2 Accused in Former Boxing Champ’s Slaying

In a case that could bring them the death penalty, two unemployed longshoremen stand accused of murder in connection with a savage beating in Wilmington that eventually claimed the life of former world welterweight boxing champion Don Jordan.

George Hernandez, 54, of Long Beach and Gilbert Fontes, 49, of Wilmington were arrested by Los Angeles homicide detectives last week after a months-long search. Hernandez was arraigned Wednesday on one count each of murder and robbery and pleaded not guilty to both charges. Fontes is scheduled for arraignment on the same charges March 24.

If convicted of both crimes, each man would face a minimum of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Their arrests came five months after Jordan, 62, was found unconscious in a parking lot near the longshoremen’s hall in Wilmington. The onetime Geronimo Kid was so severely beaten last Sept. 30 with a 2-by-4 that authorities initially believed it would be just a matter of hours or days before he succumbed. Instead, he spent weeks in intensive care, and was later moved to a long-term nursing hospital where he remained for months before dying Feb. 13 of still-undetermined causes stemming from the beating.

One of 22 children, Jordan was raised in East Los Angeles and became the world champion in 1958. But just over a year later, Jordan had his boxing license suspended in California when he failed to appear for a physical exam. And by 1960, amid charges that underworld figures were trying to skim his earnings, Jordan’s career suffered one setback after another and he lost the title in a fight where--even as champion--he was a 3-1 underdog.

Over the next decade, Jordan went through a series of jobs, saw his second marriage end in divorce and survived what was initially diagnosed as a terminal case of lung cancer. Ever the fighter, his friends and family said, Jordan pushed on, settling in tough waterfront neighborhoods of Long Beach and Wilmington and working on the docks as a longshoreman.

Last September, Jordan was beaten into unconsciousness, allegedly by two men who knew him, police and Jordan’s family members say.

“I had heard a long time ago that the two guys who did this were longshoremen,” said one of Jordan’s five daughters, Genevieve, 42.

During conversations with friends and co-workers of her father who visited him while he was hospitalized in a coma, Genevieve said many told her the same basic story: that they “had heard” who had done it but did not personally know any more than that.

Based on information allegedly provided by witnesses, homicide Dets. Janie Johnson and Terry Carlos began a search months ago for the two men now accused of slaying Jordan.

“With the witnesses, it was just a matter of finding them,” Johnson said of Hernandez and Fontes. Saying there were numerous addresses for each of the men, authorities said detectives finally located the 6-foot, 180-pound Hernandez on March 3 at a Long Beach house he shared with his girlfriend. The 5-foot-8, 190-pound Fontes, like Hernandez an out-of-work longshoreman, was arrested at his Wilmington apartment five days later.

Both men were taken into custody on felony warrants and neither resisted arrest, Det. Johnson said.

“They both knew [Jordan],” Johnson said of the two men. “As far as I can tell it was pure and simple robbery.”

That theory did not surprise Genevieve Jordan.

“My dad always carried a lot of cash in his pocket, that was just the way he was,” she said, recalling how Jordan would always have at least $200 with him.

No matter that he was robbed at knifepoint seven years ago, she said. No matter that he continued to live in seedy hotels and tough neighborhoods where robberies are an everyday fact of life.

“Nobody was gonna change the way he did things,” Jordan said of her father.

While stubbornness led him to live in tough areas, family and others say, it may also have allowed him to survive events and medical setbacks--including inoperable lung cancer 20 years ago--that would have felled lesser men.

After Jordan was moved to a hospital in Harbor City, daughter Diana Jordan said, “he seemed to be responding to orders . . . to move his hand.”

But then, she said, her father “took a turn for the worst.” On and off a respirator, he survived several bouts of infections and high fever and at least one recurrence of hepatitis that he first contracted decades ago.

“He was constantly fighting infections,” Diana Jordan, 41, said. “I think what happened was that he was just tired . . . it was just time.”

Diana Jordan said this week she has “mixed emotions” about word that his alleged killers have been arrested.

On one hand, she said, she is pleased that authorities have found the men they believe to be responsible for the crime. “If they did, justice will take its course,” she said of the two men in custody.

But the arrests--and pending court proceedings--also mean her wounds will take longer to heal, she said. “I buried my father and am trying to get on with life,” she said, noting that even a conviction of the two men “isn’t going to bring my dad back.”