Police Reopen 40-Year-Old Homicide Case of Leon Jordan
Kansas City police announced today that they are reopening the investigation into the 40-year-old killing of Civil Rights and political leader Leon Jordan.
In a news release, police said that they “have located the weapon used in the murder and partial fingerprints taken from the weapon and cars around the crime scene. The fingerprints were among some 100,000 KCPD kept in storage before the national fingerprint database AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification System) was instituted in 1988.”
Police said that the weapon, a shotgun, was located in a Kansas City police car. According to police spokesman Capt. Rich Lockhart, police released the gun to an unknown party in 1976. In 1977, the department bought it back from a local gun dealer, and it has been used as a police service weapon ever since.
Photograph KCPD
Jordan, 65, was the founder of Freedom Inc. He was killed on July 15, 1970.
Police said the suspects have been described as three black men who drove a brown, late 1960s-model Pontiac. The car and gun were later found abandoned.
More information here and here.
Categories: Forensics, Help the Cops!, News: Cold Cases
Tags: Autopsy, Ballistics, Crime Scene, Evidence, Expert Testimony, Finger Printing, Forensics, Gun Fire, Identification, Investigations Division, Kansas City, Missouri, Partial Finger Printing, Police, Unsolved Homicide, Victim