Adam Gold: Amanda Lamb, WRAL TV five in Raleigh, Intrepid, reporter, investigative journalist,
and all that.
Uh, but also the host of a new podcast.
Follow The Truth.
Uh, it is the, um, the story of not just James Jordan, Michael Jordan's father, uh, his murder,
but the fact that maybe, the wrong guy was convicted.
You can get it wherever you listen to your podcasts.
And Amanda joins us on the Adam Gold show.
Uh, how are you doing?
Amanda Lamb: I'm doing great, Adam.
Thanks for having me.
Adam Gold: Pleasure is ours.
Let me ask you this question.
When did you become, because I think in order to do something like this, and I know it has
done very well so far, but in order to do this and do it right, you have to be immersed
in the topic.
So when did you become interested in something?
Again, this happened in 1993.
When did, when did this happen?
Amanda Lamb: You know, I actually came to WRAL in 1994, but I wasn't involved in the
coverage of this case at the time.
You know, I was a new young, green reporter.
I met Daniel Green, who is one of the two people that are in prison for this crime.
I met him through a freelance crew that I was doing a project with in 2009.
And then we just kind of struck up a friendship.
We started writing, we started talking on the phone writing letters and then in 2010,
his case kind of came back around again, series of court issues involving the blood evidence.
And I did a story for WRAL.
I did an interview with him and you know, we'd been talking ever since.
Um, mostly now we talked by phone, I just talked to him a couple hours ago.
And, you know, there are so many things about this case and about this trial and about this
investigation that just don't add up.
And that's why our team was really interested in and reinvestigating it.
And really, we already had so much information because of the archives of WRAL.
I mean, it goes all the way back to 93, you know, a lot of the reporters actually, they
covered it then are still with us.
And so we just basically started looking back through our archives, piecing things together,
and then kind of went out and did new, uh, investigation and added in everything that's
happened in the last few years with his case.
And he just filed an appeal with his attorney, Chris Mumma.
So they are now, you know, eagerly, awaiting the court's decision on it.
Adam Gold: No, I'm sure you do.
You get into all of the shadiness that went on.
Uh, where the, the, you know, where the body was found and all of that.
I mean, how much, how much does that play into all of this?
Cause there was a lot of, I mean, I think, and I don't think nepotism is the right word,
but there was a, there was a lot of shadiness that went on down there.
Amanda Lamb: Yeah.
I mean, there's a lot of questions.
Robeson County, North Carolina, where Lumberton is, that's where the murder happened.
It's a place it's a tri-racial county.
There were a lot of tensions back in the nineties there you had a Native American population
and African American population in a white population about a third, a third and a third.
And there was so much tension between these different groups that had been building and
growing for years prior to this, to this murder.
In addition to that, the marginalized communities, the Native Americans and the African-Americans
were very skeptical of government.
They were very skeptical of law enforcement and believed that there was corruption happening.
There was strong evidence that, that it was happening.
And so you have a situation that was kind of like the perfect storm here.
You know, you have a Black teenager and you have a Native American teenager.
They are, you know, from whatever you want to say, the wrong side of the tracks, they
had been in trouble before.
This is a high profile case.
It has to be solved.
I mean, this is Michael Jordan's father, the father of the most famous basketball player
of all times, I think most people would agree and, you know, they just had to solve it.
And so here you are in this kind of a sleepy little area that, you know, has a lot of issues,
racial tensions, possible corruption, and they just grabbed these teenagers and they
were in the car.
They had some of the items that belonged to James Jordan.
Let's flip them.
Let's get one of them to turn against the other and that's what happened.
And so in this case, Larry Demery turned against Daniel Green, basically threw his best friend
under the bus and said he did it.
And, um, you know, that's how it went down.
And again, so many questions about the specifics, the evidence, and specifically Larry Damery
his statements.
And his statements in court and he's made some recent statements that we'll get to in
a later episode that you might be very surprised.
Adam Gold: One more thing for Amanda Lamb and the podcast is called Follow The Truth,
telling the story of Michael Jordan's father, James, who was murdered in 1993 and maybe
Daniel Green in jail for something he did not do.
Uh, give me one thing that you learned that maybe you didn't know at all that surprised.
Amanda Lamb: Wow.
That's a great question, because I feel like I've been learning about this case for more
than a decade.
Um, you know, I'll have to say, and I think you'll hear this.
If you're listening to the podcast, Daniel Green is a really interesting, smart guy.
He's self taught.
He learned about the law in prison.
He learned about every aspect of this case.
And I think one of the status things is that Michael Jordan was, was one of his heroes.
I mean, he was a poor black child growing up in the south and he saw Michael Jordan
on the Wheaties box.
He saw him on commercials and in his mind he thought, well, gosh, if this guy can do
that, I can too.
And he had really big dreams and he believed in himself.
And of course, you know, all that went away when he went to prison at 18.
So it's really a juxtaposition of.
It's such an interesting character who, you know, the expression “there but the grace
of God go I”?
You know, you wonder what could Daniel Green have been?
Um, if this hadn't happened.
So there's, there's just a lot of really interesting character development in the podcast.
We're able to really get in depth in that in a way that you just.
You know, in a news story.
Adam Gold: You don't have enough time on TV to get into these things.
Uh, Amanda Lamb from WRAL-TV 5 in Raleigh.
Follow the Truth, the podcast available wherever you get your podcasts.
Thanks for the time.
We'll talk again.
Amanda Lamb: Thanks so much.
Take care.