jordan over here. He's born May 25th, 1946. And he's born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He's adopted as a baby.

So we've had a lot of adoption on our shows for some reason. I don't know why. Maybe there's just more adoption out there than we realize. Maybe that's what it is. I'll bet that's true. I mean, they don't advertise that stuff because it's generally wanting to make you, when you see a family, just that's the family. It doesn't matter how it was formed. When you were a kid, like, you know, all the friends you had, how many friends were adopted? I didn't know. Three or four. Really? Three or four adopted friends? I can't think of one that was fucking adopted. I can't think of one that was, like, formally adopted. I know ones that were, like, his aunt's watching him because his mother's a drug addict or whatever the fuck, but it wasn't like...

strangers formally adopted. That's because all my friends are trash and people that adopt people usually have money. There you go. That's why I figured it out. Yeah. I lived in an area of Phoenix where like Arcadia was just real close by. Yeah. But people didn't necessarily live. You know what I mean? So they had money but they would like not go out into Arcadia. They would stick on the other side where the white trash lives. Exactly. And they would send these fairly well to do adopted kids to school with us. Interesting. Yeah. I think there was I mean I can certainly think of two off the top of my head but I'm sure there was more.

Yeah, I think where I grew up, they would have just looked at your application. What, you live in the village of Wappingers? You're not getting any kids. That place is a mess. You're not adopting children out there. You can't afford to take care of your own. You're not. What are you on? Della Verne Avenue? No, that's not working right now. I'm sorry. I grew up in a really, like, borderline slum, but, like, two miles east of me. That's not a slum where you grew up. That's not a slum. On Shea? No, no, no. I didn't move there until way long. Oh. 32nd Street Indian School was scum, but two miles east of there was fucking great. Oh, that's a rich area, yeah. Yeah, that's where fucking Wonder Woman lived.

That's where it gets rich. It's where like politicians lived and shit. Yeah. So he's adopted by Homer and Francis Jordan and took their name. He grew up in Petal, Mississippi, which is we've done an episode in Petal, Mississippi, as a matter of fact. Not the D. That's right. And it is which is across the river from Hattiesburg. And apparently all the way through school, he's got a good reputation. It's a good, good boy and a nice kid. And he's fine. His brother, Robert, who I don't know if he's adopted also or if he's part of the.

Jordan family to begin with. But, uh, Robert said, you know, the two of them grew up together, going to church and going to Sunday school. And, uh, they went to youth rallies all over the state with the church of God and they did summer camps and conventions. And, um, he and his brother, uh, Richard, you know, the guy we're talking about, they both sang in the choir. And, um, he said later on that his wife sang in the choir too. And that, uh, Richard Jordan was an usher even in church. So he was very immersed in the church as a child. Um, he's a smart guy. We don't know how smart he is, but he claims a specific level of IQ, uh, later on and through his life of, he says he has a one 45 IQ.

And he uses that. What's the highest? It goes all the way up. I mean, does it? Yeah. It goes a 140 is like consider genius level and, you know, above average is like 110, 110 to one, whatever. So yeah, we don't know if it's true either. I mean, who knows, but that's a good number for him. So when he graduates from high school, pretty much immediately he's charged with check forgery. So he does some dumb shit here. And so he's looking at a forgery charge, fresh out of pedal high. Yeah. Looking down the barrel of a forgery charge. Not good.

Is that friends and family checks or do we know? We don't know who he took the checks from or what they're forged on, but he's, you know, 18 years old. It's 1964. Everyone in the court has a flat top. Things are not going to go well for you. And a check was not what they are today. No, no, no, no. A check was a lot easier to forge back then. You can do whatever you want and hand it to someone. There was no electronic anything. Didn't even have a bank name on it. It just said, I'll pay you whenever. And then you'd find out like two weeks later that they don't have any money. And then it's like, well, now we got to start this whole process. It's a real easy way to get shit if you had no money back then. So we don't know who brought this up, but there's an offer made.

We don't know if it's the judge, if the DA and his lawyers work it out or whatever, but there's an offer made and I think you know what the offer is because it's 1964. Military, right? It is join the army and the charges are dropped. They used to do that all the time. That was a huge thing they did all the time. So he joined.

Fucking A. He's got nothing to do anyway. Doesn't say you have to finish. Well, he's got nothing better to do anyway. Yeah. Yeah, that's the thing. And he doesn't realize that Vietnam is going to be a huge deal. He doesn't know that's coming at all. There's people over there, but it's not a major war yet. It's just kind of, we were sent advisors over and there was little things popping up, but it wasn't like, there was no draft or anything yet. So 1964, he enlists in the army where he'll spend five years in the army. Wow. Absolutely. He served in the first cavalry division. He earned multiple citations. He served three back-to-back tours in Vietnam.

I made it out of there every time. Yeah, I won't tell you what he was doing, too. Well, the military estimates put his combat service at 33 months in combat, actually, on the ground. That's a lot. That's almost three years of combat. Yeah, that's a long time. That is a lot. He's a helicopter gunner.

Oh, wow. He is one, if you've seen any Vietnam movie, the craziest guy who's hanging off the helicopter with an M60 shooting people going, come on, yeah, get some, like shooting ladies in a field. That's the guy. Wow. That's this guy. Just hang out of the helicopter, shoot anything that moves as you go along. And those humies, those things got shot down, right? Oh, yeah, they're firing up at them. Absolutely, they got shot down. Yeah. I mean, you're also shooting like farmers and shit. Yeah, I mean.

It's what you were told to do. It's also an easy shot. That's the thing. Yeah. If you're up high enough, guns can't get you anyway. No, no, no. Yeah, they were definitely shooting rockets at him and taking down helicopters and stuff. So it's a dangerous job, I guess. I don't know. I mean, probably not as dangerous as being in the jungle, I bet. Yeah. Yeah. I'd rather be above shooting than down in the shit. You know, there's a reason Sarah Palin does that to shoot wolves. Yeah, it's probably easier. Yeah. So from 66 to 68, he's got an M60 and shooting, shooting shit.

as it goes down. They go about a thousand feet in the air and shoot. So bullets can come back at you too from there. So at one point, we don't know exactly what happened here, but his aircraft, his helicopter was in an area here where a U.S. helicopter had been shot down.

Yeah. So they believed the people who got shot down said, we believe the fire came from this hut down there. There's a hut. So his team, Jordan's team went up and basically Jordan just filled the hole, filled the hut full of holes, basically just completely decimated this hut. And then they went to see if they got everybody. And of course it's just women and children inside. No weapons, no anything, just women and children that he just, nothing fired out of that hut. No, no, no. Or they didn't have switched it. Who knows? But at this point you've killed shit loads of kids and children. That's what you do.

So, um, yeah, that's what he said. He was, he says he was severely traumatized by this and he'll say he never got the support that the military, uh, they never gave him any support for that. No therapy or no anything like that. No doctors for this. You gotta be a special kind of.

fucked up to be able to just write that off in your brain. Well, that's why we had a lot of people, they'd come back, they'd get no help for it, and then they'd end up being fucking junkies and being homeless because their brains were fucked up and we weren't doing anything to help them. That's what happened. I mean, most of the homeless surge of the 70s came from Vietnam. I mean, there was a lot of Vietnam vets that were all fucked up in the head and on drugs. You've got to assume that any war that we've ever been in, there's been some sort of miscommunication somewhere that we probably did that because that's what, I mean, war is disgusting, but you've got to be able to have unbelievable communication.

That's unacceptable. Yeah. The only difference was in Vietnam, the military just went, oh, well, they didn't even care. Yeah. So anyway, he said he was traumatized. And we don't this is all on what he said happened. So we don't know. We don't know if that even happened. We don't know an official record of this or anything. Don't know what date it happened. But we do know what date this happened or what year anyway. In 1970, the army court marshals him. Oh, what do you do? So that's not good for falsifying official documents.

He likes to do that. Yeah, he likes to forge that. Well, you can do it really. Everything's made of paper back then. So you can really forge just about everything. And I didn't have a picture, right? No, fuck no. It wasn't laminated. It was a piece of cardboard. It was like, it was like your fucking social security. Yeah, that's it. He's handed it. That was what they had back then. There's no scanning. There's no anything. You could just print anything out. So he ends up, and I don't know if this was for like leave or for whatever he was trying to do, but he ends up getting nine months in the disciplinary barracks at Fort Leavenworth. So that's not good. He gets nine months in Leavenworth, which is probably more than he would have gotten if he would have just taken a shit on the forge check to begin with.

You're probably right. He would have just gone to the... He wouldn't have had to be in war for years and then do nine months. He could have been done with this shit. Of course, he probably would have got drafted anyway. Certainly wouldn't have had to shoot that hut. No, he probably would have got drafted anyway, though, at that point. So who knows? Eventually. He ends up getting, and this is, there's some, again, some back and forth on whether he got an honorable discharge or a dishonorable discharge. Okay. We're not sure. Either way, in 71, he's out of the army. Now, in the 1970s here, so it's 71, he comes home. He ends up in the next few years. I don't know if he...

Had a woman at home and you know on his on his breaks from war He came home and knocked her up or what or if he had them all pretty quick But from 71 on he has about three kids in the next five years Wow, so he's got a wife and three kids and they live in Hattiesburg He works in Louisiana. Well, the wife has keeps the kids in Hattiesburg So I don't know that works exactly but he's one of these guys that does kind of transient jobs that You know, guys will go from oil rig to here to different places. Whatever pays well, you know, they're going. He spent a year as the plant manager at a Swift Farm Service Center, which is a fertilizer plant. Oh, God. Imagine working in a year in a fertilizer plant.

That's right. At least you're managing it and you can get away from it, right? You've got to be able to get away from that smell. You probably have less shit on your hands than everybody else. It's probably like, it's like Monty Python. How do you tell who's the manager? He's the one who hasn't got shit all over him. And that's, that's how you know who the manager is. Yeah. Replace shit with a clipboard. And that's him. Yeah. It's so hard to get away from that smell because there's, I mean, there are, there's that chicken farm way the fuck out West and that Fertizona. And when you're driving down the 10 coming from LA or San Diego, you can smell it five miles before you get there. If you're managing.

You're going to manage from five miles away? Even just fertilizer that's out if you live near farmland. I had a friend who lived in southwest Phoenix there, and he bought this brand new house and all this shit, and he could never open his windows no matter how nice it was out because it would just overload. His furniture would stink like shit for days. It was horrible. And even if you can stand that, if you put a piece of chicken on the counter, it will be covered in flies. It's disgusting. Even if you can stand that. Even if you have no sense of smell.

Even if there's something wrong with you. Oh, man. He's also going to spend two or three months at a shipyard in Morgan City. But the fertilizer plant here, how he lost his fertilizer plant job is, there's differences of opinion. One point he said he left. He just left. He was done. But at another time, when he's talking to a psychiatrist, he said that he acknowledged that he got fired for doing dumb shit. And they said, what about that? And he said, well, I've always been a good con man.

What's he lying about? Always been a good con man. He's always been the good Eddie Haskell, basically, of, oh, yeah, no, he just came from church, and then he's forging shit and doing things, because you know the check, that's not the first thing he ever forged that he got caught for, probably, you know? Right. So, no. He said, you know, he did a number of illegal activities and had not been caught, only once or twice. But he was, I guess, told to resign, or he was fired from the fertilizer plant because of what he called embezzlement.

Theft. Theft. I like how he made it sound like he ran, like, a Fortune 500 company. Like, they asked me to resign. You manage a shit plant. If you get caught stealing, they say, get the fuck out, and they have security walk you out. They don't ask you to resign. They don't even let you stop at your locker to get your shit. You're just out. No, we'll fill a box for you later. Yeah, you're going to be walking out with that picture of your wife and, like, the little plant coming out and, like, a pencil sharpener, and that's what you're going to be doing. I left my last job on good terms. They still sent somebody to my house with a box on my shit. Yeah, there you go. If you call not showing up for five years, good terms, I suppose.

Good terms. They are a glutton for punishment, that company, huh? If I paid someone for five years who never showed up and just made a podcast instead, I would fucking hire a person to break their fucking legs. You understand that? Good terms. I sent a letter of resignation. I got a phone call the next day saying, we've accepted your resignation. No problem. We forgot you worked here, as a matter of fact. Thanks for reminding us. I can't believe you guys didn't just fix the question. That's so funny. So what he stole? You know, embezzlement in the early 70s in a Mississippi fertilizer company. What are you thinking here? Are you stealing?

Bags of cow shit? No, this is actual money he stole. How much money can you steal? But in the plant, there can't be that much there. And the fact that you can't just steal everything they have. You're not going to last a year. So what do you think? If you were to guess. $800, $900? $43,000.

How? Isn't that that much money and shit? By the way, you know what that is in 2026 dollars? 266,913 dollars and 31 cents. He stole a quarter of a million dollars worth of shit from a fertilizer plant in Mississippi. Holy fuck. Yeah, 43 grand in like 73. That was like the average salary was like $6,800 or something. That was the average household or, you know, salary. In the 70s, you could buy two houses with that, right? Fuck yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. I only know that from all in the family. Somebody offered Archie Bunker 30,000 for his house. He was like, we got to sell it because it's only worth like 14. And that was the early 70s.

So I guess he was under financial pressure and he was writing bad checks. And so he was looking for a way to get some money to cover the bad checks he was writing and try to... So he's just skimming. Robbed Peter to pay Paul pretty much, yeah. He considered bank robbery and... Why would you when you got that scam going? After he got fired. Because he was still in debt. He was in all his debt still because he's a fuck up and he loves being in debt. And he considered extortion. Because he wants to get the money but he's also a classy guy, mind you. What a blackmail people for cash. Yeah, he's like, I could just walk in and rob a bank. But that's so...

Brute. You know what I mean? It's so, it's gauche really is what it is. But extortion has a certain, je ne sais quoi, that just lends itself to making me feel like a real international, like a high society cat burglar. Extortion is wearing a suit. Yeah, yeah. Like a high society cat burglar or something. You know what I mean? I'm only here for the jewels in the arts. Extortion owns a couple of ascots somewhere. Yes, drives an Aston Martin.

So that's what he was doing. He's considering all this. At this point, he's unemployed. He's in a shitload of debt. It's the mid 70s. He's pushing 30 years old. He's got three kids, a wife, fuck loads of debt, bad checks floating all over the fucking Southeast. Blacklisted in the bullshit operations. You are never touching another pile of shit again on someone else's dime ever. He's got a lot of problems. He owed money on a car. He owed money. He owed department store credit cards he had out. He got those? Absolutely. He even had a boat that he owed money on. He's living above his means the whole time. That's the problem. So he just writes checks to keep it floating. And then he's got to fix it.

If you're stealing, embezzling from a company, you know there's an end to that. Why do you live above the means of theft? Dude, it's Casey Anthony's hallway is what it is. We're back to Casey. Coming fast. We came up with, during the Patreon this week, we figured out a lie that there's an absolute end to that you can't overcome. That's called Casey Anthony's hallway. Well, there's a brick wall at the end. Yes. And no more offices. When Casey Anthony was at Universal Studios telling the police that she worked there and she said, my office is down this hallway. And as they got toward the end of the hallway, finally, she just stopped at the end of the hallway, turned around and said, okay, I don't work here. I lie. Because once you run out of offices,

aren't yours. That's it. The lie is over. So any lie like that, that has a finite end to it. That's obvious. That's Casey Anthony's hallway. It's like Schrodinger's cat. It's, there's a lot of, it's Casey Anthony's hallway. Nose to nose with drywall. That's what do you do that? That's what I mean. You're fucked at that. You got to turn around and go, I don't work here, I guess. So I can't imagine stealing, knowing for sure that there's, there's an end to that. Yes. And then financing. It's the gamblers. It's a gambler addict mentality though. It's the addict mentality. It's the gambler mentality. It's all of that. And when he's got that by for sure. So by age 30 here, um,

You know, he's an unemployed farmer fertilizer plant manager, former shipyard worker, three Vietnam tour combat vet with some PTSD issues, as he said. He's a self-described marksman, as I would assume you would be if your only job was to shoot people for 33 months. So then he decides he is fucked. He's backed into a corner by January of 1976. He has run out every line he has, basically. And he needs some money and he needs it now, essentially. And a lot of money to really put a lot of things right. He owes a shitload of money. He's going to lose his boat, his car and all this stuff.

What he does is, on January 10th, 1976, he's in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and he walks into a pawn shop in Baton Rouge with a 16-gauge shotgun. Oh, my. Not to rob the pawn shop. To sell it? To pawn the 16-gauge shotgun. You don't want to try to rob a pawn shop. They have the most guns. He has a lot behind the counter. Not only do they have the most guns, then they have chainsaws and shit to take you apart with. Just on the shelf stock, they could dismember you, kill you, and have you cleaned up and gone without any hesitation. Literally. It's how...

Marcellus Wallace got saved in Pulp Fiction. Yeah, exactly. Thank God it was a pawn shotgun. Yeah, you walk in, pick your weapon. Totally. So he's going to trade his 16-gauge shotgun for a Titan .38 caliber pistol.

and $75. So he gets a pistol and $75 for his shotgun. That's a great trade. Not a bad trade. It's a weird trade, the person at the pawn shop says, because most people don't trade hunting weaponry for a bird gun. You don't trade a bird gun for a handgun. Those are totally different things. It's just not normal. You're not shooting quail with that thing. No, you've got to be a really good shot. Imagine trying to shoot quail with .38. Pop! Shit! That would be so impossible. Not only did you miss, but you just sent a round.

Two miles away, blindly. Hope nobody gets it over there. He just sets it straight, wildly out of bounds. Miles into it, wherever. So he tells his parents that he's going to the coast to take a physical for a job on an offshore oil rig. So that buys him some time where no one's going to be looking for him for a couple days. Then he drives to Gulfport, Mississippi.

All right. He checks into the Twin Star Motel. I'm sure it's nice. One star isn't enough. The Twin Star. I'll bet it's not two stars. I bet it's not a two star. That's their Yelp review total is what it is. The Twin Star. We're embracing it. We're just going to say, fuck it. Like those restaurants that make t-shirts that say, you know, one star, worst service ever or whatever. Same shit. That's what they're doing. So he registers as Jack Wilson.

Why would you do that? I've never registered under a false name because I'm never up to something in a hotel. Maybe that's why. Yeah. Could be up to something. And nobody's ever looking for me either. Not usually. No. He pays cash also, which was very common in the 70s. That would be way more of a red flag now of anybody paying cash in a hotel like us when we went to Austin. We had like singles and quarters and shit that one time in 2017. It costs more to pay cash. You'll get it back in the morning, but...

Yeah, so we were like, shit. It costs $80 more? I'm like, but that's all I have. But that's all the money. Okay, well, that's our gas money back home, so we better get it back or else we're living here forever. Essentially, we live here if you don't give us that $80 back is what we told the guy. My car will be out of gas and I got nothing. We're going to live in this parking lot. So he pays gas. But that's all I have. But that's everything. That's all we both had between us, for Christ's sake.

Oh, that was sad. So room 110, this is, and he spends the next couple days driving around Gulfport, just taking it in, taking in the sights, the sounds, and doing his thing. He's not doing, he's not like casing anybody, not following anybody around. He's just looking around, just seeing what comes to him naturally. You know what I mean? Room 110, that's two doors down from where the players dwell, James. That's a good point. Oh, God. So Monday, January 12th, 1976.

Yeah, I've been driving around Gulfport. This is like third day driving around Gulfport, maybe fourth day. You know, he's got an alias and he sees the Gulf National Bank on Highway 90. Hmm. OK, it's like right by the beach. This is this bank. It's right across from the beach and stuff. And he stops at a pay phone at a convenience store right across the street from the bank. And he calls Gulf National Bank. And because he's a, you know, a real international mover and shaker here. Very debonair. He asks the person who answers, who can I speak with that handles commercial loans?

You know, because he's starting a big business here. And the bank tells them, well, our person who handles that's a guy named Charles Marder. He can help you with that. Charles Marder is M-A-T-E-R, not the Y. So Charles Marder can help you. And they said, we'll connect you with Charles if you'd like. You know, we'll put you through to him. And he hung up. Richard hangs up. Doesn't get put through to Charles.

Then he opens up the phone book, the Gulfport telephone directory that every payphone used to have a phone book. It's dangling there right by your knees. And back then, if you're young, you're like, first of all, that's so weird that there was books full of everyone's phone number. But it was everyone's phone number. Everyone. Unless you were like hiding from like a stalker or like, you know, like the FBI was after you. Your name was in the phone book. You had to pay extra. You had to fill out paperwork and pay for them to delete you. Yeah, for it to be unlisted. That was like a big deal for the phone company not to list you and whatever. So it was a huge deal. You could look anybody up and not only would they have their name, their phone number and their street address.

Yeah. Go right to their house. So literally people used to say, look me up. Yeah, they literally look me up. Look me up. I'm in the book. Everybody would say that. Yeah. Imagine if you said that to someone. Hey, what are you doing? No, I'll be in town this day. Cool. Look me up. And then they walked away. You'd be like, well, I'll never see that person again. How the fuck do you look me up? Look me up. Where? In what? What are you talking about? Did he just say Google me? Yeah. Facebook, like Instagram, TikTok. What are you talking about? Where are we here? They don't have your address on there. So bizarre. But that's what it was. Everything. And in the phone book, there is exactly one M-A-R-T-E-R. One Charles Marder.

So he said, probably the guy. It's got to be him. It's got to be him. So who is he? He's Charles Wesley Martyr here. He was born in 1936 here. He's from Baton Rouge, Louisiana originally. He graduated from LSU with a BS degree in finance. And he also went to the LSU School of Banking of the South as well later on. What is that? I don't know. School of Banking. He wants, he did finance. His whole route is he wants to be a banking executive. Putting money in.

take money out. There's a school for that. There's a school. I guess how do you, how you approve loans, how you do, how you run the business. Cause a bank is all investing your interest and you know, investing the money they have. And that's a, there's a whole lot going on behind the scenes. The teller part is nothing. That's 1% of a bank. They don't care. That's just to make you feel like you're like actually have a human. It makes you feel like your money's safe. It's fucking not there. As soon as it goes, it's like, it's in the markets. No, it's like one of those old movies when they show a pneumatic tube in a thing and it's going all over like the Hudsucker proxy or something. It's like one of those fucking things where it's all tubes and shit. You have no idea where your money went. It gets turned into digital shit in a minute.

Yep. So in 1962, he married a woman he met at LSU that was also going to college. A woman named Edwina Rose DeGray. DeGru? DeGray. Well, she'll be martyr here because they're getting married, but it's D-E space G-R-U-Y. That's her. Very Louisiana.

Fucking A. Very good. Some French behind it there. Southern Creole French shit. Yeah, totally. Well, that's another reason for the Catholicism is the French were Catholic. So there you go. I almost asked a French Catholic. They are. So she's born June 20th, 1940. Like I said, about four years younger. So he was probably a senior when she was a freshman. Yeah. He's coping for the new chicks. And she meets Charles. She was born in New Orleans. She is the daughter of, wow, Edwin Joseph Dufouchard de Groy. That's her father. Dufouchard? Dufouchard. Yeah.

Yeah, D-U-F-O-U-C-H-A-R, DeGrois. Yeah. DeGrois. And her mother is Emily. Good luck spelling it. That's the only part. It ain't the Emily you're thinking about. No, I-E? Yeah, E-M-E-L-I-E. E-M-E-L-I-E. Emily. Wow. Emily Carrie Melanson DeGrois. And she went by Tootsie.

Why not? Because she had a penis, I guess. I have no idea why. Because she loved Dustin Hoffman. I don't know. She goes by Tootsie, because that's easier than all of that. So Tootsie and Edwin, and the daughter is Edwina. This poor kid, he said, we're naming our kid Edwin. I don't give a shit what comes out of your crotch. It's called Edwin. We'll stick a vowel on it if we have to. So she grew up on Bonnebel Boulevard in Metairie. Is that how you say that? Metairie?

I don't know. M-E-T-A-I-R-I-E. We've had that one before. Oh, it's French as fuck, right? I think they just say it as Metairie, if I'm not mistaken. That's possible. I could be wrong. She has two sisters and a brother. She went to St. Catherine of Siena Grammar School, went to Metairie High, then went to East Jefferson High where she got her diploma. And yeah, she, I guess her aunt said that when, this is Edwina's sister, the kids later on, her kid's aunt, they were talking and she told the kids that they'd, when they were younger, like pre,

Edwina getting married, the two sisters would like to dress up in their nicest clothes, put really good makeup on and everything, look really presentable, and go crash wedding receptions that they did. Because if you have two attractive, super well-dressed for a wedding young lady there, no one's going to ask them for an invitation. They're just going to feed them whatever the fuck, chicken or fish, and then that's it. Go dance and drink and have fun. That's amazing. They did the wedding crashers thing long before the movie. In the late 50s and early 60s they were doing it. Their sister said she liked to have fun. She liked to do stuff like that. Wasn't that H.I.'s wife's name in Raising Arizona? She went by Ed.

Yeah, it was. Was it Edwina? I don't know if it was Edwina. It had to be Edwina. It might have been. Why don't you say it like that? Edwina? Edwina. Edwina. Edwina. Had to be Edwina, right? I can't fucking remember now. No, I don't know if they ever sent it in there. I haven't seen it in a few years. I think they showed the. I can't rewatch that. I should watch it all year. Oh, okay. Because he called her Ed. Yeah. Ed and hi.

I can't remember. I think it's Edwina, though. I really do. Like I said, that should be a once-a-year movie that I watch. It's so good. It's been four or five years. I've got to get back on it. She's crying, and he's like, who did it? I'll get that son of a bitch.

The whole thing is fucking hilarious. It's not H.I. Madonna. Great fucking movie. So I saw that in the theater. Stop it. In the movie theater with Racist Nan. When you were a child? Racist Nan. First of all, Nan is not a big movie aficionado. We went to like, I could think of two movies that she took me to as a child. One was Look Who's Talking, which was very uncomfortable for a child to watch. The opening scene of sperm flying everywhere. That was gross. And Raising Arizona, which I was like eight, nine years old. I don't know what, I think because the trailer makes it look like a.

A fun movie. A goofy movie. Son, you got a panty on your head. It's that shit. And so she thought, but she liked it actually, which is interesting. And I got, it got me into weird movies. This is dark. Yeah. It got me into the Cullen brothers. It's like a nine year old. I was like, this is fucking cool. It's such a different movie. Yeah. And it was funny. So I think it's a real truck. Like that shortstop. Those were all over Arizona at the time. Yeah. And I mean, nobody even, I'm sure nobody thought about it, but as soon as I saw it on TV, I was like, Hey, I go there. That's so familiar to my life. I know that. So 1965, they have a son, Eric Charles, Eric Charles martyr.

Now, Chuck here, he is quickly gaining some prominence in the world of banking. He was a, I guess, he worked as a national bank examiner for the Department of the U.S. Treasury at one point. Sounds impressive. And then got another job. They lived in Metairie for a while. Then Chuck gets a job at the Gulfport National Bank there on the Interstate 90. What's Edwina do? She's from money, though, yeah? They sound wealthy. Don't know if they're from money or not, but I mean, enough, at least middle class, enough to be able to send your kids to college. Dad's got four fucking names. Dad's got four. Three of them are very French, so that's a lot.

I feel like they're at least upper middle class or at least solidly middle class. You know what I mean? They're doing enough to, they go on vacation once a year and they, you know. They don't worry about the mortgage. They send their kids to college at least. So they're moving. Chuck gets a job. Charles goes by Chuck, by the way. Everyone calls him Chuck Barter. This is on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. They move to Gulfport in around 70, late 70, early 71. They buy a house on Southern Circle. And Edwina takes care of the young child. She's a housewife at the time, which was, he works at a bank.

If it was 1970 and you were a big successful banker and your wife had a job, people would be like, what are you doing? You can't support your wife at a bank? What are you, a compulsive gambler or something? They think you're a loser. That's how society was. That's impressive. Yeah. Now, she's a stay-at-home mom, takes care of the kid, soon-to-be kids, as they're going to have another kid here in 73, and spends time. She likes hanging out with her friends.

You know, all that kind of thing. She likes to, according to her kids, she likes to play cards and watch TV with the kids. I was just going to say this bitch plays bridge. Oh, absolutely. Everybody played cards back then. Isn't that wild? Because you come from a time that's before television. What else are you going to do? People play cards to pass the time. They hung out, they play cards. That's it. Yeah. My grandparents were all card fanatics. All of them.

constantly play cards with my grandmother. I don't even know the rules to gin or bridge or any of those card games. I just know that watching it is so impressive to see adults. Oh, they're into it. Yeah. It wasn't impressive to see my Italian grandma play with all. They just speak Italian and yell at each other the whole time and accuse each other of cheating and fucking scream and yell. It was hilarious. Hilarious. As kids, we used to watch them and go, God, they're going to kill each other in there. Amazing. So Edwina, she's doing all that. She takes the kids to the beach all the time. She drives a convertible Volkswagen Beetle.

Oh, yeah. 72, 73 around the shore there. So fun. They're living a good life, basically. She's also big into volunteer work, and she's a member of the St. James Catholic Church. She's in the auxiliary of the Memorial Hospital at Gulfport. She founded the St. James Booster Club. She was a secretary of the St. James PTA. This is the school that her kids go to, or kid at this point. She's even active in scouting, boy scouting, where she's a dead mother for Troop 204. How about that? She is the quintessential fucking June Cleaver.

Yeah. Of the time, basically. Very busy taking care of the house and kids, and I'm sure she was freshly dressed and lipsticked at all times, you know what I mean? That kind of lady. In that boxcar derby car. Yeah, yeah, but soapbox derby. Soapbox, that's it, yeah. Well, Chuck only has time on the weekends. He's very busy, but every night he gets home, you gotta go in the garage and help little Eric with the soapbox derby car. You need to build the car. Okay. So 1973, they have another son named Kevin Paul Martyr. So they have Eric as the older, Kevin as the younger. Chuck gets a promotion at work, which is big time.

Yeah. Big time. This is the bank, like we said, right on US 90, the beach highway, right on the water. You can see it from your office. If he's got a cool office, he's got an ocean view. I found the actual newspaper announcement of his promotion, which is hilarious. They put it in the paper. They put it in the paper. They say Charles W. Chuck Martin, or Martin, has been promoted to senior vice president, responsible for the overall loan portfolio.

That's a lot. Wow. That's a whole lot. He's been promoted to that. The overall loan portfolio for the entire bank. Yeah. He's the guy that's going to oversee everything. That's a big job. A vice president, too. That's a big shit. So he's heavily on the commercial loan side of things, too, because that's where they make most of their money. Commercial loans are way bigger than your home loan. Millions rather than a $170,000 house. And back then, a mortgage was $8,000. We're going to finance $12,000 or something, whereas these commercial loans could be millions, millions of dollars. That's where the money is. He also stays busy. He doesn't just work. He's a member of the Kiwanis Club of Gulfport.

And served on the board of directors for them. Also a member of the Gridiron Club, which was something to do with football, I believe. Some sort of football thing. Yeah. Broadwater Country Club. These are country club people even. Holy shit. She takes her convertible beetle to the country club to play tennis because she also likes tennis. In the 70s. Early 70s. That old money. God damn. Just success money. He's very successful. The Gulfport Yacht Club he's a member of. You got to have a yacht to be in that club, right? I'm not sure. But either way, they go to fancy parties is what that tells me. The Yacht Club and the Country Club, they're always.

Suited up with fancy drinks in their hand, is what that sounds like to me. And also a member of the Home Builders Association, I guess because he does a lot of loans. Because I build shit. So he is also, as kids say, a very strict father, too. Just very strict, not to beat them or anything, but very strict. You do the right thing. You do that. This is very like typical middle America family. Right. Dad, you know, brings home the money and gets a membership of the yacht club. And mom drives around the beetle and plays tennis and certainly helps the kids with their homework and all that. Now that's Chuck. That's the guy that he's looked up in the phone book, Richard Jordan, while he was on his little joint. So back to Richard Jordan, he hangs up on Chuck, looks up his address and he drives by the house, drives by the martyr house on Southern circle around noon that day.

Now there's several cars in the driveway. It looks to me from the picture I've seen, it's like a circular driveway, like a half circle that goes in. So there's a bunch of cars and there's a few here. They say there's several cars, including a Mercedes and a sports car. Oh, a different car. It's not a Mercedes sports car. No, a Mercedes and a sports car going on. So he sees all these cars and he assumes that Chuck probably came home for lunch today. Maybe that's what it is. So he keeps driving. Richard Jordan does. He comes back about 2 p.m. when he figures the lunch rush will be over at the house. And by then, all the cars except one are gone.

What's it? I think it's the, the beetle, I believe, or it's the, she might've got a Mercedes by then. I'm not sure, but it's one car in the driveway. So he picked up the phone. He's got the number still. He goes to a pay phone after he sees only one car, dials the martyr house because it's in the phone book and a woman's voice answers, presumably at Wiena. He hangs up immediately. Okay. Then he goes back to the motel room. He puts on a suit.

Suit pants, tie, sport coat. A six-piece? Six-piece suit he puts on. He carries a manila folder and has a clipboard. Okay. And leaves his motel room. Full suit and tie, manila folder, clipboard. Yeah. Also, another thing he has is in his pants. Not what you think is in his pants. No, it's in there, but also. Yeah. He cut out the lining of a pocket and strapped the .38 revolver inside it so he could get to it without a holster.

So it's scrapped to his leg with no pocket so he can reach in his pocket, grab it out of the holster and pull it out of his pocket. That's actually genius. It's pretty diabolical. In all the episodes we've done, we've never heard of anyone doing that. People have put guns in their pockets. Nobody's cut the liner out. This is episode 721. We've never had somebody figure that out. Maybe he does have a high IQ. We'll never know. So he does that so he can get to this 38 and this won't show a bulge too because it's like in his pants on the side so you won't see a big bulge in his suit jacket or anything like that. Won't draw any attention. He goes back to the martyr house. Clipboard.

Folder, six-piece suit. Sand's pocket. Yeah, got his gun pocket working. And he walks up, he rings the bell. Edwina answers the door, because back then you just answered the door when someone knocked at it. You know, whatever. He tells her that I'm with the electric company. Okay. And I've gotten reports of defective circuit breakers in the area. I'm investigating this. So we don't know if he said electric company or General Electric, one of the two. He had a specific electric company. Either way, she said, well, come on right in.

I'll show you where it is. Absolutely. He's got a tie and a clipboard. I mean, he's an important man. Can't get in his way. He's jotting down information as he receives it. Yeah, he's talking about wiring problems. We don't want the house to burn down. So once he's in the house and the door is closed, he pulls the 38 out of his pocket. Yeah. Okay.

Now, where are the kids right now? That's a good question. She's got two, Kevin and Eric. Yes, Eric is the 10-year-old. He is at school. It's so funny that there's a lot of different accounts of where he was. One says he was at school. Others say he was at catechism class. He is at school, which is a Catholic high school, our Catholic school, elementary school. So he's kind of at both. They're kind of both right. But it got confused over the years, so people didn't know. But it's 2 o'clock in the afternoon on a Monday in January. He's at school. He's almost done. Yeah, he's at regular school. Whatever's going to happen better happen fast. Yeah, he's going to be at home soon. 3 o'clock. Now, the 3-year-old is asleep upstairs in the house.

So it's just her and the three-year-old in the house here, Kevin. Okay. Basically, Edwina, he tells her, look, I'm kidnapping you. That's what's going down here. Like, I'm kidnapping you. I'm going to hold you for ransom and I'm going to get a bunch of money out of this whole thing. She tells him, which I don't know if anyone ever thought of this when someone's trying to kidnap them. She said, I can't go.

I can't. I mean, I'd love to and everything. Here's the thing. Today doesn't work. I got appointments. Like, really, if you come back tomorrow, maybe I can work something out. But right now, I am not available to be kidnapped. I'm sorry. Can't do it. Can't do it. She said, my three-year-old's asleep here. What am I supposed to do? Leave a three-year-old? I can't go. This is crazy. You can't just take me. This is very inconvenient, is my point. He grabbed her, put the gun up to her head, and said, we're leaving, and walked her out the front door. Oh, boy. That's why you bring a gun, I assume, through this type of thing. He gets her out of the house and into the car. Then he realizes that, fuck, I left my folder inside.

Oh, no. My prop there. That's not going to work. It's got fingerprints. It's got a lot on it. Shit. Fuck. He said, God damn it. I left that on the kitchen table. Shit. So he went back inside for it. Okay. He went out, by the way, checked the kid who was sleeping, looked at the kid. Kid is sleeping and picked up the folder and left again because he walked her in with it and walked back out again. And then they leave again with the folder. He makes her drive.

OK. OK. Now, that afternoon, about 340 p.m., about an hour 40 after he originally gets over there here. This is when Judy Tyler Frears, a former Gulf Point National Bank employee, was an employee at that time, said that at 340 p.m., Chuck Marder at work receives a call from Jack Wilson. And we know who Jack Wilson is. That is the alias that he used, that Richard Jordan used at the hotel. During that call, she called the FBI during that call.

She said, I saw Mr. Martyr talk with the FBI and I saw Mr. Martyr being presented with money rolled up in plain brown paper sack. He was very upset. He was shaking. There was tears in his eyes. Oh, it's a rant. He called for a ransom. This whole thing's about ransom.

So he called, um, when he called, Chuck called the FBI and stuff about the ransom, but he also called the house to see if the guy was lying. Cause anybody could just call and go, I have your wife send me money and she's home cooking dinner. You know what I mean? Instead? Yeah. She's watching the fucking match game and pick up a kid. Yeah. She's a, she's a really perfecting her backhand down at the yacht club tennis court. She's got the top down in the beetle with that 1600 humming. Just humming, babe. So, um, apparently he called home right away and the three-year-old answered the phone. Oh.

What? Three year old. That's impressive. And the 10 year old was still at school waiting to be picked up by mom, who obviously isn't coming. So he's like, OK, my kids are safe anyway, because that was one of the things to kidnap the kids, too, because Jack Wilson didn't say. So anyway, this call that he makes for ransom is very businesslike. Hello, Mr. Martyr. Yes, I have your wife and I am holding her for ransom. This is Jack. We have your wife is what they said. What Jack said, we have your wife.

holding her for ransom. You know, this is the way it is. No reason to freak out. It's happened and you're going to have to come up with some money and you'll get your wife back. It'll be no problem. She's not being hurt. She's not being tortured or beaten or anything like that. That's it. And he said, well, how much money do you want? 50,000 bucks.

which like 200, almost $300,000 nowadays. It's a shitload of money. It's certainly a lot of money. It's not forever money. No, but in the fifties, it's also, you have to think what he could, he reasonably acquire. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like how much cash can a person get in the seventies? Who's not like a multi, multimillionaire. You know what I mean? Frank Sinatra could probably go pick up a suitcase full of cash, but I don't know if this guy can. He's the vice president of a bank. I mean, that's where the money is, but still. But in 1970, getting this kind of money by 1975, you're going to need to get this money again. Yeah. This is 76 here. Okay. So I mean, it's, it's, it's not 80.

Yeah, this is 76. It's still like I said, you can't ask for more than you think that they could reasonably get. I think that's what it is. So they don't know how much money this guy has. He's a 50,000. I'll try that, you know, and fair enough. But it's just such a silly play because it's so dangerous in terms of freedom, life. Oh, it's insanity to do this. This is so stupid. This is crazy. He tells Chuck she'll be released within 48 hours. She's OK. I promise you. Very matter of fact. And he says you get the 50,000. You leave the money on Highway 49.

There's going to be a blue jacket by the side of the road, wrap the cash in brown paper and put it on the jacket that I leave there. Okay. Now, the FBI was contacted, by the way, by local police and by Chuck for two different reasons. Number one, when his kids are at home, so he sends the FBI to the house and the police and he goes back to the house. But before they even got there, a friend of Edwina's had stopped by, found Edwina missing in the three-year-old in the house alone and called the cops also. Okay. So they've gotten a bunch of calls. She just shown up on a Monday afternoon and, you know, the car's there, the door's unlocked.

Three-year-olds inside, no Edwina. Just taking phone calls. So Chuck gets the money. Obviously, the FBI is going to provide this money or the bank or somebody. There's plenty of cash around. The money will show up. It's going to show up. So nightfall comes, which is pretty early in the day in January. Chuck drives out to Highway 49 with the money. There's no jacket. He does not see a blue jacket like he was instructed. So he drives up and down the highway in the dark looking for this jacket, but it's not there. And so he's freaking out. He's got all the money sitting next to him on the seat.

Richard Jordan was sitting, watching him drive from the woods. He's in the DeSoto National Forest watching him drive back and forth in the woods, okay? And he knows that he didn't leave a jacket. He knows he didn't leave a jacket, but this is on purpose. What he's doing is he sees two vehicles also making turns back and forth with Chuck's vehicle. So this is just a setup test run. This is not actually to do the exchange right now. He just wants to see if he's got the FBI with him, and he does, obviously. So he said he knew it was a setup, never put the jacket out, and waited to see that. So just a test, testing all this type of thing. Now, Chuck said that he drove around, he had the money, and he said, I did not make contact with him, though.

on the road. He said he returned to his home where the FBI agents were there. And he received at that point, another call from Jack Wilson at home. I saw what you did. Yeah. He said, okay, drive back up 49 like you did before, except, you know, he said, what I'll do is I will signal you, um, with, uh, my car. I'll, I'll blink it three times. I'll do all of that. Okay. Um, okay. Uh, now.

That's what he told him the first time. Leave your friends at home this time. No, that's what he told him the first time was he'd blink his lights three times and then look for a jacket, which he didn't. But he tells him to go up, drive again, and blink the lights three times or whatever. Now, the next morning, January 13th, 76, he calls again Richard Jordan.

Okay. Now he's accusing Charles of fucking with him. He said, you tried to pull a fast one on me last night, didn't you? Yeah. This is like old movie dialogue. I did pull a fast one on me, didn't you? It's very, probably. I tried to pull the wool over my eyes. I tried to pull the wool over my eyes and fool me. So during this conversation, the FBI is there coaching Chuck and they're telling him, get tough with him. Fucking stick it, push back. Tell him to go fuck himself. It's like, hey, your wife isn't being held hostage here. You fucking tell him to go fuck himself when your wife is being able to tell me to do it. Jesus Christ. Let's play with your wife's life in his hands. Hey, I think he's a pussy. Call him a pussy. See what he does.

Some of his mom's a fat twat. Do it. See if he kills her. I bet he won't. Okay. Let's do this like a practical joke or something. What do you think's going to happen? Try to say vis-a-vis in the sentence. Yeah, try to do it. So what he does, Chuck decides to heatedly demand to speak to his wife. Well, let me talk to her then. Let me know she's okay. Let me know whatever. So Richard Jordan said, I don't know if you want to talk to her and I think you're fucking with me. I guess we're at an impasse. That's what he says. He actually said, I guess we're at an impasse.

Okay. He tried to French up impasse because it's got an E on the end. So he was like, we're at an impasse. It's like when Kemper calls a coupe a coupe. A coupe, yeah. Exactly. No, the 70s and 80s were really into like French stuff is fancy. Period. So people thought they were like European and shit. It's funny. So weird. So French food was a big deal. It was a big deal. We're going out to a fancy French restaurant. For breakfast, we're having croissants. Croissants. Croissants. Croissants. Croissants.

So we're at an impasse. So Chuck, then he says, I want to speak to my wife. And Jordan says, Richard Jordan says she's fine. She's so fine. By the way, she wants me to ask you something. She wants me to ask you how the children are.

So now he's delivering messages from Edwina to Chuck saying he wants to know about the children. He tells them that she really wants to know to make sure the boys are okay because she left the three-year-old there by himself and the 10-year-old at school. Chuck says, tell Edwina that the kids are fine. I'm taking care of them. They're fine. They're not hurt. Everything's fine. They don't even know what's going on right now. So at one point, he continues to insist. After Richard Jordan continues to insist, she's fine. And he says, well, just let me talk to her then. Finally, Chuck loses it and says, quote, I'm not giving you shit if I don't talk to my wife.

Which is, I don't think he uses and says shit like that very often, but that's the exact quote from the tape. I'm not giving you shit if I don't talk to my wife. I'm not making the drop until you let me talk to my wife. So now I'm taking the ball back in my court. You might have my wife, but you want money. And that's the whole reason you've done all this. And it's going to be a waste of time if I don't give it to you. Yeah, regardless of what you have of mine, I have something you want, motherfucker. Yeah, the whole reason. You're not going to just make the calls here. The whole point of monkey do's. The whole reason for monkey do's. The whole reason for monkey do's. That's your stupid opinions reference that you should really figure out. It's hilarious. It's absolutely.

It's so funny. So martyr here repeatedly calls him a son of a bitch as well. You son of a bitch. I'm not giving you shit. Now he's pissed. Oh, yeah, asshole. Like he's just pissed. He doesn't care anymore. He says, I want to talk to my wife. I want to talk to my wife. And they're talking about money. And Chuck says, I don't give a damn about money. I just want my wife. So this is crazy. It's at this point. This is a great negotiating tactic at this point. At this point, Jordan says, OK, I get it. Tell you what. Twenty five grand. You want to talk to your wife? But how about less money and you don't talk to your wife? How's that sound? Is that good?

Is that okay with you? He really did that. He really said that. He said new instructions. I'll take half. I'll take half. About half. What do you say? New instructions too, by the way. Drop it near the I-10 at Canal Road. And make sure to take several turns before you get on the freeway so you can't be followed either. I don't want you followed again. Okay. I'm not going to do it if you're being followed. Leave your pals alone. Yep. So the money has been serialized, microfilmed by the FBI. They've taken a picture of every single bill, everything. So, by the way, what a boring job.

You think it's going to be all exciting. Then you're sitting there taking individual fucking pictures of. $20 bills. Polaroids, I'm sure of it. I think this is microfilm, so they have those little cameras. It's like you see in a spy movie when someone opens a file, picks it up real quick. A two-finger deal jobber that they can just snap. Totally. But even still, you've got to snap, move the bill. Snap, move the bill. Set it up, make sure it's in frame. $100 at a time. You also have to write down the serial number of that bill. Every single bill. Wow. So this time, Chuck drives near the spot, I-10 and Canal Road, and guess what's sitting there? A jacket. Blue jacket, right there.

He leaves the money as instructed on top of it and drives away. Still hasn't talked to his wife? Nope, hasn't talked to his wife yet. Now, he must have, at least Richard Jordan thinks he's lost the cops because no one was, he didn't see anybody behind him, didn't see anybody following. But what he doesn't know is the police were there before even he got there, Richard Jordan. The police got there early and are watching the whole thing. They watch him put the coat down. They watch him come get the money. Once he picks up the money, they spring on him. But before they can get to him, he gets in his car and speeds away with the money.

Not a good operation. How fucking far away were they? Not too close, apparently. Wow. So now he's flying down a Mississippi highway, flying down the 10, 25,000 in highly marked serialized bills. Incredibly traceable bills. Incredibly traceable. That's when a car comes up near him.

And it's a police car. It's not a police car. It's an unmarked car. But Richard Jordan just sideswipes him, fucking rams him into a ditch. OK, the car goes off into a ditch. The other car, not Richard Jordan's. Somebody hops out of the car that went into the ditch and starts firing a 357 at the at the fleeing vehicle, which, again, highly dangerous. Just fucking 357 shots. And when open highway is crazy, fucking insane. Imagine that.

I think that's in the police handbook of do not do that. Do not take large caliber fucking hand cannons and just fire them indiscriminately at mid-morning. It's like 9.30 in the morning on a major highway. Rush hour traffic. On a weekday. Busting shots out. It hits the rear window of Jordan's car, shatters it out, but that's it. Car keeps going, so they didn't hit him, obviously. Just hit the rear window. You could make a movie out of this. You can see the scenes. Glass shatters. He ducks down. He keeps driving. It's crazy. He keeps going. Problem is, the impact bent his fender.

Okay. So now his fender is rubbing on the tire, which you're not going to go that far on, which kind of fucks the car up. And so he keeps going anyway. He later claims he didn't know who the two men were who came up next to him that he sideswiped and were firing 357 shots at him. He said later on, he, quote, thought it was two rednecks who came down on him with weapons. And he, quote, hauled off and knocked their ass into a ditch.

You hauled off first and then got shot at, though. A couple of rednecks. The rednecks were a Harrison County deputy and an FBI agent. Those are the rednecks that were next. One was probably a redneck. Yes. The other one was wearing a suit and tie with very shiny shoes, by the way. So in a because this is like a terrible shot. This is like Mindhunter era FBI, like from the show, like just look presentable and have shiny shoes is most of the job, basically. So that these two guys, this is one of them. The deputy's name is Larkin Smith, who would later on become a sheriff of the county and then a U.S. congressman.

Really? He's the guy who fired the 357 shot indiscriminately in a fucking highway. And we went. Let's make him a congressman. We should make him have more power to make decisions, this guy. Let us pencil his name on our ballot, please. Right? But they did get his tag number and they know his car. So they set up, they have his photo also because they know who he is. So now we know who he is. So they set up roadblocks everywhere. Fucking everywhere. Anywhere out of this area, basically. Now, Richard Jordan, though, rather than trying to escape, he goes inward and goes to a shopping center and abandons his car in the shopping center. It's a late model brown four-door Mercury.

Okay. He had payments on that. That's terrible. It'll later be found abandoned at the Norwood village, which is like a mall area basically. So what he does now is he hides the bulk of the money. He hides $23,500 and keeps $1,500 with him. There's varying accounts of where he hit it. Some people say it was the woods. Other people say it was in an abandoned car behind the store. Other people say it was like behind a dumpster. Like there's all sorts of different stories about that. But things we do know is he takes $1,500 and goes into the shopping center.

the Orange Grove Shopping Center he went to. So he walks into a TGNY, which, do you know what this is? That sounds familiar. It's apparently, it was a very Southern, right? Very, I don't know where it was, but it was a very prominent chain back in the day. It says there, the great American five and dime.

Basically, they have everything, everything that you can imagine from gardening tools to like Walmart destroyed them. Exactly. Exactly. That type of thing. But they were the kind of an original version of that. So he walks around in there and you can find something because right now he knows that the cops know what he's wearing in his car. So he's got to disguise himself. This is fucking amazing. So he buys a new outfit to wear. He buys a jumpsuit, which is an odd choice of something to wear for an escape. He's going to get shot out of a cannon now. He is living by city. He may as well dress like it. This is all dressed like Trevor, I guess. Yeah. So.

He buys the jumpsuit he buys, though. That's fine. If it was like a, you know, like a worker's coveralls or something, be a dark green. He buys a bright red jumpsuit. Oh, we're not saying track suit. You're saying jumpsuit. A jumpsuit. Yeah. He buys a bright red jumpsuit because when I'm on the run and I want to blend in, I dress like Santa Claus. That's how I like to dress because that's very inconspicuous. I want to dress like, it may as well say Department of Corrections on the back. You might as well. You might as well. He puts it on in the store. I'll wear it out. Thank you. And then he calls a cab from inside the store. Yeah. So the cab picks him up.

Picks up a man in a brand new red jumpsuit at the shopping center. And Richard Jordan tells the driver where he wants to go. Take me back to the twin star motel. Yeah. Now the driver, he doesn't know this fucking guy is sitting back there. He's just talking and he's like, Jesus Christ. He goes, man, we're gonna have to take a bunch of back roads. Goddamn cops got fucking roadblocks everywhere. It's a huge pain in the ass. If I'm going to get you back to this hotel, we're gonna have to go back roads and shit because quote, some fool kidnapped a banker's wife and now we're all suffering. Now we're all got to fucking stop at roadblocks. So we're all inconvenienced. Some fool.

Does he have hubris? Is he pissed about that? We're not sure. Some fool. He's probably excited that he didn't know he was the fool, at least. At least they don't have my picture out there, obviously. Yep. At 1 p.m., the cabbie runs out of back roads and they hit a roadblock. Uh-oh. Okay, so Richard's going to try to be cool back here. You know what I mean? An officer looks in the back seat, immediately recognizes him because the photograph has been circulated that much in the last hour and a half. Yeah, and if you're at a roadblock, you know who you're looking for. You're looking for one guy. They all look at the picture. They studied it. They're only looking for one guy. And they go, oh, you look just like that guy. So they pull him out of the car. He's arrested without a fight. Now he's...

Sure. Hands behind your back. Wow. Exactly what he's told. And then the local police hand him right over to the FBI. Here you go. And that cabbie goes, I called him a fool to his face. He still owes me 12 bucks, by the way. Can you, can someone give me my fare? Get some money off that fool? Yeah. Shit. So 2 p.m. at the FBI office, he's read his rights. Now he'd already been read his rights.

on the way but he reads his rights again by the way when he was read his rights en route to the FBI office the FBI agent said that as he read them Jordan recited them along with him like excitedly word for word like he was saying they were singing a camp song or some shit 99 bottles of beer on the wall they were doing verse 2 yeah You take one down, pass it around, and I'll keep track of the number. What do you say? So they read him his rights again. He says he understands them. Signs a written waiver, so he's ready to talk. Knows his rights. First, he denies everything. I don't know what you're talking about. Yes, I'm sitting here in a red jumpsuit holding $1,400 in highly marked bills. Yeah, it was my car you rammed into, or I rammed into you, and shot at, and you have my voice calling, and all this. But it's not me. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know shit. Then, as it goes on, and they tell him, dude.

Seriously. We saw you pick up the money. We watched you do it, bro. What are you talking about? He eventually just goes, all right, fuck it. Let me tell you what happened. He says, yeah, I made the ransom calls. That's me. Anyway, that's what I did. He said, then he takes out a piece of paper and draws them a map. Oh.

Maps everything out because they're going. Their question is, where the fuck is Edwina? Right. That's all anyone's concerned with here. Right. Where the fuck is Edwina? But they can't ask him that until they get him sat down. He signs that waiver, even though it's nowadays. I think it would be different with extenuating circumstances. They have done certain things where if it's if you're trying to save up that there's a right in the missing woman, you can do a little furtherance of perhaps she's alive somewhere. We got to make sure that she's that health and well-being is taken care of. Absolutely. But here, this is just, you know, he then draws this map. Yeah. And he said, here's a map of where I've been and throw me in the car and let's go and I'll show you around.

All right. Okay. The map's important because it's drawn in his handwriting here. He takes them, gets in the car, retraces his own everything. He shows them where he hid the clothes he'd worn, shows them where the money is. He shows them the abandoned car. He shows them the river where he threw his gun away. Oh, he doesn't have a gun anymore. Then he says, no, he didn't have a gun when he was run from the cops. He never had a gun. Then he says, now let me show you this logging road. Uh-oh. And they go, okay. And they take him out on this logging road, which is part of the map he drew.

And on the logging road, they find Edwina. Oh, no. And she's already dead. Already dead. She has a gunshot wound to the back of the head, is what they find. She's face down with her hands behind her back, fully clothed. Execution. Yep. This is 24 hours later. They do the autopsy, and they said the bullet entered the right occipital skull, the lower back right side of the head, like you pissed off the fucking Genovese crime family. And it traveled upward, right to left, back to front, and exited above the left eye. So went in here, exited here.

That's what it was. A 38. Yeah. So they're like, yeah, the bullets never recovered because the bullet was through and through. Yeah. There was no singeing of the hair. So it's not a contact wound. Didn't have it pressed up, but it wasn't a distant one either. There was a distinct abrasion ring, a dark ring around the wound that's visible in photographs that shows that that shows bone fragments and powder residue. So close enough to get powder burn, but not the actual singeing of the hair. Yeah. The medical examiner decides in his reasonable medical probability, the shot was fired from within a matter of inches.

At most two feet. So anywhere from two feet to two and a half feet maximum is how far away. Then another thing the medical examiner says is that Edwina was stationary and on her knees when the gun was fired. That's so shitty. That's just such a pussy thing to do, to shoot a fucking, some lady in the back of the housewife. A housewife. Yeah, it's crazy. So she didn't do anything to you. So this is what he says he did. This is what he tells the cops. Now we know what the medical examiner says, but this is his story because he says, fuck it, I'll tell you everything. And he does. Well, part of it anyway. Yeah. They said, did you put her in the trunk?

And he said, no, I didn't throw her in the trunk. I put her behind the wheel of the car with a gun on her and I made her drive herself. I made her drive about 30 odd miles out of town, out of the neighborhoods, all out, out into the pines. That's where I went. He said, I forced her to drive my car. They took the US 90 to the US 49, turned north, passing close to the Gulf National Building where Charles was working at the time. So she could see her goddamn husband's building. There's Salvation or something. At least he can help me in some way. He then forced her to drive to a logging road north of East Wortham Road in Harrison County.

It's a sparsely settled wooded area here off a logging road. There's nothing there, just Mississippi pine trees. That's it. That's when he said he ordered her out of the car. And he said that he was telling her that he told her that she was going to stay here with his partner.

I'm going to drop you off to somebody who'll keep an eye on you while I go and get money from your husband. And then once the husband gives me the money, then we will let you go. We're going to arrange a pickup point and we'll drop you off somewhere and then come get you fair. So she got out of the car. That's what he's been telling her the whole way there. I'm taking you to my partner so I can do this. Now they get out of the car and she starts looking around and doesn't see anybody. She just sees she's in the middle. She's in, you know, in casino where they fucking murder them. Yeah. She says, holy fuck, this is not good. There's nobody else here. I'm just far away from any human beings. I will hear a gunshot. Nobody there. Now his version is.

This. Okay. He said she ran. She saw there was no one else else there and she fucking took off. Right. Started running. So he said he panicked at that point and fired a warning shot over her head to make her stop. But he hit her. Not over her head, like just buzzing her into the air. He shot it up in the air, he said. Oh. To the warning shot. Boom. Yeah. Come back. Okay. This is amazing because he said she thought maybe if she thought he was shooting at her, she would stop running. She'd freeze. Yeah. He said, but what happened was the bullet must have come down and hit her in the back of the head.

That's his actual version of events. I shot into the air and then it came down. Yeah. He and Lee Harvey shop in the same magic store. This is way more of a magic. It's the most magic. This is like, I mean, Jesus Christ. Imagine you shoot in the air and it goes, boom, right into the person you were trying to fire a warning shot away from. That's insane. It's like the bullets from Roger Rabbit. Yeah, it's the cartoon bullets. That's exactly what it is. So he said it was a terrible, awful accident. A stupid thing to do just to do this kidnapping to begin with. But this murder was not a murder. This was an accident. A complete accident. Yeah. Yeah.

this is, I don't think he, I don't think he knew, he must not have known the track of the bullet because a bullet coming down is not going to hit you in the back of the head and then go back up again. They rarely fly like a, like a wacky, like a wacky straw. They don't go up and, no, it's like, yeah, he's, his bullets like a loopy straw. Like it just does all sorts of crazy things. Chocolate milk going everywhere. Yeah. Zigs and zags, babe.

He also said that his plan was he was going to tie her hands to a tree with his necktie and then leave her there while he collected the money and then come back and let her go. That was the plan. She had to go run away. And then this morning shot thing happened. So they're like, OK, that's funny because you brought no rope, no blindfold. You didn't even bring a fucking, you know, an orange juice for this lady. You didn't bring anything for a hostage to survive or to be able to do anything. No safe house. You just brought a gun, a tie.

that's it and a hostage and um now the state has a different version the state's version based on evidence and not you know self-serving horseshit is that he made her kneel down put the muzzle about six to eight inches from the back of her skull and fucking executed her period that's it body was found face down hands behind her back and they said that's it there's no warning shot it was just an execution period done that's it that's the state's version they even get an investigator who's a blood spatter expert um and uh he testifies that later on we'll tell the medical examiner too that the spatter shows she was motionless when she got shot oh boy um So, by the way, back to the murder day here. Okay. He shoots her. She's lying face down in the logging road.

He shot her well before he made the first ransom call. He didn't even have her. He never had her when he talked to Chuck, ever. He picked her up. What the fuck? They drove out there. He shot her. That was it. And then he made the phone calls. This is a man with zero and then what? Casey Anthony's hallway. His whole life is Casey Anthony's hallway. He's pressed up against a fucking brick at the end of the hallway. And he's still walking, though, like in a video game when your character just keeps going. That's what's going on. He can smell the drywall mud and he's just still going. No. So what does he do after the murder?

What does he do? Go to the motel? No, not at all. Once you've murdered somebody, you go to the movie theater and watch Death Wish. What? That's what you do.

Is that what he did? You go and you watch Death Wish with Charles Bronson. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. You got to get there for the crowds. By the way, Charles Bronson played a mild-mannered New York architect in that movie, which is exactly what I think of when I see Charles Bronson. Don't you? He was mild-mannered whatever he was in every movie. Yeah, because that's his only move acting-wise. That's his baseline. That's his baseline. But anyway, his wife is murdered and his daughter is assaulted, raped in a home invasion, and he responds by getting a revolver and just basically going out into the streets and executing anyone he sees that he doesn't like the looks of.

He turns into a way worse person than any of those people. He kills way more people and then they make like eight of those movies too. So many. And then dudes in their like 40s and the 80s that they're jerking off to it because they're like, God, I hate black people too. They're jerking it to it because that's all it was. That's all the movies were. If only he was a six foot four white guy that fought terribly, I'd watch the shit out of those too. Yeah, that's great. And as a kid, I thought those movies were great. I didn't know. It was just a bunch of fucking violence. We loved all those movies. Anything like that. It's action. Yeah, shit's blowing up. Cool. Bloodsport, put it on. Great. Let's watch them fight. What a terrible movie that is. Of course it's bad. It's awful.

We loved all that shit when we were little. Thought it was great. And there was a love story mixed in. You got to bring the ladies in, Jimmy. Jean-Claude's got to get his dick wet. Yeah, he's got to show his bare ass at some point. There's got to be a reason for all this blood. It's pussy. It's obviously pussy. Revenge for his brother's death and pussy. Not necessarily in that order, by the way. That's the other thing. Come with me. You never know. So back to him in police custody. It's 445 before he's taken to a county judge who tells him he's charged with a capital offense. Now he says he wants to wait for a lawyer.

So the judge appoints a lawyer. Rhett Russell is his name. At about 530, another investigator who is over at the county jail and has been there on the case for three hours has no idea that Jordan just asked the judge for counsel. He doesn't know this. He walks in, fingerprints him, photographs him and starts talking to him because he has no idea that he's already asked for a lawyer. About 6 p.m., another officer arrives. Mirandizes Richard again.

Yeah. And then turns on a tape recorder and asks him to fucking repeat a story. So he confesses again. Exactly the same story he told the first time. I kidnapped her. I took her out. I shot in the air. I accidentally hit her. Yada, yada, yada. They type it all up. Get it ready. Exactly what he said. And he refuses to sign it. Like, I just.

Cops probably aren't the best typists. I'd be like, you motherfucker. You know how fucking long it just took me to hunt and peck this out? There was a yank it out, feed a new paper in several times. You're going to sign it or eat it. Those are your options. It'll take you to see the new Bronson. Yeah. One of the two. But he refuses to sign it. Now, the next day, January 14th, 1976, they send divers out to find his gun. And this is one of the craziest things that's ever happened on our show before. Okay, they send scuba divers out. And we don't know. Some sources credit the Gulfport police. Some say it's the fire department.

Okay. And it's important because of what they do because it's fucking crazy. They dive in. They find the 38. Wow. They find a 38 in the fucking water, which is incredible. Number one. What the craziest shit is, this is the big Biloxi River. They find it in a river. Okay. So it moves. So when the diver found it, for some reason, I have a picture I will post on the social media of this. Whoever took the picture has a, the most amazingly timed shot. It's perfect. Yeah. The fucking guy comes out of the water with the gun and fires it into the air.

Did it work? Yes. There is a picture of him with his hand in the air and fucking flames, you know, sparking flames shooting out of the gun, visible in the photograph. What an asshole, first of all. What a fucking idiot. And then it came down and killed a lady 10 feet away, obviously. As will happen. And Jordan was like, I told you, see? Fucking told you guys. He fired. Called me a liar. He fired it into the fucking air as he surfaced. It wasn't like he came up with it to let me see if it were... He popped up and was like...

Which must have scared the shit out of everybody. Not only did he pop out of the water, but fired a fucking shot off. I'm sure it scared the shit out of him, too. I bet he feels like a real bozo. Yeah, no shit. So they said that there was only two rounds in the gun. That was the second round. Wow. Fired from that. And the prosecutor later on will say this means that Jordan shot Edwina, then cocked the hammer again in case she wasn't dead, then closed the hammer.

That's what they say. So it rolled the chamber over. Yes. So that's why it fired. When you come up, maybe don't hold it by the trigger. Maybe keep your finger off. Hang on to that handle. Maybe the front even. It's fine. The second one, though, was still in the chamber. So obviously, the people around here freak out. This is a very upstanding country club, the Yacht Club, vice president of a bank, all this shit. So there's an article here saying, quote, how do we answer all the questions?

This comes out the next day. They say that the neighbors of Edwina and Chuck Martyr, whose children played with their children or visiting nephews and were in and out of their homes on Southern Circle, are all wondering the same thing. How do we answer our children's millions of questions on why this had to happen to such a good, sweet, happy person as Mrs. Martyr? One mother, whose daughter babysits for the Martyrs, said she was asked, how are they going to explain it to Eric and Kevin? Those are the kids there.

Some of the children knew before their parents did that something was wrong and that Mrs. Martyr was missing from the home. That's because they were questioned by officers while they were playing basketball out there. Oh, they said all the residents were concerned. Nearly all feel the act was not a happenstance and that it was a fully planned and executed, carefully planned. So they're saying it's a well orchestrated event. That's they think this is like this must be like some crazy international cabal of, you know, something.

It's coming then. Oh, everyone who lives on the circle agrees. It's not an easy area to find from the scenic drive. Unless one drives up into the circle for some distance, he would not know there are homes located in that area. He said they had to have known something about us when our children go to school, when the carpools leave, who's at home and who is not. Well, they said young mothers want to know also if Edwina Martyr was selected at random. And if so, why not one of them? Your husband is not doing well enough. That's why.

Literally, he just said, who has money? People who work at banks. Let me call a bank, ask for someone important, and then go to his house. He must have money. It was that simple. He's saying if you don't have any money, take your broke ass home. Take your broke ass home. I think it was. Yeah, I can hear Fergie saying that dumb shit. I can just hear it as a group of people. Oh, yeah. So that's what's going on here. They're like, why not me? I'm not good enough. So they said the circle is occupied by professional people, some bankers, some lawyers, some doctors, others retired, others owning business firms. That's not the idea. He just said money is in banks.

Right. Nearby neighbors and a mother who'd been in a carpool with Mrs. Marder for two years said she was one of the finest, sweetest, and dearest of persons. She was always smiling, always pleasant. She always had the most radiant smile and just made you feel good to be around her. They said she was a home person. They said with a small one, you have to be, one of the mothers said. She said she had many friends who did not live in the circle, whom she played bridge with all the time as well. There you go, bridge. Bridge, the old lady game. They said she was always friendly and frequently came over to our adjoining patio to talk in the late afternoon as they watched the children play.

They said she was very active and interested in the Catholic school that her older son attended. And one of the nuns at the school called one of the mothers crying and asked to be told it wasn't true. Men in the circle are concerned also for the safety of their families. Mothers feel that their children should be able to grow up in an atmosphere without locks and bolts, without having to know every minute that their children are in their homes or their friends' homes. You know, life.

Knowing exactly where your kid is. They're like, I should be able to just have my kid go outside, not know where he is for four hours, then he comes home alive. That's it. That should be it every night. One man told the paper, I'm very concerned for my wife. I'm always gone from 8.30 a.m. I live in the big blue house up there in the back of the circle there. I'm gone from 8.30 to 5, and I can't even be reached. I mean, I am gone, gone. Off the map. And if anyone tries to kidnap her, they'll have to kill her. I know it. They will have to kill her. She's not going to go lightly, so.

You know, I understand. My pain in the ass. I mean, my wife. I love her so dearly. I love her so dearly. She's the mother of my children. I have lots of life insurance on her. That's how much she means to me. Yeah. I insure her. Because her life means that much to me. It means a lot. $50,000 ransom. I'll pay it tomorrow. Tomorrow, yeah. Just to get her back. I need to have her here.

The article says they also feel that there's a lot more to the events surrounding the kidnapping that is being revealed, that they as neighbors and friends should be briefed by officials on the circumstances under which she was abducted. They want to know what they can do, how they can protect themselves and their children, if there were any past connections with the accused man in Martyr's Bank. Well, number one thing is when someone knocks, go, who is it? And then don't... Believe them. He has no badge. Call the electric company. Any person that comes to your door, inquire further. Don't take their word for it. Also, if it's beyond the meter, the power company doesn't give a fuck. If you've got bad circuit breakers, they don't fucking care. That's your problem. You think she knows beyond the meter and all that as a housewife in 1973? You work at the electric company. I didn't know what that meant until you told me. No one knows that.

Yeah. So yeah, either way though, that's ask. I mean, but back then you, that was considered crazy to not open the door for someone who not. It's just, it'd be like not answering the phone. Yeah. It's consider you're a weirdo in a crazy person. Yeah. It'd be like not answering the phone. Who the fuck was answering the phone? Whereas now it's like, obviously I'm not answering that. I saw the curtains move. They looked to see who it was and they didn't answer the door. Piece of shit. Think you're invited to bridge night next time. Fuck right.

So they were asked if they were disturbed by being called during the dinner hour by the press. And one woman said, we're not eating much tonight. This is nightmarish. It has left its mark on the children. It's hard to explain to them why these things happen. We are all emotionally ill and we are physically ill. Our hope is that the guilty party will be punished and will not be allowed to get out of this so that many and so many seem to be doing as so many seem to be doing throughout the country. The laws seem to favor them and not those who are hurt. We have anguish all night and all day over this and want to be informed.

They said the residents of the circle who had been in constant contact with each other by telephone think that maybe they should get large dogs and let them roam the circle at night. What is this, a junkyard? You've now turned your beautiful neighborhood into a junkyard with snarling dogs haunting people if they try to take their trash to the curb. Are you out of your fucking mind? Well, it's either that, James, or the congressman lets us have our tigers like we have. One of the two, yeah. How about get dogs and keep them in your house?

And this happened at 2 in the afternoon, so having them roam the night won't matter at all. Why won't your kids eat their dino nugs? Why are you telling the kids so much? Well, back then they were probably making them eat liver. There's no dino nugs back then. We're having liver. I don't want liver. Pow. And they just smack you one until you ate liver. This was a practice in the circle several years ago until there was a mass poisoning of dogs, a case that has still not been solved. They used to let dogs just run in the circle to protect their houses, and then someone poisoned them all because they probably got bit trying to take their goddamn garbage out, which still don't poison dogs, obviously. Lay on their grass. Good God.

So pre-trial here, they're gonna take him to trial. He wants his confession or confessions thrown out. Um, the second confession, the taped one, which is taken after he'd asked for a lawyer. Um, that's the big one. They're going to say, well, they want to use the tape and as a confession in court. And that was after he was already asked for a lawyer. So that shouldn't be allowed in. Um, they Jordan here, Richard Jordan said, I feel sure that I did tell him that I had an attorney pointed appointed for me, meaning the person who was questioning him. Um, but the, the agent who was questioning him said, Jordan never said a word about a lawyer. He just talked. Um, and the tape backs him up because the recording is running the whole time.

Right. And there's not nothing about a fucking way. Never says shit about a lawyer ever in the whole thing. He's been he was Mirandized at least five times before this guy walked into. So the confession is allowed in. The main reason is, is because he already said the exact same thing before they got there. But it's a little controversial to allow the tape in. But they're going to allow the tape in. I would think because it's after the whole.

The only reason they're doing is because it was the exact same thing he said before, but it was after he was appointed a lawyer and at that point, whatever, but he's also a free human being who has free will to speak if he wants to, even if he's been appointed a lawyer, even if the lawyer said, the lawyer came in, sat next to him, said, don't say shit. And he said, fuck you and said everything. It's fine. You're in charge of your own shit. So it gets in there and it didn't matter because it's, it's a cumulative. Anyway, they would have had all the notes of him confessing the first time. So it's, it's very interesting. So then we'll get more to this later. This does not allow, this is not allowed in now.

Later on, we'll talk about it. Jordan's going to claim that the FBI agent Frank Watts threatened to throw him out of the window of the building. Oh, toss him out the window while he was cuffed. Yeah. Then Jordan asked this. This is amazing. Richard Jordan. This guy's a real asshole. He said that I'd like to take a polygraph to clear myself, but I'll take a polygraph if all the officers also have to take a polygraph.

About what? About what happened in that room. And the judge said, well, no polygraph is admissible here anyway, so it really doesn't matter. Your beef with their weird, you know, whatever the fuck you're doing, that's all on you and I don't care. I don't want either of your polygraphs. Sit the fuck down. Yeah, shut up. I'll believe you. That's what we do with a jury here. They're the polygraph, the jury. So then there's a psychiatrist, Dr. Clifton Davis here. Jordan himself asks to be evaluated. He's examined at the Gulf Coast Health Center in Gulfport. Then he moved to be examined at Mississippi State Hospital instead.

He wanted to do that, but he got denied by the court. Now, his Clifton Davis, this doctor, Dr. Davis, diagnoses him as a, quote, sociopathic personality, saying he's competent, understood the charges, is able to assist counsel, able to distinguish right from wrong. So, sane. Sane, but a dick, basically, as we said. He's an asshole. Yeah. He noted that Jordan may give or withhold information to cast himself in the best light, the doctor also said. Then he said that this is what he told me.

Because he said that, you know, he talked freely in the room with the psychiatrist. That's what the doctor said. He said that the doctor said he boasted about how he thought he was going to, quote, beat the rap. Oh, he's going to beat it. They're never going to get him. He claimed that he has a 145 IQ. So he's smart. He knows what he's doing. He claimed he'd always been a good con man. He described shitloads of illegal activities that he never got caught for. Just stuff. He described the embezzlement with the fertilizer people. He described sitting down and working out a plan, including involving robbery, kidnapping and extortion.

And then he said the main thing that's wild. There's delusional, like I'm going to blame other people for my shortcomings. And then there's this crazy shit. He told the psychiatrist, you know, it's really the FBI's fault that Edwina's dead. If they hadn't been there. Well, he said if they followed the car and they were around the drop and they made me nervous. So if they didn't go around making me nervous, I wouldn't have killed her.

Oh, so it's really their fault. If you think about it, he said that. Wow. And then another psychiatrist later on, he'll just say he didn't do it at all. And we'll get to that. But it's crazy. So his defense team, he starts saying, well, I had an accomplice. I had an accomplice. His defense team won't even use that because they're like, that's not believable. We're not using that. No other person has been mentioned here. There is a change of venue out of the county because the coverage was pretty fucking heavy, as you can imagine. Rich lady gets murdered and kidnapped from her home, for Christ's sake. So they tried it in Pascagoula.

The jury selection is July 19th. The trial lasts three days. It's a five man, seven woman jury. And not only were fucking everything, everybody's name and address in the fucking phone book. If you were on a jury before you even started, the jurors, the jurors are Carolyn Pino, Daniel G. Pruitt, Mrs. Francis Faye Smith, Donald Foster, Dorothy Guy, Donny Ray Walters. The list goes on. Yeah, this is that's crazy. Their names are right there.

This is the, okay, I think the prosecutor, I was really impressed with the ease with which the jury was selected. They said, I was impressed that there was not the first juror who said that they have a fixed opinion as to the innocence or guilt. So none of the jurors, even the ones that knew about the case said, I don't have any opinion on it, which to me is just a lie. Yeah, if you've heard of it, you've got an opinion. You've got an opinion. Absolutely. And that's just also a kind of a 1975 Southern thing. Like, I mean, I ain't judging nobody. I ain't gonna pass judgment. So the prosecution opening, they say very simply, quote, he shot Edwina Martyr in the back of the head. She fell down with a Kleenex in her left hand and her right hand cupped.

Kleenex because she was crying. She was scared. The .38 caliber projectile exited the front of her head above the left eye. She was murdered on that logging road. They also bring in a handwriting expert, Donald E. Stagnall, an FBI handwriting expert that identified Jack Wilson and Jordan as having the same handwriting. Hey, what a coincidence. Jordan obviously used Jack Wilson at the hotel. The expert made the finding after comparing blow-up copies of Jordan's handwriting with Wilson's registration card there.

Then there's a cross-examination by the defense where there's a lengthy explanation of a number of differences between the handwriting samples. And the guy said there are variations but not differences. There's a difference. He said variations add to the identification, not take away from them. So these actually identify them more because they're very specific variations. So then they have a psychiatrist here that he was examined by, and they said that he has a sociopathic personality.

but is capable of understanding the charges against him and can assist counsel and is just fine. He stated that, you know, he might withhold information, just like I said before, to cast himself in a good light and all that kind of thing. The doctor said that in his opinion, he is, quote, capable of distinguishing right and wrong and assisting counsel, said he talked freely about, quote, how he thought he was going to beat the rap and how he had 145 IQ. So he just sounds like an asshole is what he sounds like to the jury at that point. The defense had his own expert here, Dr. Leroy Riddick, who said that you could, you couldn't tell how far away Edwina was when she was shot.

She could have been. He said she could have been as far as 30 yards away or as close as three feet. Okay, fine. But how do you get the burns? I would even look from 30 feet away. If they want to put it that way, it doesn't matter to me. Point is, she was on her knees 30 feet, 30 yards. I don't care how far away he was. She was in a prone position. She wasn't running from anybody. No, well, this is murder. Yeah, absolutely. But this is their defense's case is she was running away and he fired a warning shot, whereas not true. She's on her knees and it's from two feet away. So horseshit. Yeah. And they also asked this guy. They said, wasn't he a marksman?

Right. Like, didn't he an expert marksman? Well, with a .38, unless it's a long barrel, you can't hit shit. They said, could a marksman shot her from 10 yards? And this guy said he had no knowledge of his abilities as a marksman and wouldn't opine outside of the physical evidence. So, okay, now this is the closing here, or, yeah, half-hour statement from the prosecution. They said, and Lena Martyr had a right to live. And this guy, by the way,

I mean, he put some emotion. He had a handkerchief in his hand the whole time, acting like he was best friends with Edwina, basically, the prosecutor. He knew her, though. That's the other thing. A bunch of them knew her. He used it to dab tears from his eyes as he described the martyr family's loss. What a nice man. He's good. He gives a shit, at least. Oh, he's so teary-eyed. Good Lord. So he said, citing consideration given in the courts for Jordan's rights, he says, my God, what rights did Edwina Martyr have that day? He said that the claim that the deadly wound was made by a warning shot is, quote, a cock and bull story. It's a cock and ball story is what that is.

He said he was the judge. He was the jury. He was her lawyer. He was her prosecutor. And he was also her executioner out there that day on Turin Road. He threw two new roles in that scene. He only did three for it to really have the sting. Prosecutors. He's got a lawyer. But because he's a lawyer, he's got to throw the lawyers in there. He had a whole trial with this person, a whole mock trial.

He said Gerald Jordan's family will not have to run up and down the road looking for his body. The body will be turned over to them. It will not be left for the birds of the air and for the beasts of the fields to feast upon. The beasts too. Wow. Yeah. In reference to a statement that his attorney saying Jordan was sick. He said, I say he's not a sick man. I say he's a greedy man. Did you notice how cool and calculated and cold that he was on the tapes making demands? Come on.

So after the prosecution does their closing, the defense goes, I think we're about done here, right? Judge, let's get a directed verdict of not guilty so we can all just go home. Obviously, they have not presented their case. Clearly, we'll all just go home now. The judge was like, are you out of your fucking mind? There's confessions and everything else. So he moved for a directed verdict, which is so funny. He alleged the state had not met the burden of proof. His lawyer there, Russell, at that time, also moved that the defense be allowed to give the final closing statement if they're not going to have a directed verdict. He cited a scene from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in which Brutus' speech to the crowd was turned against him by a speech by Octavian, which followed his...

which followed his Brutus' defense of the murder of Caesar. What? He said, I can come out and tell you a good defense, and then this guy can come out and turn it all around, so I want to have the last word. Yeah, haven't you all seen Julius Caesar? You've all read Shakespeare, all of it, right? But you'd assume the lawyers probably have, because they went to college and shit, so they're not idiots like us. So the defense, they're not uncultured douchebags like us, yeah. Now, defense, well, there's something from it, actually. The defense closing here, they say the case has been like a nightmare to me. That's what the defense attorney said.

Yeah, this is the most impossible thing I've ever done. Yeah. He said, no human being in the world has more right than I do to talk about the death penalty. Don't know why he said that. Well, then you're going to figure it out. He picked up the murder weapon and told the jury, this gun right here is turned at the head of my client just as surely as it is loaded.

He criticized laws allowing sales of guns to, quote, anyone with a sick mind. Which, yeah, maybe if he wasn't allowed to go get a .38 so easily, this wouldn't happen, is what he's saying. But he had a 12-gauge, or a 16-gauge. He had a shotgun that could have easily done just as much damage or worse. You can't knock on the door with a 16-gauge shotgun on your gun and say you work for the electric company. You can't cut the pocket out of your pants and stuff that down the leg. People see you with a shotgun, they know, hey, I might have to run. If you've got it out tucked, it's not as easy. Very rare for them to carry that. Very rare. He then says this.

Quote, in my church, we live with the memory of six million people dragged screaming to the gas chambers because the law in that country and the highest court in that country said it was the law. You're comparing this guy to the Holocaust. Literally innocent people ripped from their homes and fucking taken to a concentration camp. This guy went out and kidnapped a woman for ransom. Does he pull this in everything that he defends? Yeah, it compares everything to the Holocaust. My client jaywalked. Sure. Sure he did. But my people were taken to the gas chamber and I don't feel like he should have to suffer the same fate. It's a $50 fine, sir. I don't care. Six million Jews didn't die for this. They did not die for it. My client did not be able to walk across the street in a free country. A free country, mind you. Free.

Wow. Oh, man. So he trafficked a little heroin. Six million Jews are dead. Does that mean nothing to you people? Are you heartless?

Do you have no hearts or minds? My God. It's not fair that Goebbels existed. No. He said, in my heart of hearts, I have never believed from the first day that I met this man that this man is a normal man. Yeah. He said, he's calm and he's quiet and has never shown one iota of emotion to me about anything. He is sick if he has anything. He's a sick man. He said, this man has been diagnosed as a sociopath. You know this is improper.

And his voice was so hoarse that he could barely go on as he called for the abolition of the death penalty. He said, he says, what we ought to do with Richard Jordan is no worse than what was done. Oh, that was right. That's somebody else. That's the prosecutor. Okay. He said, the prosecutor said that no, he said, the prosecutor says what we ought to do to Richard Jordan is no worse than what was done to Mrs. Marder. I submit to you that if you bring in a verdict against my client, the prosecutor's right. It's not different. You're a murderer too. So why are you better? Just because it's a bad guy. And that's my point always. What are we talking about? We're all, were we better now?

Yeah. He then attacked the idea of a death for death retribution. He said, I'm not advocating this man should go forth on the street. If you're unable to reach a verdict, my client will remain in custody. I will find someone who is willing to something. He says, if the capital punishment is not abolished, all the world will ever give is death for death. The spark of his life is holy. This man needs to help needs help about as much as any human being I've ever encountered.

Am I not? Am I advocating this man be convicted? No, I am not. I am advocating that this man should go forth on the streets. Surely you know that I'm not. I only ask that you remember the words of a good man that I even was able to read and understand. He said, they say unto you an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and a life for a life. But I say unto you. And at that point, he said, please think about it and walk to a seat.

The prosecution said he fucking said he shot her and it came down that way. It's crazy. It's an upward shot. Obviously, he executed her. And they said every item of proof we had in this case reveals a diabolical plan of an intelligent schemer. That's more accurate.

I agree with some of the death penalty shit, but this guy's right. That guy's not sick. He's just a monster. And that defense attorney is swinging for the fences. Oh, the Holocaust. Look at your Bibles. I mean, he's swinging for anything. And I don't think telling the whole jury you're a Jew in Mississippi is probably going to endear you like you think it is in 1975 or today, probably. So he said, he pulled out that .38 caliber pistol and within seconds Edwina lay dead in those woods. This is to me what makes this crime so reprehensible, so unforgivable. The woman lay dead in the woods at this point. Richard Gerald Jordan begins to plot to get money from Charles Marder.

He said that, you know, he's a desperate man with demands for a ransom. He's trying to do anything in the world to regain his wife. Martyr is. And he said, I don't know what else we could have presented to you to make this any fucking clearer, basically. And so that's it. He said, you know, what do you want? Basically, that's all. He said, what was three year old Kevin Martyr saying? I want my mommy. I want my mommy. He was never to see his mommy again. And he wiped tears from his eyes. Can't answer the phone. Martyr residents. Martyr residents. We're going to be martyrs. He said, life is like a football game.

You get a set of rules to go by. Richard Gerald Jordan has had 30 years of his life to play by the rules. I'm asking you to take Richard Gerald Jordan out of the ballgame and out of the game of life because he didn't play by the rules. Bench him. Free agency for this guy. Put him on waivers. He said, I've never seen a case with so much overwhelming evidence.

He said that gun is, you know, all that shit and blah, blah, blah. So the prosecutors, what they also do, okay, in Mississippi in 1976, this murder, there is one penalty for it and one penalty only. And it's automatic. There's no penalty phase. If you're found guilty, they go guilty and death sentence and goodbye. And that's kind of how they used to do it in like old England and shit. They would do like that. And then you'd appeal the death sentence and try to get to life. So I'm talking like a 1900s even, not that, that far. So the prosecutor, Owen is a smart fucking guy. This guy.

He urged that the court follow the Florida process, which has one jury decide guilt and another evaluating extenuating circumstances or things like that to possibly get the death sentence or a life sentence. He goes, because the way some court decisions have come down, this is the way it should be done. So he says that he urged the court to follow the Georgia procedure, which leaves final discretion on sentencing to the judge, but the jury recommends a sentence. Florida, you mean? No, that's the Georgia way. The other way is two separate juries. The Georgia way is the jury decides within the judge's final sentence. So he said you could do either one of those.

The judge said after the trial is over, I might consider using the Georgia procedure, but then doesn't at all. July 21st, 1976, the jury's out for four hours. They come back guilty of capital murder. Now, this is an automatic death sentence. No penalty phase, no mitigation, no weighing. You, sir, may fuck off death penalty, period. That's it. But like we said, the prosecutors actually discussed filing a motion to give him a separate punishment hearing. But the judge, when they said we might do that, said I found no legal basis for it. I'd be making up a procedure. I can't make up a procedure. That's gonna be very appealable. So.

Death penalty. Okay. Now, let's rewind a few weeks before that. That was July 21st, 1976, which is less than six months or six months after the murder, which is pretty impressive. Seven months. Very fast. July 2nd, 76. A couple weeks before this, the U.S. Supreme Court held that mandatory death sentences were unconstitutional in cases out of North Carolina and Louisiana.

So they even, that's why the guy said, hey, let's not just automatically do this. It's going to get thrown out. We're all wasting our time here. October 5th, 1976, Mississippi Supreme Court decides Jackson versus state, which creates bifurcated trials in Mississippi capital cases, which if you don't know, means that one jury decides the guilt or innocence. Another jury decides the penalty, or at least whether you get the death penalty or not. October 27th, 1976, Jordan's motion for a new trial is sustained. And there you go. Death sentence gone. 98 days later, fucking gone.

So now he has to go to do a whole new trial. Whole new trial? Whole new guilt phase, whole new punishment phase, because everything was predicated on if he's guilty, he's getting the death penalty. So strategies might have been different and all that. So they got to clean the slate. Holy shit. It's the exact same trial. Exact same. You would think that a defense team would see what didn't work and then do something different. They did the exact same thing. Well, I feel like that group wasn't very red. I think these people know history. They might know more. And we're going Jew approach again. Some of these people might be World War II buffs. That's all I'm saying. I'm going to go heavy on the Jew stuff.

So verdict, guilty again. Yeah. Okay. Sentencing that day, by the way. Yeah. The defense attorney tells the jury that Jordan's been a good person until he was about 30. Then something happens to him. Happened to him. I don't know what. He said he, quote, was and remains a sick man. They call his parents. They call a prison chaplain who's been praying with him. The prosecution cross-examines the chaplain, which I don't know what you cross-examine a prison chaplain about. Whether or not he's got the next ticket stubs. I guess. Did you see sleepers? Sorry. No, I guess. Yeah, yeah. They don't cross-examine his parents, though. Uh-huh. Yeah. Jury deliberations now.

That night, the jury is deliberating. They come back into the court after hours and say, there's one juror who's not in favor of the death penalty here. Just one, and that's all it takes. It's a broken thing. So the defense moves for a mistrial, and it's denied. The judge says, get back in there and fucking pick something.

Which is rough. Has to be unanimous, huh? Yep, which is good. It should be. But then they go back in. They go back in for a few hours. And also, the district attorney asked the defense counsel if there's a motion for a mistrial at this point because the judge is forcing them to go back in. They said, do you want to go ahead and file a mistrial? Do you want to go ahead and move for that? Because we're into that. He said, basically, we'll agree to it, is what he said. And the defense said, nah, we're good.

Offered a mistrial, and they said, no, we're good. Huh. Wow. And they might have looked at the jury. The only thing you can think of is they looked at the jury and thought, that one holdout, he's going to hang on. He's never going to do it, yeah. We're going to get a life sentence. An hour later, they came back. You, sir, make fuck off. Death penalty again. Convinced them. Convinced them. All 12. They all said death. Okay, now we've got to go through this rather quickly because this is the most insane.

fucking post sentencing, whatever shit ever. Okay. So now that's re-sentenced to death. Yeah. Okay. November 22nd, 1978, the Mississippi Supreme Court affirms this case. Um, the court summary was 29 years old, former member of the armed forces who was out, uh, who out of desire to obtain, obtain money, abducted Mrs. Martyr at gunpoint and shot her, then continued with the, what the court called his grotesque scheme. They, they had his lunch for him. This was the appeals court. Um, they said that also, they said that the death penalty they ruled was neither wanton nor freakish.

The judge said that the record clearly reveals to us that any jury instruction considering a lesser offense was neither warranted nor justified by the evidence. No rational bias or basis appears upon which the jury could have acquitted Jordan or found him guilty of any lesser offense. So they said he brought her from home after deceitfully pretending to be representing a utility company, then took her at gunpoint into the woods and shot her. Afterwards, he played the ransom game with Mr. Martyr, his victim's husband, for many hours with Jordan assuring Martyr that Mrs. Martyr was still safe and well. Anyway, keep on keeping on, asshole. Execution set for January 9th, 1980.

All set for that shit. They're ready to go. But there's a problem. The court grants him a stay of execution on December 2nd. They give him a stay of execution saying that I guess he exhausted all appeals. There's something with the U.S. District Court. They just want to basically send it out, give him another chance at appeals. Now, by 1980, Chuck and the kids have moved on. They've left the area. They moved to Lafayette, Louisiana. Chuck's going to end up remarrying a few times, by the way.

Yeah, he remarries. Eric will later say that none of them were mother figures to him, which I don't know how anybody would be if your mother was murdered like that. That'd be hard. So he also said that he thinks Chuck got stricter after the murder. We were more strict on than hard on them. He says he can't be sure, but he was a kid and his father never talked about it. He said his father would not talk about what happened ever with the kids. And he said that it's not. He said that my mother's death was not a topic of conversation with my father ever. Wouldn't do it, which is you got to talk to your kids about that, I would think. But you're so broken up, I guess.

1982, August. Here, a federal appeals court Friday upheld the murder conviction but ordered prosecutors to reconsider whether he should get the death penalty. OK, a fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the case of Richard Richard Gerald Jordan, who was convicted in the kidnapping. He was appealing U.S. District Court, U.S. District Judge Harold Cox's reversal, a refusal to overturn his second conviction and death sentence. The appeals court said there apparently may be merit to Jordan's claims that he did not intend beforehand to kill Mrs. Martyr, and therefore the state court trial erred in the charge to the jury about malice aforethought. So basically the difference between premeditated and not. They're saying maybe it wasn't premeditated.

The court instructs the jury that the malice aforethought mentioned in the indictment does not have to exist in the mind of the defendant for any length of time, so long as it exists at the time of the alleged act. They said the court instructs the jury that malice aforethought is premeditation to commit an act without legal justification or excuse. So the Fifth Circuit Court does this. They affirm the conviction. They affirm the confession ruling that that should have been allowed in, noting he was Mirandized at least four times and know his rights so well he recited them from memory. So can't really say they didn't know what he was doing and all that kind of shit. So that all stays in. Two, it vacates the death sentence.

Oh, yeah, because of a jury instruction, specifically what Owen, the prosecutor said in closing argument. He said, each of you have to determine what is an aggravating circumstance. Now, you can't do that under Godfrey v. Georgia. You can't hand 12 people the power to decide for themselves what counts as an aggravator. There is a list of aggravators. You have to present them. Yeah. You can't just say, well, I mean, shit. I mean, if he- Make up your own. He pisses on the toilet seat, doesn't stop it up. That's an aggravator. I mean, it's, you know. So now Richard says he didn't even do it. Oh. His new thing is, I didn't even do it. So you can't kill me. He said, I never fired the shot that killed her, quote unquote. Who did?

Oh, yeah. He says now he has an accomplice whose name he won't reveal even under threat of the death penalty. He can't reveal this man's name. Kill me if you want. I'll never say. He said, if I go to that gas chamber, the name will probably go with me. It's more or less death. It's more or less a point of honor to me. Get the fuck out of here. You got to be kidding me. He had a perfect out when they fired on his vehicle to say they hit her. Yeah. Well, they would know, wasn't it? It was their bullet probably. Well, he wouldn't know. He wouldn't know.

So he said that I took her from her home and I dropped her off with the accomplice in the forest. He said, I left her with him and I went back into town to call Mr. Martyr. When I got back, she was dead. He said she tried to escape. I have no reason to doubt the man. I don't know about you, but I believe him. He's a very honorable fella. He said he only confessed because the FBI agents threatened him. He said, do you know anything about police in Mississippi? It was either confessed or I wouldn't be here now. They said they were going to throw me out of an eight story window. And he says, even though his ultimate fate is uncertain, he realized that he could end up in the gas chamber someday. He says, of course, it'll be, I'd be disappointed to say the least. Talk about an understatement.

How would you feel if you got executed? Disappointed. I'd be, you know, all right, disappointed. I got Thai food last night and the wings in my drunken noodle were a little mushy. I was disappointed. A little, I mean, still edible, but just a little mushy. I was a little disappointed. Didn't get dragged to the gas chamber. Same as if I was dragged kicking and screaming to my death. Wow. This is very disappointing, you guys. Yeah. I'm not happy with this at all, by the way. He said, I can face it. I don't want to. No one in their right mind wants to die. From all I've heard, I don't believe it'll be painful. I'll be apprehensive about not knowing.

And he said, I've had, he said that he's not afraid of any punishment because he knows God has forgiven him. Oh, well, that's good. Oh yeah. He said, I've had my backsliding and they use an apostrophe backsliding, but I know I've been forgiven for all the things I've done wrong. He said, he regrets what happened to Mrs. Marger, but he doesn't think that killing him will solve it. He said, if they kill me instead of one unhappy family, we've got two families unhappy. Killing me can only compound the suffering already caused. Sure. And here's the best part. He said, you know, I've been thinking about it. I no longer support the death penalty. He literally said that. He goes, you know what? I thought about it. I used to be a supporter. He said, now change my mind.

This case has done one thing for me. He said he used to like it, but he said firsthand experience has changed his mind because he knows it's not a deterrent, which that's a good guy to ask. He said, as far as the death penalty having an effect on anyone's behavior, no, it's not a deterrent. People who think that way are giving criminals too much credit for intelligence. Right. Thank you. You're not saying that that's what it is. You're not saying that states with a death penalty tend to have higher murder rates. It's not because they haven't caught up to it yet. It's just it doesn't do anything. Well, the thing is about murder in a lot of situations, it's based upon and predicated upon.

if I do this, I will gain something from it, money or whatever. If you've got people that are that broke that they're willing to murder over it, there's your biggest problem. It has nothing to do with... Well, not only that, people don't kill thinking about the consequences of it. Like, well, if I do this, I'll do 20 for that. They don't think about that. They're going to get away with crimes. That's how they do it. It's the consequences of if they don't murder that are way worse because we're going to get away with it.

And if you want to say it's for retribution, then fine, be honest. Say it's for retribution. If everybody says we should have retribution in the way of the death penalty, then do it. I don't fucking care. I'm just saying that to say it's for deterrence, which is what they try to say, it's not. They've done the math. We've had fucking decades. It does not help. You can say, fuck those guys. That's a different argument. Go ahead. Make it. He said the only reason people support the death penalty is out of frustration with their own lives.

which I do agree with that in a certain extent, to a certain extent. It's a way for them to get back at the system, to pick at the weak and the defenseless. It seems like the less control people have over their lives, the more they support the death penalty, which tends to be true, actually. He said that they admitted that if anyone, then he said, though, if anyone ever killed one of his children, quote, if I could get my hands on him, I'd carry it out the death penalty myself. I believe it.

Sure, and anybody should think that way. He says, by the way, he does miss his children, two sons and a daughter, or two daughters and a son. He said more than anything, hasn't seen them since his arrest because his ex-wife has kept them from him. Oh, because she doesn't want to bring him to see a murderer? All the way to Mississippi to see a murderer. He hopes a lawsuit he filed will allow him to have contact.

He said his parents come to see him. He said it hurts me that it brought disgrace and shame on them, meaning his parents. When these things happen, people often say the parents didn't do the right job. My parents did do the right job. They can't be responsible for me all my life. There's times when I wish I could take back one minute of my life. He says there's a saying yesterday has come and gone. Today is the only time I have. Therefore, I must live for today. So what does Chuck want to happen? What's he want? Chuck said if we had a life without parole sentence, which they didn't have in Mississippi at the time, I might feel differently about the death penalty. Chuck's a reasonable guy. Sounds like.

He said, I think the reason for a lot of the crime in this country is that we do nothing about it. That's not exactly true. He said, as for the man who killed his wife, he said, I couldn't have done what he did. Jordan should never be allowed to live in society. I would be perfectly happy with him behind bars if I knew he would spend the rest of his life there. And that's a very reasonable approach to it. I'm not bloodthirsty. I just don't want him out on the streets doing this to other people. Great. Don't kill him. Fine. Just never let him out. I'm fine with that. Like I said, my family was fine with that when we had someone murdered. We all went, yeah, just put him away. That's great. Go ahead. What the fuck are we going to do? Go down there and kill her? That's stupid.

Anyway, they said, we don't talk about what happened much anymore, Eric's son said, though. 1983, re-resentencing. Wait, re-resentencing. His defense attorney withdraws. He's taking a sabbatical from practicing law. Oh.

for Holocaust studies possibly, I'm not sure. Joe Sam Owen, the prosecutor, isn't the prosecutor anymore. He's in private practice, but the martyr family asks him to come back and do it because they felt like he was the most passionate. Put on a new number. Just come back in. Get in the game. So he does it as a special prosecutor. He later estimated he spent more than 3,000 hours on the case. He said he knew. The reason why he did it is because he knew Edwina. He was a member of the St. James Catholic Church and she was a member of it too and she knew him or they knew each other. They bring in a prosecutor, a prosecution expert here talking about she was not running, she was kneeling. Richard testifies now.

Atta boy. Jordan's going to testify. He explains the debts, the car, the boat, the store bills he had, the department store credit cards. He said he was desperate. He said, quote, I meant to shoot over her head to scare her and let her know I wanted her to stop running. Which, what happened to the accomplice last year? He said, I wanted, I needed the money. He said, I wanted the better things of life, but I didn't plan to kill somebody.

And he also said he was sorry and realized what he did was wrong. I wanted to eat caviar. You don't understand. I really wanted to keep my boat. You know, you had those tiny carrots. They're amazing. They're so good. Oh, my God. Tell you what. So the they call character witnesses, death row, lifeguard relative, not lifeguard, death row guard, relatives, friends. He puts on 16 mitigation witnesses and himself. Six family, five friends, jail inmates, prison chaplains.

The prison guard said that he made Jordan a, quote, hall man, a job with responsibilities over other inmates and was highly complimentary about his conduct. So he said that he does great. The hall man's a very important guy that I'm counting on, and he does it. They also bring in a pathologist. All this is all favorable to him, obviously. The court does deny the defense one thing here, and that is talking about that he has devised a method for generating electricity using wind tunnels. And he wants to present that as a reason why you should live, because he can literally help society, is what he's saying.

Okay. According to the proffer, he's been in contact with the Tennessee Valley Authority about it and claimed that he had entered into an agreement with them to put together this thing. Wind farms. Wind tunnels, not farms. Tunnels. I don't know. So the prosecutor brings blood spatter evidence. They bring all their people. They said he killed her before. If he was so desperate, he didn't fill out a single job application. Maybe start there.

They said, this is the prosecution closing here. Through the entire process that we employed here, at another time in another place, we presented the case. The jury found him guilty. We were required to do so. We went through the process of convicting him of guilt. He says, he takes a stand and says, I'm a changed man. I didn't mean to do what I did. You finally got me convicted. Now you got me in the box. It's getting close to the penalty stage. And I'm going to play on your sympathy. I'm going to play on your mercy. I'm going to play on your bias. I'm a changed man. I didn't mean to do what I did. It was an accident. And I'm sorry because I found the Lord. Blah, blah, blah. That's what he says.

He said another thing that's bothering me and has bothered me since 1976, and I've never had to face this problem until Mr. Jordan took the stand. Many, many years we've worked on this case waiting for this very minute, and I'll be dadgummed. I'll be dadgummed, boy. He said, I'll be dadgummed if he doesn't take the witness stand and say, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I did that. And I think I ought to have life imprisonment. See, because when I was a little boy, I wasn't a bad fella. So you should give me life in prison. That's what he's saying. He said, but don't let him get a life sentence and let him keep living the good life, you know, in a Mississippi state maximum security prison. The good life. If you, if you, yeah, if you resent him to life, that's where they, that's where he gets the 25 grand and he gets to eat however he wants. Oh, forget about it. He'll be on a Mediterranean cruise next week.

Women feeding him grapes. We can't be having that. He said, Richard Gerald Jordan is no fool. He's shrewd. He's smart. He wasn't going to get into any trouble. Nothing he's done has benefited society. He didn't do all that for society. He did it all for himself. The defense closing is, quote, there wasn't any issue as to his guilt in the case. And we've acknowledged this all along that it was a horrible crime. They do bring up the Tennessee Valley Authority thing, although they said that the TVA never bought it. But they said, we have a picture of a man who's not just sitting idly by. He's trying to make a contribution with his life since this horrible event. Anyway, you, sir, may fuck off.

Death penalty again. Goddamn. More death penalty. He is losing so hard. He's just really, really losing it, man. So Chuck says, the guy's cold-blooded. He was trying to extract money from me after he'd already murdered my wife. I'd like to see him get his just punishment. Understandable. He said he doesn't have any sympathy for criminals who end up on death row because of deprived backgrounds. He said some people say they had a poor life, but I came up the hard way. Oh, did you? How hard was it? Yeah, we don't know. I'm not going to break the guy's balls, but who knows? I mean, there's...

You know, varying degrees of hard way. He said he lived with his grandmother as a youngster because his mother was unable to care for him. He said, I went to college on my own. I didn't come from an affluent family and managed to grow up and provide for my family about robbing and stealing. That's fine. Good for you. Good. Yeah, it's good. He said, there's always loopholes. He said, I don't think he'll ever face the death penalty. He said, there's always loopholes like tax loopholes. The lawyers want to get business. They do it for money, for publicity. If a guy can be an F. Lee Bailey, he will.

What does that mean? If he can be a big spectacle lawyer, big and famous, and travels the world and hangs out with celebrities and gets people off to death. If I can keep him from being put to death, then perhaps my career will flourish. Yeah, pretty much, yeah. Which, yeah, that's your job, so why wouldn't it? Also, he said the psychological adjustment of his life has been hard. I can't imagine having...

Two little kids you got to raise and somebody's murdered, that's horrible. He said, time cures all problems. You never forget, but the further you get away from the happening, the thing just becomes a shadow in your mind. The first years were the hardest, 76, 77, 78. But I'm better than I was a year ago and I'm better than I was the year before that. You get more normal every day. He remarried last year and he says that his sons now have a mother again, even though later we find out that wasn't the case. And yeah, and he's happy to be in a place where he's not surrounded by constant reminders. 85, appeal to the Supreme Court. By the way, the Mississippi Supreme Court, I don't know if you know this or not. I do.

consists of a man so old that his daddy fought in the Civil War, a muskrat who smokes a corncob pipe, and then just the ghost of Huck Finn, which I didn't understand at all. That's the whole Supreme Court. But don't ask that muskrat what's in that pipe. No, no, no. He smokes what he wants. It's up to him. There's some shit in there. There's some shit. The defense complains about not being able to present the wind tunnel stuff and more outside of the closing argument. Oh, it's not fair. And they said, well, it would have been hearsay if you let this guy do it anyway, so it's fine.

April 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court decides Skipper v. South Carolina holding that a Capitol defendant has to be allowed to put on evidence of his good behavior in prison because a jury is entitled to draw favorable inferences about his character and his probable future conduct. Will he be a problem in prison? They do that a lot now. That's a big thing in terms of like the dangerousness in prison. May 86, the U.S. Supreme Court vacates the death sentence and sends it back to Mississippi in light of the Skipper case. All right. Wow. They said under the ruling in Skipper, we now know this type of material is relevant and the opinion of the court is contrary to the contrary is erroneous. Remanded for a new hearing. Hearing.

December 1991. Sentencing hearing. Yeah. December 1991. They're going to offer him a deal. 15 years later.

How about life without parole? And we'll call it a fucking day. He says, okay, and agrees in writing never to challenge his sentence again. No appeals, no nothing. Shut the fuck up and go live your life in jail. So he says he'll do that. And the DA, Joe Sam Owen, he objects, but the judge imposes it anyway. The problem is here in 1976, the year of the crime, therefore the law that governs, there was death or life without parole. There was death or life with the possibility of parole. There was no life without in 76. So they said, you can't, it's not a sentencing option. It's not one. So the deal everybody just made,

is not null and void, but they make it anyway. Chuck says, I'm not looking to put this guy to death, and I still don't think he's been punished for what he did. I feel like this was probably the best thing we could come up with. I kind of get tired of having to go through the appeal after appeal and going through the situation again and again. And the son, Eric, said, I don't really have any desire to go basically waste my time. I would have thought that this would have been taken care of a long time ago, but it's probably been too long. The 1990s, he's in Gen Pop. He's made a trustee.

He works. He volunteers for extra hours. He's well-mannered. He causes no problems in the whole time he's there. He writes short stories, which we have an excerpt of. Don't worry. He kept working on the wind tunnel. He hired a lawyer from prison to make sure that when he showed the design to the TVA, they couldn't steal it from him like a copyright lawyer.

He's also in an FBI training tape. For what? An instructional videotape on how to prevent crimes like his for FBI agents. This is crazy. The prosecutor said, this tape was given to bank executives and family members and whoever else. It was on dealing with kidnapping and what to do and what not to do. And Jordan was on that tape. He used that tape as evidence later of how he was rehabilitated and contributing to society. I was a little upset by that. But the tape's helpful, though. So what are you upset about? You know what I mean? Well, I don't want him using that to his benefit. I don't want it.

I don't want him doing good things because then he can say he's doing good things. Well, he's doing good things, though. Shut the fuck up and, you know, still say it doesn't outweigh his whatever. But don't say I don't want him doing good things for society. It's still good. He says that he hates to admit it. But Jordan's been a model inmate. If there is such a thing, he said. He said he's not had one problem, no reprimand, no altercations. But I always thought he was intelligent and manipulative to do what he did. That's the prosecutor. 1994. He goes against the agreement and appeals his life sentence like a fucking moron. OK. OK. Because.

In 1976, there was no life without, so he should get life with parole. He's trying to get parole. Unbelievable. That's the point here. So he's already served 18 years, and parole eligibility at that time would have made him just ready to go for parole. 97 Mississippi Supreme Court decides it and says that he's not entitled to have his sentence amended on remand. He has the right to be sentenced by a jury, and the state has the right to seek the death penalty in that jury. Back to one, everybody. Oh, my God.

Back to one. He has another evaluation. He's diagnosed antisocial personality disorder, manifesting a failure to conform to lawful behavior, deceitfulness, conning others for personal profit, impulsivity, aggressiveness, reckless disregard for the safety of others, and a failure to honor financial obligations and a lack of remorse. Asshole. Okay. Re-re-re sentencing. Unbelievable. Is it re-re-re or re-re-re-re? I'm not sure. It's too many re's. I think it's three re's. He goes to Owen, the prosecutor, and offers to waive any challenge he might have and accept life without parole. I'll just do it, I swear.

Owen says, fuck you. Not going to happen. Not happening. Just vindictive. Just fuck you. I'm tired of dealing with you. So they do it. They have another thing. They have another character witness. He has a retired telephone company employee who's known him since he was a kid who started visiting him in prison testify. And this man said, in my heart, I don't feel the man would be a danger to anybody anywhere for anything. I don't. If the man was out, he'd be welcomed in my house. Then on cross-examination, they said, did you know he did this, this, this, this, this, this? And the guy said, I don't know any of that.

And I go, would you change your mind now? And he goes, maybe. Yeah. So anyway, he said that he's comfortable in prison and you can't make him comfortable. The Owen guy said, I stand before you today as a special prosecutor. This is not my profession. I gain nothing from it. I profit nothing from it. He said, I'm not even getting paid for this at all. I'm doing this for free. He said, I just want justice. He said, if you feel that I am harsh on Richard Gerald Jordan, then I apologize. But I've been doing this case a long time. In other words, this guy pisses me off.

His lawyer said, look at the life of him as a whole. Let's not just judge him on the basis of one snapshot in time. The whole totalitarianism of it. He chooses not to speak. Really? 35 minutes of deliberation for the jury. You, sir, may fuck off death penalty again for the fourth time. Fourth time. Holy shit. So he's going here.

Wow. So Owen is just like finally happy and he thinks it's over. Then the Mississippi Court of Appeals, ruling on whether his crime was legally heinous, atrocious and cruel, said he could have allowed Edwina to secure the safety of her child. He did not have to kill her in the cold, inhumane way he did. After he received his ransom, he could have returned her to her family physically unharmed. 2001 appeal, the state Supreme Court said even someone without any ballistics training can see that that bullet cannot travel in the way that they tried to describe it.

2001, the county honors Owen for all the work he's did. They said he saved taxpayers personally by doing shit for free $400,000 to $800,000, which is a lot for a small Mississippi county. You know what I mean? That's crazy. Also, the short stories. He reads a short story. Here we go. This is the prosecutor reading this to the press. Quote, the early morning sunlight filtering through the slats of the Venetian blinds struck my sleep-filled eyes about the same instant as the shrill bell from the cheap alarm clock on the nightstand began its daily assault on my eardrums.

And he said, Owen said, when you work on a case and work hard for 26 years, you just don't want to let it go. I want to see closure. And he laughed at the writing, by the way, which isn't terrible for a guy in jail. It's fine. Venetian blinds, though, they're just horizontal. Yeah, that's all. But Venetian sounds much better. They're the tall ones, right? So he's comparing the bars to Venetian blinds. Sliding the last door. Yeah, that kind of shit.

A martyr said it's just so painful to relieve this stuff again and again, the husband. 2002, Supreme Court denies his shit. 2005, Mississippi Supreme Court agrees the trial counsel had failed to prepare to challenge the state's blood spatter expert. Still denied relief, though. Deficient but not prejudicial, they say. 2010, federal habeas denied. 2012, executions of Mississippi stop. Right.

They don't have the drugs anymore. So now they're looking at making a compound. We've done this with the drugs a hundred times. 2024, here, apparently he's trying to appeal. Denied again. 2015, Supreme Court, they don't want to fucking hear from you this time. Eat dicks. August 2015, the drugs here, they said that they are no longer able to obtain sodium theopentol or phenobarbital because of pressure on manufacturers and that they are looking to include midazolam as a drug to use to do this. That's the, I think, knock you out drug before that happens. Yeah, just like ceases existence.

2017, he challenges the cocktail, saying it won't work very well. 2021, Mississippi executes David Neal Cox with this. The cocktail. Potassium chloride, midazolam, and vicarinamium. The commissioner refuses to say where the state got the drugs. Okay. I'm sorry. That's insane. I got a guy. If you had to go behind a building somewhere to get the drugs, you are no better than these people. I got a guy.

That's ridiculous. Unless there is a clear path of paperwork and all legitimate, this is insane. October 2024, the attorney general moves the Mississippi Supreme Court to set an execution date within 28 days. They set it later in 2025. He's now 79 and the oldest guy on death row. Yes. May 1st, 2025, they set his execution date for June 25th. June 4th, he seeks an injunction over the three method protocol there. Don't worry, we got a guy. That's it. There's also a clemency petition based on PTSD. Oh.

They said, like other veterans, Vietnam forever changed Richard. According to his petition for clemency, they said they talk about the finding these people and having to use defensive and suppressive fire with M60 machine guns mounted onto the top of cargo doors, helicopters, all this shit he was trained to kill on site. They talk about the hut. His base, the Phu Bai near Hu in South Vietnam, was attacked in one of the bloodiest battles during the 68 Tet Offensive, during which he was under constant threat of being killed. He was in the Tet Offensive. Apparently so. Now.

As Edwina's son, Eric, says, it doesn't surprise me that you want to try to play whatever game you can so they don't put you to death. He's kind of playing the military card and seeing if that's going to help him out. They didn't go to these here. They're done. The family is done with this shit. It's over for them. June 20th, 2025, the U.S. District Judge rules execution may proceed, but they must contact the court if the drug fails to work. That's part of it. Oh, give us a call. Let us know. Give us a ringy ding ding here. June 20th to 23rd, appeals all over the place, Fifth Circuit, Supreme Court, all this type of shit.

Nothing goes on, though. Nothing at all. June 23rd, 2025, execution set for two days from now. The son, Eric, says that, you know, he says, I don't want him to get what he wants. If you want to spend the rest of your life in jail, then I would rather you not get that. And if that means you get executed, you get executed. He's like, if he wanted to die, I'd want him to have to sit in jail. I just think he's an asshole, which makes perfect sense for the son of a person murdered. That's perfectly reasonable. He said, I don't try to dwell on it too much. Also, Charles, Chuck is still alive at 88. Is that right? He's hanging on. June 24th, 2025, the Fifth Circuit Court upholds.

This, the governor announces he will not grant clemency. Richard makes a YouTube video. What? Begging the quote public for clemency. How? Somebody made a video for him. He's got people in there. Or the news or something. Yeah, but it was a YouTube video. Wow. Yeah. June 25th, 2025, execution day. Here we go. He's talkative and in a good mood. He's been moved to a holding cell. His family and spiritual advisors and lawyers came. He's able to eat his last meal with his family. Last meal, Jimmy. Peach cobbler.

chicken tenders, French fries, French fries, strawberry ice cream and a root beer float. Oh, he's going with some rain freeze. Yeah. Oh yeah. 4 30 PM. The U S Supreme court denies the last stay. 6 PM is execution time. His wife is in the room. He's married. He's married still. I don't know if he's still married or if this is a new wife. I'm not sure, but it says his wife is in the room. His lawyer, one of his lawyers are there. He says, first, I'd like to thank everyone for a humane way of doing this. That's his last words. I want to apologize to the victim's family. Then he thanks his lawyers and his wife and says, I love you all. And I'll see you all on the other side.

And then a man wearing a mask and dark sunglasses walks in and rubs his chest and says that that means he's unconscious. Again, if you have to say, I can't tell you where I got the drugs, then I have to have a guy come in in a mask and dark sunglasses to perform it. You're doing something that is not, it's untoward. You clearly feel bad about this. Exactly. But either way, this guy, who gives a shit if this guy's dead? He's an asshole. So he lies there with his mouth open, takes deep breaths, dead at 6.16 p.m. Wow. There you go. So he's dead. That's it.

The family gives a statement saying nothing will bring back our mom, sister or our friend. So basically, who gives a shit? This guy cost the government so much money, so much amounts of money, untold amounts of money. That's all the things we're talking about. The money part is insane. And that was even with the free prosecutor. So Edwina is buried in the St. Louis Cemetery. Number three in New Orleans. So there you go.

That's it. What a story, Mark. There is Gulfport, Mississippi. There you go. If you like that story, get on whatever app you are listening to. Give us five stars. Netflix, thumbs up, fuckers, if you're watching this. Please do that. It helps a lot. They have a double option.

Double thumbs it, fuckers. Let's do it. Go nuts. Shutupandgivememurder.com. Tickets for live shows, merchandise. Tickets for live shows, September the 19th at the Pabst in Milwaukee. September, or I'm sorry, September the 18th at the Pabst in Milwaukee. September the 19th, Minneapolis State Theater. Then in October, November, Dallas, San Jose, Sacramento, Tarrytown, Boston. Get your tickets right now. Shutupandgivememurder.com. Follow us on social media at smalltownmurder on Instagram, at smalltownpod on Facebook, patreon.com slash crime in sports, P-A-T-R-E-O-N.

dot com slash crime and sports anybody five dollars a month or above you get everything we put out every goddamn thing including whole big back catalog as soon as you subscribe almost 400 episodes are coming your way immediately new ones every other week this week love after lockup time everybody it's back we can't wait to talk about it so subscribe right now because it's going to be great in addition to that you also get everything we put out fucking everything your stupid opinions crime and sports small-time murder ad free ad free ad free and you get a shout out at the end of the show which is right fucking now jimmy hit me with the names of the people who would never bother putting up this many appeals and they would just just let themselves be killed by now give me those names right fucking now This executive producer, Gary Howard, checking in Alabama, Georgia. And Happy Hour's checking in Splendora, Texas. Oh, Splendora. Happy Hour just got a new truck. His buddy got his old truck and fucking, this thing is, I'll send you the, it's.

The pictures I got of this truck, James, it makes me want to drive a fucking Peterbilt to the grocery store. It's badass. I'm really trying to drive this Peterbilt real quick. We got it. Excuse me. Everybody out of the way. I have to get my, I have to get Oreo cookies. Other producers this week are Peyton Meadows, Liz Vasquez, Janice Hill, Scott Rashard, James Donovan Harris II, Lena McCown, Katie Caddy, Halea Kala, Kim with no last name, Brianna Carr, Anita Justice, Lauren Ashmore. What is it? I said, I need a justice. Perhaps.

I'm sure that's their real name, actually. It's spelled U-S, not I-E-C-E. Oh, yeah, probably. Certainly some. All right. Brooke Rice. Lauren Ashmore. Lacey would know last name. Mike Friday. Ralph Sampson, 50. Lee Donnersberger. Mylene Barty. ADA. The law has donated to us. Amy McClain. Nina Corbett. Corbett. Oh, it might be ADA, just in all caps. Or it's ADA. I don't know. Jackie Anderson. Jonathan Thatcher. Dow. Oy. Dow. Oy.

That is a tough one to... All right. Kyle Huge. Good for you. Amanda Fancher. Sam Sum. Brian Donahue. Lynn Whalen. Mortimer. Becky Kuch. Kuch. Not Kuch. But it's Kuch. Ashley Robinson. Nikki Mann. Michael with no last name. Joel Barnhart. Stacey Myers. Ari with no last name. Jocelyn Pinto Alvarez. Ashley Johnson. Shannon. Shanann Burnett. Maybe it's Shannon. Paige Carson. Lacey Strickland. Jess B. Heather Bevin. Hattie. Nope, that's Hattie Lang. Minga with no last name. Jackie with no last name. Brandy McCracken. McCracken. McCracken. I'm sure it is. Wanda Waters. Sloth with no last name. Kelly...

Coyne, Dustin Breitkreutz, Justin Terry. I think it was Dustin. Did I say Justin? I don't know. Finally, with no last name, Jen Logan, Dave, no last name, Nurse Rowe, Levi, with no last name, Jennifer Loggins, Kenny's Kid, Tara G, Katie Stout, Batista, Jerry Fitzgerald, Bobby Hollersgay, Austin Roos, Mr. Moose, Regina, Regina LaManna.

La Mana. Kings Come Down. Thick Ticonderoga. There it is. It's not that hard. Christine with no last name. Jessica Thomas. Kristen with no last name. Aaron Anderson. Nicole with no last name. Lucas Danielson. Nick with no last name. Christian Jennings. Dennis Ambrochio. Jackie with no last name. Jack with no last name. Nick O-Ring.

Ryan Rosser. Kay Richardson. Amanda W79. Chad Jones. Allison Williams. Charles Jenkins. Justine Kendall. Haley with no last name. Nicole White. Stacey Lowinson. Lewinson. Diamond Deb. Brian Kuhl. Janet Cole. That's two people that know each other probably. Maybe it's K-U-L-L and C-U-L-L. There's no way they know each other, right? They're not related. It doesn't seem like it, but it's just a big coincidence. Fascinating. They're right next to each other. They donated together. Drew McElmoyle. McElmoyle.

Sounds like somebody with a speech impediment trying to say Macklemore. It does, it does. Jessica with no last name. Kiki Bass. Cindy Maynard-Gout. Lisa King. L.S. M. Shelly with no last name. Corey Smith. Richard Stamper. Tracy Whiskerman. Jennifer Weathers. Michael Filippelli. Julie with no last name. Raymond Yazazewski. Michaela Miller. Joe with no last name. Jake Niebuhrer. Thay Lee. Teresa Nalt. Ronaldo Vargarici. Kathy Ann Hench. Lauren Dobbs. Brent.

Layler. It's probably Layler. Cat Daddy, 69. I can pronounce that just fine. Allison Banford. Sophia Padgett. Mike Tillery. Bradley Geiger. Angela Anderson. Balzac with no last name. I think that's the full name, James. I'm sure it's a real person. Kim Graviter. Todd Gow. Ronta Ganocchio. Joe Zamuda. Generation X Babs. We are Wisconsin. I don't know. Shia Lotto. Melissa Renner. Kevin Demare. Vanessa with no last name. Neil with four last names. Doesn't give them. Hunter Patty. Jamie Trank. That's the right way to donate, P.S.

Darren Bastian, Tom with a last name because it's Tom Smith. Who the fuck's going to know that that's the right guy? Just Tom. Hey, Tom. Caleb Hallett, Ruth Hawkins, Amelia Mink, Jack Holtz, Janine Hildebrand, Jill Quick, dirty, Sarah Gonciorek. That's what Quick meant back in the day, right? Dirty.

Yes, I believe so. They were on the easy side. Miles Unde, Uday, Cameron the tallest turkey, Sarah Gonser, Alexa Krause, Selena Sira, Melissa Bernard, Mark Sira. Okay, so those are two people who know each other. Chelsea Brown, Elle Edwards, Diana I, Tyler Justice, Ashley Varney, Kimberly Parve, Bobby Robertson, Amanda Clay, Kat Kelsey, Haley Biggs. That's not Haley, right? Stacey Simeone. However, that guy from the soccer team.

pronounces that. Dana Kedrowski, Victoria Storm, Randy Drayton, Fawn Forward, Jamie Yazzie, Lauren with no last name, Hannah Stark, Brittany Barton, Daniella with no last name, Patrick Kukura, Stephanie Snap, Dusty with no last name, and Melio with no last name, and all of our patrons. You guys are the greatest. Thank you. Thank you so much, everybody. You beautiful, spectacular, wonderful bastards. We love you so, so much. Thanks for all that you do for us. Thanks for hanging out with us. Want to follow us or do anything? Shut up and give me murder.com is the place to do it. So keep coming back. Keep hanging out with us. Week after week. What's a week? Week after week. It's a week after week. Come back. Keep hanging out with us. And until next week, everybody. It's been our pleasure. Bye.