Mississippi’s longest-serving death row inmate was executed on Wednesday for the 1976 kidnapping and murder of a bank loan officer’s wife.
Richard Gerald Jordan, 79, was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. by lethal injection at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman.
“First, I would like to thank everyone for a humane way of doing this. I want to apologize to the victim’s family,” Jordan said before the execution started.
“I will see you on the other side, all of you.”
In January 1976, Jordan called the Gulf National Bank in Gulfport and got the name of loan officer Charles Marter.
He then looked up Marter’s address in a telephone book, went to his home, and kidnapped his wife, Edwina Marter.
Jordan then shot the victim dead in a forest before calling her husband and demanding $25,000, pretending she was still alive.
“It should have happened a long time ago,” Edwina’s son Eric Marter said of the execution he did not attend.
“I’m not really interested in giving him the benefit of the doubt.”
