Richard Gerald Jordan was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. on June 25, 2025, ending a 49-year legal odyssey that made him the longest-serving death row inmate in American history to have his sentence carried out.
Jordan, 79, was executed by lethal injection at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman. He had been sentenced to death four separate times for the 1976 kidnapping and murder of Edwina Marter, a 34-year-old mother of two.
The execution closed a case that spanned seven presidencies, from Gerald Ford to Joe Biden. A child born the day Jordan first received a death sentence would be approaching 50 years old today.
Jordan spent more of his adult life on death row than most people spend in entire careers. He entered the system when the Vietnam War had just ended. He died in an era of artificial intelligence and global pandemics.
The crime itself was methodical and brutal. On January 27, 1976, Jordan posed as an electric company worker to gain entry to the Marter home in Gulfport, Mississippi. He kidnapped Edwina Marter at gunpoint.
Jordan drove her to the DeSoto National Forest, where he shot and killed her. He then called her husband, Charles Marter, at work, demanding $25,000 for her safe return. She was already dead.
He was arrested the next day in a Mobile, Alabama hotel room, never having collected the ransom. Edwina Marter left behind two sons: Eric, then 11, and Kevin, about four years old.
Jordan’s first trial in 1976 was straightforward. The evidence was overwhelming. A jury convicted him of capital murder and sentenced him to death.
But the U. S. Supreme Court soon invalidated mandatory death sentences, and Jordan’s sentence was overturned.
A second sentencing hearing in 1977 produced another death sentence. That too was reversed on procedural grounds. A third trial in 1983 yielded a third death sentence.
It also was overturned.
By the late 1980s, prosecutors offered Jordan a deal: drop all appeals and accept life imprisonment without parole. He accepted, then immediately appealed the plea agreement itself.
Jordan argued that life without parole was not a legally available sentence in Mississippi at the time of his crime. Courts agreed the plea was improper but did not reduce his sentence to life with parole as he sought.
Instead, a fourth sentencing hearing was ordered. In 1998, 22 years after the murder, a fourth jury sentenced Jordan to death for the fourth time. He had essentially argued his way back to death row.
The legal wrangling stretched on. Jordan’s attorneys argued that no jury ever heard the full context of his life: three voluntary tours of duty in Vietnam, 33 months in a combat zone, and severe untreated post-traumatic stress disorder.
Psychological evaluations confirmed the PTSD diagnosis. Jordan had been awarded the Air Medal five times and the Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal. He volunteered for multiple deployments to allow his younger brother to return home first.
By the time he came back in 1969, he was a different man. He received no treatment. He struggled in silence, as so many Vietnam veterans did.
By 1976, he was unemployed and desperate.
Inside Parchman, Jordan became a stabilizing force. He held tier worker status, mentored younger inmates, mediated conflicts. Prison staff described him as a calming presence in one of America’s most difficult correctional facilities.
A prison chaplain called him a force for good. He married a woman he had known in his youth, a marriage permitted by the prison commissioner. In his final years, he had a wife and a defined community.
None of that erased the crime. Edwina’s family waited decade after decade. Eric Marter, who was 11 when his mother was killed, became the family’s public voice.
He said simply, “I know what he did. He wanted money.”
As the execution date approached, Jordan’s legal team exhausted every appeal. No court intervened. The Mississippi Supreme Court set the date.
The U. S. Supreme Court declined to hear any further challenges.
On June 25, 2025, Jordan’s final meal arrived at around 4 p. m. He requested chicken tenders, french fries, strawberry ice cream, and a root beer float.
He shared the meal with family members.
Those present described him as composed, reflective, even warm. He spent his last hours talking about his life, the people he had known, the places he had been. A 79-year-old man eating comfort food with loved ones before execution.
At 6:02 p. m. , the process began.
Jordan lay on the gurney, his mouth slightly open. He took several slow, deep breaths. Then he was still.
At 6:16 p. m. , he was pronounced dead.
Before the lethal drugs were administered, Jordan was given the opportunity to speak final words. He took a breath and spoke quietly and clearly.
“First, I would like to thank everyone for a humane way of doing this. I want to apologize to the victim’s family,” he said. He thanked his attorneys for decades of work.
He looked toward his wife and told her he loved her. His final words were: “I will see you on the other side, all of you.”
Afterward, a representative of the Marter family spoke outside the facility. “This man has been on death row for 49 years,” they said. “Yet today is not about Jordan.
It’s about Edwina Marter and justice being served.”
Edwina’s sister, who had waited nearly half a century, said the execution did not fill the void. Grief does not close like that, she said. It never has.
Eric Marter, now in his late 50s, had said before the execution simply: “It should have happened a long time ago.”
Richard Gerald Jordan was born May 25, 1946, in Petal, Mississippi. He grew up unremarkably, ran into trouble with check forgery, and enlisted in the Army in part to avoid prosecution.
He served from 1966 to 1969, three tours in Vietnam, by choice. He was in the middle of the conflict repeatedly. He came home carrying wounds no one could see.
By 1976, he was 30, unemployed, and desperate enough to kidnap a mother from her home. He shot her in a forest, then tried to collect ransom for her safe return, though she was already dead.
Four juries across four decades looked at the same crime and reached the same conclusion. Edwina Marter deserved to live. She deserved to watch her sons grow up.
She deserved to grow old.
She was 34 years old when she died. Her youngest son, Kevin, was about four. He would grow up with fading memories of his mother.
Eric would carry the case for 49 years.
The legal system moved at its own pace. It took 49 years from first sentencing to last breath. Careers began and ended.
Wars were fought and forgotten. Generations were raised.
Through it all, Edwina Marter’s family waited. They attended hearings. They gave victim impact statements.
They watched Jordan grow old behind bars while their mother stayed forever young.
The case raised profound questions about the death penalty. Jordan was the longest-serving inmate executed in U. S.
history. His attorneys argued he was a changed man, a stabilizing force in prison.
But the law did not recognize redemption as grounds for clemency. The crime remained. The families remained.
The legal path had been exhausted.
Mississippi’s execution protocol was followed without incident. Jordan showed no visible struggle. The lethal injection process took 14 minutes from start to pronouncement.
The execution chamber at Parchman was quiet except for the reading of the death warrant and Jordan’s final words. His wife was present. No members of the Marter family attended.
Eric Marter said he did not need to be there. He had waited long enough. He had lived the consequences every single day since January 1976.
Richard Jordan’s death sentence was carried out four decades after the crime. He was 79. The oldest inmate on Mississippi’s death row.
The longest-serving in U. S. history to be executed.
The number 49 will now be forever tied to this case. 49 years. A woman named Edwina Marter was 34 when she died.
Her sons were 11 and four. They are now in their late 50s and early 50s.
The execution does not bring her back. It does not fill the void. It does not give Kevin Marter the memories he never had.
It does not restore the decades Eric spent without a mother.
But the state of Mississippi carried out its sentence. The legal process that began with a jury in 1976 finally reached its conclusion. Justice, as defined by law, was served.
Richard Gerald Jordan’s last words included an apology to the victim’s family. He said he would see them on the other side. He thanked everyone for what he called a humane way of doing this.
Edwina Marter’s sister said after the execution that the void remains. Some losses are too large to be filled by any act of justice, no matter how long it takes.
Eric Marter had said before the execution that he just wanted it over. He wanted to stop reliving the crime every time a new hearing was scheduled. He wanted to move on.
Now he can. The case is closed. The appeal process is exhausted.
Richard Jordan is dead. Edwina Marter is remembered.
The longest death row case in American history ended not with a dramatic last-minute reprieve or a Supreme Court battle but with a quiet injection and a simple final meal.
Chicken tenders, French fries, strawberry ice cream, and a root beer float. Shared with family. Followed by an apology and a promise to see everyone on the other side.
Richard Gerald Jordan was executed on June 25, 2025, at 6:16 p. m. He was 79 years old.
Edwina Marter was 34. The 49-year wait is over.