A Lifetime Predator : Jeffrey Gorton

0:00Speaker 1:At about 4 p.m. on November 9, 1986, Margaret Eby was supposed to meet some friends at her house to prep her garden for the cold Michigan winter. When they arrived, the door was ajar and Margaret wasn't answering. When they finally went inside, they found their friend covered in blood on her bed, but the case would eventually go cold. On February 17, 1991, Nancy Ludwig had flown into Detroit on an overnight as a flight attendant. She was scheduled to fly out the following morning, but never showed up for her shift. When a maid discovered her body in the bed, covered in blood, investigators had no reason to connect it to a murder from five years ago that happened 75 miles or 120 kilometers away. But the murders were connected, and it would take 10 more years before DNA technology was advanced enough to identify the killer. This is Monsters. Thank you. Jeffrey Gordon was born on November 1, 1962, and though his specific birthplace is unknown, he grew up in the Flint, Michigan area. He was the fifth of six children born to Lawrence and Shirley Gordon. The oldest was Deborah, his only sister, then Steve, Dan, Brian, Jeff,

1:38Speaker 1:and Greg. Lawrence had worked in the outdoor sprinkler industry, and in 1980, he opened his own business called Buckler Automatic Lawn Sprinkler Company. Eventually, all the boys would end up working for the family business. Jeff was described as a good son, with his brother Brian saying he was the only one of the sons who seemed to always do the right thing. He got good grades in school and was on the chess team. He didn't abuse drugs or even drink much. In high school, Jeff participated in sports but ended up quitting to have time for a part-time job. He worked stocking shelves at a Sears department store and also helped his father with the new business.

2:17Speaker 1:Near the end of his senior year, Jeff met a girl named Dawn Tierbach at a local roller rink. Before the internet and cell phones, kids used to go to a big building to roller skate, play arcade games, and eat snacks. That was social media in the late 1900s. Dawn wasn't immediately attracted to Jeff, but he was smart and funny, and soon the two were a couple. In June of 1981, Dawn learned she was pregnant. Jeff was accepted to attend the University of Michigan Flynn campus, and before the fall semester started, he broke up with Dawn.

2:51Speaker 1:Jeff's best friend was also attending, but by October, they both decided to drop out and join the Navy. Before Jeff left for basic training, he saw Dawn a number of times. She was desperate to get back together, and it seemed that Jeff was stringing her along. Don kept a diary of every single thing that Jeff did during that time. Every time he told her he would come over and never showed up. Every time he did show up and claimed he loved her. On February 22nd, 1982, Jeff promised Don that he would marry her and then four days later he left for training. But as soon as he was gone, he told people that he joined the Navy to get away from Don because she was pregnant and he didn't think the baby was his. Don gave birth to their son on March 28th, 1982. She named him Jeffrey, pronounced the same but spelled differently. Jeffrey Sr.

3:41Speaker 1:was spelled R-E-Y, and Jeffrey Jr. was spelled E-R-Y, for some reason. On May 14th, Dawn and Jeffrey Jr. flew with Dawn's mother to Orlando to visit Jeff. Less than a month later, Jeff completed basic training, returned to Flint, and married Dawn. The day after their wedding, Jeff was sent to the Navy's Great Lakes training facility in Chicago to train as an electrician. Don and Jeffrey Jr. moved to Chicago, but Jeff spent most of his free time out with friends, so she returned to Flint a month later.

4:13Speaker 1:In September, Jeff was transferred back to Orlando, and the family moved down there together. Jeff still managed to stay away from home most of the time, but he had completely quit the small amount of pot and alcohol he previously consumed, and he was laid back, never raising his voice at Don or their son. Despite Jeff's good son external appearance, on the inside, he had always had an obsession with women's clothing. While still training in nuclear power, Jeff started breaking into homes and stealing articles of clothing from women. Jeff would later admit that he had started by stealing clothes from family members. His most desired article of clothing was pantyhose. According to him, it was only after moving to Orlando that he started breaking into homes to steal women's garments. Unfortunately, Jeff was doing much more than just stealing from homes. On April 29th, 1982, Marie Gagliano had gotten off of work at the Fashion Square Mall in Orlando, stopped for some groceries, and headed home to the Garden Park Apartments. She had gotten out of work after the mall closed at 9pm and pulled into

5:19Speaker 1:the parking lot of her apartment at close to 10pm. It was a Friday, so she expected her roommate to be out, and she was looking forward to having something to eat and relaxing. The parking lot was well lit and felt safe, so Marie didn't feel a sense of urgency when she got out of her new Volkswagen Rabbit and opened the back hatch to retrieve her bag of groceries. As soon as the bag was in her arm, a man suddenly appeared beside her. He reached down under her skirt and pulled her leg, sending her backwards onto her butt.

5:49Speaker 1:Her bag of groceries flew all over the parking lot. The man grabbed her ankles and started dragging her to a nearby dumpster. Obviously, Marie started screaming, which alerted the area residents and made her attacker switch plans. He dropped her ankles, grabbed her slip, and ripped it off her body. Then he ran and jumped into a car, squealing his tires as he raced out of the parking lot. A couple who lived in a nearby apartment came outside, made sure Marie was okay, and helped her gather her groceries.

6:19Speaker 1:She had a small cut on her right elbow and her right butt cheek would end up being pretty swollen, but physically she came out in better shape than she was sure the attacker had intended. When officers arrived to take a statement, she gave a description of the man and the following day another woman would give the same description after another attack, that time in broad daylight. She had also been retrieving something from the back of her car when a man suddenly attacked her, beat her, and then pulled her slip off. She was also able to tell officers that the man had been driving a Buick Regal.

6:52Speaker 1:When police brought a sketch from the second victim to Marie, she said it looked like the man who had assaulted her. Investigators linked those two cases to a third attack that had happened earlier on April 8th. That woman worked for the same department store that Marie did. On May 6th, two female Navy recruits were walking on the training center grounds in Orlando when a man suddenly ran up behind them and ripped one of their slips off. The women immediately started fighting him, but he managed to get away. Still, two police vehicles were nearby and witnessed the attack, so they raced to catch him, but they ended up running into each other. That gave the man the chance to get in his car and drive away. Jeff, Don, and their son lived in a rented mobile home in a mobile home park near the base. On May 18th, their landlord needed to fix a leaking window in their trailer, and when he went to start the work, nobody was home.

7:48Speaker 1:Jeff was on the base, and Don had taken Jeffrey to Michigan to visit family. After letting himself in, he spotted two grocery bags filled with women's underwear and pantyhose. Since he had recently gotten complaints about Jeff lurking in the trailer park and some women saying their undergarments had gone missing, the landlord called the police and evicted Jeff and his family. When the authorities learned that Jeff drove a Buick Regal, he became their prime suspect in the recent attacks that had happened around town. But then the Navy learned of their suspect and were sure he was the same man they were looking for. They found him at work on the base and brought him in for questioning.

8:27Speaker 1:Jeff admitted to having attacked the women and let them search his new apartment where they found even more women's clothing. It included the slips of his victims as well as one that belonged to his previous landlord's wife. Jeff was arrested, but he wasn't held in jail. Jeff was arraigned the day after being arrested, and he borrowed $ 2, 500 from his grandparents in order to post bond. A week later, Marie Gagliano saw Jeff in a grocery store having no idea he had been released. She managed to get out of the store and run to her car without him seeing her.

9:01Speaker 1:On September 16th, while he was still awaiting trial, the Navy gave Jeff a less than honorable discharge. Later that same day, Jeff attempted to attack a woman named Christy Walker. She was sitting in her apartment when a hand reached in from behind the curtains and attempted to open that window the rest of the way. Christy screamed and the hand disappeared, but it left fingerprints which came back a match to Jeff. His bond was revoked and he was charged with breaking and entering. Dawn asked Jeff's parents if she could borrow $ 5, 000 to bond him out again, but she actually used the money to hire a moving company to load up her stuff and send it back to Michigan.

9:40Speaker 1:She returned to Flint with Jeffrey and gave whatever money she had left over back to the Gordons. In February of 1984, Jeff ended up taking a plea bargain, having his charges reduced to two counts of robbery and one count of burglary. He gave the judge a sob story about how he had compulsions and he hoped to get the help he needed. He was sentenced to four and a half years, and with time served, he was released on parole the following year. Jeff's arrest didn't completely shock Dawn.

10:11Speaker 1:Their old landlord had told her he believed Jeff was stealing women's undergarments. Then she found some of them in their trailer, but he promised her they weren't stolen. She still considered the possibility of reconciling after Jeff served his time. Jeff managed to get out on bond again before his trial and his parents paid for him to return to Michigan for Christmas in 1983. During that visit, Dawn wound up pregnant again. Once he went to prison, though, she filed for divorce and moved on. She met another man who she ended up marrying and he adopted her second child.

10:45Speaker 1:They ended up having two more children together. Jeff would maintain that the second child was not his, but Don claimed she had a paternity test done, and they were. Once Jeff was released on parole, he returned to Flint and started working for his family's sprinkler business. Buckler Automatic Lawn Sprinkler Company had quickly grown and held contracts with all of the McDonald's, Burger King, and Taco Bell restaurants in the Flint area. They also took over the sprinkler work for the Mott Estate, now called Applewood Estate. It's a historical site that was the former home of General Motors co-owner and mayor of Flint, Charles Stuart Mott. Jeff quickly showed his dark side when back in Flint. His brother Greg had gotten married and lived at his own place in town. One of their neighbors, Toni Tremblay, lived with her cousin and became friends with Jeff after he returned from Florida. By the summer of 1986, Jeff had become obsessed with Tony and one day she came home to find that he had broken into the house and left a bouquet of flowers and a note. If that wasn't creepy enough, he had cleaned their entire house, even

11:53Speaker 1:doing her and her cousin's laundry, folding it and putting it away. She confronted him and told him to leave her alone, then installed a padlock on her bedroom door only to come home to find it broken off a few days later. After that, she moved and never saw him again. It seems that Jeff turned his focus to another neighbor. For years, she spotted Jeff trying to peep in her windows, and she always reported the activity to his brother Greg. He always said he would take care of it and asked her not to call the police.

12:25Speaker 1:Even after moving, she believed Jeff was still peeping in her windows, but she never got a good look at the face of the man she saw. At that point, she did start calling the police, but they said they couldn't do anything without proof it was Jeff. So, she adopted a large dog and it would suddenly start barking for the first few weeks, then stopped and the woman never saw Jeff again. Margaret Fink was born on February 8, 1931, the second of five children born to Christian and Martha Fink.

12:54Speaker 1:She grew up in Detroit and after graduating from high school, she enrolled at Wheaton College in Illinois. She dropped out of school in 1949 and married a man named Stuart Eby. They had their first child, a daughter named Dale in 1951, then a son Mark in 1952. There was a gap of five years, then another son, Jonathan, in 1957, and finally a daughter named Margaret Lynn, who went by Lynn, in 1958. Margaret went back to school to finish her bachelor's degree after Mark was born. She continued at Wayne State University to get her master's degree and then received a Ph.D. in music from Michigan State University in 1971.

13:37Speaker 1:The family took many vacations, including two trips to Germany where Margaret did research for her doctorate. Margaret became a professor of music at the University of Michigan in Dearborn after receiving her Ph.D. Unfortunately, on April 9, 1975, Stewart suffered a fatal heart attack at only 46 years old. A few years later, with all of the children adults, she moved to Cedar Rapids and became the dean of the College of Humanities at the University of Northern Iowa.

14:07Speaker 1:It was in 1981 that she would return to Michigan, taking the job of provost and assistant chancellor at the University of Michigan in Flint. Margaret was not only an educator, she was a talented musician. She immersed herself in the music and arts community, becoming a sponsor at the Flynn Institute of Arts and organizing a festival to celebrate what would be Johann Sebastian Bach's 300th birthday. She even began working for the local classical music radio station. In 1986, Margaret was renting the two-story gatehouse at the Mod Estate.

14:42Speaker 1:It was the perfect location to host parties and was only a 15-minute walk to the university. On Friday, November 7th, Margaret had dinner at the home of Richard and Mary Newman, who she met at First Presbyterian Church. A few other educators and church members were there, and Margaret left the dinner at about 11 p.m. She had carpooled with a few other guests, and after she went into the gatehouse, they left. Margaret was supposed to pick up her granddaughter the following day, but never showed up. When Lynn returned home from work, she noticed her daughter still there and asked her husband what happened. He said she never showed up and didn't even call. Now, Lynn would say that was very unlike her mother to not show up like that, but she knew she kept herself very busy and assumed something had come up. After calling Margaret and leaving a message, she and her husband shrugged it off and went to bed.

15:34Speaker 1:It was Sunday afternoon that Margaret's absence would really sound the alarm. By the time two friends arrived at the gatehouse at 4pm, Margaret had already missed a 2pm concert she was scheduled to attend. The friends were there to help her transplant some geraniums to a greenhouse for the winter. When they went to knock on the front door, they found it ajar, but they closed it and knocked to let the woman know they were there. When there was no answer, they stepped inside and called her name. One of them crept up the stairs and that's when they found her, in her bedroom, which was covered in blood.

16:09Speaker 1:He raced back downstairs and called 911. Sergeant Gary Elford was the detective called to the scene just before 5 p.m. on November 9th. Charles Mott had died in 1973, but his widow, Ruth Mott, still lived in the 18-room estate. Elford assumed that it was Mrs. Mott who was deceased, and it wasn't until he arrived on the scene that he learned it was Margaret, who was renting the gatehouse. Mrs. Mott was out of town. A murder in Flint was not a surprise. In 1986, Flint had more murders per capita than Detroit, and Detroit was known as Murder City.

16:46Speaker 1:A murder at the Modest State was going to be a major story, though, so the Michigan State Police came in and handled the investigation. Outside the house was Margaret's 1980 Chevy Coupe. All of the doors and windows were checked, and other than the front door, none of them were unlocked or had been forced open. Inside, the place was extremely tidy. There were no signs of a struggle in the main living areas. On the dining room table was Margaret's purse and her keys. Upstairs, the bathroom was clean besides a partial fingerprint in blood next to the sink faucet.

17:20Speaker 1:Margaret's bedroom was a stark contrast to the rest of the house. There were pools of blood on the floor and mattress. A bathrobe was lying next to the body, also covered in blood. Margaret had been stabbed twice in the chest and her throat had been cut. The wound in her neck was so deep it nearly reached her spinal cord. The medical examiner determined that the wound had been caused by a serrated knife and the killer would have had to use it like a saw to create the wound he had. She was wearing a necklace that was embedded deep in the wound. One detail was that Margaret had been lying on an electric blanket which was turned all the way up. The heat caused the semen collected for evidence to degrade too much for any identifiable information to be recovered, at least at the time. The sample was frozen and stored in case future technology would allow the authorities to be able to use it. Once the house was finished being searched, it was realized that Margaret's ID was missing. Sergeant Dave King became the lead detective in the case. King called Lynn and told her they found someone deceased in her mother's bedroom, but they

18:29Speaker 1:had not positively identified the body. Lynn knew it was her mother. Nobody else would be there. Jonathan had heard about the murder on the news and called Dale. They all made their way to Flint. The following day, Jonathan and Dale ended up giving the authorities a positive identification of their mother. Nobody had any idea who would want their mother dead. She didn't lead a dangerous life and was a bit of a workaholic. Lynn told Sergeant King that a few years earlier she had been having marital issues, so she lived at the gatehouse with her mother for a few months. Lynn was working as a waitress and came home at three in the morning after a late shift to find the house a mess. Margaret was a very tidy person, so Lynn was surprised but thought maybe she was too tired to straighten up before going to bed.

19:19Speaker 1:Lynn also went to bed, only to be woken up by her mother yelling about her making a mess. That's when they realized that someone had come in after Margaret had gone to sleep and rummaged through the house. Margaret's underwear drawer was open, which meant the intruder had been in her room while she was sleeping. They called the police, who found a window open and footprints leading away from the house. Nobody was ever caught for the intrusion. That wasn't a lead that helped solve Margaret's murder. And after finding a list that the victim had made of her past lovers, detectives started running them down and interviewing them.

19:54Speaker 1:None of them stuck out as a valid suspect, and the case went cold. Brenda Fleming grew up in Flint, with her father working the assembly line of a GM factory his entire adult life. Her mother also worked for the company as a secretary. After graduating from high school, Brenda attended a technical school to become a medical assistant. In 1986, she worked at a medical center receiving and sorting lab specimens. On November 21st, two weeks after Margaret Eby's murder, Brenda left her shift at the clinic and went to a bowling alley with some friends to watch a local band. Not long before closing time, a young man walked over and asked her to dance. He introduced himself as Jeff Gorton. After the dance, they talked and seemed to hit it off. They parted ways, but a few weeks later, they both appeared at the same spot and started hanging out. Their relationship quickly escalated, and soon Jeff moved into Brenda's mobile home. That led to them purchasing a house together in February of 1988. Jeff proposed in October of 1989, and they were married on September 22nd the following year. They went to Niagara Falls for

21:07Speaker 1:their honeymoon. Brenda was swept off her feet by the attention that Jeff showed her. He noticed when she liked something and would surprise her with it later on. He seemed like the perfect man to settle down with. Of course, she didn't know anything about his past. He had told her he had been in trouble in Florida, but he claimed his landlord accused him of peeping, but they worked it out and the police were not involved. A far cry from the prison sentence he was actually given. By the beginning of 1991, Brenda was pregnant with their first child.

21:41Speaker 1:Nancy LePole was born on August 15, 1949 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She had worked for a television station in Minneapolis where she met a man named Art Ludwig. Art was 18 years older than Nancy and was separated from his wife, who he had seven children with. They had worked together and Art initially didn't like her. It was at an office Christmas party that they ended up talking and seemed to hit it off. Not that they started dating then, they went their separate ways only to run into each other at a local bar a while later and seemed to hit it off again. That's when they decided to go out on some dates and realized they really enjoyed each other's company. Nancy eventually became a flight attendant for North Central Airlines, which would eventually become Northwest Airlines, which would eventually merge with Delta Airlines. They waited until Art's divorce was finalized in 1977 to move in together and were married the following year. Due to Nancy's job, they were able to fly for free and eventually Art retired early and the couple did a lot of traveling. all over Europe, including Germany, before the Berlin Wall fell. They

22:49Speaker 1:went to Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. Back in Minnesota, they loved outdoor activities and bowling. On February 17, 1991, Nancy had a shift flying into Detroit in the evening and would have to stay overnight to catch her next flight out of the city in the morning. The airline had a contract with Hilton Hotels for their pilots and flight attendants to stay there during overnights. The contract required the hotel to provide them with rooms that were not on the ground floor so they wouldn't have to worry about someone trying to break in. The flight arrived in Detroit at about 8.30 p.m. and once everyone was off the plane, Nancy headed to the shuttle that would take departing passengers to the Hilton Hotel. When Nancy boarded the shuttle, another flight attendant was already sitting near the front and Nancy took a seat right behind her. The rest of the shuttle was empty. That made it weird when a man boarded the shuttle and took the seat right next to Nancy. Nancy and her co-worker chatted during the trip to the hotel while the man remained silent. When they got to the Hilton, they all departed and the two

23:55Speaker 1:flight attendants checked in. The man did not. Both of the women's rooms were on the third floor and they agreed to meet in the lobby at 8 a.m. to ride back to the airport together. Then they parted ways and Nancy headed into room 354. The next morning, Nancy didn't show up to meet her co-worker, and after waiting a while, the other attendant decided to head to the airport without her. It wasn't until about 12.40pm that the maid got to room 354. It was past checkout time, so when she saw the Do Not Disturb sign hanging on the door, she assumed the guest had forgotten to take it down when they left. She knocked just in case, and when there was no answer, she opened the door.

24:38Speaker 1:It was dark in the room with the curtains pulled shut and when she hit the light switch, nothing happened. She walked across the room and opened the curtains to reveal Nancy still in bed, covered in blood. When she called for help, another hotel employee raced to the room and also tried the light switch, but the light didn't come on. They realized that the lamp in the room had been unplugged from the wall. After checking for a pulse and finding none, the employee closed up the room and called the police. Now, the Detroit Metropolitan Airport is actually just outside of Detroit in a small city called Romulus.

25:14Speaker 1:Officers from the Romulus Police Department soon arrived, followed by Detective Dan Snyder. In the room were two beds. On one of them, there was a large blood stain, and on the other, Nancy's body was face down with her backside sticking up in the air. She was covered with a blanket, and only her head and feet were sticking out. There was a partial footprint in blood by the door and there was bloody water in the tub, making the detective assume the killer had showered after the murder. Nancy had multiple stab wounds as well as defensive wounds from putting up a fight. Some of the wounds on her hands were so severe her fingers had nearly been severed.

25:52Speaker 1:Her face had been beaten and her throat cut. Then the investigator noticed that there was no luggage in the room, no suitcase, no clothing, not even a handbag with her ID. Not knowing who the victim was, it was impossible to say what she would have had with her, though. Detective Snyder called the Michigan State Police for assistance with the investigation. The medical examiner found a large men's tube sock stuffed in Nancy's mouth. It was determined that there were scratches on her face from her own fingernails, likely trying to get the gag out of her mouth as she choked to death on her own blood. There were also tiny, shallow knife wounds on her face where the killer had likely poked her with the knife as a means of torture.

26:35Speaker 1:The wound to her neck was all the way to her spine and was determined to have been made with a serrated knife using a sawing motion. There was semen found inside of her and on the surface of her body. There was evidence that Nancy was raped while on her back on the first mattress. Based on the amount of blood on that mattress, it was believed that Nancy bled out on that bed, then was moved to the other bed and positioned with her buttocks in the air. Evidence showed that Nancy was raped again on that mattress after her death. The killer had smeared his semen around on her buttocks. After getting Nancy's identity from her employer, they were able to determine that she also wore a watch and a wedding ring, which were both missing along with the luggage they knew she would have definitely had with her.

27:22Speaker 1:Art was first notified that something was wrong when he got a call at home in Minneapolis from Nancy's supervisor saying she missed her flight out of Detroit. Soon after, a local police officer arrived and informed him that a body was discovered at the Detroit airport Hilton and they needed him to identify the remains. After the positive ID, investigators began the arduous task of tracking down witnesses. Most of the people in the hotel at the time had left and traveled back to destinations in other parts of the country. Fortunately, a number of them were other employees of either Northwest Airlines or other airlines and could be tracked down a little easier. Northwest flight attendant Frederick Neubel arrived at the Hilton on the shuttle prior to Nancy.

28:07Speaker 1:He checked into his room number 353 and settled in to watch some television before going to sleep. By the time he turned the TV on, it was about 9pm, and he heard two high-pitched sounds. He thought it could be screams or could be the squeals of an excited child. He looked into the hall through the peephole and didn't see anything. The sound didn't happen again, so he finished watching television and went to sleep. Another flight attendant, Phil Arcia, checked into the Hilton at about 10.15 p.m., and once in his room on the second floor, he realized the heater didn't work and it was extremely cold in February in Michigan. When he alerted the front desk, the only other room they had that was available was on the first floor. Despite the policy of Northwest Airlines to not give staff rooms on the first floor, Phil was tired and he took the room. In that room, someone had left the heater on full blast, so he went over to the unit to turn it down. It sat directly under the window, and it was there that he saw a man out in the parking lot loading a burgundy suitcase into the trunk of his car, a brown or

29:13Speaker 1:gold Monte Carlo. Northwest Airlines had a policy that flight attendants were required to have burgundy luggage to match the company colors. The man did not look like a flight attendant, though. Phil was surprised to see the man leave his trunk wide open and then return to the hotel. A minute later, he appeared in the parking lot with an armload of clothing. Phil could see that one of the articles of clothing was a beige overcoat with a burgundy lining, something that would belong to a Northwest flight attendant. After three more trips between the hotel and the car, the man slammed the trunk closed and drove away. Phil thought it was odd behavior, but didn't think it was worthy of a call to the front desk, so he went to sleep.

29:58Speaker 1:There was a former Hilton shuttle bus driver who had been fired for yelling at a Northwest flight attendant who became a suspect but had an alibi. The next time Phil Arcea was in an overnight in Detroit, he remembered hearing about the murder and realized he should tell the authorities about the strange guy in the parking lot. He was able to get the details to a sketch artist and described the vehicle the man was driving. Another flight attendant would give a description of a man she had an encounter with in the Detroit area and it matched the sketch. It still gave them no name, though. One of the hotel staff's boyfriend drove a gold Monte Carlo, but he was also cleared. Running DNA at the time took months and didn't provide them with a match to anyone they had taken DNA from. Despite the search, as well as Art Ludwig's efforts to keep the story in the media, this case also went cold. Wally Gorton was born in October of 1991, eight months after Nancy's murder.

30:58Speaker 1:Jeff and Brenda welcomed their second child, a daughter named Jenny, in May of 1996. They settled into a typical suburban family life, with Jeff moving up at the family company, being a reliable, non-drinking husband and helpful father. He became close with Brenda's family as his own seemed to be less interested in family events. Jeff, Brenda, and the kids went on vacations with Brenda's family, and they spent every Fourth of July at a family cabin. It was in 1997 that tragedy struck the Gorton family. Dan Gorton committed suicide on October 10, 1997, in the driveway of his home in Flint. He had a history of depression and alcohol abuse and was hoping to reconcile with his ex-wife.

31:43Speaker 1:When he found out she was seeing someone else, he went out to his car in the driveway and let it fill with carbon monoxide. His ex-wife found his body two days later. As the 90s turned into the 2000s, Jeff continued his life keeping his secret activities from the world around him. Nobody knew about his obsession with women's undergarments, one that had escalated so far that he was now raping and killing before taking his trophies. The Flint Police Department started a cold case squad in 2001, partly to take a new look at the evidence in the Margaret Eby case. With more than a decade of advancement in DNA technology, they wanted to get the samples out of the freezer and see if they could catch the killer.

32:28Speaker 1:The semen collected back in 1986 had a note attached to it that said it was unusable, but that was by 1986 standards. The investigator didn't believe that was the case in 2001. He had the semen and blood samples from the scene pulled from cold storage and sent to the new DNA lab at the Michigan State Police. Once the lab was done, they had a full DNA profile of the killer and it eliminated anybody who had previously been a suspect. Then, when the profile was put into the system, it came back with a match to another case.

33:03Speaker 1:It was the unsolved murder of Nancy Ludwig. Knowing that the two cases were linked was great so they could compare evidence, but it still didn't give them the identity of the killer. They went back and asked for DNA from anyone who had any relation to the victims, but there were no matches. They weren't aware that the person who had killed Margaret and Nancy had almost no connection to them. The lower priority suspects would be people who worked for subcontractors of the Mott estate, including Buckler Automatic Lawn Sprinkler Company. Before they could start collecting samples from those people, 9-11 happened and cold case work was put on the back burner. Investigators in Flint had sent the partial fingerprint that had been left at the 1986 murder scene to the FBI, but they were suddenly busy with national security and it got set aside for the time being.

33:56Speaker 1:In February of 2002, the FBI lab was able to upload the fingerprint into their national system, which produced 20 possible matches. After a visual comparison, the only one that perfectly matched belonged to Jeffrey Gordon, who had been convicted in Orlando, Florida in 1983. Despite his conviction being in Florida, investigators learned that he had returned to Michigan after his release and was living near Flint. He also worked for Buckler Automatic Lawn Sprinkler Company. When they dug into Jeff's history, they found reports from the prison in Florida saying he had been placed in administrative segregation for inappropriate contact with staff.

34:36Speaker 1:He had used his foot to reach outside of his cell in an attempt to rearrange the employee's clothing. Investigators saw that his name had been run through the system multiple times over the years, but that could have been for something as simple as a traffic stop. In 1995, he was caught on surveillance at a department store walking up behind a woman who was bending over and lifting her skirt to look at her underwear. She hadn't noticed, but the security guard watching the camera did, and they called the police. Jeff was charged with fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct, but pleaded to disorderly conduct and was sentenced to 90 days in jail. That sentence was held in abeyance, which basically meant he was put on hold and Jeff didn't serve any time. That likely made him able to keep the arrest a secret from his family. Because that charge was a misdemeanor, he wasn't required to have his prints put in the system, which is why nothing came up when the partial print was run in the state system.

35:36Speaker 1:Further investigation revealed that Buckler's sprinklers had been out working on the system at the Modestate on November 5th, only two days before Margaret's murder. The crew had to access the sprinkler controls that just happened to be in the basement of the gatehouse. It turned out that there was a hidden entrance to that basement on another part of the property, but after Margaret found one of the mod estate staff hanging out in the basement one day, she asked for the opening to be locked. It's possible that Jeff had unlocked the outside access to the basement when he was there servicing the sprinkler system. That led detectives to put Jeff under surveillance, hoping they would find an opportunity to collect some discarded DNA, since they didn't have a warrant and Jeff could easily say no if they asked.

36:21Speaker 1:They were keeping an eye out for any silverware he ate with or anything he drank out of. A cigarette butt would also work, but Jeff didn't smoke. The biggest hurdle was that the sprinkler business wasn't really active in the winter months. That meant Jeff got unemployment and stayed at home most of the time. After a few days, Jeff and Brenda took the kids out to the skating rink and the surveillance team followed. Inside the business, one of the officers saw Jeff drink some soda and toss the cup in the garbage. He retrieved the cup and handed it off so it could be taken straight to the state police lab. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough DNA retrieved from the styrofoam cup to pull a full profile. There were seven matching markers, which wouldn't be conclusive at trial, but it was enough to get a warrant to arrest Jeff and search his house. Despite having the ability to arrest Jeff, investigators chose to bring him in for a voluntary interview to see what he would say. On February 9, 2002, detectives arrived at Jeff's home and asked him to come to the station for questioning. They mentioned it was for

37:29Speaker 1:a past assault case, but they noted on the way to the station he didn't ask any questions about the case. At the station, the investigators told Jeff that they were investigating the murder of Margaret Eby, and his name had come up since he had worked on the sprinklers at the estate. They wanted to keep the interview as casual as possible, not letting on that they knew he was the killer. After reading him his rights and confirming a little about his past, Jeff claimed he didn't think he had ever worked at the Mott estate. That actually helped the detectives because Jeff couldn't then claim the bloody fingerprint in the bathroom came from a legitimate reason, like he cut himself and Margaret let him clean up in her bathroom.

38:09Speaker 1:He eventually suggested he might have been there once, but it was years ago, so his memory wasn't perfect. He did clarify that if he was there, he had no reason to enter any of the houses. They asked a bunch of questions about where he might have been on the Mott property and what he knew about Margaret. They talked to him about his past, specifically his conviction in Florida. Jeff reduced his criminal record to having been in trouble for, quote, stealing some women's clothing. He then admitted that he had stolen some articles of clothing from his family members and relatives of friends when he was younger. The interview shifted to information about Nancy's murder. They asked him if he had ever been to the Hilton near the airport. Jeff claimed that he couldn't afford the Hilton. They asked if he'd ever just been there, not as a guest. He said no. They asked about his vehicles and he told them he drove a convertible 1964 Dodge Dart and he had a brown conversion van. When they asked about his past vehicles, he said he still owned a 1982 Monte Carlo that he got in 1988 and drove until around 2000.

39:16Speaker 1:After that, the detectives decided to show their hand. One of them handed Jeff the report that said his fingerprint was found in Margaret's bathroom. Jeff denied he was there and couldn't explain how his fingerprint got there. They told him they had also matched his DNA and Jeff said again that he didn't do it and asked for a lawyer. Jeff was required to give a DNA sample based on the warrant and once that was done he was placed under arrest for two counts of murder. A few days later, the lab would produce a report with a full DNA profile from Jeff showing he was the perfect match for the DNA left on both Margaret and Nancy. The same time Jeff was picked up at home, other officers picked up Brenda and Jeff's first wife Dawn and brought them to the station for questioning. Dawn told the investigators about her marriage to Jeff, about his arrest and then her divorce from him. She said she had not stayed in contact with him and he had not had any contact with their children since his arrest in Florida. It was at the police station that Brenda and Jeffrey Jr. would meet for the first time. Brenda would later say that

40:24Speaker 1:Jeffrey looked just like her son, Wally. When interviewed, Brenda would deny that Jeff had any fetishes, only come in clean a few weeks later that she did know Jeff was obsessed with women's undergarments. She didn't know that Jeff had been arrested in Florida and didn't know anything about the arrest in the department store in 1995. It was only then that Brenda was informed that her husband was suspected of having killed Margaret Eby and Nancy Ludwig. When Jeff's parents and siblings were interviewed, they all claimed they knew nothing about his past problems. It seemed unbelievable that they would have no idea why Jeff had been in prison in Florida and also why he received a dishonorable discharge from the Navy. They had also spoken with his brother's neighbors who said they had reported Jeff's behavior to his brother. They were either in denial or just didn't care.

41:16Speaker 1:At Jeff's house, a team was searching it from top to bottom. There were a number of women's underwear and pantyhose tucked under the mattress in the master bedroom. In a drawer on Jeff's side of the bed, more women's undergarments were stuffed inside. In the bedroom, they found a camcorder pointed at the bed and a number of VHS tapes. When the tapes were viewed, they had a number of scenes that proved that Jeff was a predator. There was a shot from a camera having been hidden in a woman's restroom, showing a woman using the facilities. There was a shot of his neighbor mowing the lawn in shorts and a bathing suit top. Some had what looked like family outings at first, but would end up with zoomed-in shots of women's buttocks or crotches. Then there were some tapes that were nothing but clips from movies and TV shows where women were either undressed or changing their clothes.

42:07Speaker 1:On other tapes, they found shots of Jeff on the bed trying on women's undergarments and masturbating, and there were even shots of Brenda nude, seemingly unaware that she was being recorded. In the garage, they found five 18-gallon plastic totes that all contained women's undergarments. In the attic there were more boxes and a duffel bag so stuffed it couldn't be zipped. The Monte Carlo was towed to the Flint Police Department so it could be searched. Police would end up finding almost 3,000 articles of women's clothing in Jeff's home. Many of the items were tagged with names.

42:44Speaker 1:Sometimes a full name, others just a first or last name, and even some with just an address. Some had a description like Linda Halloween 96 or clothesline RR track. Some were from relatives like the ones that said Cindy Brenda's cousin, Randy's wife or Brenda's mom. Many of the victims were customers of the family business. They would become friendly with Jeff when he was installing their sprinklers and allow him access to the house when they weren't around. He would have free reign to snag a few garments which usually wouldn't raise any alarms. Many of the women who owned the clothing were tracked down and questioned about where they knew Jeff. None of them wanted the clothing back. Jeff's trial for the murder of Nancy Ludwig began in August of 2002. Jeff pleaded not guilty and his defense was supposed to be that he had in fact had consensual sex with Nancy then someone else came into the hotel room and murdered her. Partway through the trial, something happened that made his lawyer unable to tell that story or allow him to take the stand. First, the prosecutor presented their case with witnesses and DNA, to which the defense

43:58Speaker 1:barely countered. People thought that the defense was tanking the trial because it was his last case as a public defender, but that wasn't true. And due to attorney-client privilege, the truth wouldn't come out for months. Ultimately, the jury found Jeffrey Gordon guilty of the murder of Nancy Ludwig, and he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The trial for Margaret Eby's murder was scheduled to start in January of 2003, but Jeff ended up pleading no contest, and he was sentenced to another life term with no possibility of parole. It was on May 16, 2003, that Jeff filed a motion for a new trial due to an inadequate defense by his public defender. During the motion, Jeff was able to testify about what he claimed really happened on the night Nancy was killed. He claimed that he was with a man named James Kleppinger, and they went to the airport Hilton to pick up flight attendants for sex. He claimed that he met Nancy, they talked for a while, and then went to a room where they had consensual sex. Afterward, he took a shower and James showed up at the room looking for him. James

45:08Speaker 1:got angry that he had been left out and by the time Jeff got out of the shower, Nancy was dead. Jeff said he wanted to call an ambulance, of course, but James said it was too late, so they made it look like a robbery and left. James was a convenient patsy since, by then, he was already in prison for raping and murdering a woman. Understandably, the judge didn't believe the story and denied the motion. So they were together and only James committed the murder but was magically not seen around the car when Jeff was loading it with Nancy's belongings or when he left the parking lot?

45:43Speaker 1:I don't think so. The biggest problem that motion created for Jeff was that it ended the attorney-client privilege that his public defender was bound to and he was able to tell exactly what had happened during the trial. Jeff had initially told him the story of being at the hotel with James, and as far as the attorney knew, and based on James' background, it was possible so he was able to use it as a defense. He had only skimmed the medical examiner's report, so when he testified about the injuries to Nancy's body, it seemed unlikely that someone else could have been able to do that while Jeff was in the shower. There was also the evidence that Nancy had been raped again after her death. So the lawyer met with Jeff in private and questioned the story.

46:28Speaker 1:At that point, he said the normally mild manner to Jeff snapped and started ranting about all the women involved in the trial and how he would kill all of them like he killed Margaret and Nancy. Then he flat out confessed to the killings. He even told the lawyer that he had Nancy's clothing in his collection, but it was labeled as Nell North. The N and L in Nell representing Nancy Ludwig and the North meaning Northwest Airlines. Then he went on to confess to having killed other women in Ohio and Florida. At that point, the lawyer couldn't legally use Jeff's story as a defense since he knew it was a lie. He also couldn't legally allow Jeff to testify knowing he was going to commit perjury.

47:11Speaker 1:So he just had no defense and Jeff was convicted. After hearing the lawyer's story, a detective would end up going back through the log from the clothing found in Jeff's possession and finding a pair of purple underwear labeled Nell North. If Jeff Gordon killed other women, their identities have never been uncovered. It's very unlikely that someone like Jeff, who becomes compelled to commit violence against women, went as long as he did between victims. Along with the thousands of trophies he had, many surely just stolen based on opportunity, it's still hard to believe that not a single other piece of clothing isn't a trophy from another murder. He likely has more victims that we'll never know about, but fortunately the monster is locked in a cage and can't create any more victims. Thanks for listening to This Is Monsters.

48:03Speaker 1:New episodes are uploaded twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays. There are occasional bonus episodes covering unsolved cases in criminal history. If you have a suggestion for a case you think I should cover, leave it in the comments. You can also follow the channel on Instagram at thisis underscore monsters and purchase merch at thisismonsters.com. Thanks so much and be safe.