EP06: Mysterious Murder of Michael Jordan's Dad
01:01:11 Share

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Whether you love true crime or comedy, celebrity interviews or news, you call the shots on what's in your podcast queue. And guess what? Now you can call them on your auto insurance too, with the Name Your Price tool from Progressive. It works just the way it sounds. You tell Progressive how much you want to pay for car insurance, and they'll show you coverage options that fit your budget.

Get your quote today at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Save on Cox Internet when you add Cox Mobile and get fiber-powered internet at home and unbeatable 5G reliability on the go. So whether you're playing a game at home or attending one live,

You can do more without spending more. Learn how to save at Cox.com slash internet. Cox Internet is connected to the premises via coaxial cable. Cox Mobile runs on the network with unbeatable 5G reliability as measured by UCLA LLC in the U.S. to H2023. Results may vary, not an endorsement of the restrictions apply. All right, welcome to another episode of Psychopedia Live.

I am your co-host, Hank Sinatra, with my co-host, Investigator Slater. Thank you so much. If you're here for the first time, welcome to the podcast. If you're back, welcome home. We're trying to do a little podcast thing where I don't love true crime, but I'm getting to love it because you're doing such a great job of sucking me into the case.

Thank you. It's a true crime comedy podcast making it a criminy podcast, meaning we are trailblazers. We are. We really are. I mean, we're setting- Never been done. Never been done. It's been attempted, but it hasn't been executed the way that we've been doing it because, you know, we like to think we're actually adding some humor to these grotesque stories and not in a way that would disrespect the victims, but in a way that would just bring levity to it because these cases are heavy. They are.

They need a little levity. So where there's gravity, I bring levity because I think gravity is the opposite of levity, but I do not know. Sounds right. Okay. Well, you're the investigator. And it's an important job. So thank you for filling that role. It's a way that I deal with my discomfort in the case because sometimes I get so scared and so freaked out that I just start cracking jokes. Is it appropriate? I don't know. It doesn't matter. It's how you cope.

As you know, if you listen, Investigator Slater is going to lay a case on me and then throw some curveballs at me in the form of pop quizzes, which I love, even though I'm terrible at them. I never get anything right. If you've heard this case before, great. If you haven't, great. And I think with that, we're just going to let you go because you've got to let go.

You said this case is a little different today. This case is a little different. I tend to lean towards the really deranged killers. Your people. My people. Yeah. Like I connect with, right, with all the different paraphilias. What's a paraphilia?

I know what necrophilia is and agoraphilia, which is when you want to have sex with the outside. No, agoraphilia is not- I'm just kidding. Listen, I'm not a psychologist, but that don't sound right. This guy's having sex with his front lawn. Yeah.

This case is not one of those. I'm going to actually be interested to know if you catch on because I'm going to give you a little teaser in the beginning to see if you've heard of this case before and you might have. It happened during our lifetime and it happened, I think, during a crucial part in our lifetime. When I was nine? When you were younger and when the person involved in this case actually may have been somebody you were paying attention to. Really? Yeah. Okay.

All right. Well, I'm really, I am interested already. So was that the teaser? No. Oh, okay. Not even close. Throw the teaser out there. All right. You ready? I am ready. Okay. In August of 1993. 13, I was. In a swamp located in the middle of nowhere, South Carolina, a fisherman named Hal Locklear discovered the barely identifiable remains of a 57-year-old man draped over a tree limb. See?

60 miles away in Fayetteville, North Carolina, the car belonging to the deceased, a red Lexus SC400, was found abandoned and vandalized.

Oh.

Oh, I know who it is. You do? Yeah. Wait, before we reveal the identity of this ill-fated victim and his world-famous son, let's gain some historical context of the year 1993. Can I just interject? You may. I'm not excited that this man was murdered. It's horrific and terrible for him and his son, but I'm glad that you're going to run me through this case because this case has always been a mystery to me. I heard what happened and like, if we're talking about the same thing, which I think we are,

I always heard this guy's father was murdered and there was motivations and possibly, but it was like, you look at a guy. Lots of conspiracy theories out there about this. It's hard to pick apart what happened, what didn't, what's true, what was fluff like for headlines. Oh, this is exciting. I'm excited. I'm so glad. All right. 1993. Ready? So first of all, Tank Sinatra was 13.

Bill Clinton was inaugurated as the 42nd U.S. president. A movie ticket cost $4.14. And people complained about that. Right. Jurassic Park was the most popular film. The McDonald's supersize option started. Wow. And did you know that it originally was called the Dino Size because it was a cross promotion for Jurassic Park? And then it did so well that they took it on forever and renamed it supersize. No, I did not know that. Now you do.

The federal minimum wage was $4.25. You could go to a movie for that. Right. Real quick, did you hear that they are reincarnating woolly mammoths? They're trying to take DNA from woolly mammoths and make them a real thing again. Are you serious? Like Jurassic Park is actually happening. Oh my God. That's incredible. Why woolly mammoth? Maybe that's what they have the most DNA for and it was the most responsive. Maybe also they don't want to

fucking make a T-Rex? Not yet. Because like, what the hell? I don't know. You know somebody in the lab is going to fuck up. I hope so. And it's going to be just- The most aggressive woolly mammoth. Horrible situation going on in the world. It has bulletproof skin. I know. We don't need a GMO woolly mammoth running around America or anywhere. It's absolutely going to happen. Oh, it's so stupid. So dumb. But anyway, keep going. But I'm kind of excited. Supersize me. Okay.

Okay, huge year for cinema. 1993 cult classic Hocus Pocus and Mrs. Doubtfire were released. Wow, good times. The cost of a 30-second Super Bowl ad was $850,000. Yeah. Any idea what it is today? Seven million. Yes. How'd you know that? I'm on Twitter a lot. The most famous people in America were Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts. Says who?

says the 1993 fucking research that I did. Ariana Grande was born. Born. Mm-hmm. A gallon of gas cost $1.16.

And I found this one interesting, and this is the last little tidbit I'll throw at you. The Martin Luther King holiday was observed in all 50 states for the first time. Really? Do you know how important that day is to me? You know what? I do, but why don't you tell our listeners? I just have always loved Martin Luther King Day. I think he was probably the closest thing to a modern-day saint we have, if not a legit saint.

Aside from the domestic abuse and the philandering and all that stuff, but not a perfect person, but he did so much for society. And I've just always, you know, yeah, Christmas and New Year's and Thanksgiving and Halloween or whatever. I just always liked Martin Luther King Day. And one time I was in the car with a girl that I was dating and her parents asked me what my favorite holiday was. And I said, Martin Luther King Day. And her dad almost threw me out of the car. He was like, what the fuck is wrong with him? It's just, it was like,

Like an annoying answer, I guess. Okay. It was truthful. Yeah, but I guess he thought I was trying to be like cute or I was going to say Christmas or Thanksgiving. I was like, I love Martin Luther King Day. I just like thinking about him on that day. And then of all days, my son was born on Martin Luther King Day. That's what it was. That's what I remember. Yeah. That was just another- Icing on the cake. Yeah. That was just another piece of the pie or piece of the puzzle. Or icing on the cake, like I said. Yeah. I mean, icing on cake is a little-

It's not my favorite. I prefer cake over pie. It was the ice cream on the pie. Okay. No, it was icing on the cake for sure.

off that fascinating journey in the past. I want to give you a quick little 90s-centric pop quiz. All right. Unrelated to the case, but I found this so interesting and I'm curious. Which of the following statements is true in that it happened in 1993? Okay. A, women were finally allowed to wear pants on the floor of Congress. B, Dolly the sheep became the first successfully cloned mammal. Okay. Which is ironic.

We just were talking about the woolly mammoth. Yep.

And C, light-up sneakers sold 5 million pairs. Oh, man. And you obviously had like 10 pairs of those. I did have one pair of light-up sneakers. I remember going dancing and you had light-up sneakers, but this was later. Yeah, I had them way after. You might still have them. I had them way after the invention of them. That's tough. I mean, I know that the sheep was cloned around then, so I'm going to stick with that. It was a great guess, and I'm impressed that you knew that. It's not the right answer. Oh, man.

Dolly was cloned in 1996. Pretty off. What? I'm talking about 1993. I'm very impressed that you knew about the sheep at all. Yeah, I know about the sheep. I mean, it could have been 1994 for all I knew. I just remember being a teenager and being like, oh, cool, they cloned a sheep. Cool. Great, guys. Good idea. Was cool. So light-up sneakers sold 5 million pairs. Wow. I am the worst. That was 1992. And in Tank Sinatra's case, just stuck around forever. Yeah.

No, women were finally allowed to wear pants on the floor of Congress, which means in our lifetime, they were not allowed to wear pants. Allowed? Yeah. What would happen? There was a dress code. They had to stick to the conservative skirt. Pencil skirt. Dark colors. I don't even know what a pencil skirt is. Really? It's funny because like a well-made pencil skirt is a little sexy. Like,

Like, I find it amazing that skirts are considered conservative and pants aren't for women. Traditional. Traditional, not conservative. Yeah. Okay, fair. Also in 1993, and related to tonight's case, was that the aforementioned world-famous athlete and global icon, he was very much in his career prime at this point, and he abruptly declared that he was walking away from his sport after the news broke of his father's bizarre death. To go play baseball. Oh.

If it's not clear yet to our listeners, tonight we are covering the murder of Michael Jordan's father, James Jordan, who shortly after midnight on July 23rd, 1993, embarked upon a three and a half hour drive from Bennettsville, South Carolina to his home in Charlotte, North Carolina, and somehow tragically wound up dead in a swamp.

So sad. You know what? I think about his father, not a lot, but I think about like, how would you trade places with somebody and how good you think somebody's life is and whatever. And like Michael Jordan, very few people become synonymous with what they do. Like I've become synonymous with memes. You for sure have. Self-proclaimed, but- It's not self-proclaimed, you're everywhere. Michael Jordan-

like nobody says like, there's the argument. Who's, who's better LeBron or Jordan or Kobe or Jordan. Nobody has ever called anybody the LeBron James of anything. It's always, this guy's the Michael Jordan of hockey or the Tony Hawk. Actually, don't you have that on your meme account? The Michael Jordan of memes, but that's an homage to Jay-Z. Who's the Mike Jordan of rap. Oh,

Outside, Jay working. Now watch how quickly I dropped 50, which is crazy because that was a diss on 50 Cent, but also alluded to the fact that Michael Jordan would score 50 points in a game when nobody else could do that. Wow. Double entendre. He's, I mean. He's unmatched. Don't get me started on Jay Z. We'll never finish this. My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big ROAS man.

Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friend's still laughing at me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to linkedin.com slash results to claim your credit. That's linkedin.com slash results. Terms and conditions apply.

LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. Hey, so let me tell you about James Raymond Jordan Sr., yes? Oh, yeah. He was born on July 31st, 1936, and raised in a small rural community in Wallace, North Carolina. He was a sports fanatic who loved baseball and was so good that he almost went pro. But he had a tough upbringing, and he ultimately ended up enlisting in the Air Force.

Then in 1957, he married his high school sweetheart, Dolores Peoples, and the two went on to start a family. James and Dolores actually left their three children at this point with James's mother, and they moved to Brooklyn, New York, so that James could train as a mechanic with a focus on airplane hydraulics.

While living in Brooklyn, Dolores gave birth to the couple's fourth child, Michael, on February 17th, 1963. After that, they returned to North Carolina, specifically to Wilmington, and Dolores and James completed their family by having a fifth child. All the Jordans then turned their attention to education, church, and sports.

Now, to recount James's tale of adulthood is to also speak about Michael Jordan as well, because the two lives were significantly intertwined in many ways. So I'm going to give you an abridged version of Michael Jordan's career path during James's life so you can fully appreciate their complete coexistence and how profound their relationship was.

So sad. Very sad. James drew from his own experience as an athlete and urged Michael to take up sports. But Michael, a late bloomer, was a bit slow in cultivating his talent. Despite being a sophomore and only, quote, only 5'10 in height, Michael was not selected for the varsity basketball team at Wilmington Laney High School. Yeah. I think that is a pretty well-known fact. That's what everybody who says, like, well, Michael Jordan was cut from his basketball team. Yeah. Don't give up type of thing.

By junior year, he grew taller and made the varsity team, but wasn't much of a standout player and he was constantly overlooked by recruiters. By senior year, now standing at 6'4", Michael made Allstate and was recruited by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he started on the basketball team and began to take the sports industry by storm. I also know he practiced his acting.

He was a very hard worker. Yeah. So tall, love basketball. Cool. That works. I remember watching something on him a long time ago, not the Netflix Michael Jordan documentary, but he would just say, I'd go out and shoot for hours. And like, you think, oh, I'm going to go shoot for hours. And you shoot for like 20 minutes and you're like, wow, my shoulder hurts. Yeah.

You didn't care about any of that. Hours. Did he do it to get better or did he do it for the love of the sport? Both. Because I think about that with my son. He's like an amazing artist and he draws, if I tell you, for hours a day. He's like a very Tim Burton style. My husband and I, Dave and I, are always like, this boy is destined for greatness in the art world because he's like a natural proclivity to just...

always fine tune his craft. Yeah, that's great. He does it to get better, but he does it because he loves it. I think if you love something, you want to get better at it. Right. So Michael Jordan. And if you're talented, then you do get better at it. Yeah. Because if I practice basketball 24 seven, it doesn't matter. I would never be good at it. I don't know if that's true. Cause I, it's true. Have you seen me with the basketball? Have you ever practiced? Not all day, every day. Exactly. But I practiced.

Like 20 minutes. And then once every six months. I played horse. Okay. Okay. No, I want to tell you something. So I do this thing where I put my kids to sleep at night and I lay on my son's beanbag and throw the basketball towards the ceiling. This is so not, it's going to sound stupid, but I was like, I want to be able to throw it as high as I can without touching the ceiling, but get it close where it goes because it's spinning. Goals are important. Goals are important.

It's hard to see people living out your dream, isn't it? So I couldn't do it. Couldn't do it. And then I just kept doing it and doing it and doing it. Now I can do it like whenever I want. But I like when you're first doing something, a desire to be good at it doesn't equal being good at it. Right. So you have to like, you need the repetitions. I think it's a combination, nature and nurture. Nature, nurture, muscle memory, repetition. Yeah. Repetition. Yeah. You're right. Over and over. You're right.

Michael's parents, James and Dolores, were fixtures at Carmichael Auditorium at UNC, and they attended every one of Michael's college games. They would hold up signs and they would proudly cheer him on from the stands. They were great, great, great supportive parents.

On March 29th, 1982, at the NCAA championship game against Georgetown, with just 17 seconds left on the clock, Michael scored the winning shot that officially put him on the map. Hell yeah, dude. He became the national player of the year, renounced his college eligibility, and made himself available for the professional draft. Oh, really? He was, of course, recruited by the Chicago Bulls and responsible for lifting the team to sixth place.

NBA championships, earning himself the designation of the greatest basketball player of all time. But Michael Jordan was so much more and so much bigger than just the world's greatest basketball player. He was a brand unto himself, right? Off the court, he made $1.7 billion pre-tax and

from businesses like Nike, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Wheaties, Chevrolet, and others. Don't forget about Gatorade. Can I finish? Well, I'm not allowed to read the screen. And he's still associated with brands like Gatorade, Nike, Hanes, and Upper Deck. Well, I just remember the citrus cooler flavor. Like, Mike, if I could be like Mike. Yes. How many people have their own song?

Michael Jordan is the Michael Jordan of being Michael Jordan. Nobody, sorry. LeBron's great. He's very good. Kobe, rest in peace. Amazing. Mamba mentality. Killer mentality. I bet you remember Michael's jersey number.

23. Yeah. And then 45. In fifth grade. Yeah. Two plus three is five, by the way. Oh, which is Tank Sinatra's favorite number for anyone who's wondering why he's pumped about that. When I was in fifth grade and Michael Jordan was huge, all the kids in my class were assigned a number by our teacher. And that's how we had to, we were called by our numbers. We had boxes where we had to put our supplies and my number was 23. I had such street credibility just for that. I'll never forget 23. Yeah.

Throughout all of Michael's success, there by his side stood his pops. That's what he called them, his pops, James, who traveled the U.S. to follow and support Michael's career. Their tight bond was seen as essential to Michael's success, and they were often pictured side by side at media appearances or taking part in high stakes poker games in Vegas. Here we go. Whatever. We're starting to get into things now. Yeah.

There's even a photo of James and Michael toweling champagne off each other inside a triumphant Bulls locker room after sealing the first three-peat. In an interview I watched, James said, quote, I'm lucky to be here. I'm lucky to be a part of it. I'm lucky to be part of what he is, what he stands for, and what he's doing right now. So they were— You think he was proud of him? Super, super close. Yeah.

At this point in the case, it's a little bit after midnight on July 22nd, 1993. And after attending the funeral of a former coworker, James began a three and a half hour drive from Wilmington, North Carolina, back to Charlotte, North Carolina, where he had a family living at the time. I thought it was in Bennettsville. That's where his body was found. This is a very tricky case. I have a good memory. You do. He was scheduled to fly out to Chicago the next day to attend a golf tournament with Michael.

Now, about an hour and 15 minutes outside of Wilmington, James became overcome with exhaustion and he pulled off the highway at the intersection of I-95 and NC-74 in a place called Lumberton, North Carolina, so he could rest. This was a common location for truck drivers to pull over to sleep, less common for people driving in their cars to pull over to sleep.

But here we are. I could do that. You could sleep anywhere. Yeah. And you do sleep. But I don't know if I would pull into a truck stop to sleep. Right. Maybe in 1993, it's more, this is where you do it, man. This is where you sleep. It's questionable. And we're going to come to that. Yeah. It's questionable. It's really not. It really wasn't looked upon as like the most logical thing to do and the most reasonable location to do it in. And this is part of the questioning that centers in his case. I guess if you're in the middle of nowhere, you want to be where other people might be.

Right. Because that might keep a criminal from doing something you don't want them to do. But yeah, I would just pull over in like a Target parking lot or something and sleep there. It's 1993. Where would you pull over? In 1993, that's equivalent to Target. Radio Shack parking lot. Cool.

Prior to even getting into his car that evening, James had a few drinks and some theorize that the reason why he pulled over was because he'd been intoxicated and he couldn't drive anymore. And his post-mortem toxicology report did indeed reflect the presence of alcohol. When he pulled over, he was only 500 yards away from a quality inn hotel. So it struck some people as odd that he didn't just check into the hotel, but that he instead went to this truck stop to sleep in his car.

Also worth mentioning is the fact that that particular quality in hotel was allegedly being used by drug dealers who ran their operation out of a back room. So I'm throwing that out there as like a little where he was, why was he there? Why didn't he go in? Did he go in? It's just questionable because this quality and was seedy. Also when you're tired.

You just want to pull over and close your eyes and fall asleep. If you do something that might wake you up, like checking into a hotel, it's like, I'm not even tired. I just had to interact with people. Say hello to the front desk woman. But regardless of whatever the circumstances were surrounding his decision to pull off the road that night, the end result remains the same. He fell off the radar for three whole weeks. Wow. Wow.

Wow. And resurfaced in a different state as a corpse in a swamp. Where was he found again? South Carolina. Pop quiz. All right. During the three weeks that followed James' disappearance, did Michael Jordan and his family, A, organize the National Search Party, B,

B, do nothing. C, hire a private investigator in each nearby state to investigate the disappearance. B, do nothing. Yes. Did you know that? No. Is it just because it's so outlandish that you went with it? No. I am somewhat familiar with this case, and I feel like... I don't know if you're going to bring it up later, but...

Michael Jordan knew his father well, obviously, and maybe he thought he was just off on some like fucking crazy gambling trip or whatever. Yeah, you know more than I feel like you alluded to. I know the super duper basics. Yeah. And the conspiracies, the gambling, the debt, the whatever. That's what they kind of blame it on, but I don't even know if that's true. That's just what I've heard. Right. I knew very little about this case. So when I was researching it and I read

that the Jordan family did nothing for three weeks. And here we already know how close they are. Yeah. I found it astonishing. Maybe they were scared to find out what they might find out. Maybe they were just like, oh, dad's being, you know, dad's being bad. I mean, I feel like, no. I feel like your father, who's your world, who's your rock, who's your center, who's your support, who's a public fixture in and of himself goes missing, you look. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, when you look, it makes it real. There's an investigative podcast out there that I do recommend people listen to if they really want to get into the weeds of this case. It's called Follow the Truth. And in that podcast, they illuminate some of the conspiracy theories out there surrounding this case. And one of the sticking points that pops up into every conspiracy theory is the fact that for three weeks, the Jordan family did nothing.

So to your point, some conspiracy theorists feel that he went missing, like relating to a gambling situation, that Michael actually had loads of gambling debt, allegedly, at this time, as well as potentially James. Yeah.

And that he went missing either as like directly related to some gambling debt or he was trying to go below the radar to handle business and... Probably. Well, I mean, I do remember hearing that. I mean, I know Michael Jordan is just like...

a terrible gambler. I don't like the word degenerate gambler, although that's what people tend to call gamblers. Like that's just the adjective that goes with it. It kind of illustrates like nothing else matters except gambling. But I remember thinking, wow, that must be so sad to think that your gambling problem and debt, which how the fuck are you in debt? But that's why this, it doesn't make it a viable theory. Yeah. I mean, maybe he was just like, Hey, fuck you. I'm Michael Jordan. I'm not paying you. Um, and they were like, well, okay. Yeah.

Watch what happens to pops. Right, a truck stop. And feeling like you might be responsible for that in some way, which is, again, another reason why you might do nothing. I don't know. I have no idea. Yeah. One of the conspiracy theories involves drugs because he was so close to this quality in that was so notorious for having a drug operation being run out of one of the back rooms. So was he doing something illegal with drugs?

And to your earlier point, maybe the Jordan family knew that he had a drug problem. So when he went missing, they were like, oh, he'll turn up. Like he's probably in a bad way, whatever. That's one theory. Another theory is a potential mob hit. I mean, there's lots of conspiracy theories out there. The drugs and the gambling, which are usually intertwined, makes the most sense. Right. Because-

I don't know. I mean, just because he's rich, ostensibly, like Michael Jordan's father, you would think he's taken care of, doesn't mean that he doesn't want to have his own thing. Well, addiction also, I feel like it's... I'm not even talking about doing drugs. I'm talking about maybe getting involved with sales of drugs and not delivering on what he said he was going to deliver on. Just because someone's taken care of or has money, that doesn't mean that they don't still want to earn money in their own way. And it also doesn't mean that they don't have issues. Right.

So after three weeks of absolute radio silence, a local highway patrolman ultimately made a discovery on August 5th, 1993, when he spotted an abandoned and vandalized car parked out in the woods in North Carolina. Yeah, that's weird that it was vandalized. The car's wheels were removed, the windows were broken, and the speakers were taken. The patrolman opened the glove compartment and saw that the car was registered to a Michael Jordan in Chicago. I knew you were going to like that.

Imagine that you're a cop. You're just like, what? This has to be a joke. I'd be like, I'm definitely getting punked.

Only then did the Jordan family report James' disappearance to law enforcement. So once the connection to the abandoned car was made to Michael Jordan, did they then report to law enforcement that James Jordan was missing? How did that conversation go? I can't imagine it went well. Hi, Mrs. Jordan. This is the police down in North Carolina. We have found a car that's registered to Michael Jordan. On the same subject. You know what? My dad has been missing for three weeks. What?

And I just got so busy that, I mean, you know who I am, right? Like I had to play ball and like, you know, sign autographs and Nike and Gatorade. Like I can't, it's just too much. Like I, my dad was just like gone for three weeks. Like, but you found him? Nope. Immediately a forensics team was deployed and technicians began to fingerprint the car and conduct luminol tests to see whether there had been any traces of blood inside. Luminol? Yeah. This is like a common theme in our cases. Oh yeah.

But the car was clean and did not point to any foul play, at least not inside the vehicle. It was vandalized. It was robbed, but there wasn't any signs of violence. When you say vandalized, you mean? Speakers were taken. The wheels were taken. The windows were broken. Okay. I was picturing spray paint for some reason. Oh, no, no. That's me because I'm a hip hop head. Really? That's to me vandalism, you know? I think that's art.

Once the link was made between the abandoned car registered to Michael Jordan and the deceased African-American male discovered in the swamp in South Carolina three weeks earlier, the news of the death of Michael Jordan's father officially broke wide open and a media circus ensued. Maybe that's why they didn't report it either. Could be. Pop quiz. What was James Jordan's official cause of death?

A, strangulation. B, drug overdose. C, a single gunshot wound. Single gunshot wound. Yeah. Yeah. You're crushing it. I know a little bit about a little bit. Single gunshot wound to the chest. It was a guess, by the way. It was a good guess. I do. My brain is just producing all this information from the back, the depths of it. This is also an interesting case for you. Yeah. You like it. I can tell. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

But even more shocking than the loss of the man behind the legend was when Michael Jordan, who was right in the middle of his prime, he stood alone atop the NBA mountain as one of the greatest players in basketball history declared that he was walking away from the game. Do you remember that? Oh, yeah.

which had clearly been prompted by the tragic death of Michael's father. I don't, I'll be honest with you. I don't remember it being prompted by the death of his father. Well, the timing suggested that it was connected. He denied any connection to his father's death, why he was walking away from the sport. He said something and you could easily YouTube this and hear it like his retirement or his first retirement speech. But he basically said, it's not a challenge for me anymore. And,

If I'm not challenged, I don't have motivation. Like I've already proven I'm the best. So mic drop.

Michael Jordan drop, but it created a seismic shock through not just the sports community, but the entire world. Cause he wasn't just a athlete, right? He was a brand. It had every person in every corner of the globe asking what happened to James Jordan. And how many championships had he won by this point? Three? Yeah. The three P. Okay. Cause anyone, another three after he came back.

So how did James Jordan go from being the head of one of the world's most famous and successful families to an unidentified corpse in a swamp? Great question. And how did he go missing in Robeson County, North Carolina, have his car turn up in Cumberland County, North Carolina, and then have his body turn up not just in another county, but in another state in Marlborough County, South Carolina? That's an even

even better question. At this point in the investigation, there were more questions than there were answers. Quick question for you. Yes. Do you know how far away those areas are from each other?

Where his body was found and where his car were found were ours. Yeah, okay. So seeking some clarity in the events leading up to James' death, investigators decided to access the phone records from his car phone because he had one of those, remember what the old school car phones looked like? Oh, yeah. My dad had one, and I thought he was the shit. He was. He was.

So they discovered several calls made to Charlotte, North Carolina, Wilmington, Chicago, and Cleveland. And these are all relevant locations to James's life at that point. But then later in the evening on that same night, so the night he'd gone missing, there were a bunch of phone calls made to areas that had no obvious or known connection to James.

investigators followed the trail of outgoing calls and were able to identify and charge the individuals who stripped the car because they made that connection from the calls that were made. Their names were Gary Farrier, Kenneth Farrier brothers, Torellis Teasley, and Joe Bon Carter. All pretty sick names. Sick, right? But amazingly, Torellis Teasley.

Fuck, Torellas Teasley. Yeah. I mean, not a great guy. Not a great guy, but a great name. Yeah. Amazingly, however, these men were not responsible for the death of James, just the vandalization of his car. Yeah.

So the men indicated during their police interviews that the car had been brought to them by a guy named Daniel and a, quote, Indian kid. And the plan was for the four men, so the four guys whose names you sweat, to sell the car and to split the proceeds with Daniel and Larry, who, by the way, is the, quote, Indian kid. Police...

track down Daniel, whose name is Daniel Green, and they brought him in for questioning in Robeson County, North Carolina. Daniel never asked for a lawyer. He never invoked his rights. It was determined that Daniel had indeed stolen the car and made some phone calls from the car phone, which explains the unknown bunch of calls showing up on the report. What an idiot.

18-year-old Larry Demery, the quote, Indian kid, actually had an outstanding warrant for armed robbery cases he'd been involved in, so he was taken into custody and arrested for those cases. He waived his rights, he didn't ask for a lawyer, and he initially spit out the same exact story that Daniel Green had. So at this point, Daniel and Larry are corroborating each other's stories. Also of note is that Daniel and Larry were best friends since childhood.

So Daniel must be kind of the same age as Larry. They're the same age. They're 18. The police placed Daniel and Larry in separate rooms at the police precinct.

And they told each one that the other was in the process of ratting them out. That's so fucked up that they do that. Daniel and Larry were interrogated for seven hours straight. And initially, both suspects stuck to their story of stolen car parts and nothing else, right? So they said that, yes, we're going to cop up to the fact that we stole the car and we were going to strip it and we were going to sell the parts, but we...

but we did not kill anybody. During each suspect's interview, Daniel and Larry were presented with the threat of the death penalty, and each were given the opportunity to save themselves by turning on the other. Detective Smith, who was one of the investigators, told Larry during the interview that, quote, this is the death penalty. This is where they shove a needle up your ass and you don't wake up.

So, it should come as no surprise to learn that eventually, Larry changed his story and he sold out his best friend. Larry claimed that he and Daniel were looking for someone to rob when they spotted this red Lexus on the side of the road at the intersection of I-95 and NC-74 with a UNC license plate. They figured it belonged to a student. Which would have been fine, had they robbed a student.

Fine? I'm kidding. Okay. I was like, we're going to have to revisit this. We thought it was a student. Right. According to Larry, Daniel instructed him to leave at that point and to head back to Daniel's house to wait for him.

Later on, Daniel showed up at the house driving the red Lexus with a dead man slumped over the middle console. No. Wait, say that one more time. According to Larry, Daniel instructed Larry to leave Daniel with the car. Okay. And Daniel would come and get Larry later.

So later on, when Daniel showed up at the house driving this red Lexus to pick Larry up like he said he was going to, Larry noticed a dead body slumped over the middle console. And he asked Daniel, why did he do it? And according to Larry, Daniel said, quote, hurry up and let's get him moved. They then dumped the body over a bridge and abandoned the car in a forest 60 miles away in South Carolina.

Daniel maintained then and continues to consistently maintain, so for the last 28 years, he has not changed his story, that Larry's version of events that I just told you never happened. And that crucially, Daniel wasn't even there the night James Jordan was killed. Wow.

According to Daniel Green, the night of July 22nd, 1993, started with a family and friends cookout, which Larry attended as well. At approximately 1.30 a.m., Larry asked Daniel to come with him to make a delivery in New York. Daniel declined. He said that he had a crush on a girl at this party and he didn't want to leave.

According to Daniel. Wait, so where are they? North Carolina. So at 1.30 a.m., Daniel goes, hey, bro, drive with me to New York real quick. Larry said that. Larry goes, hey, man, drive with me to New York real quick. Right. And they were at like a family friend's cookout. 1.30 a.m. 1.30 a.m. Yeah. No. And Daniel said, I'm trying to like hook up with this girl. I'm not going anywhere. Plus, I don't want to drive to New York right now. And what are you delivering? Well, okay.

possibly, right? They don't like claim to be angels. Yeah, yeah. They just claim to have not murdered James Jordan. Yeah, I'm not saying there's any kind of implication there. I'm just saying like that's a stupid question to ask somebody. Who knows? Maybe they've done it before. True. According to Daniel and crucially other people at this party, Larry left alone from the party and returned a few hours later acting nervous and upset.

Mm-hmm.

And that the man he met there sexually propositioned him, which led to a confrontation that resulted in a fatal shooting. Okay. So Daniel, just to sum it up, because I know there's a lot of he said, he said, right? At this point, Daniel saying, Larry left the party. He came back four hours later saying there was a body we had to get rid of and that this body happened.

because the man who was facilitating the drug deal put a move on me and I killed him. And Larry's saying that Daniel pulled up to his house with the body slumped over the seat. Okay. Both of those stories could be false because the police were lying to them and interrogating them. We're going to move on to hear all the other ways in which the police could not be trusted. I am learning about true crime. Yeah.

You're getting good at it. I mean, I see it. I'm not the Michael Jordan of true crime. Not yet. You are. Okay. I'll be Scottie Pippen. Now, while Daniel and Larry were being interrogated by the Robeson County Sheriff's Department, Daniel's mother's trailers...

where Daniel lived with his mother in the trailer, was being searched. Investigators discovered a shop vacuum cleaner in the trailer home containing a .38 caliber pistol in the canister of the vacuum cleaner. It's going to vacuum up real quick. Which the cops allege was the same type of gun that was used to kill James Jordan. Yeah. They also discovered a rack of VHS tapes that were neatly labeled...

but for one. So they seized the tape that wasn't labeled, they brought it back to the station, they popped it into the VCR player and found... It was Space Jam. Pop quiz. A, a homemade and poorly produced pornographic film. Okay. B, a Michael Jordan highlight reel. Whoa. C, Daniel Green rapping about shooting people.

Fuck. A Michael Jordan highlight reel? No. Daniel Green rapping about shooting people? Okay. All right. Yep. Yep. Wow. What an idiot. Police notice in this video of Daniel Green rapping about shooting people that in the video... Yo, if your name's James Jordan, I'm going to shoot you. What do you mean? Why am I in trouble? It's actually really almost as egregious. He was wearing...

an NBA all-star ring, and a Chicago Bulls wristwatch. Oh, so this guy killed him. So police are now convinced that they have their guys. Now, it may appear like it was a pretty open and shut case at this point, but it's important to understand the social and political climate of Robeson County, North Carolina at this point in time.

Often dubbed one of the most dangerous places in America, Robeson County, North Carolina, earned its reputation through decades of political turmoil, racial injustice, and police corruption and misconduct. Yeah. Home to 116,000 scattered and roughly divided people. About 38% are Native American, so American Indian. 38% Native American? Correct. Wow. 22% Caucasian, 22% African American, and 10% Hispanic. Wow.

Robinson still ranks amongst the worst of North Carolina's 100 counties in every category of major human suffering. Wow. The violent crime rate is 154% higher than that of similar-sized rural counties in North Carolina. The murder rate is 135% above that of Raleigh, the capital.

which is a city of 220,000 people. But back in 1993, it was the poorest county in North Carolina and had a problematic tri-racial hierarchy between American Indians...

African Americans, and Caucasians. And this is how it went. The Caucasians were thought to be at the top of the hierarchy, then the American Indians, and then the African Americans. Violence was rampant in Robeson County and guns were everywhere. But the most remarkable aspect of Robeson County was its reputation for police corruption. The Southern County Sheriff of Robeson County at the time, a public fixture named Hubert Stone, served four

four four-year terms as sheriff and was shady as fuck. I bet. He regularly covered up serious and controversial crimes, specifically connecting to his son, Hubert Larry Deese, who was peripherally, if not directly, involved in major drug trafficking operations.

But here's another connection to this case. Dease, so this is the sheriff's son, was also a co-worker of Larry at a factory near where Jordan's body was recovered. Daniel Green's lawyers suggested that the sheriff had moved the investigation away from his son and Larry, basically, to protect him and to avoid a narcotics investigation. Just crazy.

Corruption. Also, Sheriff Stone, which I thought this was interesting, he kept a sawed-off shotgun next to his desk. He worked hand-in-hand with former District Attorney Joe Freeman Britt, who actually obtained a title in the Guinness Book of World Records. And here's a pop quiz. Ready? Biggest piece of shit. There you go. What title did the DA of Robeson County, Joe Freeman Britt, earn in the Guinness Book?

By deadly, you mean he sent the most people to the death penalty? Mm-hmm. Um...

World's highest earning prosecutor. Nope. World's deadliest prosecutor. Okay, so. He sent 44 people to death row. Wow. Which was record-breaking and horrifying. So it's understandable, particularly in Robeson County with this guy, that when presented with the death penalty, Larry immediately caved. Yeah.

Jesus.

So when African-American Daniel Green and American Indian Larry Demery show up with clear links to the case, law enforcement were chomping at the bit off the bat to nail them for this crime. And according to good old Sheriff Stone, quote, these guys have been in so much trouble since they was young, they didn't really think. All they got in their minds was crime.

These guys were guilty before they were proven innocent, basically. After the interviews, both Daniel Green and Larry Demery were formally charged with first-degree murder and taken into custody. Both suspects in handcuffs were paraded in front of the courthouse and a mob of news cameras to intentionally make them look guilty, which, by the way, is something that had never happened prior to that and has never happened since. Really? Yep.

And the media, with cameras rolling, ate it up. At this point, they know it's Michael Jordan's father. Correct. Right? Okay. And at this point, the world, the country, was looking for the next OJ trial. Yeah. Right? And these guys were hot, right? Yeah. Like, not hot, like, attractive. They were super handsome. But, like, hot for, like, we're going to nail these guys. Yeah. And make a spectacle out of it. Correct.

And law enforcement felt immense pressure to get the case solved quickly because it was so in the media all over the world.

And Larry and Daniel fit the template. They fit the profile. And one of them buckled under pressure and said exactly what law enforcement wanted to hear. And we can't help but question whether the deep history of racism and corruption in Robeson County blocked any possibility of there being a fair trial. But in spite of any doubts regarding the fairness of the trial, it happened and Daniel Green and Larry Demery were found guilty of first-degree murder. They were found guilty? Correct. Correct.

Daniel was sentenced to life in prison while Larry was given a lesser sentence of 40 years due to his cooperation in naming Daniel as the trigger man. Hey man, thanks for all the information. We're just going to give you 40 years. Case closed. You'll be fine. But what really happened on the night of July 22nd, 1993? Well, that of course depends on who you ask.

In recent years, the whole robbery gone wrong narrative has been placed under the microscope and new legal developments are in the works.

In 2010, Daniel enlisted the help of the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence and has since appealed his conviction multiple times. His legal team claims that his original case and trial were mishandled due to the high-profile nature of the crime and the victim. So here are some of the issues and inconsistencies from the original trial, which were committed by both the prosecution and the defense.

This part I find so interesting. So we're going to poke holes in the initial trial. Okay. One, lack of alibi witnesses. So remember how Daniel said that he was at a cookout with family and friends and that Larry had shown up and he was late and he was agitated and he asked Daniel for his help. They only had one person testify at trial, confirming Daniel's presence at the party the night of the shooting. What happened to everyone else? Where were they?

Nobody knows. Given that this entire case rested on Daniel's alibi that he was at this party, not calling more witnesses was a huge tactical error.

In recent years, his new team has obtained several sworn affidavits from numerous people who confirmed Daniel's alibi. Do they have bad representation? Evidently. Yeah. Two, ballistic evidence. Based on Larry's testimony indicating where Daniel had been standing at the time of the shooting compared to the entry wound on James' chest...

A ballistics expert who later analyzed all the evidence firmly maintains that the shooting could not have happened as described by Larry. Additionally, ballistic tests showed that the bullet recovered from James Jordan was damaged to the point where it couldn't be conclusively linked to the gun that they recovered from the vacuum cleaner from Daniel's mother's trailer. Okay, blood.

At the original trial, the state maintained that James had been shot in his car. They said that there was a spot of blood inside the Lexus that was identified by a blood analyst and forensic scientist named Jennifer Elwell with the State Bureau of Investigation. She ran three tests on the Lexus

Two were positive for a spot of James' blood on the passenger seat. One was not. This means that the results were inconclusive and non-confirmatory. But in her original testimony at the trial, she withheld the negative.

and only presented the positive. And while we're on the topic of blood, how could someone who was shot at close range inside a vehicle not have left a shit ton of blood in the car? There was no blood. So it doesn't add up. James's shirt.

The coroner, his name was Joel Sexton, who conducted the original autopsy on the then John Doe in the swamp, did not find a hole in the shirt where the bullet allegedly entered his body. His report said, quote, Which is weird.

Yeah. But when the shirt was entered as evidence in the first trial, suddenly there was a bullet hole in the chest and the shirt, complete with gun residue. Possible he missed it or no? Could be.

So, how did the hole in the shirt suddenly get there? Yeah, maybe he missed it. Definitely a theory. But it also suggests the possibility that the evidence was tampered with. Oh, yeah. And even weirder, this is so weird, was the fact that the t-shirt had been buried in the ground behind a warehouse after the initial autopsy was conducted because the coroner said there was an overwhelming stench emanating from the shirt.

They didn't want to destroy the evidence, so they buried it. What the fuck? So weird. Why the fuck did the state bury evidence in the ground? Where they then had to presumably dig it up to reexamine it for holes. Like, it's sketchy. Maybe a burrow got into the shirt and that's what they thought the bullet hole was. Maybe. Or something.

I mean, it's not preserving evidence, so weird. I mean, the reasonable doubt is obviously already established. Correct. And none of this was presented in the first trial. Really? That's why he's appealing, Daniel. He's still in jail? Yeah. Oh, that's so dumb. And then the last sort of major overwhelming piece of evidence that just has to be reexamined or definitely was not presented in the first trial conclusively is

was a phone call made from James Jordan's car phone. So one of the first calls that Larry and Daniel made from James's car phone the night of his disappearance was to a man named Hubert Larry Deese, who we met earlier in the case, right? He was a known drug trafficker in the area and the biological son of the sheriff of Robeson County, Sheriff Hubert Stone. Oh, here we go. Right? Yeah.

So, was the murder of James Jordan a drug deal gone bad that Deese was involved in and Daniel and Larry were set up to take the fall? Yeah. The judge would not even allow the jury to hear about the phone call, that a call from James Jordan's car phone was made to Deese. Yeah, I mean...

This is not, I don't, this is- The judge at the time said it was just a theory. There was no proof of Deese's connection and therefore it could not be used as evidence in Daniel's defense. What does he consider proof?

Right. A phone call, maybe? Let the jury decide? Why not let the jury decide? I mean, obviously, I'm starting to see what happened here. Now, the call to Dease was the second call made from James Jordan's car phone that night after they confirmed that the original set of calls were all normal, right? So pop quiz.

Where slash to whom was the first call made? Hubert Larry Deese. That's one option. Second option is Domino's pizza. The third option is a 1-800 sex line. An 800 sex number. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. They are 18. And they don't have to pay for it. Right. Yeah. Hey, bro, you want to listen to some chick tell us sexy stuff on the phone with this dead body? Michael Jordan vehicle.

In July of 2021, the center representing Daniel in his appeals filed a petition with the Court of Appeals and continued to fight for justice in proving Daniel's innocence. On November 30th, 2021, the North Carolina Court of Appeals overturned

their first ruling denying an evidentiary hearing, meaning they're going to likely allow him to appeal his case. And that was on November 30th, 2021. So this is your last pop quiz. Okay. What other major event happened on November 30th? And you're not getting a multiple choice because you should know. Your birthday. Yes. I was waiting for you to shit the bed on that one. Oh my God.

Larry Demery, 44 now, was granted parole, which he's going to get on August 6th, 2023. Wow. Daniel Green will be eligible. Doesn't mean he's going to get it, but he'll be eligible for parole in 2024 as things stand now. Yeah. So that's the case. But to end on a lighter note, there's an Amazon Studios movie coming out in the U.S. on April 5th, 2023 titled Air, which is a movie about a man who's been in a car accident.

which is a biographical drama film directed by Ben Affleck.

and starring Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, as well as Jason Bateman, Chris Messina, Marlon Wayans, Chris Tucker, and Viola Davis. And the premise of the movie is Sonny Vaccaro, who's played by Matt Damon, is a shoe salesman at Nike trying to sign rookie Michael Jordan to a deal to wear their shoes. Oh, yeah. Yep. I know that story, too. I've heard that before. So that's coming out in April. And that, it was between Nike and Reebok, right? I don't know. Okay.

Okay. Investigate it, please. I shall. That'll be the part two of this case. Okay. Yeah. No, that's, I mean, I'm so, well, not glad again. Like it's sad. Doesn't like listening to this case with the back and forth and the, and the sheriff and the son and the Larry and the blah, blah, blah.

Does it matter? Yeah, I guess. It matters to Larry and Daniel because they're in jail, which is not good. But ultimately, his father was murdered. And... Does it matter to Michael, you mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. I mean, I would certainly want to know if they had the killers and the correct killers. Yeah. For me, that would be important. It doesn't change the end result that his father's dead. Yeah. You might want to say, hey, what actually happened? I would want to know. Yeah. Why did you kill him? What's the motivation? Sure. Right. So,

So I still feel like there are more questions than there are answers, which is how this case started. Yeah. With the John Doe in the swamp in South Carolina. You said he was draped over a branch? Yeah. He was basically straddling, essentially, a branch. Picture if you were hugging a pole or a long branch. That's what he looked like. So did he wash up on there? Did someone put them there? Who knows? He was just discovered by a fisherman. The way that Larry tells the story is they dumped his body over a bridge. Yeah.

Yeah, and then obviously they were coerced into that confession. 100% coerced into the confession. Whether or not they did it or not, I mean, I don't know. I definitely think there's enough reasonable doubt to revisit this. Yeah. All right, good job on this case. Thank you so much. Yeah, this is the first case that I actually enjoyed. Just kidding.

Let's edit that part out. No. The first case where I had any kind of familiarity whatsoever with what potentially happened. And I was, I had a desire to learn more about it. So I was like hooked. Well, I think with,

true crime podcasting, it's important to appeal to a lot of different types of true crime fans. And not everybody's going to love the deranged serial killer, sexual sadist. That's not everybody's bag. Chicken on the head. Chicken head on the dick head. Right. Sometimes people want to hear a good old whodunit. And that's what I'm here for. I'm going to bring it all. We're going to give you everything you want and none of what you don't.

Word. Yeah. So if you enjoyed this episode, leave us a rating because those really help us out. Review, subscribe, tell your friends, tell your other true crime freak friends that love true crime. You guys can talk about the cases. You could talk about how in-depth Investigator Slater's journalism is and how funny I am and how handsome I am and how bald I am. Michael Jordan, by the way, paved the way for a lot of bald people out there. You're right. He really did. He kind of made it cool before it was cool.

Cool. It's cool. But it wasn't cool before that. It was like he made it cooler, I guess. Like there wasn't a ton of bald people running around. Thank you, Michael. Thank you, Michael. So Michael, thank you for that. And we'll see you guys next episode. Bye.