Mississippi has executed a Vietnam combat veteran for murdering a stay-at-home mother of two sons in a failed attempt to flee with ransom money.
Richard Gerald Jordan, the state's oldest death row inmate at 79, was executed by lethal injection on Wednesday, June 25, and pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. local time. He became the 25th inmate executed in the United States this year, matching the number of executions during all of 2024.
Jordan's execution came nearly five decades after he kidnapped and killed Edwina Marter, 35, who was shot in the back of the head many hours before her banker husband − believing she was still alive − paid a $25,000 ransom for her return on Jan. 12, 1976.
"I would like to thank everyone here for a humane way of doing this," Jordan said in the death chamber as he looked at the ceiling. "I wish to apologize to the family. I ask that you forgive me for what I did. Not forget, but forgive."
Jordan had been challenging the drugs used in lethal-injection executions and arguing that "Vietnam forever changed" him and left him a "traumatized man," according to his petition for clemency filed on June 16. The petition stated that Jordan served three combat tours totaling 33 months, often in perilous positions as a helicopter gunner, earning him various medals and an honorable discharge.
