When Jordan Neely was choked to death by a fellow passenger on the New York City subway in May 2023, his death became a political talking point. In this profile, Lisa Miller looks beyond and behind Neely’s killing, telling the young man’s life story in intimate detail. It starts with his mother’s murder at the hands of her boyfriend when Neely was barely a teenager:
The following day, a Monday, Jordan, together with his maternal grandparents, an uncle, and his great-aunt Mildred, was back at the house in Bayonne. A police officer was there too, to help them file a missing-person report. When Jordan’s uncle Christopher reached Southerland by phone, Southerland said Christie had gone on vacation. He bought her a suitcase, he said. But Jordan knew this couldn’t be right because his mother would never leave town without letting him know. All the while, the TV was on in the living room, and amid the confusion, a news broadcast came on: A woman’s body had been found in a black expandable duffel bag by the side of the Henry Hudson Parkway in the Bronx. Wrapped in black plastic, clad in jeans and a T-shirt, the corpse was decomposed, and the police were trying to make an ID. There, on the television screen, flashed Christie’s belongings: a black-and-silver belt and a turquoise ring. Jordan began bellowing and beating the walls.
By the time Jordan testified at Southerland’s trial, he was 19 years old. He had built a new life as a Michael Jackson tribute artist in New York City. He owned a Michael wig, which he kept neatly styled; military-type jackets in red and black with gilded trim and epaulets; a white glove. At the trial, Southerland was representing himself pro se, which meant that during his cross-examination, Jordan had to answer questions posed by the same man who had intimidated him and lied to him as a child and who would later be convicted of murdering his mother. Under oath and appearing composed, Jordan relived the morning his mother didn’t wake him for school. Southerland referred to himself as “the defendant” or “Mr. Southerland,” but Jordan refused to play along, addressing his questioner as “you.” It was agonizing to watch, recalls Kristen Brewer, then a young assistant prosecutor who observed the trial. Jordan had bounced around in the five years since his mother’s murder, and Brewer was struck by the earnest truthfulness with which he took the stand. She says she remembers thinking, “If this young man can even manage stability, we’ll have asked a lot of him.”
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