NBA Star's Father Shot To Death -- Body In River Identified As James Jordan

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. - The body of James Jordan, father of basketball superstar Michael Jordan, was found more than a week ago floating in a South Carolina creek, and authorities said today he had been shot to death.

Jordan, 57, died of a gunshot wound to the chest, Cumberland County, N.C., officials said at a news conference today. The body was found Aug. 3 near McColl, S.C., about 60 miles southwest of Fayetteville and just south of the North Carolina state line. James Jordan's car was found two days later near Fayetteville.

Dental records helped confirm the identity of the body. Authorities investigating the case in both North and South Carolina have no suspects.

FBI agent Thomas Lusby said it was conducting a kidnapping investigation based on the possibility that Jordan "may have been abducted from the state of North Carolina and transported to South Carolina."

Lusby added that there had been no report of any demands by kidnappers.

Michael Jordan is vacationing in California and has made no public statements about his father.

"We are going to treat it in Cumberland County as if it were a homicide," said Sheriff Morris Bedsole. He said the body had been in the water for some time.

"The body was originally found on Aug. 3 . . . and has been listed as a John Doe since that time," Bedsole said. "The cause of death was a single gunshot wound to the chest, and, . . . I don't think we have a lot more that we can tell you."

Dr. Keene Garvin, a forensic pathologist at South Carolina's Newberry County Memorial Hospital, said he helped perform the autopsy Aug. 4.

"It'd be consistent basically with him being dead from the time he'd disappeared," Garvin said.

James Jordan, who was close to his son and was a courtside fixture at Chicago Bulls' games, hadn't been seen in three weeks, but the family had not reported him missing. His luxury car, its rear window smashed, was found Aug. 5 in a wooded area off a Fayetteville road. The red Lexus 400 had been stripped.

Bedsole declined to speculate on what happened or where it happened. He emphasized there were no signs of a struggle in the car.

"We don't think it happened in his car," Bedsole said.

The tragedy came amid a year of unprecedented success for Michael Jordan, perhaps the nation's most prominent athlete. He led the Bulls to a third straight National Basketball Association championship.

But it also was a year in which the younger Jordan was dogged by reports of excessive gambling.

When word surfaced that Michael Jordan had made a late-night trip to an Atlantic City, N.J., casino the night before losing a playoff game to the New York Knicks in May, his father stepped forward and tried to take responsibility.

"The trip was my idea," James Jordan told reporters in Chicago. "I took him with me. He just paid the bill. It wasn't anything planned ahead of time. It didn't seem like going to Atlantic City for gambling. I just thought he might want to relax."

Family and friends said it wasn't unusual for the elder Jordan to stay out of touch for long periods of time, but a three-week disappearance was unprecedented.

Members of Michael Jordan's security staff flew to Fayetteville from Chicago earlier this week to identify James Jordan's car.

James Jordan was last seen July 22 after the funeral of a friend in Wilmington, N.C., 60 miles southeast of Fayetteville, Bedsole said.

Jordan stopped at the home of the widow before driving some friends home, the widow said.

Carolyn Robinson of Wilmington, who rode with him, said Jordan told her he had to return to Charlotte, N.C., to catch a plane to Chicago.

"He talked to his office on the phone while we were driving back," Robinson said. She heard him say that after his Chicago trip, he planned to be in South Carolina.

Jordan stopped at Robinson's home, ate a late dinner and visited before changing clothes for the drive home, she said.

"I asked him to call me when he got there, and he said he would. He never did, but I didn't think anything of it. He was so busy," Robinson said.

Jordan's wife, Deloris, told authorities she last talked to her husband July 26. She said she did not know where her husband was calling from.

The Jordans have a home outside Charlotte, which is about 140 miles west of Fayetteville.

Because Jordan travels on business, it wasn't until the car was found that the Jordan family became concerned.

"The officers who were there have related to me that the family apparently had not seen reason for concern. They hadn't felt the need to report Mr. Jordan missing," Sheriff Frank McGuirt said.

James Jordan was born 1936 or 1937 in Wallace, N.C. The son of a sharecropper, he worked for General Electric until retiring in the late 1980s to oversee his son's retail manufacturing plant in Rock Hill, S.C.

In 1985, James Jordan pleaded guilty to accepting a $7,000 kickback from a private contractor while in charge of inventory control at General Electric's Wilmington plant. He received a three-year suspended sentence, supervised probation for five years and a $1,000 fine.

"I was born with nothing and nowhere to put it," James Jordan had said.

Material from Associated Press, Reuters and the New York Daily News was used in this report.