Jordan Riddle

Investigators are baffled by black leader's shooting

He sat up in bed, watched TV and, with a nurse's assistance, even stood briefly. Vernon Jordan, president of the National Urban League, was making a slow but steady recovery from gunshot wounds that felled him in the parking lot of the Marriott Inn in Fort Wayne, Ind. But the police and FBI were making little progress last week in tracking down the would-be killer of the civil rights leader.

Investigators combed the site of the shooting for evidence and interviewed more than 400 people nationwide. They turned up no clues, but they did manage virtually to dispel some theories. One was that Jordan's attractive blond companion, Martha Coleman, 36, a longtime civil rights worker in Fort Wayne, was in any way involved in the attack. She had just driven him from her home to the motel when he was shot. After intensively questioning Coleman, her four former husbands and several male acquaintances, investigators found no evidence linking them with the shooting.

The FBI also rejected the belief of local officials that the rifleman was a professional assassin who had been stalking Jordan. Investigators noted that the gunman amateurishly left behind a shell casing from a .30-06 bullet. Moreover, said Roger Young, the bureau's official spokesman in Washington, hitting Jordan would have been an easy matter for even an average marksman, particularly if the rifle had a telescopic sight; the big man (6 ft. 4 1/2 in., 225 Ibs.) was only 40 yds. away from the matted grass where the assailant lay in ambush.

Fort Wayne police continued to question black leaders, as well as Ku Klux Klansmen and local members of other extremist groups in an effort to turn up leads; officers even used hypnosis in an unsuccessful attempt to sharpen the memory of a man who reported seeing a parked car just off Interstate 69 at the time of the shooting but could recall little else about it.

The police force's inability to turn up any clues led Allen County Prosecutor Arnold Duemling to conclude that the investigation was "dead," a remark that irritated federal agents. Said the FBI'S Young: "We have a lot of leads and a lot of theories--perhaps too many theories." One of them stems from Coleman's report that a motorcyclist had preceded her car on the 15-minute drive to the motel, timing the green lights perfectly. (Could the motorcyclist have been a spotter for the gunman?) Said Young: "We're a long way from the end." But he added: "Remember, it took us a long time to find Patty Hearst."

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