For nearly two years, Kenneth Jordan’s family lived with an agonizing question: where was he? Now they have an answer that has left them with new questions and deep anger.
Jordan was reported missing after he was last seen in late July 2024 on Allenby Street in Prichard. The Sept. 6, 2024, missing-person report was, at the time, one of many such cases the Prichard Police Department handles each year. For Jordan’s family, it marked the beginning of an agonizing, drawn-out search.
Courtlyn Boykin, Jordan’s niece, said the family learned only last week that Jordan’s remains had actually been found in Prichard shortly after that missing-person report was filed, back in August. She said she still doesn’t know exactly where he was found, why it took so long for authorities to identify him, or why her family is only now finding out.
“I feel angry. I’m so mad because we — it just seems like my uncle was treated so inhumanely,” Boykin said. “And he had people out there looking for him, his loved ones. We were wondering where he was, and this whole time he was at the medical examiner’s office, and we could have laid him to rest almost two years ago.”
According to what Boykin has been able to piece together, the Prichard Police Department sent Jordan’s remains to the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences, which eventually made a DNA match confirming his identity. But she said she has received conflicting explanations for why the identification process dragged on so long.
Boykin, who recently moved to Birmingham, said the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences told her family that the delay stemmed from the Prichard Police Department failing to respond to requests tied to the missing-person report. However, she said Prichard police told her they have no record of ever receiving such a request from the state agency.
Capt. Maxine Mark, who is currently overseeing daily operations at the Prichard Police Department, declined to comment on the case when asked. The Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences referred questions to the agency’s public information portal. A request for comment submitted through that portal had not received a response as of publication.
For Boykin and her family, the unresolved question of accountability is almost as painful as the loss itself.
“No family should have been waiting almost two years to find that their loved one’s remains had already been found, but just unidentified,” Boykin said. “We went this whole time wondering if he was alive, wondering if something had happened to him. … Someone dropped the ball, and I think that’s the answer that I’m looking for. Like, who or what agency dropped the ball here?”
Cases involving unidentified remains and missing-person reports depend heavily on coordination between local law enforcement agencies and the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences, which handles DNA testing and identification for the state. Delays or communication breakdowns between agencies can leave families in limbo for months or, as in Jordan’s case, years.
Jordan’s family says they now intend to press both the Prichard Police Department and the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences for a full accounting of what happened and why it took so long for them to learn the truth. South Alabama News will continue to follow this story as more information becomes available.