My City May 2023

The Killer

Jeffrey Wayne Gorton came to Michigan from Florida in 1985. While serv ing in the Navy in Florida, he was arrested for attacking women on the base. His method of operation was to follow them, bash them in the back of the head, and steal their undergarments as they struggled to gain their senses. He posted bond for release from jail but was quickly arrested again for breaking and entering. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to four years be hind bars, but released after serving two years. Once out of prison, Gorton moved to Genesee County and began working for the Buckler Automatic Sprinkler Company owned by his parents. The com pany provided service to the Applewood Estate in Flint and Gorton frequent ly worked there. At work, he gained a reputation for having misogynistic and extremely perverse views to ward women. Despite being dubbed “Uncle Perv” by his coworkers, Gorton eventu ally married and fathered two children. In fact, it was at an outing with his family where investigators obtained the evidence that had eluded them for so long. →

On November 9, 1986 the City of Flint woke up in shock and horrified. Margarette Eby, the beloved music professor and founder of the city-wide Basically Bach Music Festival was found dead, murdered in her home at Applewood Es tate. The crime scene was gris ly; police determined that Eby had been raped and stabbed to death the night before. There were no signs of forced entry and the only evidence the killer left behind was a single fingerprint found on a faucet knob in the bathroom where the killer cleaned up after the deed. In the months and years that followed, detectives exhausted all leads while a city and family mourned. Margarette Eby was beloved both at the University and in the city she had adopted. In the investigation, all paths led to dead ends and the case was forgotten by everyone except those who clung fast to Eby’s memory. Nancy Ludwig On February 18, 1991 Nancy Ludwig arrived in Romulus, MI and checked

into the Hilton Hotel. A flight attendant with Northwest Airlines, Ludwig was no stranger to the city or her accommodations. Around 9pm, she opened the door to a room where she had stayed countless times. It felt so routine, she had no reason to be wary. Suddenly, a man emerged from a nearby stairwell, grabbed her from behind and forced her into the room at knifepoint. Just after noon the next day, a member of the housekeep ing staff found Ludwig’s body lying on the floor, hands bound behind her back. Her throat was slit ear-to-ear. The coroner determined that Ludwig had been stabbed multiple times, including wounds on her hands she sustained while fighting her attacker. Examiners also determined that she had been raped multiple times. Police found little evidence of her killer with the exception of fluid DNA and a blood soaked washcloth left in the sink. As with the Eby

case in Flint five years prior, detectives were facing an uphill battle. Besides the scant physical evidence at the crime scene, they also were able to get a sketch of a possible suspect from wit nesses in the hotel parking lot who saw a suspicious man loading baggage into a Monte Carlo nearly an hour after Ludwig was murdered. All roads went nowhere and the case went cold until five years later, when Ludwig’s husband Art received a phone call from the son of Margarette Eby. After reviewing details of Nancy’s death, Eby’s son told Art he believed both Nancy and Margarette were killed by the same person. They reviewed notes and, convinced, Art called Ro mulus Police, who told him that they would look into it further. In 2002, detectives reprocessed the fingerprint found in Margarette’s bath room and this time, they got a hit from the database. The fingerprint belonged to Genesee County resident, Jeffrey Wayne Gorton.

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