If you’re a Michael Jordan fan, you may know his beloved father James R. Jordan, Sr. was murdered in North Carolina in 1993. But do you know the whole story? Michael Jordan has only spoken publicly about it a few times.
The murder sparked international attention and the trial became a national media spectacle – but cameras were not permitted in the courtroom, and there’s so much the world doesn’t know about the case and there are plenty of unanswered questions.
How did James R. Jordan Sr. die?
Two teenagers, one Native American and one Black, were convicted of the murder of James Jordan and are serving life sentences in separate North Carolina prisons. Larry Martin Demery and Daniel Andre Green tell conflicting stories of what happened the night James R. Jordan Sr. was murdered. There are new questions about the investigation, new evidence from the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence plus a documented history of law enforcement corruption and racism in the rural county where the murder happened.
Here’s what you might not know about this case.
1. Michael Jordan’s dad was an unidentified John Doe in a swamp in South Carolina. He was cremated before he was identified.
In August 1993, a fisherman found a body draped over a tree limb in a South Carolina swamp with a gunshot wound to the chest. With the body badly decomposed and no missing person report matching the description of the dead man, an autopsy was performed, the jaws and hands were preserved for later identification, and the man’s body was cremated several days later.
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2. Michael Jordan’s car was found stripped and vandalized in the woods near Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Two days after the unidentified body was found in South Carolina, a stripped and vandalized Lexus sports car turns up in the woods more than sixty miles away in North Carolina. Then, the revelations that shock the world – according to the registration the car was bought in Chicago by Michael Jordan, and the dead man in South Carolina is later identified as James R. Jordan Sr., Michael Jordan’s dad.
Listen to how the investigation unfolded from the original prosecutor, and WRAL’s exclusive news archive.
3. James Jordan’s body was identified using personal dental records plus his fingerprints.
The coroner kept Mr. Jordan’s jaw and hands for later identification after he was cremated. James Jordan had extensive dental work and dental records were used to confirm his identity. Additionally, the fingerprint on the right thumb matched the right thumb print of Mr. Jordan, whose prints were already on file with authorities.
4. James Jordan wasn’t reported missing by his family until three weeks after he disappeared.
While Mr. Jordan did have a criminal record for his involvement in a kickback scheme, conspiracy theories that surrounded the case about organized crime and gambling were never proven to be factors in the murder.
Learn more about the complicated life of James R. Jordan, Sr.
Reporter Amanda Lamb shares how Michael Jordan grieved the loss of his father in her blog.
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5. James Jordan was murdered in Robeson County, North Carolina, the county with the highest violent crime rate in the state, with a history of systemic racism and law enforcement corruption.
Robeson County is about halfway between Miami and Manhattan on I-95, and the drug-running corridor known as cocaine alley runs right through it. Searing and overt racism toward Lumbee Indians and Black people ran rampant in the years leading up to the James Jordan murder investigation and trial. Robeson County is a place where armed gunmen took over the local newspaper to draw attention to claims of racial injustice and police corruption. It’s a place where a political candidate was gunned down weeks before an election. Decades of racial tension and police corruption still haunt the community today.
6. The Robeson County Sheriff’s Office was charged with corruption several years after the trial.
Does the location of the murder have anything to do with the outcome of the trial? Years after the murder, 22 officers from the Robeson County Sheriff’s Office were charged with various crimes involving corruption in a sweeping investigation dubbed Operation Tarnished Badge.
Learn more about Robeson County, NC, the scene of the James Jordan murder.
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7. Michael Jordan’s NBA ring was found buried in a yard.
The investigation got one of its first big breaks from an unlikely source: suspect Daniel Andre Green himself. Daniel pointed investigators to a patch of dirt by his great-grandmother’s house. They dug up a ring – Michael Jordan’s NBA ring.
Listen to SBI Agent Tony Underwood talk about the moment the ring was discovered.
8. After his murder, a suspect wore James Jordan’s jewelry in a rap music video.
There were other damning puzzle pieces that emerged in the investigation: a gun hidden in a Shop-vac in the house where Daniel Green was living and a rap music video starring Daniel wearing James Jordan’s watch and an NBA ring. At Daniel Green’s murder trial, Michael Jordan’s brother Larry identified the jewelry as gifts from Michael to his father. The jury never heard the music video because the judge thought it might prejudice them. Still photos from the video were shown in court. However, the video was leaked to the media.
Listen to the original interrogation tapes as investigators interview Larry Demery and Daniel Green.
9. The two main suspects in the murder of James Jordan were best friends.
Larry Demery and Daniel Green first met in elementary school. They grew up together in Robeson County. In July 1993, Daniel says Larry was living in Daniel’s home. A gun found in a Shop-vac in the house was later presented at trial as the murder weapon, though ballistics did not confirm it was the gun that killed James Jordan. Larry’s eyewitness testimony against Daniel was the basis of the State’s narrative that Daniel pulled the trigger. Both men are serving life sentences in separate North Carolina prisons.
10. Co-defendant Larry Demery took a plea deal in exchange for testifying against his best friend, Daniel Green.
At Daniel Green’s trial in 1996, the public heard for the first time the full story of what prosecutors say happened on the side of the road in Lumberton, North Carolina on July 23, 1993. The State’s story places Daniel Andre Green and Larry Martin Demery there trying to rob James Jordan as he slept in his car. In stunning testimony, co-defendant Larry Demery tells the court he saw James wake up startling Daniel who then fired the fatal shot to his chest. Demery testifies he and Daniel then drove to South Carolina and dumped James Jordan’s body off a bridge.
Demery took a plea deal in exchange for this testimony.
Hear the State’s case against Daniel Green and Larry’s stunning, detailed testimony identifying Daniel as the triggerman who killed James Jordan.
11. Daniel Andre Green’s main alibi witness, a girl named Bobbie Jo Murillo, never testified at his trial.
When it comes to the question of who killed Michael Jordan’s father, Larry Martin Demery and Daniel Andre Green tell two vastly different stories. The core of Daniel’s defense is that he was not there when James Jordan was killed. He says that he only came on the scene later, at Larry’s insistence, and then helped dispose of James Jordan’s body.
Daniel Green says he was at a cookout with his mother, sister, several friends and a girl he had a romantic interest in named Bobbie Jo Murillo. Multiple witnesses, including Bobbie Jo, corroborate his story.
However, when the case went to trial, Daniel’s defense didn’t spend much time exploring Daniel’s alibi and only called two witnesses. Bobbie Jo, the girl Daniel was allegedly with all night, was not called by the defense to testify.
Listen to Daniel Green tell his detailed account of the night James R. Jordan, Sr. was killed and how he ended up with Larry driving a body to South Carolina.
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12. Under the law in North Carolina, if you are with another person committing a felony when someone is killed, it doesn’t matter who pulled the trigger.
Whether Daniel was at the scene when Jordan was killed is key to the case. The felony murder law in North Carolina says if a felony like a robbery is being committed and someone is killed, everyone who is present is equally culpable regardless of who pulled the trigger. So, if Larry and Daniel were both there at the time of the killing, they are equally responsible, though Daniel was tried and convicted as the triggerman. He has consistently maintained that he was not there when James Jordan was killed.
13. The gun presented at Daniel Green’s trial was not proven to be the gun used to kill Michael Jordan’s dad.
The gun evidence was one of the three pillars of the prosecution’s case. But at the Daniel Andre Green murder trial, the State was never able to prove that the .38-caliber revolver found was the one used in the James Jordan murder. Investigators found the gun tucked inside a Shop-vac in Daniel’s home, where he lived with his mother. Daniel says co-defendant Larry Demery also stayed there on a regular basis. Ballistics tests on the bullet found in James Jordan’s body were inconclusive in confirming they were shot from the gun that was entered into evidence.
14. There was no conclusive evidence of blood found in James Jordan’s car.
The primary narrative of the prosecution’s case is that James Jordan was killed in his car on the side of the road in Lumberton, North Carolina. Co-defendant Larry Demery testified he saw Daniel Green shoot and kill James Jordan in his car and that the body was then moved into the passenger seat. Blood analysis tests were inconclusive for the presence of blood in the passenger seat, though they were not clearly presented as inconclusive at trial. In fact, an analyst testified she thought there was blood in the car despite no confirmatory evidence.
15. The original defense team never conducted bullet trajectory tests or its own blood analysis.
The original defense team never conducted bullet trajectory tests to disprove the shooting could have happened as Demery testified. Decades later, Green’s new attorney, Christine Mumma of the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence, had field tests conducted based on the detailed testimony from Demery about where Daniel was in relation to the car and Demery’s description of Mr. Jordan’s position in the driver’s seat. That bullet trajectory expert says the shooting could not have happened as described by Larry Demery.
16. Evidence of a bullet hole in Mr. Jordan’s shirt wasn’t observed during the autopsy, but was present years later at the trial.
Mr. Jordan’s body was found draped over a tree limb in Gum Swamp near the North Carolina-South Carolina border about a mile from Crestline Mobile Homes. He had been in the water for nearly two weeks. The coroner concluded he died from a single gunshot wound to the right chest. The autopsy report states the coroner searched thoroughly for a corresponding bullet hole in the shirt, but it was not there. Three years later, when the shirt is entered into evidence at Daniel Green’s murder trial, it is presented with a bullet hole in the right chest. The prosecution also presented evidence of gunpowder on the shirt, but the pathologist conducting the autopsy noted none.
The original defense team’s handling of the gun evidence, the blood evidence and the shirt presented at trial are among Daniel Green’s claims that he received ineffective assistance of counsel during his trial.
Listen to Attorney Chris Mumma from the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence lay out her case as she questions the evidence.
17. One of the first calls made from James Jordan’s car phone the day he died was to Hubert Larry Deese, a convicted drug dealer and the biological son of Robeson County Sheriff Hubert Stone, who investigated the Jordan murder. The jury never heard about it.
Judge Gregory Weeks did not allow that call to be presented as evidence at the trial saying there was no known connection between Deese and Sheriff Stone, and therefore it wasn’t relevant. According to Daniel Green’s legal team, the prosecution knew Deese and Stone were father and son, and that Deese and Demery both worked for Crestline Mobile Homes. Jordan’s body was dumped in the Gum Swamp less than a mile from Crestline.
Jurors never heard about that phone call or the relationship between Deese and the sheriff. According to Chris Mumma, the State interviewed Deese but there’s no record of the interview. Mumma says the State either didn’t make a record of the interview or didn’t provide the record to the defense.
18. A North Carolina reporter claimed that Larry Demery told her in 1993 that he shot James Jordan. She never published the interview.
The one person known to have interviewed Larry shortly after the arrests was Connee Brayboy, editor of a local Native American magazine called the Carolina Indian Voice. She would not share what she learned in that interview until 2015, and it is a revelation that threatens to turn the entire case upside down. Brayboy claimed Larry told her that he was the one who shot James Jordan.
In November 2015, Connee Brayboy signed an affidavit with the Court documenting what Larry told her.
Learn more about Larry Demery’s past and hear Chris Mumma talk about Connee’s affidavit.
19. More than two decades after Larry Demery testified identifying Daniel Green as the triggerman, an affidavit is filed claiming Demery admits he lied on the witness stand.
On December 31, 2018, Daniel Andre Green’s current attorney, Christine Mumma, visits Larry Demery in prison. In a bombshell confession, she claims he admits to her that he lied at trial, that he was coerced by investigators to tell the story he told. According to Mumma, Larry admitted he did not see Daniel Green kill James Jordan. This contradicts the testimony he gave at trial that helped convict Daniel. Mumma says Larry did not admit to pulling the trigger himself, only that he never saw Daniel do it.
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Chris Mumma signed an affidavit with the court documenting what Larry told her.
Hear about Chris Mumma’s visit to Larry in prison, Larry’s parole, a big ruling in Daniel’s appeal, and what’s next in the case.
20. Daniel Green has maintained his innocence in the murder since 1993.
Daniel Green has filed appeal after appeal since his conviction in 1996, claiming he wasn’t there when Michael Jordan’s dad was killed. All of them have been denied. The North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence took on Daniel Green’s case in 2016. Green and his lawyer, Chris Mumma have filed multiple appeals on the grounds that there is new evidense in the case. They claim there was a violation of Daniel’s due process rights, and that he had ineffective legal counsel at his 1996 trial.
21. In 2020, Green’s co-defendant Larry Demery was granted parole.
He was scheduled to be released in 2023. In 2021, his parole date was delayed by a year and then later revoked.
Daniel Green continues to appeal for his right to present new evidence that he says proves his innocence in the murder of James Jordan.
22. A ruling from the North Carolina Supreme Court on a different case reverses a lower court’s decision in Daniel’s case.
The NC Supreme Court ruling involves a claim of “ineffective assistance of counsel,” which was one of the reasons attorney Chris Mumma said Daniel deserved a new hearing. Her motion for a new hearing was flatly denied in 2020, but after the State vs Allen Supreme Court decision, the NC Court of Appeals ruled Daniel’s motion should be reconsidered.
After 28 years behind bars, Daniel’s attorney calls this “the first positive thing that has happened in his case.”
Learn more about why Judge Winston Gilcrest’s denial of Daniel Green’s appeal was overturned.
Where can I find more information about the murder of Michael Jordan’s dad?
WRAL produced a podcast about the murder of James Jordan and the case against Daniel Green. Follow the Truth is a true crime podcast hosted by veteran crime reporter Amanda Lamb. The podcast questions the evidence and explores whether this is a case of wrongful conviction.
The Follow the Truth podcast, produced by WRAL Studios, first launched in July 2021 using new reporting and the exclusive case archives from WRAL News.
WRAL Studios’ parent company, Capitol Broadcasting, co-produced a five-part documentary series about the James Jordan murder called Moment of Truth, now streaming on Amazon’s free streaming service Freevee and on Amazon Prime.
A major film about Michael Jordan
While you are on Amazon Prime, it might be worth checking out the movie ‘AIR’. It’s a major motion picture about the story of the “partnership between a then undiscovered Michael Jordan and Nike’s fledgling basketball division.”
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