Elma man, a former Charles City resident, convicted of first degree murder and abuse of a corpse

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

A former Charles City resident who was charged with first-degree murder and abuse of a corpse over an apparent theft of illegal drugs, was found guilty on both charges in Howard County District Court Wednesday.

Sayvonne Eugene Jordan, age 27, was living in Elma when he was arrested in January this year, but he has listed his address as Charles City and Waterloo previously, and was being held on unrelated charges in Floyd County Jail when he was arrested for the Howard County murder.

Authorities arrested Jordan after saying they had found evidence of the remains of a human body in a burn barrel behind Jordan’s home during a search of his residence in November 2022.

The remains were sent to the Iowa State Medical Examiner’s Office, and the Howard County Sheriff’s Office said the remains were determined to be that of Jonathan Esparza, age 30, a New Hampton resident who had last been seen in October 2022.

Jordan’s trial started last Wednesday, Nov. 1, in Cresco.

Monty Platz, an Iowa assistant attorney general helping Howard County with the prosecution, presented evidence that he said showed Jordan was Esparza’s drug dealer, and that Esparza had gone to Jordan’s house and stolen four to five pounds of methamphetamine with a street value of $20,000 to $25,000.

Jordan accused Esparza of the theft and warned him of dire consequences if the drugs were not returned.

Testimony showed that Esparza said he was going to Jordan’s house on Oct. 20, 2022, and that was the last time Esparza was seen.

During the November 2022 search of Jordan’s home, authorities said they found the remains of a bullet that had been fired, bullet casings, bullet holes and an ax in Jordan’s basement.

In a burn barrel behind the house, they found what forensic scientists would later identify as more than 100 pieces of human bone, including a large piece of an arm and a large piece of a forearm bone, as well as pieces of skull, shoulders, teeth, ribs, hands, legs and other bones.

Experts identified the bones as belonging to Esparza by comparing them with medical scans Esparza had done at Floyd County Medical Center in 2018.

They also said that the bones had scratches and grooves that showed evidence of attempts being made to chop them into smaller pieces.

Also found in the burn barrel were what the prosecution said were the remains of a necklace matching one that Esparza had worn, and the remains of a key fob to the type of car that Esparza drove.

No comparative samples of Esparza’s DNA were available to the crime lab, but blood found on the ax that was located in Jordan’s basement was compared with DNA samples from Esparza’s parents, and showed a “99.9999%” probability of kinship, according to a report by the Iowa Department of Public Safety DCI Criminalistics Laboratory in Ankeny.

In closing arguments Wednesday morning, the defense argued that there was no evidence in Jordan’s basement of the kind of mess that would result from chopping up a body, and that other unidentified people had been reported near Jordan’s house on the night Esparza disappeared.

The case went to the jury Wednesday, and jurors deliberated for about three hours before returning verdicts of guilty to the charge of first degree murder, a Class A felony, and guilty to the charge of abuse of a corpse, a Class C felony.

District Court Judge Linda Parish set sentencing for Dec. 18 at 1 p.m. in Howard County District Court in Cresco.

Conviction of first degree murder in Iowa has a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

At the time of his arrest on the murder charge, Jordan was being held in Floyd County Jail on unrelated charges involving parole violations and a drug possession charge. He was transferred to the Howard County Jail, where he has been held since being charged with murder.