Robert David Jordan was sentenced to life in prison without parole on March 31 after he was found guilty of murdering his cousin, Jimmy Lee Anglin, a 27-year-old Oglethorpe County resident.
The jury deliberated for 45 minutes before returning a guilty verdict on charges of malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault and concealing the death of Anglin. Jordan had pleaded not guilty to all four charges.
The trial of The State of Georgia v Robert David Jordan began in the Oglethorpe County Courthouse on March 21. There was testimony from more than 15 witnesses and evidence from 100 exhibits.
Anglin went missing on Nov. 3, 2017, and he was last seen at Jordan’s residence. Jordan and Anglin were friends and allegedly conducted business together.
Although Jordan’s motives remain unclear, the state mentioned that Jordan was angry when Anglin supposedly stopped giving Jordan portions of his monthly government disability checks. Another theory was that Jordan was upset over not receiving half of the money from a set of model cars that he had given Anglin to sell.
Kinship analysis, a form of genetic profiling that is commonly used in missing person cases to find possible familial gene patterns based on DNA samples, found that the skull fit the DNA profile of Jimmy Anglin’s mother, Vicky Anglin, and brother, Randy Anglin, according to Constance Fisher, a biologist and forensics examiner in the FBI’s DNA Casework Unit.
The state also presented evidence of calls from jail, when Jordan gave family members directions to the suspected murder weapon, a Stoeger 22-gauge shotgun.
In the jail call recordings, Jordan appeared to talk in code and referred to the gun as a “letter” or “smoker” before instructing his mother to sanitize and dispose of it.
Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Mary Crawley listened to that call as it happened and followed Jordan’s directions to a wooded area in Banks County, 30 miles from Jordan’s residence. She found the shotgun hidden under a blue jacket.
The shotgun was consistent with the gun used in the crime, according to state witness Emily Bagwell, a GBI firearms technical leader
Steve Jordan, the defendant’s brother, was called to the stand as a state witness. Steve Jordan had let the defendant borrow two shotgun shells in the days prior to Anglin’s disappearance, which the prosecution pointed to as premeditation.
Steve Jordan testified that the defendant confessed to murdering Jimmy Anglin to their late father, who died in 2020.
He also claimed that in the days following Anglin’s disappearance, he saw his brother emerge from the woods talking about DNA with his pants duct-taped to his shoes and sleeves duct-taped to his gloves.
Steve Jordan has ongoing charges associated with this case, including concealing the death of another.
Other witnesses included Comer’s Robert Potter, an acquaintance of the defendant. Potter testified that the defendant arrived at Potter’s home the day before Anglin went missing and told Potter he was going to “kill that damn (Jimmy Anglin).”
During closing statements on March 30, the defense questioned the credibility of multiple witnesses, including Potter and Steve Jordan, as well as the processes used to identify the remains.
The defense also made claims the state failed to investigate other potential witnesses, like Jimmy Anglin’s best friend and Steve Jordan’s previous girlfriend, Lisa Bridges, who could have potentially given alternative leads.
The state was represented by Northern Judicial Circuit senior assistant district attorney Jeff Lee and assistant district attorney Benjamin Durfee. Jordan was represented by Leslie Jones and Howard Anderson.