>> if it wasn't for forensics, i can tell you right now janice dodson would be walking the street. she assassinated bruce dodson. he didn't even have a chance. i wouldn't call her a black widow. i would call her a greedy assassin. a murder victim's son was the first to suspect that his mother's death was the work of a serial killer. investigators hoped that cells found on a styrofoam cup, marks on a water faucet, and the clues left on a secret video tape would reveal the true identity of a man who had eluded police for over a decade. by 1991, 42-year-old nancy ludwig found what she was looking for in life, a husband who adored her and a career in the airline business. >> she had always wanted to be a flight attendant, from when she

was a young girl. very outgoing, spontaneous, adventuresome. that's why she made such a good flight attendant. >> during one of her out-of-town trips, an airline employee called art ludwig with some bad news. >> it was some woman explained to me that there had been a problem in detroit and i should get myself ready and get out to the airport and they would meet me there and we would fly to detroit. >> nancy ludwig was found dead in her hotel room near the detroit airport. she had been stabbed to death. the evidence revealed she fought valiantly against her attacker. >> she had such extreme defense wounds on her hands. you just couldn't help by

getting a real feel for what she went through.ut getting a real feel for what she went through. and that isn't really always the case at a crime scene. >> nancy's hands had been bound with twine. >> this particular kind of twine is most frequently used in gardening and landscaping. >> biological evidence revealed that nancy had been sexually assaulted. and there were signs the killer spent a considerable amount of time inside the hotel room. >> we found a bloody washcloth by the basin, and we could see that he had showered in the tub. he could not have walked out of the hilton hotel in bloody clothing. >> one of the most unusual aspects of the crime was that nancy's personal belongings were missing. >> she arrived at the hotel with at least two suitcases and a purse. all of her jewelry, her watch, earrings were all removed from the room, including the trash can liner from the trash can. >> on the night of the murder, another guest at the hotel noticed a man carrying airline-type luggage to his car. >> right outside his window,

underneath the parking lot light, was what appeared to be a monte carlo with somebody carrying toward an open trunk what looked to be northwest gear -- suitcases and whatnot. >> amazingly, there were 2,800 monte carlo automobiles registered in the detroit area. >> every one of those 2,800 owners we ran lien to determine whether there were warrants or whether they had criminal records and tried to eliminate them that way. >> investigators learned that a hotel employee's boyfriend owned a monte carlo. when questioned, the employee behaved suspiciously. >> she was caught in a lie. she claimed that a call had come in to nancy's room. she claimed to have known nancy from previous trips. actually, it was nancy's first trip into metro, surprisingly enough, so she couldn't possibly

have known her from a previous trip. there were no calls into her room. >> there appeared to be very little security at the hotel. >> the way they assigned rooms to flight people, it was often done with keys just sitting there at the desk with names on little pieces of paper. so you could come in and stand there and read names and rooms that had been assigned, so you knew who hadn't come in yet. i mean, it was an absolute terrible system. >> outside doors were left open at night. it was more convenient for the guests, but it certainly wasn't good security. >> investigators generated a list of potential suspects that included everyone who had access to the hotel. >> we ultimately had a list of over 22,000 names. on that list were 1,700 tips, people who flew into metro airport the fight that nancy ludwig did. people who flew out after nancy ludwig was killed. the 2,800 monte carlos.

>> a police artist developed this sketch of the man in the hotel's parking lot. investigators hoped it would narrow the list of 22,000 names to one. in small business you have to work hard, know your numbers, and stay focused. i was determined to create new york city's first self-serve frozen yogurt franchise. and now you have 42 locations. the more i put into my business the more i get out of it. like 5x your rewards when you make select business purchases with your ink plus card from chase. and with ink, i choose how to redeem my points for things like cash or travel. how's the fro-yo? just peachy...literally. ink from chase. so you can.

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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 the bedroom of her home. >> 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, lawn care people, electricians, painters. >> after her murder, investigators found a partial fingerprint on her bathroom faucet, but it didn't match any known criminal offenders in the michigan database.

investigators also found evidence of sexual assault. 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 news, we still don't -- can't give you a suspect. >> the dna profile of their killer did not match any of the known criminal offenders in the national database. >> the dna match didn't tell us who that person was.

that was our job, to find him. >> but it wouldn't be easy. margarette eby's 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 employee's boyfriend who owned the monte carlo had an alibi for the night of nancy ludwig's murder, and he was no longer considered a suspect. >> most of the times, killers are pretty stupid, and we catch them for some pretty stupid reason. he was very clever, very clever and very thorough. >> as the years passed, all 22,000 leads in the case were tracked down in one way or another. and all were dead ends.

margarette eby's family, as well as nancy ludwig's, were losing faith in the idea that the killer would be apprehended. >> after ten years, i guess i thought we had done just about everything we could. to this day, it remains a mystery to me why -- why it didn't work. ♪

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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 eby's bathroom. >> the crime lab was able to identify a small print on the faucet knob in the sink of that bathroom. the faucet knob was actually taken off, taken back to the crime lab, where the fingerprint was photographed and the knob 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 jeffrey gorton, who was now living in a suburb of flint, michigan. >> he was a married man, wife and children. would appear from all the outward signs to be perfectly normal, your next-door neighbor. >> gorton lived just a short distance from margarette eby and owned a gold monte carlo 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 easily explained why his fingerprint would have been found inside eby's home. >> you're working with metal sprinkler equipment and maybe there's a sharp edge and you slice your finger. you come in, you wash your hands, you leave a bloody fingerprint. it's not a reason to go to jail. you haven't done anything. you just left a bloody fingerprint. >> gorton's fingerprint was in the florida database because of numerous arrests for attacks on women. >> he actually had assaulted several of them by walking up behind them, knocking them physically to the ground, and

attempting to remove their slips from them while they were on the ground. >> that's what happened to marie gagliano as she unloaded groceries from her car. >> he had a snarly look on his face. he threw me down. he grabbed me by my ankles and he started dragging me. he dragged me about 15 or 20 feet. i was screaming, i mean, blood-curdling screams. he ripped my slip off and he started running. >> after that assault, police found hundreds of pieces of women's underwear in his home. >> this is a dangerous guy. he's knocking women down, he's dragging them into bushes, he's stealing their clothes, he's breaking into their houses. this is someone who's pretty much out of control. >> gorton served some prison time for these assaults in

florida before moving back to michigan. since both murder victims had been sexually assaulted and investigators had dna of the killer, they wanted to know whether it was gorton's dna. so they put gorton under a 24-hour surveillance. they followed him to a local roller skating rink where he took his children. undercover officers watched gorton eat pizza and drink soda from a styrofoam cup. when gorton left, an officer rushed to the table, confiscated gorton's cup, and took it to the forensics lab. the sample was tested immediately. >> dna is like any other biological molecule, subject to degradation. and one of the things that will degrade dna a little bit faster is a fair amount of heat. >> there were more than enough epithelial cells on the cup for

testing but this caused problems. >> the initial dna analysis on the cup was a profile that showed a mixture. >> meaning that more than one person had used the cup. >> we had hoped that we would pick up dna just from the individual that drank out of the cup, but there was some indications that there was dna from more than one person there. >> but pcr dna testing showed a strong association between the dna on the cup and the biological evidence from the two crime scenes. and that was enough to get a search warrant for jeffrey gorton's home. there investigators found hundreds of women's undergarments, panties, and hose. they also found a disturbing videotape.

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they have the fastest, most reliable internet. which is perfect for me, because i think everything should just work. works? works. works! works? works. works. when investigators searched jeffrey gorton's home, they found women's lingerie everywhere, in boxes, under his mattress. many had labels with women's names and descriptions. and they found a videotape which

featured gorton modeling women's 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 women's 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 you're attracted to? >> mostly just the hose, i guess. >> do you still feel those strong fetish desires to this day? i mean, is that something that's -- >> yeah, i've been seeing a psychiatrist for it for a little while while i was on my own. >> gorton denied he was ever inside margarette eby's home. when he did, investigators confronted him with fingerprint evidence. >> do you know where that fingerprint came from? >> no. >> 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, there's no question that you're the person that's 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 didn't do it. so -- i just need to see an attorney now. because i know i didn't do anything and i need to -- >> when gorton asked for a lawyer, the interview stopped, but not before they collected his dna sample. dna testing confirmed what the first test suggested, that jeffrey gorton had sexually assaulted and presumably killed nancy ludwig and margarette eby. prosecutors think gorton entered margarette eby's home through an unlocked door and waited for her. when she returned from a dinner

party, he attacked. after the murder, gorton washed in the bathroom and removed most of the evidence, but left behind his right thumbprint on the water faucet. five years later, gorton struck again, this time in detroit. some think he had an obsession for flight attendants. he went to a hotel near the airport, waited in the third-floor stairwell, and saw nancy ludwig walking towards her room. after the murder, he showered, changed his clothes, and stole nancy's belongings, possibly as 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. >> i'm afraid of him. i'm glad he's locked up for the rest of his life. he is the absolutely most frightening person that i've ever encountered because he was random, because he was so secretive, because he was so ordinary. >> author tom henderson wrote about this case in "blood justice" and thinks there are other victims. >> my feeling is that someday, somebody's going to be running a dna sample that kicks up jeffrey gorton's name. it may be more than one or two. it might be quite a few. >> it still took a fingerprint or something very basic and maybe less high-tech, if you want to call it that, than dna testing to solve the crime.

>> without science and the new technology that's available, both these homicides would remain unsolved and probably remain unsolved and probably remain unsolved forever. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com when a ship's captain turned up dead after a raging storm, some said his death was a tragic accident. an eyewitness told police it was murder. but something on this videotape raised questions about who was telling the truth. venice, louisiana, like its namesake in italy, is a place where life revolves around the water. the small town marks the spot where the mississippi river empties into the gulf of mexico. locals call it the end of the