Margarette Eby News Today

Automobile like the one a witness saw in the hotel parking lot on the night of nancy ludwigs murder. and there was another surprise. gorton worked for a water sprinkler company that serviced the sprinkler system in margarette ebys yard. >> that same company had been to margarette ebys 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 found inside ebys home. >> youre...

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 nancys murder in the newspaper and said her death sounded strikingly similar to his own mothers 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 professo...

After several years, the cold case unit of the michigan state police decided to take a second look at the murders of margarette 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 margarette ebys bathroom. >> the crime lab was able to identify a small print on the faucet knob in t...

Underwear, as well as footage he took of women without their knowledge. >> he was just very strange. very strange. you kind of wonder what went wrong with him that made him behave like that. >> when police brought gorton in for questioning, they asked him about his interest in stealing womens underwear. >> is there one particular item of clothing that you were fond of? is it -- be it hose or bras or panties? um, sleepwear? is there any one particular item that youre attracted to? >> mostly just ...

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 j...

>> 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 lax as nancy ludwigs 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 ...

Who that person was. that was our job, to find him. >> but it wouldnt be easy. margarette ebys 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 employees boyfriend who owned the monte carlo had an alibi for the night of nancy ludwigs murder, and he was no longer considered a suspect. >> most of the times, k...

Evidence of sexual assault. but at the time, dna testing was still in its infancy. >> in 1986, we werent 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 ebys son knew instinctively, that the same man ki...

A trophy. >> count i, you did while in 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 margarette eby. he will spend the rest of his life in prison. >> im afraid of him. im glad hes locked up for the rest of his life. he is the absolutely most frightening person that ive ever encountered because he was random, because he was so secretive, because he was so o...

>> it came from the bathroom in the upstairs bedroom where margarette eby was found. >> mm-hmm. >> the house that you said you had never been in. so right now, jeff, theres no question that youre the person thats responsible. the question that needs to be answered is, why? and what can we do to help you? >> well, there is no why, cause i didnt do it. so -- i just need to see an attorney now. because i know i didnt do anything and i need to -- >> when gorton asked for a lawyer, the interview stop...