James Jordan: shock and sadness follow shooting of Michael Jordan's father

Jet, August 30, 1993

As family members and the nation suffered a weekend of shock and sadness following James Jordan's violent death, North Carolina police authorities arrested two 18-year-olds with criminal records and charged them with the slaying. The teens' motive was robbery, they said.

"What happened to Mr. Jordan was the kind of random violence that all the public are concerned about and afraid of," said Jim Coman, director of the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation. "It could have been any one of us."

The two allegedly had set out to rob someone, never imagining their victim would be the father of the Chicago Bulls basketball star Michael Jordan.

Shooting Was Act Of Random Violence

The 56-year-old Jordan was shot in the chest with a .38 caliber handgun on Friday, July 23, apparently after he parked his car to take a nap along the gravel entrance to a store on U.S. 74 near Lumberton in southeastern North Carolina, authorities said. The autopsy report noted the bullet severed the aorta of his heart.

He would have celebrated his 57th birthday the following week.

His body, found floating in a South Carolina creek Tuesday, Aug. 3, was not identified until Friday, August 13.

Marlboro County Coroner Tim Brown noted that with days of near 100-degree heat speeding decomposition of the body, he hadn't facilities to store it and ordered cremation. "This was the first time that we did not know who we had within a few days or so. We were left with nobody missing in North Carolina and nobody missing in South Carolina."

It's a very small town in a rural county. They don't have the funds to pay for a burial and this is what they opted to do," said Hugh Munn, spokesman for the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division explaining the cremation.

Many questioned the coroner's decision to cremate the unidentified body.

William Gibson, a prominent dentist and chairman of the NAACP's 64-member national board of directors, reported in USA Today he thinks race played a part in the decision. "If this was a White individual with the extensive amount of dental work, the body would not have been cremated in just three days," he said.

As a result, Gibson said the NAACP will push for a state law creating some central control over county coroners.

On Sunday, August 15 officials arrested Larry Martin Demery of Rowland, N.C., who is a native American and Daniel Andre Green of Lumberton, who is Black, on charges of murder, armed robbery and conspiracy. They were jailed without bond.

"They had conspired to rob before they left home," said Cumberland (N.C.) Count5 Sheriff Morris Bedsole. "I don't know if they knew who, what or where. This is what they ended up with."

Green was paroled in June after serving less than two years for a conviction in Robeson Count for assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill and armed robbery, Robeson County Sheriff Hubert Stone said. Demery was under indictment for armed robbery and out on bond.

Police said Jordan was driving home to Charlotte, N.C., from longtime friend Willie Kemp's funeral when he stopped his car to rest. He was killed early in the morning on July 23, Stone said. They then went through his thinks and found out whom they had killed.

"Once they knew it was Michael Jordan's father, they tried to cover their tracks the best they could," by taking the body to South Carolina, said Capt. Art Binder of the Cumberland Sheriff's Department.

The suspects drove Jordan's car 30 miles south to McColl, S.C., where they dumped the body in a creek, then drove back to Fayetteville, Binder reported.

They apparently kept the car, a red Lexus 400, for three days before abandoning it near Fayetteville, police said. The car was seen in and around a trailer park where Green lived.

The car ended up in the hands of several youths who drove it for a while, then stripped it of parts. It was found Aug. 5 on a secluded dirt road near Fayetteville, in Cumberland County, but officials did not know until August 11 it belonged to Jordan.

Green and Demery were arrested at the Robeson County Sherfffs Department after being called in for questioning. No murder weapon had been recovered at Jet press time.

Police said the two were caught because they left electronic footprints when they used the cellular phone in Jordan's car. "One of the things that helped us the most was the car phone," Binder said. "They took the phone, they made telephone calls, and we traced them."

Joe Schulte, an agent for the State Bureau of Investigation, said more charges including carjacking, may be filed against the suspects.

Ironically, while police closed in on the suspects, about 200 hundred relatives and friends attended the services of Mr. Jordan.

Though his disappearance and murder shocked a nation as well as the Jordan family, his widow, Deloris, and their five children had words of encouragement in a prepared statement:

"Dad is no longer with us. But the lessons he taught us will give us the strength to move forward with a renewed sense of purpose in our lives.

Mr. Jordan's remains were buried at Rockfish AME Church in Teachey, N.C. on Aug. 15.