Jordan Adlard Rogers has led a life that is no less than a perfect suspense thriller which he can tell his children when they grow up. Jordan, 31, had never imagined how his life would change after a phone call. A former care worker from Porthleven, England, Jordan had struggled financially for most of his life and yet all he wished was to get a sound family.
He has a story to tell, and it's worth listening to because it was not a simple incident like winning a lottery that had occurred in Jordan's life. There was something else, and more to it. There's rarely a man who becomes Batman by inheriting a million dollars overnight.
Jordan Adlard was born in December of 1987. His destiny was decided at his birth, and his life would go through a roller coaster ride before finally reaching somewhere. But the journey was far from getting started yet, and he had to face a lot of challenges before he could reach his destiny.
Jordan's mother, Julie Adlard, was a single mother who had decided to bring Jordan to this world when she had conceived him. Julie was a free bird, and nothing could hold her back. Jordan was conceived when Julie had a fling which didn't last long. Even that did not hold Julie back.
When Jordan was only 3 weeks old, Julie had decided to get married to a man that she had been seeing for some time. She married a local resident, Gary Galloway, and they decided to raise Jordan together in Cornwall, England.
Since Jordan was only 3 weeks old when his mother had married another man, he never knew about the facts of his life. For him, Gary was the man that he had been calling and also believed to be Dad since the first day when he had started to talk.
For Jordan, Gary was his biological father, and he had never doubted that fact as a child. Never had it crossed Julie's mind either that she should tell Jordan the truth. She was content by the way the things were going on and did not want to disturb anything.
Julie and Gary brought up little Jordan in Cornwall. He grew up in a small terraced house in Cornwall, and even though they did not have many resources, Jordan was always a happy child with his family around him and loving him. There was not much that he needed to be happy.
Gary was Jordan's safe place. He felt safe around him and confided in him with full trust. After all, for him, Gary was his father. He told the Daily Mail in May 2019, “I adored Gary. One of my earliest memories is sitting on his shoulders and feeling so safe and happy. It was like a giant was carrying me around.”
Things did not remain the same for Jordan for long. His mother and Gary split, which meant even Jordan would have to leave Gary and go away with his mother. He was taken away from his father, and he could not understand what was going on.
The emotional state of Jordan was ignored by his mother during his childhood. The carefree nature of Julie was her decision, but to drag Jordan along in all her decisions, without thinking about him was not the right thing to do. But he never blamed his mother for anything.
Julie had met a new man whom she was ready to welcome in Jordan's life as well. Buster, a member of the traveling community was involved with Julie when Jordan was only a little child. Since Jordan was too young, his consent was never asked for and he would be living with a number of slew men.
Before reaching his destiny of becoming a millionaire, Jordan had also lived like a vagabond. Since his mother was living with Buster, who was a peripatetic, he also had to accept that lifestyle. He later told the Daily Mail, “I’d just started nursery school in Cornwall. Suddenly, I was traveling the country with Mum and her boyfriend Buster.” From the gypsy life,how did his life take a 180 flip?
Along with his mother and her boyfriend, Jordan traveled the whole of the UK. He had no regular childhood like the others his age. He had no permanent home, and therefore no memories related to a home would be a part of his life as he would grow up. The only fond memory that Jordan had was of Gary.
Not a single phase of Jordan's life has been financially stable. His mother had struggled all through his childhood to bring him up. They barely made their both ends meet. Who would have thought that they would have an abundance of everything in the future, and the reason would be just one phone call.
Due to the nomadic lifestyle that Jordan was living, he never had the opportunity to avail good quality education. He could not go to good institutions, and neither could he go to schools on a regular basis. His educational qualification was not exceedingly impressive.
Jordan always felt that he did not fit in the hippie culture, and was always uncomfortable. His conscience always told him that he did not belong there. Was it because his destiny had pre-decided where he was going to end up? And that this place was definitely not what his fate had in store for him?
The conditions that Jordan and Julie were living in were very unusual. Jordan told The Daily Mail, "We’d live on sites where the [bathroom] would be the bushes.” He was not even accepted by the gypsy kids. They always treated him like an outsider, and he was bullied.
Jordan was to inherit a lot of wealth in his upcoming years, but life during the early years and as a teenager were very difficult for him. It was like life had been preparing him for the best by making him face the worse. And then, a piece of bad news followed...
Gary, whom Jordan had considered his Father all through his childhood, passed away in a car accident. Gary was the only person Jordan had confided in, except for his mother. He had lost a major person of his life. After such a massive loss, Jordan was shaken to the core.
When Jordan was remembering his father, Gary one day, a thought struck his mind which he had always wondered about but had never really paid attention to. He pondered upon the fact that why was he not as tall as Gary if he was his only son?
“I’d been pestering my mother about why I was so small. I’m only 5’8” when Gary was well over 6 foot,” Jordan later explained to the Daily Mail. He finally confronted his mother and it was then that she revealed to him that Gary was not his real father. Whose son was Jordan then?
Jordan felt a strong need for a father figure after he had lost Gary and his mother had finally revealed to him that Gary was not his biological father either. In an attempt to fill that empty space, he asked Buster to be his Dad. But was that it? Would that really fill the gap that Jordan had started to feel in his life?
Being nomadic, Buster was a violent and unruly man. He would show his aggressiveness to Jordan on many occasions and was hardly ever supportive to him. Although Jordan had started calling him Dad, he could not entrust him as a father for too long.
After being together for five years, Buster and Julie welcomed a baby girl in their lives in 1994, when Jordan was seven years old. Although he was extremely happy for having a younger sibling in his life and adored her dearly, he still could not feel satisfied with his life and could not understand the reason behind it.
Soon, Buster and Julie broke up and Julie left the place with Jordan and his sister Queenie. They moved to public housing, and things became worse there. Although Jordan started going to a proper school, he had to walk for miles just to reach school, since there was no money for transportation.
Julie was in a number of relationships during Jordan's childhood. None of the men that she was involved with respected her or showed consideration to Jordan. except for Gary, who was better than the rest. All of this had impacted Jordan as well, and he could not ignore it.
All through his youth, Jordan had felt that he belonged to nowhere. He felt like a lonely person who had no existence of his own. His mother had been too busy with herself, but he had no complaints about her because he knew that she had been facing a hard time as well.
Jordan once expressed, "If I’d have known who my father was and where I came from, I wouldn’t have spent over half my life wondering who I was, feeling only half a person." That is when he made up his mind and decided to find his real father. In his quest for finding his father, would he end up finding a million dollars instead?
At the age of 10, Julie disclosed to Jordan who his real father was. Jordan had finally got hopes of feeling contentment and calmness in his mind. He had never wanted to force the duties of his dad upon him, but he was just considerate to know who the person would be.
As per Julie, Jordan was the son of Charles Roger. Julie had a short-lived relationship with Charles when she was very young. After they ended their relationship, Julie decided to give birth to Jordan and bring him up all by herself. Therefore, Charles never knew about Jordan who was his own son.
Since the whole life of Jordan was a mystery to him too, he could not easily accept the fact that Charles was his father. He had a hard time believing it, and therefore wanted proof for his relationship with Charles. He wanted to take a DNA test and was, therefore, thinking of meeting Charles.
Jordan had lost Gary when he was a child. He had considered him his real father. Another blow for Jordan came when he knew what Gary was never his father at all. “I couldn’t take it in. I didn’t care about this new man Charles. I just felt [like] I’d lost my dad twice.”
The first time Jordan met his father Charles he reminisced, “I remember this huge drive with all these bushes and trees [and] then arriving at the front door of the cottage on the estate where Rogers was living. Mum was hammering at the door when this man appeared, looking very smart in a white shirt and tie. He was very calm. He led us into the sitting room, smiled down at me and said, ‘Your mum and I need to talk.’”
Charles Rogers, whom Julie had claimed was Jordan's birth father, was a local aristocrat, whose family had lived in the 1,536-acre Penrose Estate between Helston and Porthleven for generations. He had served as a non-commissioned officer in the army in Northern Ireland but had left the position after a certain point of time and had come back home.
When Jordan was 18 years old, he had requested Charles to get a DNA Test, but Charles had told him to request for DNA only through a lawyer. 18-year-old Jordan had different priorities at such a young age, and therefore could not take the matters to a lawyer and was therefore unable to take the DNA test.
Charles had a sprawling manor and received a $1500 allowance every month from a trust. But Charles had nothing to do with his wealth. He was a drug-addict and was hopeless about his life. Nobody in his family bothered about him during the late years of his life, because he had been an altogether different man. So, without an heir and without a stable nature, who was going to inherit Charles' wealth?
Charles' ancestors were great men of Cornwall. The Lord of the great Penrose estate, John Peverell Rogers, was also a Lieutenant Commander and had passed away in 2012, leaving everything to Charles who hardly cared about any of the wealth he had and neither about the responsibilities he had on him.
Charles was the younger brother, but had been announced as the heir to the estate because his elder brother, Nigel suffered from leukemia and died at a very young age. Nigel was childless when he died, so the estate was automatically passed on to Charles.
The question that concerned the whole aristocratic society was that who would be the inheritor of all of Charles' wealth after him since he had no legitimate son of his own. And Charles had refused to take a DNA test for Jordan, so it was not confirmed whether Jordan was his son or not until...
Charles was a hopeless drug addict and embraced a hippie lifestyle in his later years, with long hair styled as dreadlocks, and barely even washed or changed his clothes. “[Charles] had big shoes to fill… He was under huge pressure taking [the responsibility] on, but he was different and a free spirit. There was always a pressure of him trying to match expectation,” Jordan added to the BBC in May 2019.
After the addictions, Charles had become an isolated person and was living in a separate farmhouse instead of the Penrose Estate House since he had failed professionally and did not have any expectations from the world. His drug addiction became the cause of his death in August 2018.
When Charles died, all hopes that Jordan had of getting a DNA test done had also gone with him. There was no way that he would ever be able to know the truth about his father. He had lived a life of doubts until now and he had thought that he would have to continue living the same life. But things had decided to take a turn...
One phone call changed the fate of Jordan in a way he had never expected it to. After the death of Charles in August, Jordan got a call from Philip Care, the manager of the Penrose estate who informed Jordan about Charles' accident. He had finally asked Jordan to get a DNA test done before the cremation of Charles.
All of the cousins of Charles had agreed for the test to be done, except for his mother who did not agree. The twist came in when Charles' mother passed away just two weeks after Charles' death. The DNA test was completed just two hours before the cremation of his mother.
The DNA test came in with positive results and it was finally proved that Jordan was indeed Charles' son. Jordan had finally got the answer to the biggest question of his life and there was finally light in the darkness. The happiness of Jordan would not just end here. It would just prove out to be the starting.
Since Charles had no other child except for Jordan, he was announced as the successor to Charles after his death. Jordan, a former care worker from Porthleven, England who had struggled financially for most of his life, was now the owner of the Penrose Estate.
Jordan was happy for being the heir to his father, but that was not what he had wanted in his life. "People say I'm lucky but I would trade anything to be able to go back and for Charles to know I was his son," he said. "Maybe then he might have taken a different path."
Jordan has a fiancée named Katie Hubber, whom he took on a trip to New York after he was handed the keys to the Penrose Estate. He also inherited a £1,000-a-week trust fund allowance. And on the same day when Charles had passed away, Katie and Jordan got the news of Katie's pregnancy.
Jordan was never greedy of Charles' wealth if he was to be proven to be his father. His only concern was to find the truth and let his father know about his existence. He had wanted a father figure in his life all through his childhood, and his only interest was to be able to fill the gap that he had felt.
Jordan now lives in the Penrose Estate House with his partner Katie. His mother and sister Queenie come to visit him occasionally and are very happy for him. Jordan, now 31, says he no longer feels like a "dirty secret" after a DNA test confirmed him as the new lord of Penrose Manor.
Since Jordan has acquired the estate and is also entitled to $1500 every week, he feels like he doesn't need to work anymore. He plans to set up a charity and help the Porthleven and Helston communities. “I’ve been at the point of worrying about the next bill and have had a tough start in life, but now I’m here, I want to help people. I’m not going to forget where I’ve come from", he said.