Original subtitles

♪♪

Johnson: It just kind of exploded.

Everybody just started talking about it,

and people wanted to know what was going on,

how did this happen?

In a lot of ways, it was kind of a classic whodunit.

When you add to the fact that his son is the most famous

NBA player in the world,

that fuels the speculation of what might have been the cause.

What does this have to do with Michael Jordan?

♪♪

♪♪

Hey, everyone. Welcome to "How It Really Happened."

I'm Hill Harper.

The relationship between a father and son is powerful,

but not every dad passes on wisdom, strength,

and affection to his little man.

Basketball superstar Michael Jordan was raised

by an extraordinary set of parents,

and the father he looked up to was James Raymond Jordan.

Mr. Jordan was a positive and loving childhood role model

and also a vital part of Michael's life

and success as a famous adult.

But in the summer of 1993, at a time when "His Airness"

soared over the entire basketball world,

James Jordan suddenly vanished,

and the mysterious disappearance of the Jordan family patriarch

changed Michael Jordan's life forever.

Here's how it really happened.

♪♪

Hey, man!

[ Cheering and clapping ]

-Whoo! -Whoo!

In the summer of '93,

Michael Jordan was bigger than basketball.

♪♪

Raye-Stout: He'd just won his third championship in a row.

Crowd: [ Chanting ] Whoomp, there it is!

Whoomp, there it is!

The gold medal headlines were written months ago,

when the NBA decided to go USA.

He had been a major factor in the Dream Team,

Team USA winning the gold

in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona.

♪♪

MJ's first NBA championship

came against the legendary Los Angeles Lakers,

and as always, his father was right there with him.

Raye-Stout: I remember him

cradling the trophy in the locker room in Los Angeles,

sort of an iconic image

of James and Michael together and celebrating.

♪♪

Johnson: Being African-American,

I really had an affinity for Michael Jordan.

I appreciated his success.

Air Jordans were popular.

He was always aware about his image.

Yo!

This is Mars Blackmon,

and this is my main man, Michael Jordan.

I remember from early on,

when he would do the commercials with spike Lee...

Is it vicious dunks? Michael: No, Mars.

...and the Mars Blackmon commercials,

and they were just so funny and great.

♪ Oh, be like Mike ♪ ♪ Be like Mike, like Mike ♪

Johnson: "I want to be like Mike."

You know, be like Michael Jordan.

I still feel blessed that I got the chance

to watch him in the prime of his career.

It was a thing of beauty to see.

Ruthless because he wanted to win.

He had the tongue thing. His tongue always hung out.

Scoop: He comes out and starts floating,

and he starts moving in hyper-speed.

Michael Jordan scored 12 points in 4 minutes.

Like, damn!

I think that Michael Jordan is the closest thing

in terms of what is a real-life super hero.

Raye-Stout: To take off and literally fly --

that's what it looked like.

I don't know where you could have been in the world

and not have known about Michael Jordan.

♪♪

James: I have the advantage of looking at him as a son

as opposed to looking at him as a superstar.

Rose: Michael respected his father like nobody else,

because his father was his best friend,

his father was his mentor and his advisor.

He loved his father dearly.

Rose: I would see them sometimes,

and they'd be talking about things.

Sometimes, they'd laugh.

Other times, it would be serious and stern.

And I think that James was just the absolute best father

that Michael Jordan could have.

My wish for every young child, black and white,

that they have the relationship

that Michael Jordan had with his father.

Etheridge: The cherry-red Lexus was a gift from Michael Jordan

to his beloved father.

It was a flashy car. It was a fancy car.

It was an item of pride for Mr. Jordan.

Lazenby: He loved the vehicle.

[ Cheering ]

When you look back on it, it's heartbreaking.

That would be the last moment, the last championship,

he got to share with his father.

♪♪

Joey: On July 22, 1993,

Michael Jordan's mother and father are at their home,

which is near Charlotte, North Carolina.

So, it's early in the morning,

and they're headed in different directions.

Deloris is flying off on a two-week trip to the West Coast.

James Jordan is staying in North Carolina

for his own personal reasons for another day.

But it would be the last moment they spend together.

♪♪

Johnson: July 22, 1993, he had gone to his former home of Wilmington

for the funeral of a friend and former co-worker.

Wilmington was the place where James Jordan had his roots.

He made his living. He had his home.

He was such a kind man, and the community all loved him.

So, the church service ends, and James stays on in town

to go to dinner to catch up with friends for a few hours.

Johnson: Sometime after midnight, he got into his car

and began what would be a three-hour trip home.

Lazenby: He drove down 95 tired that night.

As travelers often do, he pulled over

near Lumberton, North Carolina,

and decided to close his eyes for a few minutes and rest.

The next day, he was scheduled to fly to Chicago

for a special celebrity sports dinner hosted by Michael.

He and Michael were gonna play golf together.

Etheridge: He didn't show up.

Johnson: He ended up missing that flight on the 23rd.

Gagliano: People can sometimes inadvertently make themselves

even more vulnerable by being in unfamiliar surroundings

and not being alert to the potential dangers

that could be out there and ultimately find them.

It was weird that he stopped his car to rest

at that particular place on I-95,

in the middle of nowhere.

It's not a safe place.

♪♪

And with the life that I live

and rapidly how -- how I move,

I really urge everyone to take time out for their family.

Gagliano: In the middle of the night, James Jordan was alone,

driving home from a visit to Wilmington.

He had a plane to catch in a few hours

to participate in a charity golf match

with his famous son, Michael.

But Mr. Jordan missed that flight,

and ultimately, he never showed up at the golf outing.

The fact that he didn't make it to the tournament was noticed,

but no one was really worried about it.

He's known for keeping a loose schedule,

known for disappearing for days,

and known for doing so without telling friends, family,

or business associates.

Nobody thought anything of it,

and then he went missing for the next 21 days.

Let's go back a little.

Michael Jordan, it might be known by many,

was born in Brooklyn.

We have two Brooklyn guys talking here. That's true.

♪♪

His father had gone to Brooklyn to study aircraft maintenance,

and the family had moved there for that purpose.

James Jordan was a man of doing and fixing things.

That was the big value in his life.

That was his identity.

And my mother was pregnant,

and she had me when I was in Brooklyn.

In February of 1963, on a rainy day,

he was born with a bloody nose

after a fairly swift, but somewhat troubled, delivery.

I stayed there a year, and they brought me back

to North Carolina, and that's where I grew up.

James Jordan and his young wife,

they were both special people.

Deloris Jordan would become a bank teller.

It was a family ready to move

into the new age of opportunity for African-Americans

that was beginning to open up in the '60s.

They soon were on their way

to the things that all Americans have cherished

for many, many years --

that is home ownership, and that is raising a family.

Joey: James Jordan could be hard on young Michael,

and there's a famous tough-love moment

that left a lasting impression.

Michael was nearby as his father worked on something mechanical.

He was asked to get a specific wrench out of the toolbox,

but young Michael didn't know one tool from another,

and James lashed out at his son.

"Just go on in the house with the women."

"Go in the kitchen with the girls."

Lazenby: There are millions of words, probably,

that Michael Jordan's father said to him,

but those words are the ones that survive in memory.

It was the sting of those words

that created the ruthless intensity

and the competitiveness that we all know about Michael Jordan,

both on and off the court.

Lazenby: Almost like he was in a shouting match across time

with the old man.

"What do you think of me now?"

Were you a gifted athlete early?

Could you -- I was a late bloomer.

Joey: When James Jordan puts a basketball hoop up

in his backyard,

now there's nonstop basketball

and daily battles between two brothers.

Michael grew up in awe of his brothers

and of his brother Larry in particular.

Rose: Larry would always get the better of Michael,

until Michael started to grow.

But he knew he had to go through Larry

to get to where he wanted to go.

Michael come out of situations in the NBA games

playing with some of the other best players in the league,

and it would be easy for him

because of the shit Larry put him through.

Man, they would go at each other.

Joey: James was a father who let his boys play rough,

but he never let it go too far.

My basketball skills developed real, real late,

and my height and everything

started to come a little bit later than most normal people.

Were you widely recruited? No.

As late as his senior year in high school,

he was ready to go off into the Air Force just like his dad,

but then, the coaches at the University of North Carolina

came knocking at his door.

Michael: I learned the fundamentals of the game,

the mind and the thought process that comes along with the game.

I put two and two together,

and I evolved as a complete player.

Lazenby: James Jordan and Deloris,

suddenly, they were traveling to the games

and part of that frenzy and worship and excitement.

It was a glorious time in their lives.

♪♪

Gagliano: People can sometimes inadvertently make themselves

even more vulnerable by being in unfamiliar surroundings

and not being alert to the potential dangers

that could be out there and ultimately find them.

In the summer of 1993, for James Jordan,

he found himself tired and alone in a car,

and he decided to park along the side of the road

on the outskirts of a town called Lumberton,

in Robeson County, North Carolina.

Johnson: Near the intersection of I-95 and US-74.

Gagliano: Mr. Jordan had no idea what he had just driven himself into.

Etheridge: He fell asleep with his windows down,

the doors unlocked.

It was desolate. It was dark.

It's not a safe place.

There is crime everywhere.

It was the wrong place to choose to do that.

Absolutely.

♪♪

Gagliano: Two weeks after Mr. Jordan exited the interstate

for what he thought was gonna be a short nap,

police made a mysterious discovery miles away

near Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Etheridge: Authorities got a tip of a luxury car

found in a wooded, rural area --

stripped, vandalized,

and the license plate was missing.

Gagliano: Because of its run-down condition,

police officers could not immediately tell

who owned the abandoned vehicle.

It took days, but the sheriff's department later ascertained

that the red Lexus belonged to James Jordan.

His Lexus was found, but he wasn't in it.

Mr. James Jordan is missing.

Gagliano: Word spread to the public like lightning

that Michael Jordan's father had vanished

and was nowhere to be found.

Public reaction was shock, sadness, disbelief.

Johnson: It literally was the world

turning to look at what was happening.

♪♪

Detective: We processed the car last night for latent prints,

also full luminol of the car

to see if there's any presence of blood.

Those tests were negative.

Etheridge: He was the father of the world's most famous basketball player.

No one heard from him for three weeks.

Gagliano: Mr. James Jordan has disappeared

under highly suspicious circumstances.

It looks like foul play.

The Jordan family is sick with worry,

and Michael Jordan's fans lend instant support

for their number-one hero,

the superstar they see everywhere they look.

♪♪

Gagliano: Not far away from the spot

where James Jordan pulled over to take a nap,

detectives were working on a mysterious swamp investigation.

The mystery of John Doe began on August 3, 1993,

in a place called Gum Swamp.

The swamp is black in color.

Britt: Almost the color of coffee, strong tea.

♪♪

Etheridge: A local fisherman spotted a body

on a windy creek, wedged between two trees, facedown.

Reporter: Hal Locklear found the body August 3rd.

He'd come to do some fishing

when he spotted a man's body snagged on a tree.

The sheriff's department and the coroner's office

are called in to figure out who is this person

and what happened to them.

There was absolutely no identification on this body.

The John Doe had been dead for between 7 and 21 days.

Etheridge: The cause of death was a single gunshot wound to the chest.

It severed the aorta.

It was a .38-caliber bullet lodged in the body.

It was murder.

Detectives had very few clues.

The police were stumped.

He had extensive dental work -- bridges, root canals --

a full restoration.

Johnson: That kind of dental work is something

that the police and coroners could use

to help identify the John Doe.

You got to wait a little bit and hope that you'll get some leads.

♪♪

Etheridge: On August 7th,

the coroner collected other remains --

bones and other samples -- and the body was cremated.

It was then the pieces started coming together.

Tim Brown, the coroner in the unsolved John Doe case,

then sees a CBS breaking news story from Connie Chung.

Father of basketball star Michael Jordan,

James Jordan has been missing now for three weeks.

I was with my family at home watching the evening news

and learned from the reports that James Jordan was missing

and his car was discovered there in Cumberland County.

Etheridge: Brown thinks that his John Doe

just might be James Jordan.

It flashed through my mind that it was a possibility

that it could be the John Doe.

Johnson: The coroner starts to make calls

to see if he can get the dental records

from Mr. Jordan's dentist

to compare them to his John Doe.

That's when everything kind of clicked and came together.

Johnson: So, on August 13th,

the dental records that authorities received

were matched to those of the John Doe,

identifying him as James Jordan, the father of Michael Jordan,

the world's most famous basketball player.

Etheridge: It was a media circus.

There was a crush of cameras, and there were satellite trucks

as far as the eye could see.

It literally was the world turning

to look at what was happening.

The public reaction was shock, sadness, disbelief.

♪♪

Rose: Having met Mr. Jordan, it was heart-wrenching.

I almost had a sort of out-of-body experience.

Raye-Stout: I was working at the radio station.

My news director said, you know,

"James Jordan's -- Michael's dad was murdered,"

and it kind of hit me, [Voice breaking] like it is now.

♪♪

Gagliano: There were some mysterious circumstances

surrounding the James Jordan tragedy,

and they created an outbreak of conspiracy theories.

Johnson: Why was he killed?

Was there something that's hidden

that we're not aware of that was involved with his death?

All of those kinds of things become the feast of conspiracy.

A captivating kind of story to cover.

Joey: Investigators, reporters, and the public all wondered --

how could Mr. Jordan's disappearance

have seemingly gone unnoticed for about three full weeks?

Reporter: Police only then learned

no one had seen the elder Jordan

since a funeral three weeks earlier

in a town about 50 miles away.

Etheridge: Even as his 57th birthday approached on July 31st,

no one took real notice.

There was no planned celebration.

Johnson: Some people cited that as saying,

"Well, you know, that's just strange,

and that must mean that there's something going on."

Reporter: What has the family told you with regard to, uh,

to what's been happening or what happened?

Well, really, I-I'm not at liberty to discuss that.

Heffney: We learned that Mr. James Jordan had a tendency --

if he went somewhere,

he would stay for a period of time,

and no one knew where he was.

Reporter: The FBI is looking into debts James Jordan owed

to a company he owned in South Carolina.

He had reportedly run into tax trouble

while running JVL Enterprises,

a business that makes T-shirts, shorts, and socks.

We knew that the business

that he was involved in in Charlotte was failing,

and we knew of other ventures that had failed.

We didn't see that as problematic.

Reporter: Michael Jordan likes to gamble and caused a flap

during the NBA series in New York earlier this year

when he went to a New Jersey casino.

Heffney: You had the speculation.

"Well, you know, he was killed, or he was missing

because of Michael's gambling."

Authorities had to look at it.

Reporter: Jordan made headlines

with an overnight gambling junket to Atlantic City,

and later, his father said that casino trip was his idea.

Now, whether that controversy

had anything to do with this murder

is now a matter of speculation.

King: You were mad over being questioned about it?

Well, I -- How do you view the press and the athlete?

I felt that they were attacking me in a situation

that didn't need to be attacked,

and there's a lot of speculations that was going on.

Attacking you by merely asking questions?

Speculating about some things

that they really didn't have true facts about,

tying in connections

that shouldn't have never been tied into,

leaving more room for speculations in that sense,

which gives them a little bit more power

than I think is necessary.

There was a probe with the NBA about Michael Jordan's gambling.

They looked into it.

It turns out there was absolutely no connection

between the gambling and the murder.

They see a man sleeping in the vehicle,

and when he woke up, they shot.

The phone records really laid out

a map of what transpired.

♪♪

Welcome back to "How It Really Happened."

Law enforcement officers have positively identified

their John Doe murder victim as James Jordan,

the missing father of basketball superstar Michael Jordan.

With that critical development,

detectives urgently opened a homicide case

to find out who did it and how it happened.

And the Jordan family,

together with legions of Michael Jordan fans everywhere,

demanded answers.

Will good old-fashioned police work crack the case

and lead to justice for this unsolved murder?

The hunt for the killer, or killers, is on.

♪♪

Reporter: For Michael Jordan, this has been a summer

that's run the emotional gamut,

from the triumph of an NBA title in June

to the tragic death of a loved one in August.

Johnson: It was such a huge story.

Everybody knew who Michael Jordan was.

Everybody could identify with him,

that he had suffered this loss.

Why was he killed?

♪♪

A fisherman went to the Gum Swamp.

As he was preparing to fish, he noticed something,

and he really wasn't sure what it was.

For prosecutor Johnson Britt, there were two powerful images

that he couldn't get out of his mind.

One was the haunting image of James Jordan's body

laying in a swamp.

That's an image that you might envision in a horror movie.

The other image -- weeks earlier...

[ Cheering, clapping, laughter ]

...you had witnessed the Bulls

win their third NBA Championship.

Michael weeping, his father comes and consoles him.

So, you take the two images, you put them together,

and they're inseparable for me.

Foley: Our investigation up to this point

has been an attempt to identify this person.

Now that he's identified,

we can start on the murder investigation.

Everyone was curious to know, how did this happen?

There were lots of questions.

So, it was a real whodunit.

♪♪

Joey: Despite being stripped and abandoned,

James Jordan's luxury car still contained clues

that would unlock the mystery of his murder.

Heffney: In 1993, when the vehicle was found,

it had a cellphone in it.

This would have been a cellphone that you, like,

see back in the day in James Bond movies.

The phone records really laid out a map of what transpired.

Heffney: You can see the history of calls

made by Mr. James Jordan.

Britt: And then suddenly --

Heffney: Bam. You have one call that's out of the ordinary.

The first call that was made that was in question

was a call to a sex line.

Deductive reasoning would say,

"well, Mr. Jordan is not making these calls."

Gagliano: Veteran investigators have pinpointed the moment

they believe the victim stopped using his cellphone,

and they started tracking down who could possibly have been

making these suspicious new calls.

♪♪

Investigators then met face-to-face

with the people who received calls

in order to find out precisely who had contacted them.

Britt: An overwhelming majority of the phone calls

came back to this individual named Daniel Green.

Other calls were identified having been made

by Larry Demery.

They made more than 30 calls.

They're calling their friends and family

from the deceased's phone, getting into this luxury Lexus,

and took this four-day joyride.

Douglas: As it turned out, a friend of mine

actually saw Daniel Green and Larry Demery.

Wallwork: And a fairly new red Lexus pulls up next to me

during a stoplight, which caught my eye,

and I noticed there were two young guys in the front seat,

looking happy-go-lucky,

and immediately, I'm thinking of my children,

that if I had that car,

they would not be driving that car.

They just out trying to impress people.

[ Tires squealing ]

Who are these teenagers?

Britt: They learned that Daniel Green had a brother

who was in the U.S. Army and was stationed at Fort Bragg.

When they interviewed him,

he placed Daniel Green and Larry Demery

in the red Lexus at his residence.

When talking to the brother, Daniel Green mentioned

having the car of Mr. James Jordan.

Britt: He showed him a set of golf clubs

that were in the trunk of this car.

Well, guess whose name is on that golf bag?

It was Michael Jordan's.

Joey: Right away, investigators want to talk

to Daniel Green and Larry Demery

to find out whether these two teens

had any involvement in the death of James Jordan.

Officers were assigned to go find Daniel Green.

♪♪

Weller: What was their motivation?

Everyone was curious to know, how did this happen?

♪♪

♪♪

Gagliano: Detectives arrived at Daniel Green's mother's home,

armed with a search warrant

and determined to bring her son in for questioning.

Britt: The SBI agents who were conducting the search

seized two very valuable pieces of evidence.

Heffney: Within Daniel Green's bedroom

was a .38-caliber revolver handgun

in a vacuum cleaner.

The important fact of the handgun

was that it was the same caliber bullet

that was used to kill Mr. James Jordan.

Britt: They noticed there were videotapes stacked up.

All but one had a wrapper, and an SBI agent took it,

not knowing what might be on it.

The discovery of the .38-caliber weapon

was not necessarily the smoking gun.

Ballistic tests would need to be done

to determine whether it was just similar to

or whether it was the actual murder weapon.

♪♪

Detectives looked to see if Green and Demery

had a history of past crimes

and were struck by the seriousness

of their prior convictions for people so young.

Arrests for aggravated assault, robbery.

Heffney: Larry Demery and Daniel Green

have known each other since childhood.

They -- They considered themselves brothers.

Johnson: According to their records, they were progressing

in the crimes they were involved in.

Those two kids are scared of no one.

They have no respect for law enforcement.

They have no respect for anyone.

Both of them were involved in a robbery

of people out of Rhode Island.

These are clearly two troubled kids

with serious criminal histories,

but are they really capable of such violence?

Gagliano: Investigators needed to run down

every possible connection between the two teenagers

and the father of one of the most famous men on the planet

in order to find out what they knew.

When Daniel Green and Larry Demery

were brought in for questioning...

The both had an initial story that mirrored each other.

The two suspects said they were not guilty.

Gagliano: But when detectives punched holes in their statements,

Green suddenly started offering wild new versions of events.

And then he would modify it,

that these unknown people showed up at his house.

They were in dark suits.

With the car, wanting to sell it to him for $45.

It was just too unbelievable to even consider credible.

Joey: When the police played the VHS tape

taken from the home of Daniel Green,

it turned out to be an incriminating homemade video

starring Daniel Green.

[ Rapping ] ♪ Let's see ♪

♪ First name, Dan-I-L, last name, Green ♪

♪ Of the Green family ♪

♪ That's Green, as in tree ♪

The video was shot

in the living room of his mother's house.

Britt: Daniel Green was talking about

"You shoot a man in the head, you take his money."

Etheridge: Daniel Green had the audacity

to wear a watch that MJ had given to his father.

Heffney: And the NBA All-Star ring.

Weller: Daniel Green was videotaping himself showing off the ring,

basically letting everyone know, "I got this big ring."

I felt totally disgusted.

Really disgusted.

Gagliano: In building the case against Demery and Green,

investigators had compelling circumstantial evidence,

but they needed a big break to take the case to trial,

and it finally came from one of the two prime suspects.

Joey: Larry Demery made a full confession

of his role in the murder of James Jordan.

Rogers: In this case, acting in concert, aiding and abetting,

which would make him equally liable

even though he didn't ever touch the gun.

And Demery's confession lined up neatly with the evidence

the officers had already compiled in their case --

that his accomplice, Daniel Green, was the shooter.

Rogers: The gun was found on Daniel's relative's property,

not Larry's.

No fingerprints of Larry's on the gun.

Daniel Green had all the spoils from the murder of James Jordan.

Very damning evidence that he was involved in the crime.

In the early morning hours, on Sunday, August 15, 1993,

investigators made the arrest of Daniel Green and Larry Demery

for the murder of James Jordan.

In a heartbreaking parallel, later that same day,

Michael Jordan and his family

mourn the passing of his father in a memorial.

Etheridge: For Michael Jordan and his family,

it was a day of finality.

It was a small service in a small church --

Teachey, North Carolina.

Michael Jordan issued a statement

describing his family as tight-knit,

his father's death as shocking.

He encouraged everybody there not to focus on the details,

but instead to focus on his father,

the fact that he had been such a good father.

Joey: Michael Jordan reflected on how the healing bonds of family

helped him get through his father's memorial service

in "The Last Dance."

Michael: It was devastating,

but, you know, my mother was so strong,

and the first thing she said is, you know,

"You got to be thankful," you know,

and I started looking at the positive.

Gagliano: Based on the confession

and combined with all the other recovered evidence,

the prosecution slowly built a working theory

of what really happened to James Jordan on July 23, 1993,

after he left dinner with a friend in Wilmington

and began that fateful drive home to Charlotte

in the pre-dawn darkness.

Heffney: Daniel Green and Larry Demery

were at the Crawley Inn to rob somebody,

because they had done it before and got away with it,

and they see this red Lexus on the side of Highway 74

in the gravel.

Johnson: Mr. Jordan is in his car asleep

when the two suspects come up to him.

Heffney: They don't know who's inside the vehicle.

The passenger-side window is down maybe four, five inches.

Both Daniel Green and Larry Demery

look inside the vehicle.

Britt: They observe a black man

reclined back in the driver's seat.

They saw the jewelry that he was wearing.

Gagliano: The killers target the Lexus,

thinking the sleeping driver might be a drug dealer

or possibly...

Heffney: A college student.

And they intend to take the car

and, you know, rob the college student.

They scoot down on the passenger side of the car,

figuring out how they're gonna work this out.

They go back up to the window.

Daniel Green has the .38-caliber handgun,

and Mr. James Jordan happens to wake up.

Britt: When Mr. Jordan stirred,

Daniel Green stuck the gun inside the car

and fired a single shot.

Heffney: Mr. James Jordan was shot

in the chest area, near the heart,

and he bled basically internally,

and that's why there was not a lot of blood

found in the vehicle.

Larry Demery said

after Daniel Green shot James Jordan,

he got into the car,

pushed James Jordan into the passenger seat,

and drove off with Larry Demery following him.

After they discovered who it was, Daniel Green said...

Britt: "I think we've killed Michael Jordan's father."

Larry Demery said, "No.You

♪♪

Gagliano: Just a few months after the murder of his father,

Michael Jordan held

a shocking and life-changing press conference.

I'm very solid with my decision

of not to play the game of basketball in the NBA.

On October 6, 1993,

tired of his fame,

disillusioned by allegations

of illegal betting,

and crushed by the murder of his father,

Michael Jordan announced his retirement.

I guess the biggest positive thing that I can take out of,

you know, my father not being here with me today

is that he saw my last basketball game,

and that means a lot.

I'm happy with my decision.

I don't have any reservations about it.

[ Applause ]

When Michael Jordan retired, I wasn't surprised

because the devastation of his father was really difficult.

In one of the few times Michael Jordan has spoken out,

he told Oprah exactly how he was choosing

to deal with the death of his dad.

But Michael, you know what's interesting to me?

I've heard you talk about it,

where you say, "My father, who passed,"

and I always think --

I mean, I know he had to pass,

but I think he was murdered,

and the fact that he was murdered is --

is -- is a searing kind of pain.

I mean, have you -- have you dealt with that?

Have you accepted the fact he was murdered?

No, 'cause I'm --

I'm a very optimistic person, to a sense,

that I don't look at the real bad part of it.

I looked at no matter what happened to my father,

he's not here. Yeah.

So, he's passed to me.

When Michael Jordan told Oprah Winfrey

that his father passed,

that's how he lives with the death of his father.

I want to look at it in a good sense,

'cause I think that's a part

to help me get over that situation.

♪♪

Joey: The murder trial began on January 3rd of 1996,

and guilty-as-charged Larry Demery

would be the all-star witness for the state

in their case against Daniel Green.

Britt: His version of what happened is more consistent

with what the independent evidence showed us.

Gagliano: Ballistics experts examined the bullet

to see if it had come from the .38 that had killed Mr. Jordan.

Britt: They could not eliminate that bullet

having been fired from that gun.

The results were inconclusive,

but the evidence was enough to be admitted at trial.

That goes to the circumstantial evidence of the case.

I didn't have any doubts that the bullet

was one that came from that same gun.

♪♪

Britt: Daniel Green was convicted of first-degree felony murder.

He was convicted of robbery with a dangerous weapon,

and he was convicted of

conspiracy to commit robbery with a dangerous weapon.

The jury in this case having unanimously recommended

a sentence of life imprisonment.

Plus 10 years for the conspiracy charge.

One way or another, Daniel Green's going to prison

for a very long time.

Joey: Since Larry Demery pled guilty before trial,

he was already convicted of first-degree murder.

Rogers: So, they were both convicted of first-degree murder

and got life sentences by separate juries.

Joey: The day after the jury found Daniel Green

guilty of first-degree murder,

Frances Weller conducted a phone interview with him.

Weller: When I walked away from that interview,

I thought, "Someone could almost say he's being skillful

and playing psychology at his best,

but he's guilty as hell."

Gagliano: "How It Really Happened"

requested comment from Daniel Green,

and this is the statement provided by his new attorney.

♪♪

Scoop: I think the most important thing we need to learn

about Michael Jordan and James Jordan's relationship

is that it is a love story.

It's a love story between a father and son.

Rose: You think of Michael Jordan, this huge icon,

who was perhaps, at that point in time,

the most well-known person on the planet,

and he would melt when he would see his dad.

Scoop: They were able to share that ride together.

James was still proud of his son as a son,

not necessarily the Michael Jordan, the global icon,

just proud of his son as a son.

And even in James Jordan's passing,

I am certain James Jordan is still a very big part

of who Michael Jordan is today.

Each summer since 1993 marks another anniversary

since James Jordan's death.

If anything, his famous son has gone on to successes

that surely would have increased the beaming pride of a father --

three more NBA championships, NBA ownership,

and the expansion of MJ's brand into the billions.

Michael has spoken of his father's

ongoing presence in his life,

special moments that come in the form

of silent inner thoughts.

They are MJ's loving memories

of the way the two would always talk together.

I'm Hill Harper.

Thanks for watching. Good night.

♪♪