Bellingham mom not guilty by reason of insanity for murders

A Bellingham woman will be indefinitely committed at Western State Hospital for killing her husband and her son, a Whatcom County judge has ruled.

Sometime in the middle of July, Erin Lee Jordan, née Agren, shot her husband, Michael, 59, and her 1-year-old son, Miles, as they slept at their Noon Road home, according to charging papers.

She was found with their bodies, in the bedroom, by a real estate agent and friend of the family, Steve Mullenix, who had come over around 3 p.m. July 19 to show the house to potential buyers.

From outside, the agent heard a woman begging for help, so he broke in and found his friend and former co-worker, Michael Jordan, on the bed. Jordan had been shot in the head. The child had been shot in the body.

Erin Jordan, 43, was on the floor, alive. She had shot herself in the shoulder with a .22-caliber Ruger pistol, and the angle of the bullet narrowly missed her heart. Sheriff’s deputies believe she had been with the bodies for days. She survived.

She later told a Whatcom County detective that she felt overwhelmed by major changes in her life. Over the preceding two years she had been married, given birth to her first child, and put the house up for sale.

During that time she showed signs of deteriorating mental health.

“She would think she needed mental health care, and then not follow through,” said Eric Richey, Whatcom County chief criminal deputy prosecutor. “That’s not pointing the finger at someone.”

Erin Lee Agren, whose background was in teaching Spanish and Latin to kids, worked at Lummi Nation School. She met Michael David Jordan, a beloved high school teacher of remedial English, through the school. Ferndale Mayor Gary Jensen, a close friend and former classmate in the ’70s, said Mr. Jordan had recently “found his calling” as someone who worked with at-risk youth.

The couple wed about two years ago and she started going by his surname. She was about six months pregnant at the wedding, friends said, and she left her job to raise Miles.

After the killings, Erin Jordan spent about three weeks at St. Joseph hospital under guard as she recovered from the gunshot wound. She made her first appearance in court in August, and at that hearing the county prosecutor said the case had a “component of mental health concern.”

Ultimately, an expert for the defense, Dr. Mark McClung, diagnosed Mrs. Jordan with delusional disorder, a mental condition that often causes false, paranoid beliefs — an assessment the family of Michael Jordan agreed with, Richey said.

According to charging papers, Jordan believed that people were watching and stalking the family, and she believed she “saved” them by doing what she did. She told a detective she’d been planning to kill her husband and son for about two days.

Erin Jordan entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity earlier this month, on Dec. 8, to two counts of murder in the first degree. Superior Court Judge Charles Snyder found there was proof beyond a reasonable doubt that she carried out the acts, but that she was suffering from a major mental disorder at the time, making her “unable to tell right from wrong with reference to the particular act charged.”

This month, Snyder ordered her to be committed at Western State Hospital, the state’s 800-bed psychiatric hospital in Lakewood, as recommended by the prosecutor and the public defender, Jon Komorowski. Court records state that Jordan could be committed for the remainder of her natural life. Given her progress over the past few months, however, she could be out relatively soon.

“Frankly, she may not end up being at Western State for a very long time,” Richey said.

Any plan to release her must be approved by a sanity review board and then by a judge in Whatcom County. So far, Richey said, Jordan’s mental recovery has been helped by a proper diagnosis and a new medication she’s now taking. But that recovery has come with a great deal of pain, he added, as Jordan realized what she did, and that there was no reason for it.

“She’s heartbroken,” Richey said. “She loved her husband. She loved her child.”

This story was originally published December 22, 2015 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Bellingham mom not guilty by reason of insanity for murders."