A man found guilty of murdering a bank loan officer’s wife in 1976 was executed in Mississippi on Wednesday evening.
Richard Gerald Jordan, 79, was executed by lethal injection. He was previously convicted of kidnapping and murdering Edwina Marter as part of a ransom scheme to get tens of thousands of dollars from Charles Marter, a loan officer at the time at Gulf National Bank in Gulfport, Mississippi, according to the Associated Press.
Information about the case, documented in the Mississippi Supreme Court records, reportedly revealed the gruesome details of Jordan’s plot and subsequent murder of Marter. In January 1976, he telephoned the bank seeking to speak with any loan officer. When he was told that an available loan officer was named Charles Marter, Jordan disconnected the call and then sought Marter’s home address by searching through a local telephone book. He then went to their house and kidnapped his wife, Edwina.
Jordan then took her to a nearby forest and shot and killed her. He then called her husband seeking $25,000 in ransom for her life, falsely telling Charles that his wife was still alive at the time, according to the Associated Press.
Jordan, a veteran of the Vietnam War, was sentenced to death in 1976. Through appeals and lawsuits, he postponed his execution. He issued a brief statement before he was executed.
“First, I would like to thank everyone for a humane way of doing this,” Jordan said. “I want to apologize to the victim’s family.”
He then expressed gratitude to his wife and lawyer and pleaded for forgiveness, the Associated Press reported.
“I will see you on the other side, all of you,” were reportedly Jordan’s last words.
Jordan was given the first dosage of his lethal injection at 6 p.m. local time, according to reports. He was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman, Mississippi.
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After Jordan’s execution, Keith Degruy, a spokesman for the Marter family, provided a statement.
“Nothing will bring back our mom, sister, and our friend,” read Degruy’s prepared statement. “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.”