shortly after his wife was brutally murdered in a detroit hotel room, art ludwig received a curious letter. it was from a man who had read about nancy s murder in the newspaper and said her death sounded strikingly similar to his own mother s murder five years earlier. and i read the letter, and yes, it did seem like there were some similarities. insofar they were both women about the same size, same appearance, so on and so forth. the victim was 55-year-old margarette eby, a music professor living in flint, michigan, about an hour s drive from detroit. she was found stabbed to death in the bedroom of her home. by looking at the crime scene
party, he attacked. after the murder, gorton washed in the bathroom and removed most of the evidence, but left behind his right thumbprint on the water faucet. five years later, gorton struck again, this time in detroit. some think he had an obsession for flight attendants. he went to a hotel near the airport, waited in the third-floor stairwell, and saw nancy ludwig walking towards her room. after the murder, he showered, changed his clothes, and stole nancy s belongings, possibly as a trophy.
investigators also found evidence of sexual assault. but at the time, dna testing was still in its infancy. in 1986, we weren t even online. our state was not doing dna testing. although it was beginning to be done in other places, there were only a few select laboratories that did it, and it was a very, very expensive process. but by the time nancy ludwig was murdered, dna testing was routine. and to the surprise of investigators, dna testing proved what margarette eby s son knew instinctively, that the same man killed both women. i thought we had our case solved. and he said, well, the good news is we ve matched your case. the bad news, we still don t can t give you a suspect. the dna profile of their killer did not match any of the known criminal offenders in the national database. the dna match didn t tell us who that person was.
that was our job, to find him. but it wouldn t be easy. margarette eby s murder took place many years earlier, and nancy ludwig was murdered in detroit, over 75 miles away from flint. but investigators suspected that the killer drove a monte carlo automobile and had access to twine used by landscapers. the hotel employee s boyfriend who owned the monte carlo had an alibi for the night of nancy ludwig s murder, and he was no longer considered a suspect. most of the times, killers are pretty stupid, and we catch them for some pretty stupid reason. he was very clever, very clever and very thorough. as the years passed, all 22,000 leads in the case were tracked down in one way or another. and all were dead ends.
photographs, it was amazing. the body was positioned almost the same way, the wounds were almost the same. and security at her home was as lax as nancy ludwig s hotel. the gatehouse where she stayed at this beautiful estate had its own entrance that was supposed to be gated, but the gate was usually open. no guard there. there were no signs of forced entry, and no valuables were missing. margarette eby had a habit of leaving her doors unlocked and had no curtains on her windows. the estate had a number of people who came on regularly to do work, lawn care people, electricians, painters. after her murder, investigators found a partial fingerprint on her bathroom faucet, but it didn t match any known criminal offenders in the michigan database.