Forensic Files - Season 9, Episode 25 - Silk Stalkings - Full Episode | Forensic Files

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

The news of a flight attendant's brutal murder prompted the son of a victim who had been killed five years earlier to contact police. Both murders had similar MOs, and analysis of biological evidence proved that these were serial killings.

Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

Brief Summary

Nancy Ludwig and Margaret Eby were murdered by Jeffrey Gorton, linked through DNA and forensic evidence.

Key points

The Murder of Nancy Ludwig. Nancy Ludwig was found dead in her hotel room, brutally stabbed. Investigators uncovered shocking evidence of a struggle and assault.
DNA Links Two Murders. DNA testing revealed that the same man killed both Nancy Ludwig and Margaret Eby, despite the cases being years apart.
Jeffrey Gorton Identified. A fingerprint from a crime scene matched Jeffrey Gorton, leading to his arrest for the murders of both women.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I’m afraid of him, I’m glad he’s locked up for the rest of his life.

Victim's family reaction to the killer's conviction

20:07WatchJan 1, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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