00:00:04
[Music] a murder victim's son was the first to suspect that his mother's death was the
00:00:11
work of a serial killer investigators hoped that cells found on a styrofoam cup marks on a water faucet
00:00:19
and the clues left on a secret videotape would reveal the true identity of a man
00:00:25
who had eluded police for over a decade [Music] [Music] by 1991 42 year old nancy ludwig found what she
00:01:01
was looking for in life a husband who adored her and a career in the airline business
00:01:07
she always wanted to be a flight attendant from when she was a young girl very outgoing spontaneous adventuresome
00:01:16
that's why she made such a good flight attendant during one of her out-of-town trips an
00:01:23
airline employee called art ludwig with some bad news it was some woman explained to me that
00:01:33
there had been a problem in detroit and i should get myself ready and get off the airport and they would meet me there
00:01:39
and we would fly to detroit nancy ludwig was found dead in her hotel room near the detroit airport
00:01:48
she had been stabbed to death the evidence revealed she fought valiantly against her attacker
00:01:55
she had such extreme defense wounds on her hands you just couldn't help by getting a real feel for what she went
00:02:03
through and that isn't really always the case at a crime scene nancy's hands had been bound with twine
00:02:11
this particular kind of twine is most frequently used in gardening and landscaping
00:02:19
biological evidence revealed that nancy had been sexually assaulted and there were signs the killer spent a
00:02:26
considerable amount of time inside the hotel room we found a bloody washcloth by the basin
00:02:34
and we could see that he had showered in the tub he could not have walked out of the hilton hotel in bloody clothing
00:02:42
one of the most unusual aspects of the crime was that nancy's personal belongings were missing
00:02:48
she arrived at the hotel with at least two suitcases and a purse all of her jewelry her watch earrings were all
00:02:55
removed from the room including the trash can liner from the trash can on the night of the murder another guest
00:03:04
at the hotel noticed a man carrying airline type luggage to his car right outside his window
00:03:10
underneath the parking lot light was what appeared to be monte carlo with somebody
00:03:16
carrying toward an open trunk what looked to be northwest uh gear suitcases and whatnot
00:03:23
amazingly there were 2 800 monte carlo automobiles registered in the detroit area
00:03:30
every one of those 2800 owners we ran lean to determine whether there were warrants or whether
00:03:36
they had criminal records and tried to eliminate in that way investigators learned that a hotel
00:03:44
employee's boyfriend owned a monte carlo when questioned the employee behaved
00:03:50
suspiciously she was caught in a lie she claimed that a call had come in to nancy's room she
00:03:58
claimed to have known nancy from previous trips actually was nancy's first trip into metro
00:04:05
surprisingly enough so she couldn't possibly have known her from a previous trip there were no calls into her room
00:04:11
there appeared to be very little security at the hotel the way they assigned rooms to flight
00:04:18
people it was often done with keys just sitting there at the desk with names on little pieces of paper so
00:04:26
you could come in and stand there and read names and rooms that had been assigned so you knew who hadn't come in
00:04:33
yet i mean it was an absolute terrible system outside doors were left open at night
00:04:41
it was more convenient for the guests but it certainly wasn't good security investigators generated a list of
00:04:48
potential suspects that included everyone who had access to the hotel we ultimately had a list of over 22 000
00:04:57
names on that list were 1700 tips people who flew into metro airport the night that nancy ludwig did people had
00:05:04
flew out after nancy ludwig was killed the 2800 monte carlos a police artist developed this sketch of
00:05:12
the man in the hotel's parking lot investigators hoped it would narrow the list of 22 000 names
00:05:22
to one shortly after his wife was brutally murdered in a detroit hotel room art ludwig received a curious letter
00:05:37
it was from a man who had read about nancy's murder in the newspaper and said
00:05:42
her death sounded strikingly similar to his own mother's murder five years earlier
00:05:54
and i read the letter and yes it did seem like there's some similarities and
00:05:58
so far they were both women about the same size same appearance on and so forth the victim was 55 year old margaret eby
00:06:08
a music professor living in flint michigan about an hour's drive from detroit
00:06:13
she was found stabbed to death in the bedroom of her home by looking at the crime scene
00:06:19
photographs it was amazing the body was positioned almost the same way the wounds were
00:06:24
almost the same and security at her home was as laxed as nancy ludwig's hotel
00:06:32
the gatehouse where she stayed at this beautiful estate it had its own entrance that was supposed to be gated but the
00:06:38
gate was usually open no guard there there were no signs of forced entry and no valuables were
00:06:46
missing margaret eby had a habit of leaving her doors unlocked and had no curtains on her windows
00:06:55
the estate had a number of people who came on regularly to do work lawn care people electricians painters
00:07:03
after her murder investigators found a partial fingerprint on her bathroom faucet but
00:07:10
it didn't match any known criminal offenders in the michigan database investigators also found evidence of
00:07:18
sexual assault but at the time dna testing was still in its infancy in 1986 we weren't even online our state
00:07:28
was not doing dna testing although it was beginning to be done in other places there were only a few select
00:07:34
laboratories that did it and it was a very very expensive process but by the time nancy ludwig was
00:07:44
murdered dna testing was routine and to the surprise of investigators dna testing proved what margaret eby's son
00:07:53
knew instinctively that the same man killed both women i thought we had her case off and he
00:08:01
said well the good news is we matched your case the bad news we still don't can't give you a suspect
00:08:09
the dna profile of their killer did not match any of the known criminal offenders in the national database
00:08:16
the dna match didn't tell us who that person was that was our job to find him
00:08:23
but it wouldn't be easy margaret eb's murder took place many years earlier
00:08:29
and nancy ludwig was murdered in detroit over 75 miles away from flint but investigators suspected that the
00:08:38
killer drove a monte carlo automobile and had access to twine used by landscapers
00:08:47
the hotel employee's boyfriend who owned the monte carlo had an alibi for the
00:08:52
night of nancy ludwig's murder and he was no longer considered a suspect most of the times killers are pretty
00:08:59
stupid and we catch them for some pretty stupid reason he was very clever very clever and very thorough
00:09:09
as the years passed all 22 000 leads in the case were tracked down in one way or another
00:09:16
and all were dead ends margaret eby's family as well as nancy ludwigs were losing faith in the idea
00:09:25
that the killer would be apprehended after 10 years i guess i thought we had done just about everything we could
00:09:32
to this day remains a mystery to me why it didn't work after several years the cold case unit
00:09:46
of the michigan state police decided to take a second look at the murders of margaret eby and nancy ludwig
00:09:53
they thought that perhaps the original investigators might have missed something
00:09:59
dna testing revealed the same man killed both women but they had no idea to whom
00:10:06
the dna belonged so they concentrated on the partial fingerprint from the faucet in margaret
00:10:13
eb's bathroom the crime lab was able to identify a small print on the faucet knob in the sink
00:10:23
of that bathroom the faucet knot was actually taken off taken back to the crime lab
00:10:29
where the fingerprint was photographed and the knob was stored as evidence back in 1986 flint police could only
00:10:41
compare the prints to others in michigan and the search turned up no matches but improvements in computer technology
00:10:50
led to the creation of an automated fingerprint identification system that compares thousands of fingerprints in
00:10:58
seconds when the print from the water faucet was placed into the new nationwide fingerprint database
00:11:06
the computer identified a matching print in florida it matched the right thumbprint
00:11:14
of 39 year old jeffrey gorton who was now living in a suburb of flint michigan he was a married man
00:11:22
wife and children would appear from all the outward signs to be perfectly normal your next door
00:11:29
neighbor gordon lived just a short distance from margaret eby and owned a gold monte
00:11:36
carlo automobile like the one a witness saw in the hotel parking lot on the night of nancy ludwig's murder
00:11:44
and there was another surprise gordon worked for a water sprinkler company that serviced the sprinkler
00:11:52
system in margaret eb's yard that same company had been to margaret eby's residence
00:11:59
several days before her death in order for them to blow out the sprinkler lines for the season
00:12:06
but that could have easily explained why his fingerprint would have been inside eb's home
00:12:12
you're working with metal sprinkler equipment and maybe there's a sharp edge
00:12:17
and you slice your finger you come in you wash your hands you leave a bloody fingerprint
00:12:22
it's not a reason to go to jail you haven't done anything you just left a
00:12:25
bloody fingerprint gorton's fingerprint was in the florida database because of numerous arrests for
00:12:32
attacks on women he actually had assaulted several of them by walking up behind them knocking them
00:12:39
physically to the ground and attempting to remove their slips from them while they were on the ground
00:12:45
that's what happened to marie gagliano as she unloaded groceries from her car
00:12:54
[Music] he had a snarly look on his face he threw me down he grabbed me by my ankles and he
00:13:02
started dragging me he dragged me about 15 or 20 feet i was screaming i'm blood curling
00:13:11
screams he ripped my slip off and then he started running after that assault police found
00:13:19
hundreds of pieces of women's underwear in his home this is a dangerous guy he's knocking women down he's dragging
00:13:27
them into bushes he's stealing their clothes he's breaking into their houses
00:13:31
this is somebody who's pretty much out of control gorton served some prison time for these
00:13:36
assaults in florida before moving back to michigan since both murder victims had been
00:13:43
sexually assaulted and investigators had dna of the killer they wanted to know whether it was gorton's dna
00:13:52
so they put gorton under 24-hour surveillance they followed him to a local roller
00:13:59
skating rink where he took his children undercover officers watched gorton eat pizza
00:14:07
and drink soda from a styrofoam cup when gorton left an officer rushed to the table confiscated gordon's cup and
00:14:16
took it to the forensics lab the sample was tested immediately dna is like any other biological
00:14:28
molecule subject to degradation one of the things that will degrade dna a little bit
00:14:33
faster is a fair amount of heat there were more than enough epithelial cells on the cup for testing
00:14:40
but this caused problems the initial dna analysis on the cup was a profile that showed a mixture
00:14:49
meaning that more than one person had used the cup we had hoped that we would pick up dna
00:14:55
just from the individual that drank out of the cup but there was some indications that
00:15:00
there was dna from more than one person there but pcr dna testing showed a strong
00:15:08
association between the dna on the cup and the biological evidence from the two crime scenes
00:15:16
and that was enough to get a search warrant for jeffrey gorton's home there investigators found hundreds of women's
00:15:26
undergarments panties and hoes they also found a disturbing videotape [Music] when investigators searched jeffrey
00:15:40
gorton's home they found women's lingerie everywhere in boxes under his mattress
00:15:48
many had labels with women's names and descriptions and they found a videotape
00:15:54
which featured gordon modeling women's underwear as well as footage he took of
00:16:00
women without their knowledge he was just very strange very strange kind of wonder what went wrong with him
00:16:08
that made him behave like that when police brought gorton in for questioning they asked him what the
00:16:17
penalty should be for murder i should probably go to jail gordon became increasingly nervous when
00:16:26
left alone then the detectives asked him about his interest in stealing women's underwear
00:16:34
is there one particular item of clothing that you are fond of is it be it hoes or
00:16:39
bras or panties um sleepwear is there any one particular item that you're attracted to
00:16:47
mostly just the hose i guess do you still feel the those strong fetish desires to
00:16:53
this day i mean is that something that's yeah i've seen a psychiatrist for a
00:16:57
little while when i was on my own gorton denied he had ever been inside margaret eb's home when he did
00:17:05
investigators confronted him with the fingerprint evidence do you know where that fingerprint came
00:17:11
from you know it came from the bathroom the upstairs bedroom where margaret evie was found
00:17:20
the house that you said that you've never been in so right now jeff there's no question
00:17:25
that you're the person that's responsible the question that needs to be answered
00:17:30
is why and what can we do to help you well there isn't a why because i didn't
00:17:36
do it so i just need to see the journey now because i know i didn't do anything
00:17:43
when gordon asked for a lawyer at the interview stopped but not before they collected his dna
00:17:49
sample dna testing confirmed what the first test suggested the jeffrey gorton had sexually
00:17:58
assaulted and presumably killed nancy ludwig and margaret eby during jury selection
00:18:07
jeffrey gorton showed particular interest in a juror who matched the physical description of the two murder
00:18:14
victims he was staring at this woman the angle that she was sitting she's wearing a
00:18:19
skirt he's just fixated on this woman and it's just a squirming in his seat
00:18:25
it was the strangest thing i'd ever seen and i thought oh this is gonna be a fun
00:18:32
try prosecutors think gorton entered margaret eby's home through an unlocked door
00:18:42
and waited for her [Music] when she returned from a dinner party he attacked [Music]
00:18:59
after the murder gordon washed in the bathroom and removed most of the evidence but
00:19:05
left behind his right thumb print on the water faucet five years later gorton struck again
00:19:15
this time in detroit some think he had an obsession for flight attendants [Music]
00:19:22
he went to a hotel near the airport waited in the third floor stairwell and saw nancy ludwig walking towards her
00:19:31
room [Music] after the murder he showered changed his clothes and stole nancy's belongings possibly
00:19:45
as a trophy count one you did while the perpetration or attempted perpetration of criminal
00:19:50
sexual conduct in the first degree jeffrey gorton was tried and convicted for the first degree murder of both
00:19:58
nancy ludwig and margaret eby he will spend the rest of his life in prison i'm afraid of him i'm glad he's locked
00:20:07
up for the rest of his life he is the absolute most frightening person that i've ever encountered
00:20:12
because he was random because he was so secretive because he was so ordinary author tom henderson wrote about this
00:20:24
case in blood justice and thinks there are other victims my feeling is that someday
00:20:34
somebody's going to be running a dna sample that kicks up jeffrey gordon's
00:20:38
name it may be more than one or two it might be quite a few it still took a fingerprint or something
00:20:46
very basic and maybe less high tech if you want to call it that than dna testing to solve the crime
00:20:52
without science and the new technology that's available both these homicides
00:20:58
would remain unsolved and probably remain unsolved forever [Music] [Music] so [Music]
00:21:41
you