It was the evening of Sunday, February 17, 1991 & Northwest Airlines flight attendant Nancy Ludwig landed in the Detroit, Michigan suburb of Romulus & headed straight to a nearby hotel, just as she’d done countless times in the past. She’d been a flight attendant for the airline for the past fifteen years & had her routine down to a science. She gathered her bags & boarded the shuttle that would take her to a local for the night. Little did she know, she had just gotten off the last flight of her life.
41-year-old Nancy hadn’t been scheduled to work that Sunday, but at the last minute, she accepted the chance to step in as a substitute for the Las Vegas to Detroit flight. She was known to be a team player & someone that would willingly help out in a pinch.
Nancy’s husband of thirteen years, Art Ludwig, said that Nancy had always wanted to be a flight attendant & it was the perfect career path for her since she had a strong sense of adventure & spontaneity.
Nancy checked into Room 354 of the former Hilton Inn in Romulus near the Detroit Metropolitan Airport at 9 pm. She rode the elevator up, said goodnight to her friend who was also on the layover, pulled her luggage cart around a corner & headed down a long hallway on the third floor, past an alcove with a noisy ice machine & this was the last time she was seen alive. Since Nancy was a last-minute substitute, she hadn’t been listed on the official roster, so when she didn’t arrive for the flight out of Detroit, no alarm bells went off.
The next morning, Monday, February 18, the housekeeper initially bypassed Nancy’s room because a Do Not Disturb sign hung on the door. At 1 pm, a member of the housekeeping staff entered room 354 & was met with an absolutely horrifying site. She found a woman lying on the bed with her hands tied behind her back with twine, her body coated in blood. The twine used to bind her hands was commonly seen in landscaping & gardening. The TV was on in the room, tuned to CNN. Management quickly alerted police who were on the scene within minutes. They soon learned that the room had been registered to Nancy Ludwig & police began retracing her steps from the night before.
Nancy had been viciously stabbed & her throat had been slashed so severely that her head was nearly severed from her body. Deep gouges to Nancy’s hands indicated that she had desperately fought her attacker before she succumbed to her injuries. She had been stabbed repeatedly & her upper torso was covered in superficial cuts that led investigators to believe that her attacker had done this with the sole purpose of wanting to inflict pain. An autopsy showed that she had endured a horrific sexual assault & after the killer slashed her throat, she had been assaulted for a second time, postmortem.
It was clear that when the monster who killed Nancy finished his attack, he spent a considerable amount of time in the room & began to attempt to erase evidence from the hotel room. Nancy’s body had been wiped down with a wet rag. She had arrived at the hotel with two suitcases that night, yet all of her belongings were missing, which included her clothing, jewelry, ID & luggage with him when he fled. It’s possible that the killer had done this for multiple reasons; to remove evidence as well as to take trophies from his crime. However, despite his attempts to clean up the crime scene, he’d left the washcloth he used which investigators found wadded up on the bathroom counter next to the sink. Evidence showed that he had also showered before he left & likely changed his clothing as he would have been unable to exit the hotel unseen in bloody clothing.
Evidence was bagged but couldn’t be analyzed for more than a decade due to the lack of DNA technology in Michigan at the time.
Later that day, Art received a phone call from the airline that something terrible had happened & he needed to come to Detroit quickly. After he learned the devastating news of his wife’s murder, he was faced with the task of identifying Nancy’s remains before the case could move forward. Art recalls feeling like whoever had done this to Nancy had killed two people that night, “He killed Nancy, & he killed me. My life was over as I knew it.”
Because the hotel served as a hub for airport travelers with thousands of people coming & going at any given time, police realized that narrowing down the list of suspects would be an arduous job. Between guests, employees, maintenance workers paired with the fact that the lack of security allowed anyone off the street to freely come & go at any hour of the day or night, made the odds of finding Nancy’s killer exceptionally difficult. Not only were the doors that exited the hotel left unlocked, but keys to hotel rooms sat at the lobby desk & a book sat open on the counter with guest’s names & assigned room numbers clearly visible for all to see. Police realized that whomever had done this to Nancy was an exceptionally violent person who was at risk for finding another victim.
After Nancy’s co-worker’s learned of her violent murder, a fellow flight attendant came forward to let police know that she had driven in the shuttle to the hotel with Nancy on the night of her murder. She told them that despite the fact that there was plenty of room in the van, a man, who appeared to be in his forties, chose to sit directly next to Nancy. Not only that, but his off-putting demeanor made her uncomfortable because he kept his eyes trained on Nancy throughout the entire ride from the airport to the hotel. Because he made Nancy’s co-worker so uneasy, she was easily able to give police a description & a composite sketch was made & shared with the public. Despite their efforts, this man was not located. The woman who traveled that night with Nancy was forever changed after what happened to her co-worker & was said to sleep with a light on in her room when she traveled for the airline moving forward.
Art & his daughters no longer felt safe as before the killer fled the hotel, he took Nancy’s photos & address book that she carried with her.
Guests who had been in the hotel parking lot on the night of Nancy’s murder recalled seeing a man loading a set of Northwest Airlines luggage into a Monte Carlo at about 10:15 pm. They made a mental note of his appearance since something seemed off about him & they sensed that he was up to no good. A police sketch was made & just like before, it failed to produce a suspect.
Police learned that a hotel employee’s boyfriend owned a Monte Carlo & when questioned, the employee behaved suspiciously. She was caught in a lie when she claimed that a call had come into Nancy’s room as well as the fact that she knew Nancy from the previous trips she had taken to Detroit. However, police discovered that this was the first time Nancy had ever landed in Detroit & no calls had come through to Nancy’s room. The employee’s boyfriend ended up having an alibi for the night of the murder & was removed from the list of suspects.
Since DNA testing was in its infancy, detectives got busy compiling the names of over 22,000 or so people who had a connection to the hotel where Nancy had stayed on the last night of her life. 1,700 tips as well as a list of owners of Monte Carlos was also compiled. Obviously with a list this long, it would take time for investigators to wade through their potential suspects.
The process moved along very slowly & every once in a while, a promising lead would emerge, only to be eliminated & the case would go back to square one. Weeks turned into months which then turned into years & no arrest had been made in Nancy’s case.
Shortly after Nancy’s murder, Art Ludwig, Nancy’s husband, was contacted by the son of a college professor named Margaette Eby. Margarette lived in Flint, Michigan, about an hour’s drive from Detroit & sadly, she was found raped & stabbed to death in the bedroom of her home on Sunday, November 9, 1986, five years before Nancy’s murder. He felt that the details of his mother’s murder were strikingly similar to that of Nancy’s, including the fact that they were similar in appearance & were about the same size. Their bodies were found in a similar manner, positioned on the bed in the same way & the wounds were almost identical.
Margarette had been living in the gate house of the gorgeous & sprawling Applewood Estate for the past five years while she worked as a provost & music professor at the University of Michigan-Flint. Applewood is the historic home of automotive pioneer Charles Stewart Mott & his family. It earned the name Applewood because C.S.’s father at one time owned the company now famously known as Mott’s Inc. Applewood Estate is now open to the public for tours.
Margarette had been leasing the gatehouse on the grounds from Ruth Mott since 1981. She had come home on the chilly night of Friday, November 7, 1986 after a day spent downtown with friends. As she stopped her car & felt around in her jacket for the key to the gate, she suddenly realized that it was already standing ajar. She got back in her car & drove toward her home, looking forward to relaxing after a long day. Just like with the gate, as she approached the front door of her home, she also realized it was unlocked, but questioned if she had just forgotten to lock it when she left earlier. Margarette was said to have a habit of leaving the door unlocked & none of the windows of the home had curtains.
Two days later, it was Sunday, November 9 & Margarette was found brutally murdered in her bedroom; she had been sexually assaulted & nearly decapitated. There was no sign of forced entry & the only evidence the killer had left behind was a single fingerprint which was located on a bathroom faucet where he had washed up after the murder. As Margarette’s family, friends & colleagues mourned her brutal death, years went by despite detectives exhausting all leads. Because the estate where she lived was so large, it was frequented by people caring for the property.
After Margarette’s son read about Nancy’s murder, he was convinced that the same man had murdered both Nancy & his mother. After contacting Art & comparing notes, Art contacted the Romulus police with the information.
DNA testing wasn’t being done in Michigan at the time that Margarette was murdered & only select laboratories in other states had the capability though the process was very expensive. When Nancy was murdered five years later, DNA testing was a much more routine process & to the surprise of investigators, DNA testing proved what Margarette’s son had theorized; Margarette & Nancy shared the same killer. However, they still weren’t able to say who this man was since the DNA profile of that person didn’t match anyone in the national database. It made it more difficult that the murders happened in two different cities that sat 70 miles away from each other.
Investigators believed that the killer drove a Monte Carlo & had access to twine that would normally be used by landscapers.
After several years, it was 2002, 16 years after Margarette’s murder & 11 years after Nancy’s murder & the cold case unit of the Michigan State Police decided to take a second look at Margarette & Nancy’s murders, believing that the initial investigators could have potentially overlooked an important detail. They decided to take a closer look at the fingerprint that had been found in the bathroom of Margarette’s home.
Back in 1986 when Margarette had been murdered, the fingerprint had only been compared to those living in Michigan & no match had been found. However, at this point, there were improvements in technology that compared fingerprints to the national database & to their surprise, they got a hit. The print matched the right thumbprint of 39-year-old Jeffrey Wayne Gorton; his fingerprint had been in the system since he was a known offender who had been arrested in Florida in the 1980s for following several women & striking them in the back of the head. When they were down, he would pull off their clothes, tear off their undergarments & flee the scene with his trophies in hand. One woman, Marie Gagliano, had been unloading groceries from her car when a man suddenly threw her down & began dragging her by the ankles, pulling her fifteen to twenty feet as she screamed; he ripped her slip off & began running away. After her assault, police found hundreds of women’s undergarments in his home.
In 1986, when Margarette had been murdered, Gorton was living only a short distance away & drove a gold Monte Carlo that matched what the witness had seen in Nancy’s case. He also had access to Margarette’s residence as he worked for the sprinkler company that had come to the residence several days before her death to blow out the sprinkler lines for the season. This could have explained why his fingerprint was found inside Margarette’s home; maybe Gorton had sliced his hand while working & entered the home in order to wash his hands, innocently leaving a bloody fingerprint behind.
At the time of the attacks on various women in Florida, Gorton had been living in a trailer park in Orlando with his first wife & son while serving in the Navy. Through the talk of the neighborhood, it was also said that he had been caught taking women’s underwear from the shared laundry room. His behavior got so out of control that he was asked to leave the area.
When Gorton was accused of attacking women on base in the Navy, he was arrested & shortly after posting bond, he was quickly arrested again for breaking & entering. Because he was a repeat offender, he was sentenced to four years behind bars. Less than two years later, he was released & his wife filed for divorce.
On his release in 1985, one year before Margarette’s murder, Gorton moved to Michigan & began working for his parent’s sprinkler company which happened to service the property where Margarette Eby was living. Seven months after he took the position, Margarette was found murdered in the gate house she rented.
Gorton was so outwardly inappropriate that his co-workers had given him the nickname “Uncle Perv” due to his unhealthy attitude toward women. He married a second time & had two children with his wife, Sandra. Although, just like his first marriage, once his true nature emerged, his marriage ended.
Gorton’s fingerprint put him inside Margarette’s home, but since he worked on the premises, investigators needed more evidence against him. Investigators were convinced that he was also the man responsible for Nancy’s rape & murder, so they began trailing Gorton 24-hours a day in order to obtain a DNA sample.
Investigators followed him to a roller skating rink where Gorton had shared a pizza with his kids & drank soda from a styrofoam cup; when he got up from the table, an investigator rushed over & confiscated the cup. When the saliva from the rim of the cup was analyzed, it was found to contain markers from two different sources, meaning the cup had been used by more than one person.
When Gorton was brought in for questioning & confronted with the fingerprint & DNA evidence, he held firm to his innocence. During his time at the station, he was provided with a drink & after he left, his DNA was collected from the cup. Results confirmed what the first DNA test suggested, that Jeffrey Gorton was a match to the killer of Margarette Eby & Nancy Ludwig.
Because of this evidence, a judge granted investigators a search warrant for Gorton’s home. Inside, they found hundreds of pairs of women’s intimate attire throughout his home, many of which had been labeled with the original owner’s name & physical description. They also located a box of videotapes that showed Gorton modeling an assortment of the lingerie. He’d also captured footage of women without their knowledge.
The state felt confident that they could obtain a conviction & Gorton was officially charged with the rapes & murders of Margarette Eby & Nancy Ludwig.
In September 2004, Jeffrey Gorton was convicted of criminal sexual misconduct, first-degree murder, felony murder & larceny of Nancy Ludwig. Choosing to forgo a second trial, he pleaded no contest to the murder of Margarette Eby. A no contest plea is largely an admission of guilt without actually saying it. He is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
Margarette’s family was very thankful that they were spared from the trial & testimony, not wanting to re-live the horrors of their loved one’s death.
During the court proceedings, those present later noted that Gorton had been transfixed on a juror who had a striking resemblance to Nancy Ludwig. He leered at her throughout the trial, seemingly unable to tear his eyes away which proved that he couldn’t even fake normality even when it was in his best interest.
It is believed that Jeffrey Gorton entered Margarette Eby’s home through an unlocked door while she was out & waited for her; when she returned home, he quickly overpowered the petite 55-year-old woman. He sexually assaulted her before stabbing her multiple times & slitting her throat. He then moved on to the bathroom sink in attempts to wash up, thus leaving his fingerprint behind which later linked him to the crime.
In regards to Nancy’s murder, investigators speculated that he had been lying in wait in the stairwell on the third floor of her hotel on the night of the murder. When he saw the pretty flight attendant opening her door, he leaped out & forced her into her room at knifepoint. The defensive wounds on her hands & arms showed that she had tried to fend him off, but he was able to overpower her. After he placed a gag in her mouth to quiet her screams from being heard from other guests, he bound her hands with twine, raped, tortured & murdered the devoted wife & stepmother of three. He then placed her body on the bed & raped her for a second time.
As he cleaned up the work, he turned the TV on to CNN to listen to updates about the Persian Gulf War, he showered, changed his clothes & despite taking everything, including the garbage can liner in the bathroom, he left one critical piece of evidence, the washcloth near the sink containing DNA evidence. As he left, he placed the Do Not Disturb sign on Nancy’s door.
It turned out that the passenger who had shared the shuttle from the airport to the hotel, who had been fixated on Nancy during the ride, was just an unfortunate coincidence. It was concerning that a person would so outwardly make a woman feel uncomfortable during her journey, but it ended up being a fellow traveler who couldn’t hide his attraction to Nancy.
Tom Henderson, author of Blood Justice: The True Story of Multiple Murder & a Family’s Revenge, which discusses Margarette’s & Nancy’s cases, believes that these two victims were only the tip of the iceberg since Gorton so clearly could not control his deviant urges, He feels that there are far more victims than they are aware of. It’s likely that someday, DNA will be run in another cold case & come back as a match for Gorton. Despite being convicted of Nancy & Margarette’s murders, he refuses to provide any details so the odds of him confessing to additional murders or assaults is unlikely.
References:
- Ruth Mott Foundation – Applewood
- MyCity Magazine: Flint crime files: The murder of Margarette Eby
- Murderpedia: Jeffrey Wayne Gorton
- Medium: The Watcher: The murders of Nancy Ludwig & Margarette Eby
- YouTube: Forensic Files – Season 9, Episode 25 – Silk Stockings
- Hogan Eickoff: What is the difference between a guilty plea & a no-contest plea?
