Longest-serving death row inmate in the State of Mississippi is set to be executed Wednesday, nearly fifty (50) years after he kidnapped and killed a bank loan officer’s wife in a violent ransom scheme.
79-year old Vietnam veteran, Richard Gerald Jordan, who is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, is listed to receive a lethal injection at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman.
Jordan is one of several people on Mississippi’s death row suing the state over its three-drug execution protocol, which they claim is inhumane.
He would be the third person executed in the state in the last ten (10) years; the most recent execution happened in December 2022.
Jordan’s execution is happening some hours after a man was executed in the State of Florida in what is emerging to become a year with the most executions since 2015.
Jordan was given the death sentence in 1976 for killing and kidnapping Edwina Marter, a mother of two young children, earlier that year. As of the beginning of the year, Jordan is one of twenty-two (22) persons across the United States (US) sentenced for crimes in the 1970s who are still on death row, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Eleven (11) years old when his mother was killed, Eric Matter, said neither he, his brother, nor his father will attend the execution, but other family members will be there.
He said, of the execution, “It should have happened a long time ago. I’m not really interested in giving him the benefit of the doubt.”
Records of Mississippi Supreme Court reveal, that in January 1976, Jordan called the Gulf National Bank in Gulfport, Mississippi, and asked to speak with a loan officer.
Later, he was told Charles Marter could speak to him, he hung up. Jordan searched for the Marters’ home address in a telephone book and kidnapped Edwina Marter.
Court records further reveal, Jordan took Edwina Marter to a forest and shot her to death before calling her husband, claiming she was safe and demanding $25,000.
Eric Marter said: “He needs to be punished.”
