 Tracy Jordan, with his son, Tracy Jr. (Photo: Phillips Black)
Terrance Crawford, a store employee, told police that he arrived at the Cash Plus store that Monday at about 8:30 a.m. to take out the trash and tidy up in preparation for its opening at 9. Crawford said a man approached and asked Crawford whether he was an employee of the store. Crawford said he wasn’t, and the man walked across the street to a bus stop where he stood and talked with “another dude.”
Crawford said Wexler arrived a few minutes later. The store’s security guard hadn’t shown up, and Crawford and Wexler began unlocking the doors. The man who had approached Crawford earlier returned and put a gun to Crawford’s head and said, “You know what this is.”
Crawford said Wexler pushed Crawford out of the way. There was a struggle, and then a gunshot. Wexler was pronounced dead at 8:53 a.m., shortly after the police arrived.
Crawford could not identify the gunman but said he was Black, about 5’8” or 5’9”, 210 pounds with a full beard. He said the man wore a puffy jacket with a black hood and black cap. He also carried a dark-colored bag over his shoulder and used a silver gun.
The police had found two plastic bags at the crime scene, a white bag from Sneaker City, and a brown bag. Crawford said the gunman had left these bags. A crime-scene technician also recovered a fired cartridge case from a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson pistol and later a bullet jacket from Wexler’s autopsy.
Technicians pulled a fingerprint from the white bag and also from the store’s door handle. The handle print was identified as belonging to a man named Frank Bagley. He said he had been in the jewelry store that connected with the check-cashing business at some point in the days before the murder. His then-girlfriend provided him with an alibi for the time of the murder.
The print from the white bag was identified as belonging to 39-year-old Tracy Jordan, who lived a few blocks away. Jordan had no criminal record and was a former Marine. His prints were on file because he was a former law-enforcement officer. A year earlier, Jordan had been fired from his job as a police officer with the Philadelphia Housing Authority. At the time, he was also president of the union representing the authority’s police officers. He had filed a wrongful-termination lawsuit against the agency in August 2003. (The lawsuit would be settled in 2009.)
On November 18, 2004, two detectives interviewed Jordan, who said that he did not know Wexler except by sight. Jordan said he had gone to the store two days before the murder with his 3-year-old daughter and bought a lottery ticket. He said that on the morning of the shooting, he was at home doing chores with his 18-year-old son, Tracy Jr. He said he went to check on a job and eventually wound up at his credit union, which was about 35 minutes away in downtown Philadelphia. Jordan said that he owned a .22-caliber Beretta, and his wife, also a housing authority police officer, owned a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson.
After Jordan gave a written statement, he drew lines through the empty portion of the paper. A detective asked Jordan why, and Jordan responded, “I know how you people are.”
Jordan consented to a search of his home, and his wife’s service weapon was brought in for testing. William McKenzie, a police department firearms examiner, reported that the cartridge case found at the crime scene and the bullet jacket had been fired from Nanette Jordan’s service weapon. Tracy Jordan was arrested on November 24, and charged with murder, robbery, and unlawful possession of a weapon.
Two days prior to Jordan’s arrest, police had recovered Wexler’s briefcase from the Schuylkill River during an unrelated investigation. Although waterlogged, the briefcase contained a laptop, several floppy disks, and a compact disc labeled “Cash Plus Taxes.” The police investigation said the briefcase was the only item taken during the robbery.
On March 13, 2005, Crawford testified at a preliminary hearing. He had told a detective on the day of the murder that the gunman had an “old-looking face” and “wasn’t a young buck.” At the hearing, he described the gunman as “an older guy, 38 or 39,” which was Jordan’s age.
Crawford did not make an identification. At the hearing, he testified that he did not see the gunman’s face and was unable to exclude Jordan as the man he saw. Crawford said: “I don’t know. I don’t know him.” Jordan was also about 4 to 5 inches taller than the man initially described by Crawford.
Crawford also gave conflicting answers about the number of bags the gunman carried but eventually testified that the man had left behind two plastic bags, including the Sneaker City bag.
As the case moved to trial, Jordan’s attorney hired a forensic expert to examine the firearm evidence. McKenzie had retired, and the state asked Officer Robert Stott, who had been McKenzie’s co-examiner, to re-examine the evidence. Stott reported in February 2006 that the new results no longer allowed him to conclude that Nanette Jordan’s gun was the murder weapon. Two other firearm examiners also reviewed the evidence and reported the same findings. Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes ordered the state to send the evidence to the FBI for review.
The FBI reported in July 2006 that it could not determine whether the firearm evidence at the crime scene was fired from Nanette Jordan’s gun. Although noting “slight differences in the individual microscopic marks” between Jordan’s gun and the crime scene evidence, the FBI did not exclude Jordan’s weapon from consideration. This was based on the agency’s policy to exclude weapons only in cases where the weapon was of a different class.
Jordan’s trial began on November 1, 2006, in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas, with Judge Hughes presiding. Jordan was represented by Gregory Pagano. Assistant District Attorney Edward Cameron represented the state.
Crawford had died of cancer in July 2005, but jurors watched a video of his testimony at the preliminary hearing.
Stott testified about the firearm testing and said that initially there had been a “match,” but it could not be confirmed on reexamination, because the comparison “lacked the minute and individual characteristics, the microscopic markings on that case that would break the threshold for me to decide that it was indeed fired from that firearm.”
Stott said he could not determine the last time Nanette Jordan’s weapon had been fired but said the barrel contained no lint or lubricant, material that is typically burned away when the weapon discharges.
Stott said that he compared the “bunter marks” on the shell casing found at the crime scene against the casings found in the cartridges of Nanette Jordan’s weapon and determined they were made at the same factory. (A bunter mark is made by the die that produces the stamp on a cartridge head.)
Stott said he called up the factory and spoke to an employee who said the same bunter is used on between 120,000 and 150,000 cartridges. Stott said that nine of the cartridges found in the Smith & Wesson were among a group of 120,000 to 150,000 cartridges that could have been used in the crime.
Adrienne Byrd testified that she had worked at the Cash Plus store for about three years. She said the store cashed checks, completed money orders and Western Union exchanges, and sold lottery tickets. She said that Wexler kept the money in a safe and was the only person to take money in and out of the store. She was shown Wexler’s briefcase and testified that he typically used it to carry his computer and paperwork. Byrd had not been interviewed until about two years after the shooting, but she testified that she would have swept the store clean when she closed up on the Saturday before the shooting.
Julius Peurifor testified that he and Jordan had been friends for about 10 years. He said that Jordan had told him about losing his job at the housing authority but that he was expecting to receive some money from his lawsuit. Peurifor said that he had lined up some roofing work for himself and Jordan on November 15, at a job site in the Kensington neighborhood. He said he called Jordan several times that morning, using his boss’s cellphone, but Jordan never showed up.
Pagano asked Peurifor if he had been charged with any crime in Wexler’s death. Peurifor answered, no. Cameron interjected, “Not yet,” and Judge Hughes admonished Cameron to keep quiet. In his closing argument, Cameron would again repeat the claim that Peurifor was Jordan’s accomplice. (No charges were ever brought.)
Bagley testified about why his fingerprint had been found on the door handle. His then-girlfriend testified and provided Bagley with an alibi. (Cameron would later suggest to jurors that the fingerprint evidence left them with a binary choice; either Bagley or Jordan had to be the assailant. “Go back to that cookie jar example,” he said. “Circumstantial evidence, you knew who took the cookie. You knew who took the bag.”)
Jordan testified about his activities on the morning of November 15 and denied any involvement in Wexler’s death. He said he and his son cleaned up the trash from the back of their house between 8:15-845 a.m., because garbage was picked up that day. Jordan said he received a call from Peurifor but was concerned about whether the job paid enough to offset the cost of childcare for his daughter. He said he went to the address Peurifor provided but couldn’t find a jobsite. At about 10 a.m., he went to the credit union to make a deposit. Photos from the credit union showed Jordan standing in line at 10:42 a.m. His clothing did not match Crawford’s description.
Tracy Jr. did not testify.
During closing arguments, Cameron said, “I want you to think about the desperate situation that the defendant was in at that time … Think about the term the higher you are, the harder you fall. He went from being the head of a union to all of a sudden in a year and a half of not working, not making any money.”
He also reminded the jury of Jordan’s actions during police questioning. “I wonder why the innocent man took a pen and crossed off every bit of the bottom of that,” he said.
Cameron also suggested that Jordan had gone to the credit union to create an alibi. “He’s a smart man, he knows he has to put himself … somewhere on camera at a place where you’re going to be least found to be suspicious.”
Cameron said the forensic evidence was strong: “I would suggest to you there should be no doubt that he’s the person who took this weapon, who pointed it at Harold Wexler’s head, who pulled the trigger and who killed that man.”
Although Stott had testified that he was unable to say when Jordan’s weapon was last fired, Cameron said, “not only was this gun fired from powder fouling, but it was recently fired because the lint got burned out.”
Cameron also appeared to shift the burden of proof, reminding jurors about the limited evidence presented by Jordan.
“Where is the son to say he’s out back … The defendant’s got no burden of proof in any case, but as a juror if you don’t hear from somebody, you are allowed to draw inferences.”
Pagano objected, and Judge Hughes sustained his objection. Cameron then made a similar argument about the absence of defense testimony challenging the weapon forensics.
“And isn’t it interesting that the defense themselves even before somebody changed their mind about this being the gun or not being the gun hired their own expert, had it examined and no written report? We haven’t heard from him, and again the defendant has no burden of proof.
Pagano again objected, and Judge Hughes again sustained the objection.
Cameron continued, “But it does cause you to wonder maybe he agrees.”
Pagano again objected, and Judge Hughes said, “Sustained, that’s stricken.”
Cameron continued, “Now, I wonder where the expert from Massachusetts is.”
Pagano again objected, and Judge Hughes again sustained the objection and would later instruct jurors to not consider evidence in instances where she had sustained an objection.
The jury deliberated for three days, at one time telling Judge Hughes that it was deadlocked and using the word “badgering.” The jury also asked to review Crawford’s video testimony. On November 8, 2006, the jury convicted Jordan of second-degree murder, robbery, and a weapons charge. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Jordan’s initial appeal, based on the insufficiency of the evidence, was denied by the Pennsylvania Superior Court on August 4, 2008.
On December 8, 2008, Jordan filed a pro se petition for a new trial under Pennsylvania’s Post Conviction Relief Act, asserting that Pagano had been ineffective for failing to present alibi evidence from Jordan’s son and wife and for failing to move to suppress the statement Jordan made to the police. The motion said that the police had failed to read Jordan his Miranda rights after the police brought him in for questioning.
The motion included an affidavit from Tracy Jr., who said that he had been awakened by his father at 8:30 a.m. on November 15, 2004, and they had worked together getting the trash to the street until about 9 a.m.
The affidavit also said: “Throughout the whole trial, I, as well as a multiple other family members were present and ready to testify. On the last day of trial I remember the prosecution mentioning the fact that we weren’t called to testify even though we were Tracy Jordan’s character witnesses and his only two witnesses to corroborate his alibi. [Pagano] replied that we had been there every day of [the] trial and were fully prepared to testify. Though he never gave a reason as to why we weren’t called to the stand.”
The trial court dismissed the petition without a hearing on March 2, 2012.
The ruling noted that Tracy Jr. had given a less-definitive statement to police on November 24, 2004. In that statement, the son said he was with his father sweeping up out back of the house at about 8:45 a.m. An officer asked him, “Do you remember what time?” Tracy Jr. said, “I don’t know.”
Tracy Jr. had an “inability to accurately place [Jordan] in a different place than the crime scene at the time of the crime such that it was impossible for him to be the perpetrator,” the ruling said.
Jordan appealed, and the Pennsylvania Superior Court ordered the trial court to hold an evidentiary hearing on the suppression issue. After that hearing, the trial court again dismissed the petition, and the Pennsylvania Superior Court affirmed on October 14, 2015. The appellate court said that although the circumstances of the police interview with Jordan might have required a Miranda warning, Pagano had not been ineffective because Jordan’s statement was exculpatory and consistent with Pagano’s trial strategy.
Jordan filed a pro se petition on June 6, 2016, for a writ of habeas corpus in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, asserting the issues raised in his state post-conviction motion.
On December 15, 2017, U.S. Magistrate Judge Timothy Rice recommended that the court deny Jordan’s petition. He said the state courts had ruled properly in dismissing Jordan’s claims. U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey Schmehl accepted the recommendations on June 7, 2018.
Jordan appealed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed the lower court decision on February 1, 2021.
In 2023, the Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) of the Philadelphia County District Attorney’s Office began a review of Jordan’s case, including an examination of the police department’s homicide file, the prosecutor’s file, and Pagano’s discovery requests.
The review found that the state had failed to disclose a wide range of exculpatory evidence that impeached the state’s witnesses, refuted its evidence, and challenged its theory of the crime.
The police and prosecutor files were also turned over to Jordan’s attorneys, including Jennifer Merrigan at the Phillips Black law firm, who filed a motion for a new trial on May 8, 2024. “The new disclosures expose a tale of two cases: the narrow, strained theory presented to the jury at trial, versus the vast trove of suppressed evidence, which points to compelling alternative suspects ignored by the police, vindicating Mr. Jordan,” the motion said.
The undisclosed evidence included:
- Wexler had pled guilty in federal court on June 18, 2004, to conspiracy to commit structuring and had been sentenced to eight months in prison on October 29, two weeks before his death. He was to report to prison on January 7, 2005. (Structuring is a money-laundering crime where a person splits larger deposits into smaller ones to avoid detection by federal regulators.) Wexler’s sentence was a substantial departure from the recommended guidelines, based on his agreement to cooperate with investigators. Within a day of his death, the FBI, the IRS, and Wexler’s attorney all told the police that Wexler was a cooperating witness, which suggested another motive for the murder.
- A former employee known as J.W. called police on the day of Wexler’s murder and told detectives that Wexler was involved in illegal numbers. Wexler’s family members gave detectives the name of a former manager at the check-cashing business, known in court records as “K.” The police did not interview K, but years later she told CIU investigators that federal agents showed up at her house prior to Wexler’s plea, told her of the investigation into money-laundering, and urged her to “save herself.” She took records from the business and gave them to the agents. Wexler found out, she said, and fired her.
- Police received an anonymous tip from a woman who said she was with a man named W.W. when he committed the robbery-murder. W.W. had a lengthy criminal record and more closely fit Crawford’s initial description. Police searched W.W.’s car and found an illegal gun but not the murder weapon. There’s no record that Crawford looked at a photo array containing W.W.’s picture.
- As part of its review, the CIU had uploaded images of the firearms evidence from the crime scene and from the firing of Nanette Jordan’s weapon to the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, a database of cartridge case images. The network reported no match between the two pieces of evidence. In the process of performing that analysis, the network notified the CIU that these images had been uploaded in 2006, also with no match.
- Crawford had been receiving chemotherapy at the time of the murder and was struggling with drug addiction. In the months after the crime, his sister kicked him out of their house, and he was living on the streets. Cameron asked the police to find short-term housing for Crawford “so that we can keep tabs on him at least until the preliminary hearing.” Based on the intervention, Crawford ended up in a homeless shelter in northwest Philadelphia.
The motion said that Stott testified falsely about the firearm evidence, calling it inconclusive and not mentioning the NIBIN analysis, which did not return a match. Cameron, the motion said, failed to correct this false testimony.
Similarly, Cameron had asked a police detective during trial, “Up until [Crawford] testified at the hearing he actually had been in the hospital under treatment; correct?” The detective answered, “Absolutely.”
The motion said this was false, and Cameron should have corrected the response. “The truthful answer to this question was no; previously undisclosed files reveal that Crawford had been missing and unhoused in the months leading up to the preliminary hearing, and that detectives knew that he had not been receiving his cancer treatments during this time,” the motion said.
Separately, the motion said that the Philadelphia Police Department had stopped using bunter marks in 2010 for the purpose of identifying firearm evidence. This decision was based on advice from the FBI, the Association of Firearm and Took Mark Examiners, and the Scientific Working Group for Firearms and Toolmarks.
“This new evidence would have precluded the [state] from introducing expert testimony, which based on bunter marks, suggested that the ammunition found in Nannette Jordan’s firearm and the cartridge found at the crime scene were within a group of 120,000 cartridges,” the motion said.
In its response, filed on October 11, 2024, attorneys with the district attorney’s CIU agreed that Jordan’s conviction should be vacated based on the state’s failure to disclose evidence about Wexler, about the former store employees, and about the tip regarding the alternate suspect. The response did not address the other claims in Jordan’s motion.
“When viewed cumulatively, as it must be, it is apparent that the suppressed evidence would have further weakened an already weak case, such that it undermines the [state’s] confidence in the verdict,” the response said.
The response noted that three weeks before the trial, Cameron emailed his bosses and expressed his concerns. The forensic evidence was scant. Crawford was dead, and the state’s most solid evidence was a fingerprint on a plastic bag: “If [Pagano] was smart, he’d call no witnesses except character and we’d be dead in the water … Over the past few weeks, we’ve tried to strengthen the case but have gotten nowhere.”
The CIU response said the case was “so weak” that it might not have survived its first post-conviction challenge, based on insufficient evidence, had the court been given accurate information. “Both appellate counsel and the [state] incorrectly stated in their briefs that Terrance Crawford identified Jordan as the shooter,” the response said, “and the Superior Court relied on this fact in denying Jordan’s sufficiency claim.”
On October 31, 2024, Judge Rose Marie DeFino-Nastasi granted the motion for a new trial and then a separate motion to dismiss the charges.
In a statement, the Phillips Black law firm said that Jordan was a former law-enforcement officer, a Marine, and a father of three. “He had no criminal record and had never been arrested prior to the false case against him,” the statement said. “His children have waited decades to be reunited with their father.”
– Ken Otterbourg
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