Cold-blooded killer or traumatized Vietnam vet? Inmate's psyche debated ahead of execution

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Did Richard Jordan commit murder because of post-traumatic stress disorder from three combat tours in the Vietnam War? Or is he simply a cold-blooded killer?

That question is at the heart of Jordan's arguments against his imminent execution in Mississippi on Wednesday, June 25 − six months shy of 50 years since he kidnapped and killed 35-year-old Edwina Marter, a stay-at-home mother of two sons. Jordan shot Marter in the back of the head before her banker husband paid a $25,000 ransom for her return on Jan. 12, 1976.

"Like other veterans, Vietnam forever changed Richard" and left him "a traumatized man," according to his petition for clemency filed on June 16, which says he served three combat tours for a combined 33 months, often in the perilous position as a helicopter gunner, earning him various medals and an honorable discharge.

Now as Mississippi's oldest inmate on death row at the age of 79, he has mentored younger prisoners, helped quell violent breakouts, and worked with banks to help prevent their employees from becoming targets like Marter, his petition says.

But at Jordan's trial in 1976, prosecutors told jurors to consider how fervently Jordan demanded a ransom for Marter's safe return even after he had shot her dead.

"Did you notice how cool and calculated, cold?" then-Jackson County District Attorney Albert Necaise said, according to an archived report in the Daily Herald in Biloxi. "He was the judge, he was the jury . . . and he was also her executioner."

As Jordan's execution by lethal injection approaches, Paste BN is looking back at the case, the dramatic murder trial, and whether Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves has answered the inmate's request for a 15-minute meeting to hear him out.

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Edwina Marter's kidnapping and murder

On Jan. 12, 1976, Edwina Marter was at home in Mississippi City with one of her two sons, 3-year-old Kevin, while her 10-year-old son Eric was in school, according to court records.

Richard Jordan showed up and kidnapped Marter as Kevin slept. Jordan had found out that her husband, Charles Marter, was an executive at Gulf National Bank and decided to target the couple for ransom money, court records say.

Jordan took Edwina Marter about 35 miles away to a deserted area of the DeSoto National Forest, where prosecutors said he executed her by shooting a bullet into the back of her head as she knelt. Jordan maintained that the fatal bullet was supposed to be a warning shot when she ran away, which prosecutors called a "cock-and-bull story."

After killing Edwina, Jordan called Charles Marter, told him that his wife was alive and well and that it would cost him $25,000 to get her back, court records say.

A half dozen law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, deployed when Marter immediately reported the kidnapping, and area journalists made a rare agreement for nearly 24 hours of news silence to allow the frantic husband to make a money drop, according to reporting in the Daily Herald.

After Jordan directed Marter to a number of futile stops at various locations, the money was eventually left under a jacket by the side of a road, where Jordan retrieved it as authorities watched undetected. A high-speed chase ensued, which included officers hitting Jordan's car with multiple bullets. Jordan made a brief escape but was later arrested after being spotted in the back of a taxi at a police roadblock.

Richard Jordan has been sentenced to death 4 times

Jordan's dramatic first trial dominated local newspaper headlines as prosecutors painted a vivid picture for the jurors who would find him guilty.

District Attorney Necaise said that Jordan's execution would be more humane than Edwina Marter's murder, pointing out that his family "will not have to run up and down the road looking for his body" as hers did, according to the Herald.

"The body will be turned over to them," Necaise continued. "It will not be left for the birds of the air and the beasts of the fields to feast upon."

Jordan's court-appointed defense attorney, Earl Denham, had an unusual closing statement, telling jurors that the case had been "a nightmare" for him and said his client was a sociopath, the Herald reported.

"He is calm and he is quiet and he has never shown one iota of emotion to me about anything," Denham said. "He is sick if he is anything."

Necaise later dismissed that: "I say he is not a sick man, I say he is a greedy man."

Jordan was sentenced to death after that trial in 1976 but that was later vacated over a change in death penalty law, and he was again tried, convicted and sentenced to death in 1977. An appeals court later vacated that sentence over unconstitutional penalty-phase instructions, but Jordan again got the death penalty at a 1983 resentencing. That, too, was later vacated by the U.S. Supreme Court, and Jordan reached an agreement with prosecutors for a life sentence.

Then in 1994, the Supreme Court of Mississippi invalidated the agreement, saying it shouldn't have been an option. Jordan was sentenced to death for the fourth time in 1998.

Richard Jordan's PTSD never presented to jury

At no point during Jordan's legal proceedings did a jury get to hear about PTSD from his Vietnam service in the 1st Calvary Division from 1966 to 1969, starting when he was 18 years old, according to his clemency petition.

As a door gunner, he protected ground troops by providing "defensive and suppressive fire" with M60 machine guns mounted onto the cargo doors of helicopters, according to one of Jordan's filings in the U.S. Supreme Court. He was "trained to kill on sight," the filing said.

Jordan once fired on a small hut suspected of shooting down a U.S. helicopter and later learned that women and children were among the dead inside, a revelation that still haunts him even though his actions were found to be legal, the clemency petition says.

His base, Phu Bai near Huế in south Vietnam, was attacked in "one of the bloodiest battles during the 1968 Tet Offensive," during which he "was under constant threat of being killed," the petition says.

After nearly three years at war, Jordan struggled mentally and emotionally back home in Mississippi and “experienced periods of hypervigilance, suspicion of strangers, and emotional numbness," according to the filing, which argues that a death sentence is improper.

"Had the jury heard this critical information, Richard might not have been sentenced to death," according to his clemency petition, which seeks a meeting between Jordan and Gov. Tate Reeves.

Neither Tate's office nor the Mississippi Attorney General's Office responded to requests for comment for this story, including whether the governor would take the meeting.

In a recent court filing, the state stands behind Jordan's death sentence and execution, calling his claims "baseless."

He "executed a young mother after kidnapping her to extort money from her husband. A jury convicted him of capital murder, and he was sentenced to death nearly three decades ago," the state told the Supreme Court.

Jordan's attorneys have been filing a number of other legal arguments fighting the execution, including a challenge over the drugs used in lethal-injection executions.

Victim's son laments length of court cases

Edwina Marter's now 59-year-old son, Eric Marter, told Paste BN that his family never bought Jordan's claims that he accidentally shot Edwina and they certainly aren't buying his arguments about PTSD.

"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 said. "He's kind of playing the military card and seeing if that's going to help him out."

He said he never heard about Jordan's Vietnam service until recently and pointed to how well-planned the crime was. "To say that you've got a mental problem, I'm not really buying it."

He doesn't have very many memories of his mom anymore, and his brother has none, though they've heard some great family stories. His Aunt Norma told the boys about how when she and Edwina were younger, they'd dress up in their nicest clothes, put on makeup and go crash wedding receptions. "She liked to have fun," he said.

Edwina not only missed out on his and his brother's childhoods, but also the lives of three grandchildren and a great grandchild, he said.

About the execution, he said the family has been frustrated decades of delays. They're ready for it to be over with. "It's been way, way too long."

More details about the execution

Jordan is set to be executed by lethal injection at 6 p.m. CT on Wednesday, June 25, at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman.

If Jordan's execution moves forward, he will be the 25th inmate executed in the U.S. this year, matching the amount of executions conducted during all of last year.

The U.S. has previously executed combat veterans, most recently on May 1, when Florida executed Jeffrey Hutchinson, who served in the Gulf War. Another Vietnam veteran, Herbert Richardson, was executed in Alabama in 1989, and was depicted in the 2019 film "Just Mercy."

Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter for Paste BN. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.