Boise Greenbelt murder suspect had an acquittal in May. His record spans decades
Just months before being accused of fatally stabbing a young man on the Boise River Greenbelt, Ross Wardlaw stood trial on allegations that he broke another man’s nose and threatened a woman with a knife last year.
A 12-person jury acquitted him of all charges — unanimously. He was released in May from the Ada County Jail, where he was being held on a $100,000 bond.
He’d been out of custody for two months when he allegedly killed 25-year-old Jordan Harbst. Wardlaw was charged with first-degree murder.
At a hearing last week, Robert Bleazard, who joined the Ada County Prosecutor’s Office in 2011, described Wardlaw’s criminal history as “one of repeated incarceration for violent conduct.”
The 41-year-old’s criminal history spans more than two decades, with many of the more recent charges related to some type of violent incident, according to court records reviewed by the Idaho Statesman. Wardlaw has been charged with varying degrees of battery charges at least half a dozen times.
For the June 2025 incident that went to trial, he was charged with three felonies: aggravated battery, aggravated assault and an enhancement for the use of a deadly weapon in the commission of a felony. He also faced a persistent violator enhancement, a charge that can be added by prosecutors when someone has been convicted of three felonies.
Those four charges were the ones at a trial in May 2026 at which he was acquitted. In an audio recording of a portion of that jury trial — which the Idaho Statesman reviewed — Wardlaw said he had no intention of being hostile.
But just two months later, he’s facing the first-degree murder charge.
In the early morning hours of July 6, Harbst, of Boise, was riding a scooter home along the Greenbelt after spending time with a friend downtown — a route he regularly took — when Wardlaw stepped into his path, knocked him off the scooter and stabbed him to death, Bleazard said.
“This was a random attack on a stranger,” Bleazard said in court last week. “The defendant’s own stated reason for it was generalized paranoia that people on scooters were after him — a belief that has really no basis on anything that Jordan did.”
“A person who kills a stranger at random for no rational reason that he can articulate is a danger to everyone,” Bleazard added.
The question of Wardlaw’s mental health has been brought up before — and is now being used by Republican lawmakers to try to criticize city leaders for not properly enforcing the state’s camping ban for large cities.
While awaiting trial on the aggravated battery incident, his case was paused for several months because he wasn’t competent, court records showed.
By February 2026, he was making “excellent progress” after being transferred to Intermountain Hospital in Boise and was expected to be “deemed fit to proceed,” according to a letter sent by a clinician to the court.
Wardlaw’s criminal history dates back decades
Wardlaw moved to the Boise area in the 1990s, he told Idaho News 6 in an unrelated interview last month. And his criminal history began shortly after that.
His first conviction in Idaho — for using tobacco as a minor — dates to 1999, when he was just 14 years old. He ended up in and out of the criminal justice system on offenses related to drugs and driving under the influence for the next decade. During that time, in 2004, he received his first felony conviction for aggravated battery.
Instead of sending him to prison, the presiding judge placed him on probation for three years. But after Wardlaw violated his probation — twice — he was sentenced to prison for several years, court records showed.
After being released in 2012, he began experiencing homelessness, he told Idaho News 6.
By 2013, Wardlaw’s criminal history picked back up, and he was in and out of the county jail until July 2022, when officers from the Boise Police Department responded to a welfare check at Corpus Christi, a daytime shelter, where they found an active warrant for him for failing to appear for a court hearing. While he was being arrested, officers found two glass pipes on him with white residue that was determined to be methamphetamine, court records showed.
He was convicted of possession of a controlled substance months later and went back to prison until July 2024. In June 2025 he was charged in two separate incidents, including the altercation where he was accused of breaking a man’s nose and threatening a woman with a knife.
Jurors acquit suspect months before stabbing
During his jury trial on the battery incident earlier this year, Wardlaw defended his actions, saying he felt threatened by the other man and “wasn’t trying to engage in some bloody knife fight.”
Wardlaw, who’d been living on Cooper Street on and off for five years, said he was approached by another man experiencing homelessness. The other man, who had recently begun residing about 50 feet down the street from him, stood close to him, holding an exposed knife, Wardlaw said.
Weeks later, Wardlaw said, he noticed a bag filled with his possessions, typically marking where he slept, was gone and “on display” next to that same man. The man told Wardlaw the bag belonged to him, which led to Wardlaw opening the bag, finding his belongings and taking it back to his spot, he said.
Wardlaw said he wasn’t angry and “made sure (he) was not hostile with him.”
When he went through the bag and realized it was missing a composition notebook that contained what he said was the “day-in and day-out of my life,” including journal entries and his will, he walked back to the man’s spot and noticed it at the bottom of a milk crate.
After picking up the milk crate and shaking out the contents, Wardlaw said, the man grabbed him. In response, he swore at the man and punched him in the face once. He did not strike the man very hard, he added.
The man then grabbed a long walking stick and approached Wardlaw as another man “got in (Wardlaw’s) face,” he said. Wardlaw decided to walk back to his spot to avoid “putting himself in a vulnerable position” by leaning down for the notebook, and grabbed a knife.
“If you come at me or if you get near me, I’m going to stab you,” he said he told them, holding his knife as he grabbed the notebook. The two men then ran toward the street, he said, where he noticed a young woman on the phone. Assuming she was calling the police, he stayed on the scene.
When an attorney asked him why he felt the need to grab the knife, he said, “In my mind, I was outnumbered, and one person had a weapon.”
Wardlaw is the type of guy “that cleans up Cooper Street and respects other people’s property,” his attorney said in court.
Wardlaw wasn’t trying to start a fight, his attorney said, adding that if he wanted to cause a problem, he could have beaten the other man “to a pulp” or pursued the young woman who called law enforcement.
“All Mr. Wardlaw wanted back was his stuff,” he said.
Days after he was arrested for that incident, Wardlaw was back in custody for allegedly punching and kicking another man, court records showed. He pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery as part of a plea deal in November 2025, and was given credit for the 94 days he’d already spent in the Ada County Jail on the other June 2025 incident.
This story was originally published July 15, 2026 at 10:51 AM.
