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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. gorton worked for a water sprinkler company that serviced the sprinkler system in margarette eby's yard. >> that same company had been to margarette 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 been easily explained why his fingerprint would have been inside eby's home. >> you're working with metal sprinkler equipment and maybe there's a sharp edge and you slice your finger...

>> 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 f...

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...

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 new...

>> 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 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, law...