The authorities had the wrong man from the moment Michael Jordan’s father was pulled from the waters of Gum Swamp.
It was a fisherman who first spotted something hanging over the limb of a tree where it had been hiding for 11 days.
By August 3, 1993, the body was so badly decayed that the coroner christened him a ‘John Doe’ and then cremated him.
The bigger picture was no easier to decipher: How had he ended up above a creek in South Carolina? Why did it take another nine days for his family to report him missing? Many details remain unclear.
Eventually, the authorities used dental records to identify the body. Fingerprints, too. Another vital clue, that underscored the scale of this case? What was missing from his hands.
He wasn’t a nobody, it turned out. His real name was James Jordan and, in the early hours of July 23, the 56-year-old pulled his red Lexus off the road for a nap. He was driving home from a funeral in North Carolina. He was wearing an NBA Championship watch and an All-Star ring. They were gifts from his son.
Michael Jordan pictured with his father, James Jordan, who was murdered in 1993
Larry Demery (left) and Daniel Green (right) are serving life sentences over the killing
A few weeks earlier, Michael Jordan had led the Chicago Bulls to a third straight NBA title. He was the most recognizable athlete in sports. Now he was mourning the loss of his ‘rock’ and his ‘best friend’.
‘I think about him every day,’ Jordan later said. ‘I’m pretty sure I always will. Every day of my life.’
Within a few of months of the murder, the Bulls star had walked away from basketball, insisting the killing had ‘made me realize how short life is, how quickly things can end.’
He decided to give baseball a go. It was an idea first planted by his father.
By then, the police had arrested and charged two teens.
Daniel Green and Larry Demery were accused of shooting James Jordan in the heart – after a botched robbery – and dumping his body. They are both serving life sentences for first-degree murder.
But questions have always lingered over the case and this week brought a seismic new twist.
In a shock twist, the judge in the 1996 murder trial has urged the authorities to release Green
James Jordan, described by son Michael as his ‘rock’, was shot and killed at the age of 56
The judge in the 1996 murder trial has urged the authorities to release Green.
Gregory Weeks claims to have been haunted for three decades over a piece of evidence that the jury never heard: a substance found inside Jordan’s car may not have been his blood after all.
Green was just 18 back in 1993. He was condemned after his childhood friend Demery testified that he pulled the trigger.
But Green has always maintained his innocence and soon the North Carolina parole commission could open the door to his cell.
In April 1994, Michael Jordan stood in the Birmingham Barons locker room and began to reminisce. He recalled the time his dad promised him a steak if he could hit a home run. Now 31, Jordan was looking to clear the fences once more.
Father and son still spoke every morning. James Jordan would offer words of encouragement and then lighten the mood with a tale from Michael’s youth.
He had been dead for almost a year but Jordan Sr lived on – in spirit and in the actions of his son. Michael Jordan had a new career in baseball, he had a new gun collection and several new habits, too.
By 1994, Jordan would always check his rearview mirror. He would change his route, too. The NBA legend even offered to lease a luxury bus for when the Barons went on the road.
‘I think about him every day,’ Jordan said, ‘I’m pretty sure I always will. Every day of my life.’
‘I don’t want to have a bus break down at one o’clock at night in the South,’ he told the New York Times. ‘You don’t know who’s going to be following you… I think about what happened to my dad.’
James Jordan was making the three-and-a-half-hour drive from Wilmington to Charlotte when his red Lexus stopped and he met a grim end.
Jordan’s body was discovered near McColl, South Carolina. His car was found 60 miles away in Cumberland County, North Carolina. In the days after the murder, however, dozens of calls were made from the phone inside Jordan’s Lexus.
Many were to family or friends of Green and Demery. That proved crucial in the hunt for suspects.
But more chilling still, Green reportedly drove the Lexus on a double date the night after the murder. He later filmed a rap video while wearing Jordan’s NBA ring and watch.
There was baseless speculation suggesting Jordan’s death was connected to his son’s gambling.
Questions also emerged about why the family waited until August 12 – three weeks after he was last seen – to file a missing person’s report.
The body was only identified the following day. ‘He loved to get his time for himself,’ the NBA star later explained.
Jordan celebrates his 26th birthday with his father James and his mother Deloris
Green denies having a hard in Jordan’s death and believes Demery was coerced into testifying
Demery claims to have met Green in third grade. They bonded over frisbee and soon they were best friends. They would fish together and hunt together and eventually they would rob together, too. But Green and Demery have never agreed over what happened that night in July 1993.
Demery has given several versions of events, including on a podcast in 2022, when the prisoner said he and Green had already robbed a convenience store and a couple before stumbling upon Jordan’s car. They noticed his jewelry and assumed he must be a ‘dope dealer’. After deciding to rob him, Green shot Jordan while he slept.
The 56-year-old moaned and sat up before slumping back in his seat. They discovered Jordan’s driving license and his championship watch – engraved with a message from Michael – before driving the body to a bridge and dropping it into the water.
Green has never disputed that he helped Demery dispose of the body. But he denies pulling the trigger and believes cops coerced his friend into turning against him.
Instead, Green maintains he was with friends at a family party when Demery – a ‘mule’ in the drug world – left around 1.30am. When he returned, Demery was a wreck.
It was then, Green claims, that his friend admitted shooting a man. He pleaded for help before taking Green to a motel where the body lay in a ditch. Rather than abandon Demery, the teen helped him cover up the crime.
James Jordan’s body was only identified through dental records and fingerprints
‘I had nothing to do with this man losing his life, period. I wasn’t connected to the murder. I came in after he was already dead,’ Green later insisted. According to the Chicago Tribune, accessory to murder after the fact would have carried a maximum of 10 years inside.
Instead, Green was handed a life sentence. The prosecution’s timeline hinged on Demery’s testimony. They argued that Jordan was shot through the heart at close range.
The problem? This story leaves unanswered questions, too. There was, it’s claimed, no exit wound on Jordan’s body. There were reportedly conflicting conclusions about gunpowder and a hole in Jordan’s shirt. Nor – as Weeks now argues – was there definitive proof of blood inside the car.
Even the jury was undecided over whether Green really pulled the trigger. In fact, per the Chicago Tribune, jurors did not find – beyond a reasonable doubt – that the defendant killed or even attempted to kill Jordan.
During their long fight to clear his name, Green’s legal team filed a motion that included an signed affidavit by a journalist, who claimed to have spoken to Demery shortly after his arrest in 1993.
Demery, 46, was due to be paroled in August but in 2021 the agreement was ‘terminated’
‘Mr. Demery stated to me that he was the person who had shot and killed Mr. James Jordan,’ he said. ‘Larry Demery told me that he killed Mr. Jordan because he had witnessed a drug transaction.
‘Larry Demery stated that the murder had taken place outside and not inside of Mr. Jordan’s Lexus, as he later claimed at Daniel Green’s 1996 trial.’
Until now, however, Green has hit only dead ends. The 49-year-old remains behind bars at Southern Correctional Institution. In 2019, a judge denied him a new trial.
His former attorney claimed Green had been treated differently in prison because of the victim in his case. They also alleged that ‘racism is absolutely a factor in this case’ – Green is black, while Demery is American Indian. And then there is the phone call.
According to reports, one of the numbers dialed from Jordan’s car phone was registered to Hubert Larry Deese – a drug trafficker and coworker of Demery, who also happened to be the son of the then-Robeson Country Sheriff Hubert Stone. His office oversaw the murder investigation.
Following this latest twist, Green told ABC news that Weeks’ intervention ‘speaks volumes about this case, and I’m overwhelmingly grateful.’
Demery, 46, was due to be paroled in August. Back in 2021, however, the agreement was ‘terminated’.
Jordan celebrates with his father after winning the 1991 NBA Championship with the Bulls
‘If he ever reads this, I just want to say I’m sorry,’ Demery said about Michael Jordan a couple of years back. ‘I know there are no words that can make up for his loss… what we did was horrible.’
Now old wounds have reopened. He has given no public response to this week’s twist but shortly after the killing, Jordan insisted he didn’t want to know why his father had been murdered. ‘It’s better that I don’t,’ he said. ‘It probably would hurt me even more just to know their reasons.’
The basketball legend returned to the NBA in March 1995 and, before long, he had won a fourth championship.
The Bulls sealed victory over the Seattle SuperSonics on Father’s Day. Jordan pulled the ball to his chest and fell to the court. He later cried on the locker room floor. ‘I know he’s watching,’ Jordan said. ‘This is for daddy.’