Bill Jordan and the S&W Model 19...

Like other fortunate members here, I also had the pleasure of meeting Bill Jordan around 1971 when he gave a talk and shooting exhibition at a local service club. I too, recall that he was a "tall drink of water" with huge hands and seemed very soft-spoken and very much a gentleman, however, he also had a stare that would freeze fire and just exuded an air of self-confidence. That was punctuated with the blinding speed and accuracy with which he wielded that Model 19. A formidable hombre to say the least. I once owned two signed copies of No Second Place Winner which was gospel to me in my early LE career. I did part with one copy to a moderator here on the forum but I still have the other copy and to this day I occasionally re-read that timeless work.

Bill Jordan was an exlemplary lawman and one of the great Americans of our time the likes of which we may not see again. As he would have said, "he'll do to rider the river with."
 
There is a rumor that Jordan has an accidental discharge with his Model 19 and killed another officer. Any truth to it?

Not disparaging the man. He was a hero.
 
kbm6893 said:
There is a rumor that Jordan has an accidental discharge with his Model 19 and killed another officer. Any truth to it?

Not disparaging the man. He was a hero.
Click to expand...

Here are the details. Jordan is not mentioned in this particular article. The deceased was John A. Rector. October, 1956. Rule 1: All guns are always loaded. Unfortunately, Jordan momentarily forgot this rule, and I'm sure the incident haunted him for the rest of his life.

San Diego County Regional Law Enforcement Memorial

Pennie Rector, John Rector's daughter, was 13 years old and in the 8th grade at the time. She has publicly stated that she bore Jordan no ill will. She also stated that "...Bill was so upset that he had to be taken home under sedation and the next day I remember he and his wife coming to our house, and he sobbed as he told us how sorry he was. He and my Dad were friends." This incident does serve to remind us all that no matter how expert you may be or think you may be, any gun handled in an administrative manner MUST be checked and unloaded if necessary.

John
 
PALADIN85020 said:
Jordan was indeed huge. Here he is with the FBI's famous lawman Jelly Bryce. Bryce is demonstrating the "FBI crouch" and Jordan the "standing tall" position. Probably Jordan didn't need to worry about getting shot, even though he was a big man. He simply could get off the first accurate shot, even without using the sights on his gun. As he put it, "Speed is fine, but accuracy is final."

BILL_JORDAN_JELLY_BRYCE-FBI_zps3dca0670.jpg


Jordan died soon after his wife. Here are their grave markers, in Linden (Cass County) Texas graveyard #1.

John

BILL_JORDAN_GRAVESITE-LINDEN1-CASS_CY-TX_zpsb585c705.jpg
Click to expand...

John,

I've seen this picture before with the same assertion that Jelly Bryce is to Jordan's right. Do you have positive attribution to establish that that is Jelly? I don't think it is, FWIW.

Regards,
Kevin Williams
 
kwill1911 said:
John,

I've seen this picture before with the same assertion that Jelly Bryce is to Jordan's right. Do you have positive attribution to establish that that is Jelly? I don't think it is, FWIW.

Regards,
Kevin Williams
Click to expand...

I can't be 100% certain. That's the caption I found with the picture while googling on the internet. If you have a bona fide picture of Bryce, that would surely help by making a comparison.

Best,
John
 
As someone who has been interested in handguns for a number of years, I have had the opportunity to meet some of the greats. I have met and spoken with Jim Cirillo, Harry Reeves, Bill Blankenship, Bill Jordan and others. One thing that impressed me about most of them is how modest and gracious they are. Bill Jordan was along in years when I met him at Camp Perry, but he still was an imposing figure. I felt like a little kid when I shook his baseball glove-like hand. My young daughter was upset with me for "yelling" at him when we spoke and told me so later. I had to explain that it was because Mr. Jordan was very hard of hearing.
 
PALADIN85020 said:
I can't be 100% certain. That's the caption I found with the picture while googling on the internet. If you have a bona fide picture of Bryce, that would surely help by making a comparison.

Best,
John
Click to expand...

I've got quite a few from LIFE magazine, his biography and FBI sources. NONE of them look like the guy in that photo with Jordan.

Regards,
Kevin Williams
 
Chuck,
All that proves is that is was shorter than the other two guys in the picture. On his application he lists his height as 5' 8 1/2". In my experience, guys who include the "1/2" run about two inches shorter than what they claim. So, Jelly was pretty short. But the facial features of that guy in the picture with Jordan don't look anything like any other known picture of Bryce. And I've never seen him in that kind of hat. He like fancy clothes, hence the nickname "Jelly" for Jelly Bean, which, back in the day apparently was a moniker for a slick dresser. But a lot of guys from Oklahoma and Texas that considered themselves fancy dressers did not wear cowboy hats. It played into the stereotype too much. To be different they would wear fedoras or derbies or pork pies. All of this is pretty far afield from the original thread so my apologies to the OP.

Regards,
Kevin Williams
 
shawn mccarver said:
Kevin:

As I understand it, they were good friends. They traded playful barbs like that quite a bit, including in print in Shooting Times.

Skelton told the story of being at some gathering with Jordan which resulted in some impromptu target practice. According to Skelton, Jordan tried Skelton's Model 19, on which Skelton had worked over the action.

Skelton said Jordan liked it so much he switched grips, holstered Skelton's Model 19 and said, "When you get the action on mine as smooth as yours, we'll trade back."

According to Skelton, he was on Patrol a few nights later when he had to shoot at a "contrabandista"* from quite a distance in the dark. He later found the gent's hat with a bullet hole through the top and said that "Jordan's damned old gun shot high."

Now, whether this happened, or whether it was one of Skelton's yarns is not known to me, but it was a good story nonetheless.

In any event, I believe Jordan and Skeeter were friends, and I thought I remembered seeing some pictures of them together on hunts and so forth.

Best regards,

Shawn

*smuggler, trafficker
Click to expand...

Bart Skelton's book said he got the hat.

And wow never heard about Jordan's accidental discharge. WOW. If it can happen to a Master it can happen to anybody.


Jordan's book on his time in the Border Patrol is a must read as well. Kept me laughing all the way through it. He claimed to have gotten in trouble for taking part in a long high round count with the other side across the River in Ol Mexico... The problem was instead of breaking contact. Jordan returned to HQ a few miles away.... FOR MORE AMMO!!!
 
Can you imagine getting punched in the face by those huge fists?
OUCH!

Returned for more ammo. Now, that's funny.

He was a man. Definitely not some PC, Bleeding heart pansy.
 
shawn mccarver said:
That is, in fact a Model 19 in Bill Jordan's hand on the cover of No Second Place Winner.

He was a soft spoken gentleman, at least 6 and one-half feet tall (6'6" or 6'7") and his hands were huge.

His book shows how he modified his S&W revolvers. Aside from his Jordan Trooper grips, which ADDED material to the back strap, he also rounded the sight blade, and removed the right half of the trigger guard, which is how that feature found its way onto the Texas Ranger Commemorative Model 19.

The Jordan Trooper grip only works for people with long fingers and massive hands, so if you have Herrett's make a set for you, be sure you have them make the grip so that the backstrap of the revolver is exposed, rather than covered, which was necessary for Jordan because his hands were so big.

I gave Bill a ride to the airport at the NRA Annual Meetings in Phoenix several years back, and it was a great pleasure to get to know him just a little before his untimely passing. He was a thoughtful man, and although his autographed book is special, the kind letter he wrote to me after that car ride is a treasure.

Most of us have read about Jordan on this or other forums, and we all remember his writings in the various magazines, including his Point-Counterpoint with Massad Ayoob on revolver versus semi-auto from Guns Magazine, I think it was, although Mas can correct me if I am wrong.

However, if you want a little different side of Jordan, there is an entire section in the book "Gunning for Justice" by lawyer Gerry Spence which tells of the shooting, by Chief Ed Cantrell of fellow Rock Springs, Wyoming police officer Michael Rosa. If I recall correctly, Rosa had threatened Cantrell after the two had problems. In any event, Cantrell, who was VERY quick on the draw drew and shot Rosa the moment he saw Rosa's eyes change to gunfighter aggressive. Unfortunately for Cantrell, he was so fast that Rosa never even cleared leather. Spence, with Jordan's help and an in-court demonstration in front of the jury, earned Cantrell an acquittal with less than two hours of jury deliberation.

While the trial was pending, Spence employed Cantrell because no one else would. He worked on Spence's 35,000 acre ranch. Jordan taught Spence how to combat shoot with the S&W Model 19. The book gives a fantastic picture of Cantrell and Jordan, and describes the in-court demonstration in a way that only Spence can tell the story.

It seems that a cocked 1911 (unloaded) was given to the bailiff who was to hold it IN HIS HAND. All the bailiff had to do was to pull that "hair trigger" when he saw Jordan go for his holstered Smith & Wesson. It seems that the bailiff had a "deer in the head lights look" when Jordan went from hands down relaxed to full speed, drew his revolver lightning fast and "killed" the court bailiff in front of the jury before the bailiff could even react and pull the trigger on that tuned 1911. The poor dumbfounded bailiff was left holding a cocked 1911 sporting an apparently surprised look. After the demonstration, Jordan told the jury that Cantrell was "a might bit faster than I am."

The point, of course, was to show that when you factor in reaction time, a man with a holstered gun is often capable of catching up and beating a man who "has the drop on you."

Jordan, of course, could draw and fire accurately faster than any man ever, save Ed McGivern of Montana and maybe Bob Munden, although Jordan did it for real.

Jordan also could draw his S&W so fast that a ping pong ball held on top of his hand, while his hand was resting on the back strap of the gun, would easily fall into the holster as the revolver was removed with lightning speed. He did not bump the ball up when he did this maneuver, he merely closed his hand around the revolver and drew - blindingly quick.

Jordan said the hardest part of that trick was not getting his revolver out of the holster so the ball could drop in, but arranging the geometry so that the ball would fall into the holster instead of missing and falling to the ground. When he did that, he would simply shoot the ball before it hit the floor. He repeated this trick when he was well into his 80s, long after he had "hung up his guns."

Despite his skill, he was a nice man, funny and he was quite an avid golfer. He was the "real deal."

Henderson Jordan, Bill's uncle, I think, was Sheriff of Bienville Parish, Louisiana, and was a member of the Bonnie and Clyde Posse. Henderson Jordan is first row middle, next to famed lawman Frank Hamer, who is first row, right, in the attached picture.
Click to expand...

Guys, there might be a bit more to this story than Cantrell saw a threat in the eyes of Rosa. I mean, seeing ''gunfighter aggression'' in the other lawman's eyes as justification for killing him?

Well, based on that criteria, during my 41 years as a law officer I guess there are a couple of hundred folks I should have shot!

Rosa was supposed to testify about local police corruption in three days at a Grand Jury. Guess he didn't make it.....

Rich

Herald-Journal - Google News Archive Search
 
Here is another take on the matter:

A Tough and Corrupt Wyoming Mountain Town Is Shocked by the Death of a Good Cop : People.com

The incident happened on a Friday. Rosa, a New York City guy from Puerto Rico and clearly not "one of the boys" was scheduled to testify at a grand jury that coming Monday.

One of the other men in the car recalled the following:

Jim Callas remembers something else Ed Cantrell said that evening as they discussed Rosa's subpoena: "Maybe we ought to take the son of a bitch out and kill him."

Rosa had been in a bar drinking a glass of wine. He was called by police dispatch at the order of Cantrell for him to come out of the bar and into the car the other three lawmen were sitting in. Within a few moments Rosa was dead, his gun still tucked in his waistband.

Cantrell told one of the other officers there, Bider, "to put his service revolver on the floor in front of Rosa's body as if Rosa had drawn it. Bider refused."

Cantrell got away with a cold blooded murder. He wasn't the first guy to come up with a nutty justification (my personal favorite is the "Twinkie defense used in the White Moscone/Milk homicides) and give a friendly jury some wiggle room to cut him loose.

Believe what you will about the incident. Doesn't really matter now, as everyone involved in dead.

Rich
 
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