Richard Jordan claims he has never heard of the trauma that the ju umpire suffered after three battle tours in the Vietnam War. His victim’s son laments the 50 years the incident took place.
Execution in Mississippi: What do you know?
Let’s take a look at the process of deciding when and how to run death row inmates in Mississippi.
Did Richard Jordan commit murder due to post-traumatic stress disorder from three combat tours in the Vietnam War? Or is he just a cold-blooded murderer?
That question lies at the heart of Jordan’s debate over his impending execution in Mississippi on Wednesday, June 25th – a shy man who has been 50 years since he lured and killed 36-year-old Edwina Mater, the mother of two sons. Jordan shot Marter in the back of his head before the banker’s husband paid a $25,000 ransom for his return on January 12, 1976.
“Like other veterans, Vietnam changed Richard forever, leaving him as a “traumatized man.” He was reveredly discharged from the hospital with various medals for 33 months, often in dangerous positions as a helicopter gunner, according to his petition filed June 16th.
Currently at age 79, Mississippi’s death row inmate, he will mentor young prisoners, quell violent breakouts and work with banks to help prevent employees from becoming targets like Marter, his petition says.
However, at a Jordanian trial in 1976, prosecutors told the ju judge to consider how Jordan demanded a ransom for the safe return of Mater, even after the deaths were shot and killed.
“Did you notice how cool it is and how cold it is?” then Jackson County District Attorney Albert Nekeys said that according to an archived report from the Daily Herald in Biloxi. “He was a judge, he was a jury, and he was also her executioner.”
As Jordan’s execution with a deadly injection approaches, USA Today looks back on the case, a dramatic murder trial, and whether Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves responded to the prisoner’s request for a 15-minute meeting to hear him.
Discover Witnesses: Visit our exclusive collection of true crime stories, podcasts, videos and more.
Edwina Mater’s Invitation and Murder
On January 12, 1976, Edwina Mater was at her Mississippi home, where her two sons, one of three-year-old Kevin, and her 10-year-old son Eric were at school, court records said.
Richard Jordan appears and invites Marter when Kevin falls asleep. Jordan knew her husband, Charles Mater, was an executive at the Gulf National Bank, and decided to target ransom money to couples, court records say.
Jordan headed out about 35 miles from Edwina Mater to an abandoned area of the Desoto National Forest. There, the prosecutor said she executed her by kneeling and firing a bullet into the back of her head. Jordan claimed that it should be a warning shot when a fatal bullet escapes.
After killing Edwina, Jordan called Charles Mater and told him that his wife was fine and thriving and that it would cost him $25,000 to get her back, court records say.
A report in the Daily Herald shows that half a dozen law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, quickly unfold when they report the lure, and local journalists rarely agree to nearly 24 hours a day news silence, allowing their desperate husband to drop their money.
After Jordan had directed Mater to many wasted stops in various places, money was eventually left under the jacket on the side of the road, where Jordan recovered it when he saw the authorities not being detected. A high-speed chase followed, including officers hitting cars with multiple bullets in Jordanian cars. Jordan made a brief escape but was later arrested after being found behind a taxi due to police disability.
Richard Jordan was sentenced to death four times
Jordan’s dramatic first trial ruled local newspaper headlines as prosecutors painted vivid pictures for the ju apprentices who convicted him.
District Attorney Nekeise said Jordan’s executions were more humane than Edwina Mater’s murder, noting that his family “doesn’t have to run down the road looking for his body,” according to the Herald.
“The body will be handed over to them,” continued Nekeise. “The birds of the air and the beasts of the fields will not be left to east feast.”
Earl Denham, a Jordanian court-appointed defense counsel, gave an unusual closing statement, telling the ju judge that it was a “nightmare” for him and that his client was a sociopath, Herald reported.
“He’s calm, he’s quiet and he’s never shown me any emotional nerds about anything,” Denham said. “If he’s anything, he’s sick.”
Necaise later dismissed it: “I say he’s not a sick man, I say he’s a greedy man.”
Jordan was sentenced to death after his trial in 1976, which later became invalid for changes to the death penalty law, and was again tried in 1977, convicted and sentenced to death. The Court of Appeal later invalidated the sentence for an unconstitutional penalty directive, but Jordan was again sentenced to death in 1983’s Res Tinsing. That too was later invalidated by the US Supreme Court, and Jordan reached an agreement with prosecutors for a life sentence.
Then, in 1994, the Mississippi Supreme Court overridden the agreement and stated it shouldn’t be an option. Jordan was sentenced for the fourth time in 1998.
Richard Jordan’s PTSD never presented it to the ju apprentice
During the Jordanian legal proceedings, the ju judge had never heard of PTSD from Vietnamese service in the First Calvary Division from 1966 to 1969, according to his petition for tolerance.
As door gunners, he protected the ground forces by attaching an M60 machine gun to the helicopter’s cargo doors to provide “defensive and repressive fire.” According to one of Jordan’s filings in the U.S. Supreme Court. He was “trained to kill in sight,” the submission said.
Jordan was fired in a small shed once suspected of shooting down a US helicopter, and later found out that a woman and a child were dead.
His base, Phu Bai, near Phu in South Vietnam, was attacked in “one of the bloodiest battles during the 1968 Tet attack,” during which he was “under constant threat of being killed,” the petition states.
Nearly three years after the war, Jordan returned to Mississippi’s mentally and emotional home, struggling with “an experienced period of stranger suspicion, emotional paralysis.”
According to his generosity petition, seeking a meeting with Jordan and Governor Tate Reeves, “After the ju judge heard this important information, Richard may not have been sentenced to death.”
Neither the Tate office nor the Mississippi Attorney General’s office responded to requests for comment on the story, including whether the governor would attend the meeting.
In a recent court filing, the state stands behind Jordan’s death penalty and executions, calling his claim “baseless.”
He “she executed her young mother after luring her to force her to pay from her husband. The jury convicted him of murder and was sentenced to death nearly 30 years ago,” the state told the Supreme Court.
Jordanian lawyers have filed many other legal debates fighting executions, including challenges against drugs used in fatal injection executions.
The victim’s son laments the length of the trial
Edwina Mater’s now 59-year-old son, Eric Mater, said he never bought Jordan’s claim that his family accidentally shot Edwina, but they certainly didn’t buy any discussion about PTSD.
“I’m trying to play as much games as I can, so I won’t be surprised that they won’t die,” he said. “He plays military cards and see if it’s trying to help him.”
He said he had never heard of Jordan’s Vietnam service until recently and pointed out how well-planned crime is. “I’m not really buying it to say you have mental issues.”
He doesn’t have much memory of his mother anymore. His brothers are nothing, but they have heard of some great families. His aunt Norma told the boys that when she and Edwina were young they would wear the most lovely clothes, put on makeup and run the crashed wedding reception. “She loved to have fun,” he said.
Edwina just missed out on the life of his three grandchildren and great grandchildren, he said.
Regarding the execution, he said his family was frustrated by the decades of delay. They’re ready to finish it. “It was too much, too long.”
Run details
Jordan is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at Parkman’s Mississippi State Prison at 6pm on Wednesday, June 25th.
If Jordan’s executions advance, he will become the 25th prisoner to be executed in the United States this year, matching the amount of executions carried out during the last year.
The United States has previously executed combat veterans, but most recently, on May 1, Florida executed Jeffrey Hutchinson, who served in the Gulf War. Another Vietnamese veteran, Herbert Trichardson, was executed in Alabama in 1989 and portrayed in the 2019 film Just Mercy.
Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter at USA Today. Follow her on x at @amandaleusat.
