Minutes before Mississippi’s longest-serving death row inmate was executed, he had some chilling final words for the family of the woman he brutally killed almost 50 years ago.
On the evening of June 25, Richard Gerald Jordan, 79, a Vietnam veteran turned convicted murderer, met his fate inside the execution chamber at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman.
At exactly 6:16 p.m., Jordan was pronounced dead by lethal injection – the conclusion of a harrowing 48-year saga that began with a cold-blooded killing that shook an entire community.
‘Shot her in the back of the head’
It was January 1976 when Jordan dialed the Gulf National Bank in Gulfport and asked to speak with a loan officer. When Charles Marter’s name was mentioned, Jordan hung up and used a phone book to hunt down the Marter family’s home address.
Once he arrived at the banker’s house, Jordan – posing as an electrician – kidnapped 37-year-old Edwina, Marter’s wife and the mother of two young boys, 11 and 3 at the time.
Holding her at gunpoint, he forced Edwina into the vehicle and drove her deep into DeSoto National Forest, where he “shot her in the back of the head when she tried to run away,” according to Mississippi Public Broadcasting.
Hours later, he called her husband and demanded $25,000, falsely claiming she was still alive.
Jordan was arrested the next day in a hotel in Mobile.
Death sentence
Jordan was sentenced to death in 1977. But what should have been swift justice stretched on for nearly five decades, as he filed appeal after appeal, even suing the state over its lethal injection method – a lawsuit that delayed the inevitable but didn’t change the outcome.
In fact, after he was first sentenced in 1976, he received three more death sentences in 1977, 1983, and 1998.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his final appeal – a silent nod that the end had finally come.
‘Needs to be punished’
“I’m not really interested in giving him the benefit of the doubt…I know what he did. He wanted money, and he couldn’t take her with him. And he – so he did what he did,” Eric Marter, who was 11 when his mother was killed, told the Associated Press ahead of the execution. “He needs to be punished.”
Eric, 59, explained that other family members would attend the execution in place of him, his brother Kevin, 52, and father, 89.
“I don’t really have any real desire to go basically and waste my time,” Eric told the Clarion Ledger in mid June. “I would [have thought] that this had been taken care of 35-40 years ago. It’s been probably too long.”
‘I will see you’
Around 6 p.m., as he received his lethal injection in front of an audience including Jordan’s wife and Edwina’s family members, the former Vietnam war vet was asked for his last words.
Jordan said, “First, I would like to thank everyone for a humane way of doing this.” He then apologized to Marter’s family and thanked his lawyer and wife. “I love you all very much. I will see you on the other side, all of you.”
Moments before he was declared dead at 6:16 p.m., Jordan lay on the gurney with his mouth slightly ajar, breathing deeply.
And Edwina’s family breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Nothing will bring back our mom’
During a news conference after the execution, Keith Degruy, a family member, read a statement on behalf of her husband and two sons. In it, the family expressed that Jordan deserved to experience the same terror and helplessness Edwina faced in her final moments.
“She had to suffer while he drug her around but knew she probably wouldn’t live through it,” De Gruy said. “Why should he get to live in prison and die of natural causes? We feel that he should have to endure the suffering of knowing his death was only hours away just like Edwina had to endure.”
DeGruy continued reading, “Nothing will bring back our mom, sister and our friend. Nothing can ever change what Jordan took from us 49 years ago. Jordan tried desperately to change his ruling so he can simply die in prison. We never had an option.”
“It should have happened a long time ago,” Eric told the Associated Press.
Nearly five decades after a cold-blooded crime shattered a family, justice finally caught up with Richard Gerald Jordan. His long journey as Mississippi’s longest-serving death row inmate ended with a final breath and a few haunting words. For the Marter family, it may not erase the pain – but after 48 years, it’s a chapter closed.
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