Michael Jordan, aka "The Goat", is known for being the best player in the history of basketball, being as dominant on the offensive end of the court as he was on defense.
In 1993, Michael’s gambling habits drew intense scrutiny and James Jordan defended his son and helped mollify Michael’s temporary media boycott.
On July 22nd, 1993, James Jordan had spent the day at the funeral of a former co-worker in Wilmington, N.C., later visiting with friends. Shortly after midnight, he was in his red Lexus SC400 and headed 3½ hours toward his home in Charlotte. James never made it. His body was identified on August 13th. He was found in Gum Swamp in South Carolina, his dead body draped over a tree limb.
It was later surmised by investigators that James, a little more than an hour into his drive from Wilmington to Charlotte, stopped to nap in his Lexus alongside a highway and was shot in the chest as he slept during a botched robbery. Largely due to calls they’d made from James' car phone, Daniel Green and Larry Demery were later charged with his murder and sentenced to life in prison.
It seems really cut and dry doesn't it? Well, after you scratch the surface, James' murder isn't quiet what it seems.
For starters, the place were James decided to pull over and take a nap was just a few hundred yards away from a Quality Inn. There they that had rooms for less than $30 per night. Why didn't James stay at the motel?
Next, why did his family waited until August 12th to officially report him missing? This was a full three weeks after he had last been seen and seven days after his Lexus had first been found by police.
On the official autopsy report, pathologist Dr. Joel Sexton, concluded that James' death had come from a single .38-caliber gunshot wound to the right side of his chest. Also, the report showed there was no exit wound to James' body. There was also no blood definitively found inside the car. No gunshot residue was found either.
There was an unusual chain of custody with the shirt. Immediately after the autopsy, Sexton gave it to an agent in the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. That agent then passed the shirt on to an employee of a company that provided services for funeral homes. That employee turned James' shirt over to a superior who buried it in a bag outside the company’s warehouse due to it's stench. After the shirt was dug up and later transported to the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigations, the bullet hole in the chest was found.
Daniel Green alleges that at the time of the murder, Demery was working as a “mule” in a Lumberton drug network where Deese was near the top of the totem pole. Green insists it was Demery who called Deese on the first full morning after James' murder. He also insists that he never killed James', but instead helped dispose of the body and stole some valuables from James and his car.
In April 1995, 21 months after Jordan was shot and killed, Demery agreed to a plea deal, accepting his own murder conviction, hoping for leniency during sentencing and agreeing to testify against Green. Demery testified, that along with Green, they decided to commit a robbery near I-95 and U.S. 74 in the middle of the night near a Quality Inn. They hoped that there they would run into unsuspecting tourists. While preparing for their crime, they noticed James' red Lexus parked on a gravel strip just off U.S. 74. Demery then testified that Green wanted the Lexus, so they hatched a scheme to wake the driver, to hold him at gunpoint and tell him to drive to a bridge near Green’s home.
Jurors in Green's trial acknowledged that they did not find beyond a reasonable doubt that Green killed, attempted to kill or intended to kill James Jordan. That, Green’s lawyers assert, is proof the jury did not find Demery credible.
Connee Brayboy had spoken with Demery at the Robeson County Jail shortly after his 1993 arrest. She signed an affidavit stating that, “Mr. Demery stated to me that he was the person who had shot and killed Mr. James Jordan. … 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.”
Judge Winston Gilchrist informed lawyers in March of this year, that he would deny Daniel Green's request for an evidentiary hearing that could have led to a new trial.
Did James' death have anything to do with Michael's first so-called retirement? His father always wanted Michael to be a baseball player. Or could his first retirement have been due to a secret suspension due to his gambling?
It seems really cut and dry doesn't it? Well, after you scratch the surface, James' murder isn't quiet what it seems.
For starters, the place were James decided to pull over and take a nap was just a few hundred yards away from a Quality Inn. There they that had rooms for less than $30 per night. Why didn't James stay at the motel?
Next, why did his family waited until August 12th to officially report him missing? This was a full three weeks after he had last been seen and seven days after his Lexus had first been found by police.
On the official autopsy report, pathologist Dr. Joel Sexton, concluded that James' death had come from a single .38-caliber gunshot wound to the right side of his chest. Also, the report showed there was no exit wound to James' body. There was also no blood definitively found inside the car. No gunshot residue was found either.
Despite this, in the prosecution’s version of events, relying almost entirely on Demery’s testimony, maintains that James' was shot through the heart at close range while sitting in the driver’s seat of his Lexus.
This brings use to the shirt James' was wearing. The autopsy states, “There is no hole in the shirt at that point. Directly below that location in the lower abdominal region are three holes that would line up with the hole in the chest if the shirt were pulled up approximately one foot.”
Now let's talk about a particular phone call made from James' phone after he had been murdered and his car stolen. On July 23rd, 1993, at 10:36 a.m., there was the phone call made from the cellular phone inside James Jordan’s Lexus to a number in Pembroke, N.C. That number was registered to a man named Hubert Larry Deese.
Deese was a co-worker of Demery at Crestline Mobile Homes, a trailer manufacturing company less than a mile from the swamp where James' body was discovered.
Deese also was a drug trafficker who wound up being arrested in February 1994 and linked to a Colombian cocaine pipeline that had connections in New York and Lumberton, N.C. He later was sentenced to 10 years after pleading guilty to a single trafficking count.
Deese is the biological son of Hubert Stone, the Robeson County sheriff whose office oversaw the Jordan murder investigation. He was also a friend of Mark Locklear, one of the lead detectives on the case. There is no documentation that authorities ever formally questioned Deese.
Green tried to get his case retried and his defense motion contended, “that Demery, Deese or someone else involved in a drug transaction encountered Jordan in the parking lot and mistook him for someone connected with the drug deal, leading to the killing of Mr. Jordan by Demery, Deese, or someone meeting them there.”
Once there, Demery said, he and Green planned to bind their victim with duct tape and leave him by the roadside as they stole his Lexus. According to Demery, the plan hit a snag when James' began to wake as Green pointed his gun through the open passenger-side window. Allegedly, without warning Green fired.
Green's attorney contended that ballistic tests never matched the bullet that killed James with the .38-caliber Smith & Wesson that Green possessed. His attorney also claims that Demery’s accounts of what happened, not just on the night in question but at the exact moment of the murder, changed significantly over time.
In the handwritten confession Demery signed at the time of his arrest, he stated he had left the intersection of I-95 and U.S. 74 before Green ever approached James' vehicle. Demery maintained he had driven back to Green’s house, then walked to a nearby bridge when Green drove up in the Lexus with James' dead body pushed into the passenger’s seat.
Nearly two years later, shortly after accepting his plea agreement, Demery offered a statement asserting he was running away from the Lexus and toward his own car and was about 60 feet from Jordan’s vehicle when Green fired the gun.
On the witness stand, it was a different story again when Demery testified that he was beside the Lexus when James was shot.
Green's attorney contended that ballistic tests never matched the bullet that killed James with the .38-caliber Smith & Wesson that Green possessed. His attorney also claims that Demery’s accounts of what happened, not just on the night in question but at the exact moment of the murder, changed significantly over time.
Nearly two years later, shortly after accepting his plea agreement, Demery offered a statement asserting he was running away from the Lexus and toward his own car and was about 60 feet from Jordan’s vehicle when Green fired the gun.
On the witness stand, it was a different story again when Demery testified that he was beside the Lexus when James was shot.
Did James' death have anything to do with Michael's first so-called retirement? His father always wanted Michael to be a baseball player. Or could his first retirement have been due to a secret suspension due to his gambling?
At the press conference when he was asked if he would ever return Michael said, " Five years down the road, if the urge comes back, if the Bulls will have me, if David Stern lets me back in the league, I may come back."
Was there a secret agreement between Michael and Stern where Michael would temporarily retire instead of a suspension? And why would Michael retire at the height of his game, especially when he was so competitive?
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