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The Murder Book: A True Crime Podcast
Each week, The Murder Book will present unsolved cases, missing persons, notorious crimes, controversial cases, and serial killers, exploring details of the crime scenes and the murderer's childhood. Some episodes are translated into Spanish as well. The podcast is produced and hosted by Kiara Coyle.
The Murder Book: A True Crime Podcast
Jeffery Gorton's Deadly Secret V: : Murder at the Airport Hilton
Murder can happen anywhere, even in the seemingly secure confines of an airport hotel filled with airline personnel. In this chilling episode of Murder Book, we delve into the brutal killing of Northwest flight attendant Nancy Ludwig during what should have been a routine overnight stay at the Detroit Airport Hilton.
The horror begins with multiple sightings of a suspicious man lurking through the hallways of a hotel predominantly occupied by airline crews. When experienced flight attendant Nancy Ludwig fails to appear for her morning shuttle, no one imagines the nightmare waiting behind the door of Room 354. What crime scene specialist Lynn Helton discovers there will haunt her for the rest of her career—a scene of such extreme violence that it "hung in the air and shouted at you."
Detective Dan Snyder, a methodical investigator with an unlikely background in newspaper circulation, arrives to find evidence of torture, sexual assault, and a killer who took time to shower before fleeing with his victim's belongings. The meticulous nature of the crime points to a predator of frightening calculation, who somehow managed to blend into an environment designed for transient airline employees. Most disturbing are the witness accounts—multiple flight attendants and hotel guests who encountered the killer before and possibly after the murder, yet couldn't prevent the tragedy or immediately identify him.
What makes this case particularly chilling is how the killer exploited the vulnerabilities inherent in the airline industry's routine—the predictable schedules, the generic hotel rooms, and the trust extended to those who appear to belong. Follow us through the painstaking investigation as detectives gather evidence that will take years and significant advances in forensic science to ultimately yield results. This isn't just a murder mystery; it's a sobering glimpse into how predators move among us, hiding behind ordinary appearances while harboring extraordinary malice.
Welcome to the Murder Book. I'm your host, kiara, and this is Part 5 of Jeffrey Gordon's Deadly Secret. Let's begin. M Johnson, a Northwest flight attendant, had a long layover in Detroit during the day on Sunday February 17th. On Sunday February 17th, the airline had a contract with the Hilton Airport Inn, which was across I-94 from Metropolitan Airport on Wick Road. Large blocks of rooms were reserved for use by flight attendants and pilots on layover, with anywhere from 50 to 100 Northwest employees checking in each day Between Northwest and three other airlines. About 90% of the hotel's 268 rooms were reserved for flight personnel. Mostly overs involved spending a night, but some were just for the day.
Speaker 1:Johnson was on what was called a sit. She was with the crew on a DC-10 out of Minneapolis and since they were laying over for five hours, the company was required to provide a hotel room for them to rest in. Her crew, of course, got off the airport shuttle, ran and entered the lobby At the front desk. They didn't find a clerk, but they found their keys easily enough. A sign-in sheet was sitting on the counter and the day clerk had prepared the sheet listing a job description, flight number, estimated arrival and departure times. The first shift clerk also assigned room numbers. The Hilton used Vanguard door locks, which required plastic carts that were the predecessor to today's swipe carts. They had holes punched in them instead of a strip along one side. The Northwest employees were supposed to show their badges, sign in and get the room keys, but on the morning of the 17th the keys were just sitting there for the grabbing next to the sheet. Johnson's crew joked about the lax security. Well, didn't joke exactly. Call it a joke On overnight stays. For security purposes, northwest prohibited the Hilton from assigning employees rooms on the first floor. It was too easy for a thief to get in by a window. But first floor rooms were okay for daytime sits and that's what Johnson crew got.
Speaker 1:Johnson didn't feel like sitting around the room with the other three. She wanted to get a workout in, but it was a lousy, blustery winter day out. So she went to the hotel's workout room, but it was packed. So she decided to go for a run on the hotel's four-story stairwell. Nothing like running stairs to get the heart pumping and the pose elevated. She would stay at the hotel, or she had stayed at that hotel many times and was well-versed with the stairwell. She ran up for flights, walked then back down to save the pounding on her knees, then ran back up. She did this repeatedly.
Speaker 1:About 1.30 pm, near the end of her workout, she started what she called her cool-down phase. She finished running on the top floor and planned to walk the two hallways of the L on the fourth floor to the opposite stairwell, walk down to three, then walk the hallways to the opposite stairwell and continue in that fashion until she got to the ground floor. Something cut her cool down short. She opened the doorway on the third floor and came face to face with a young man. He was near the concession vending area and carrying a canvas bag. He had sandy hair and was wearing jeans and tennis shoes. Something about him, beyond his just suddenly being there on the opposite side of the doorway, startled her. She walked past him and, instead of continuing as planned, she went straight to her room. Something felt wrong to me and I quit my workout, she says. When she entered her room, one of her co-workers said, oh, you're done early and she said yeah, I ran into something and I felt uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:Ling Ellisworth checked in with Martha Hook and they both were flight attendants, and when they went up together to their rooms on the third floor. They both put their things in their rooms and then walked down the hallway to the ice machine. There was a guy acting odd at the candy machine. He had sandy hair, was wearing blue jeans and tennis shoes, holding a duffel bag close to his body. He didn't seem to be looking at candy choices. It was more like he was hiding his face. He was almost pressed to the machine his back to them. They got their eyes and walked back to their rooms. Ellis Worth could hear the man walking down the carpeted hallway behind them. When she got in her room she looked out through her peephole. The man was standing with his back to her door, staring at Hook's door across the hall, and then he moved on.
Speaker 1:Monday night, upon arriving home in Minneapolis, ann Johnson got a call from her father. He wanted to know did you hear what happened in Detroit? Lynn Nelms, like Nancy Ludwig, was an add-on flight attendant for Northwest. She wasn't part of a regular crew but was added to full flights to fulfill staffing requirements or added to flight segments at mealtimes. In industry lingo, she would be either a meal chaser or an aircraft chaser. She would be either a mule chaser or an aircraft chaser. Like Ludwig, she was the only crew member of her flight staying over in Detroit, like Ludwig.
Speaker 1:About 8.45 pm Sunday night she made her way by herself through the terminal to the driveway out front to away the airport Hilton shuttle van. The van pulled up in the curb, the driver got out, put her back in the storage area in the rear of the van and Nelms got on sitting directly behind the driver's seat. She was the only one on board. Then Lewick got on and sat directly behind her. Nelms knew her but didn't recognize her because Louis had stopped over to avoid hitting her head as she entered the van and Nancy from her seat asked is that you, lynn? And Nelms answered yes. Who is it Turning to look? Because it was dark in the van and she said it's me, it's Nancy, and so they say hi. A man came on board and, though the van was nearly empty, sat next to Nancy On the 10-minute drive to the Hilton. Nelms and Ludwig caught each other up on recent flights and how things were going.
Speaker 1:Nancy's day had been a bitch. Weather delayed her flight out of Minneapolis. She got to Las Vegas late, too much racing around. She was whipped At 41, maybe she was getting a little old for this add-on business and they talk about a mutual friend. The man sat silent. Nums thought it odd that he would sit next to someone on a nearly empty van, especially if he didn't know who he was sitting next to. Since he didn't join the conversation, it was clear he didn't know Nancy. Nelm thought he looked stern. He had a look on his face that she would remember for years. She said he just looked mad and looked intense and he was just so focused, she would say more than a decade later. And he kept looking sideways at Nancy. And Lynn was sure of one thing that he was not an airline employee. Even given a bad day, a bad flight with demanding passengers, no attendant would have sat there silently. He would have had something to contribute to the conversation At the hotel.
Speaker 1:The three passengers got out. Nancy and Lynn got their bags from the rear of the van and wheeled them into the lobby. Nancy and Lynn got their bags from the rear of the van and wheeled them into the lobby. As Nancy and Lynn walked to the front desk to check in. Chatting on the way, lynn forgot about the man and later she would remember he didn't check in David Bennett, the front desk and night audit clerk from 3211, asked them which flights they came in on and passed them a sign-in sheet and their plastic key cards.
Speaker 1:Nancy and Lynn rode the elevator together. A hotel employee with a room service card rode with them to the second floor and they went on to the third. They were no longer just engaging in idle chatter. Nancy told her about the death of both of her parents recently and about the added stress of two tubal pregnancies that she suffered through. That wing of the Hilton was laid out in a long L. The elevator opened onto the longer hallway. As they walked down the hallway, lynn asked if Nancy wanted to meet her at 8 am in the lobby so they could ride back to the airport together. Nancy's flight left a little later and she thought briefly about trying to catch a little extra sleep, but then agreed to meet her. Lynn's room 341, was at the end of the first hallway. They said good night at the door. Nancy's room was 354 and it was at the end of the shorter hallway to the right. Just past 354 was the doorway to the emergency exit stairwell.
Speaker 1:Ling was in the lobby the next morning at 8. Nancy was supposed to get a 7.30 wake-up call and meet her in the lobby. Nancy was late. Lynn talked to another flight attendant she knew as they waited for the van. When it pulled up, lynn told the attendant to go on without her. She wanted to wait a bit more for Nancy For the next van. There was a handful of attendants waiting, still no Nancy. Lynn decided she would better get going. We'll be right back. Frederick Roybo was also a Northwest flight attendant. He got to the Hilton about 15 minutes before Nelms and Ludwig. He too was an add-on attendant and he had to be out early in the morning. He dropped his stuff off in room 353, the second to last room on the left side of the corridor.
Speaker 1:Rohrbaugh got a bucket of ice at the machine down the hall and returned to his room, not sure yet if he would read for an hour or watch TV before turning the lights out. He opted for TV and at 9 exactly he turned it on. Moments later he heard two high-pitched noises, the first higher and louder than the second. Screams, possibly, or kids squealing, maybe a TV in a nearby room. In most hotels it's not unusual to hear odd noises at 9 pm, but this wing of the Hilton was reserved for airline employees and Rohrball knew from past experience. Usually very quiet People were there to sleep and relax, not party. Alarmed he went to his door and looked out the peahole. He saw nothing in the hole. He heard no further sounds. He returned to his bed and called down to the front desk for an early wake-up call. He needed to be gone by 6 am.
Speaker 1:Phil Arcia's flight from Boston had gone smoothly, but his check-in at 10.15 hadn't. Flight from Boston had gone smoothly, but his check-in at 10.15 hadn't. The heater didn't work in the room and that he was assigned on the second floor. It was freezing in there and the only room they had left was on the first floor, room 129. The Hilton wasn't supposed to give Northwest employees first floor rooms, but Arcea didn't feel like making any show of it. Ironically, the heat was blasting in that room. It hit him in the face when he opened the door and he set his luggage down and went straight over to the controls to shut it off. The heater was under the window and the curtains were open, and outside, in the big parking lot between the hotel and the freeway, he could see a man carrying a burgundy suitcase, a color required by Northwest. The parking lot was well lit and a new snowfall was thick on the ground, turning night nearly into day. The man went to the trunk of a brownish gold Monte Carlo. Arcea was a car buff and he would recently had a roommate who owned a Monte Carlo, so he was sure of the make. Briefly, arcea assumed the man was a flight attendant, but only briefly.
Speaker 1:Arcea would consider himself a typical male flight attendant very well groomed, prideful in dress and appearance, whether in or out of uniform. He said quote after flying for so many years, you can tell a flight attendant when they are out of uniform. We have a look. The way we dress, the way we present ourselves. We are always dressed differently and groomed differently. We didn't have the look. He stood out like a sore thumb End quote. The man's hair was messy. He wore sneakers a definite fashion, no-no. He had a hooded sweatshirt with the hood down and his pants were rolled up at the cuffs way up, like maybe five inches worth A look. If there ever was one Dressed like that, he couldn't even be a pilot, according to Arcia, because pilots are the worst. They have no sense of fashion, according to Arcia. They're hicks when it comes to dressing. And he was one step below that and a flight attendant would be rolling his luggage, not carrying it under his arm. Then there was the way the man just threw the luggage into the trunk instead of setting it in.
Speaker 1:The man left the Monte Carlo and headed back across the parking lot. Oddly, he left the car trunk open and Arcia thought that that was stupid, because that's a good way to lose something. He stood by the window being a good Samaritan, making sure that no one came by to steal anything. The men walked to Arcia's right and around the corner of the building. Arcia was on the long hallway of the L, around the corner of the building, at the far end of the shorter part of the wing, the emergency exit opened up onto another part of the parking lot. The door was locked at night, but no alarm sounded if someone opened it from inside. Guests routinely propped the door open if they planned on returning right away, saving themselves a long walk to the rooms from the lobby entrance.
Speaker 1:Arceo stood at the window watching the Monte Carlo until a few minutes later the man returned, this time carrying what looked to be a bundle of clothing and what was clearly flight attendant stuff, including a beige overcoat with a burgundy lining. The way the man just threw the clothes into the trunk caught Arceus' eye. No concern for them whatsoever. According to Arcia quote our uniforms then were the most hideous uniforms we ever had. But you wouldn't crush it into a bowl and throw it into a dirty trunk, end quote.
Speaker 1:A lot caught Arcia's eye the way the man was dressed, his height 5'11", his weight 175 to 180 pounds. His hair light and cut short. His race white. His age no more than 30. The man made three-bar trips to the hotel and back to the Monte Carlo, always with something bunched under the arm. The man closed the trunk just then. Another car pulled into the parking lot. The man seemed to freeze. He stood there motionless. After the car passed him he got in the Monte Carlo and drove off, despite all Arce had seen.
Speaker 1:There were logical explanations. Detroit is a major hub for Northwest and many attendants either live in the area or rent cheap rooms to use as a home away from home. Perhaps he was a spouse or a friend of an attendant and was picking him or her up or helping exchange dirty clothes for clean. You couldn't very well call the front desk and complain about the way someone threw clothing into a car. Arcea went to bed. He had an early flight to Boston. When he got there someone asked him if he had heard the news.
Speaker 1:It was a busy morning for Joan Sweet, one of the Hilton's mates. The hotel had had a busy night which meant a lot of rooms to clean for the next round of checkings. She had a list of checkouts and did those rooms first. While she was working, those others checked out, opening up more rooms for cleaning. Finally, at maybe 12.40 pm, she was down to the last few.
Speaker 1:Room 354 was scheduled to be empty. Its occupant had left at 7 am wake-up call and was supposed to be gone by 8, but she hadn't checked out and the Do Not Disturb sign hung from the door's exterior handle. So she probably had been in a rush this morning and just caught the shuttle van without bothering to wait in line for checkout. As for the sign, it didn't mean much to Sweet because most people who put them out never bothered to bring them back in. She knocked on the door no response. Knocked again, nothing. Hello, maid, she said. She opened the door and cracked and said again, maid, but there was silence. The room was very dark, just a glow from the TV. She flicked the light switch on by the wall near the door. The room remained black. She felt her way to the heavy drapes, pulled them partially open and turned around. At first she thought she had screwed up, that she had walked in on the woman sleeping on the far bed, that she had not been loud enough at the door. And then she realized she was surrounded by blood Blood everywhere On the walls, the floor, the bed next to her, the furniture, and that the woman must be dead. She fled from the room.
Speaker 1:Paul Janiga, the Hilton's chief engineer, was in the office on the ground floor when he got a call from the third floor maid. She was frantic. There was a body on the bed in room 354. Janiga's first thought was heart attack, something natural and peaceful. A placid body on the bed. She's been killed, said the maid. Janiga hurried to the room. The do not disturb sign was still on the handle. He opened the door and flicked the switch nearby, but the light didn't come on. The lamp that it worked had been unplugged and the cord sat on top of the wall counter. The room was gloomy, despite the light coming in from the windows and the glow from the TV, which was turned to CNN. Desert Storm was on Soon there will be other non-war news for the cable and network folks to talk about. None were news for the cable and network folks to talk about.
Speaker 1:He went to the windows, fully opened the curtains and turned around. He saw a lot of blood. On the bed. Closest to him, on the far bed, he saw bedding bunched up into a pile, a foot stuck out of the pile. At the opposite end he saw a head and a gaping wound on the neck. He went over to the body and touched the heel. Part of him said this is a prank, it's not a real body. But the heel was real. He touched the neck looking for a pulse. There was none. He left the room, closed the door, went down to tell his manager. The manager called the police. Janiga went back up to the room and waited outside the door so he could open it for them as soon as they arrived. It was President's Day, but the holiday would soon be over for the Romulus PD. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1:Michael Giroux didn't have much seniority with the Romulus Police Department, which was why he was working. February 18, president's Day, when the call came in from the Hilton at 1.02 pm that there was a body in room 354,. He was sent to the scene. Several hotel employees were in the hallway and one of them let him in. The TV was on, giving an eerie light to the otherwise darkened room. He saw a woman lying face down, propped up at the waist by a stack of pillows. There was blood everywhere by a stack of pillows. There was blood everywhere. He called for other officers to join him at the scene and began taking 35 millimeter and Polaroid photos.
Speaker 1:Dan Snyder quiet, spoken, calm and methodical had an unlikely background for a homicide detective. He had worked 17 years in the circulation department for the Detroit News and was vested for a Teamster pension before he decided to try his hand at police work. He started as a paperboy at age 12 in the Down River Detroit suburb of Southgate and worked his way up to district station manager, direct station manager In the 50s and 60s, when newspapers made their profits on the labors of young boys peddling their bikes around the neighborhood with canvas bags of paper strapped to the handlebars or fenders, station managers were some of the gruffest guys in capitalism, not Snyder. The kids actually liked him, including young Mike San André. San André thought the world of his boss enough so, in fact, that years later he would go to work for him as a rookie cop in Romulus. Among other jobs Snyder had had with the paper was as a jumper on a truck throwing out boundaries of papers at stops. A fellow jumper was Ken Cockrell, who would go on to become something of a Detroit legend, a black activist in the turbulent 60s, who later became a prominent Detroit attorney and then a city council member. Snyder worked his way up to driver, then to station manager, making good wages with great French benefits.
Speaker 1:He had married his high school sweetheart, started a family and bought a house in a new subdivision in Southgate. The future seemed set, except for some reason or another he had always wanted to be a cop In. A neighbor down the street from his new house was a Wayne County sheriff who told him they were hiring. Snyder, went down, took the test, passed it, got on a list and two years later, on March 15, 1976, at the age of 29, started his new career at the county jail downtown. In 1981, he was assigned to the sheriff's office at Metro Airport, but he was laid off soon after.
Speaker 1:Romulus was a young city then, not a lot of residents, mostly just a bunch of farmland surrounding the airport. For 10 years Wayne County sheriffs had patrolled the city, but about the time Snyder was laid off, the county commissioners decided that it was time for the city to hire its own police force. Snyder applied and started working in Romulus in November. On February 18, 1991, he was a detective sergeant. As Romulus had grown and his coin fear turned into subdivisions, so too had its police force to 50 members. But just two detective sergeants handled all the investigations, from back check cases to felonious assaults, to embezzlement, to robberies, to murder. Snyder was a good dresser, favoring tweed sport coats and coordinated slacks. Good dresser, favoring tweed sport coats and coordinated slacks. With his neatly groomed, sandy hair and trim mustache he looked, wrote one reporter, more like a literature professor than a detective.
Speaker 1:Snyder and his wife Jean were putting the day off to good use, meeting with someone to put a down payment on five acres of land in a nearby Huron township. At 1.20 pm Snyder got a page. He asked the people selling the land if he could use their phone and call into the station, and the dispatcher informed him that they got a body at the airport Hilton. He and his wife raced to the Ramla station where he picked up a police car and drove to the hotel. Arriving at 1.45 pm, giroux led him into room 354. The first thing he saw was the body covered by a bedspread, her rear trussed up in the air, her feet sticking out. And then he saw the blood, everywhere Blood. There was a partial bloody footprint just inside the door, a bloody washcloth by the sink in the bathroom and a pool of bloody water in the bathtub where it looked as if the perpetrator had taken a shower to clean up.
Speaker 1:Snyder moved further into the hotel room. There was no blood. Between the entryway and the first bed, between the far bed and the window and on the three walls surrounding the bed and on a chair, a table and a dresser. There was a lot of blood. It looked as if she had bled to death on the bed by the window than been picked up, bedding and all and carried to the other bed. The way she was propped up, snyder thought the killer might have had sex with her after she had died. He went back to the body and looked at it closely. Her head was nearly severed. Her face was severely beaten and bruised, with what looked to be numerous knife wounds and pinprick-type holes in her skin. Her hands were lacerated from the fight she put up against the knife. Some of her fingers nearly severed too.
Speaker 1:Snyder knew this was bigger than Romulus PD. He had his own crime scene investigator. He could have called in and there might be noces out of joint if he didn't. But he made an immediate decision to call the Michigan State Police Crime Lab. His people had plenty of experience dealing with low lives mostly drunks and druggies and prostitutes working at the airport, hotels and city bars but something this bad at the Hilton at the airport where the killer could have fled by now to any place in the world no, for this case they would need all the help they could get. The state police would have a team of crime scene veterans to work the scene. He called their Northville crime lab and told them what he had. It was a decision that would pay off, but not for more than a decade. He also called to in his partner Gordy Maleniak. Maleniak's pager went off as he and his wife were coming out of an afternoon movie. His holiday was over too. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1:Snyder had told him it was a bad scene, but nothing prepared Malignac for what he saw. When he arrived about 2 pm, dan was waiting for him in the hall and when he got there they did a walkthrough before the state police arrived. Dan had said she had severe wounds to the neck, but that was an understatement. Blood was splattered over the walls, the bedding, the furniture, the floor. It was like nothing he had ever seen or would see. It was by far the worst. From the blood on one bed it was clear she had been killed there and moved to the second bed she was face down, buttocks propped up in the air on a bunch of pillows and bedding. You could see dry semen that had run out of her vagina had run out while she had been on her back on the other bed and dried. So now when you look at it, it looked as if it had run up, not down. It struck Melaniac that the killer had posed her to look that way. He was making a statement by leaving her in that position.
Speaker 1:Milenia looked at the TV Desert storm. There was blood around the sink and there was a pot of pink water in the bottom of the bathtub a ghastly residue of the room's last shower. There was a bloody washcloth on top of the vanity by the sink, so the killer had been cool enough to clean up. There wasn't any luggage, no clothes, no ID. Snyder and Malenia backed out of the room. Malenia went knocking on doors to see who was still there and who had heard anything by now. Chances were that most people had checked out and headed off who knew where Anywhere in the world. They had a name from the hotel manager, nancy Ludwig, but that was about it no ID, no confirmation of anything. Malenia had little luck finding guests and move on to employees. He talked to the maid who found her. He talked to two persons at the front desk. About 2.45, the state crime lab folks arrived. It was time to back to room 354.
Speaker 1:Lynn Helton had reasons to smile as she put away her groceries at her home in Wixom, a suburb northwest of Detroit whose rapid change from farmland to city had been sparked by a sprawling Ford Motor stamping plant that was no longer out in the middle of nowhere. It was a holiday for one, nowhere. It was a holiday for one For another. She was two months pregnant with her second daughter and thinking about breaking the news at work now that those risky first few weeks had passed. Wixson was a convenient place to live for those that they ought to plant and a good place for others to buy what the realtors call starter home. Hilton and her husband Tom couldn't afford to live where he worked as a cop in the nearby very affluent suburb of West Bloomfield. They couldn't afford Wixom and it was just up I-96 from Northville where Hilton worked as a crime scene specialist and serologist for Michigan State Police. The phone rang. It was her lab director, jim Honcher, ending her holiday. In those pre-sale phone days he had been having a tough time reaching his crime scene crew who were out enjoying their day off, and was relieved to find Lynn at home their day off. And was relieved to find Lynn at home. They had been in homicide at the airport, hilton and he and he filled her on what little he knew. A flight attendant on layover from Minnesota found by a housekeeper Pretty nasty scene. She drove the few miles over to the state police crime lab on Seven Mile Road, one mile south of the road that Eminem would later make famous. Haunter had been able to reach one other crime scene tech fingerprint expert, detective Sergeant John Terry, and the two of them got in the state-issued Rattatrap silver van and headed south on I-275 to I-94. The two freeways intersected just west of the airport. There were no seats in the back of the van, the space loaded with gear.
Speaker 1:Hilton had graduated from Detroit's Mercy College in 1982 with a BS in chemistry, then got her master's in forensic chemistry a year later from the University of Pittsburgh. Pitt has one of the best forensic programs in the world and its graduates are highly recruited. Hilton was offered a job doing drug screening and analysis in Dade County in southern Florida the very definition of job security in one of the drug trafficking centers of the world. But she was engaged to be married to Tom and wanted to return home. Her heart set on the state police. While she waited for a job to open up, she worked first as a waitress a novel profession. Everything you learn in life you can learn from waitressing, according to her. Then the Federal Food and Drug Administration in downtown Detroit, inspecting everything from potato chips to soy-based infant formula to penicillin. She also did drug screening for the medical examiner's office in suburban Oakland County. After two and a half years, in 1985, she was hired as a civilian serologist with the state police and assigned to the Northville lab.
Speaker 1:Her first murder scene had its dark, decomical moments. Scene had its dark, decomical moments. She said, quote I remember being scared, steph, not because of what I would see, but because of how I would react. I didn't want to be anything less than professional. I didn't want to get there and cry or throw up end quote. This latest one would be far too gruesome for humor. She didn't either. She worked the scene. Each crime scene investigator has a specialty, but they all pitch in on other tasks too Shooting videos, taking Polaroids, 35mm shots, making sketches.
Speaker 1:The evidence said the scene didn't require much forensic detective work. Police found a baseball cap and a pair of glasses, both belonging to the murderer. They found something else. He left behind his hearing aid. Turns out it was the father-in-law. His daughter had long been physically abused by her husband, something his wife and daughter had kept secret from him. The daughter had been hospitalized for a hysterectomy and within hours of the operation the husband had shown up demanding sex at the hospital bed. The wife turned him down then, fearing a beating. When she got home, told her mother. This time, the mother told her husband he had gone over to confront his son-in-law. An argument ensued and he would shut him dead. Finding the hearing aid might not be slap your thighs a row a row, but when you make your living at violent crime scenes. You take your humor where you can find it At the Hilton.
Speaker 1:A uniformed Romulus cop led them to room 354. The door was open. Snyder gave them an overview and then he and Melania went in with them. The hotel manager and two Native Airlines officials remained out in the hall as held to look in through the open doors. She could see part of the body on the bed to the right. The procedure was that she and Terry would work the scene, gathering blood, semen, fingerprint, fiber evidence, shoot a video, take rolls of photos but leave the body undisturbed After the several hours or so it would take them to do that. After the several hours or so it would take them to do that, they would call the county medical examiner's office in downtown detroit, one of the busiest emmy's offices in the world. The emmy's crew would arrive within an hour, at which point they would roll nancy lowick onto her back, gather whatever evidence presented herself, let the em ME people make the preliminary determination of manner and cause of death and then have them take the body back to the morgue for the next day's autopsy. That was the procedure. They had that part of it down.
Speaker 1:What Helton didn't have down and would never get over was the violence that filled the room, literally and metaphorically. Helton's first task was shooting a video of the scene. Seven minutes of silence. That screams its violence. It's violence and these are some of the notes that they took. It says it starts benignly a long shot from outside hallway of the open door to room 354. Then the camera slowly enters the room and peers into the bathroom On the immediate right door have opened light on.
Speaker 1:There are drops of red on the bright white tile floor. The room is tackedly decorated Green floral wallpaper, bright yellow counter, bright drops of blood in the sink. Looking down the short hallway now from the door to the room proper. On the left a long, narrow, wall-mounted desk lamp, hotel stationery, small white plastic ice bucket, tv. On the corner to the right, a right foot sticking out, a right foot sticking out, work in.
Speaker 1:Zoom toward first bed, right arm hanging of the right side, the body on one bedspread covered by a secondary floral bedspread, covered by a secondary floral bedspread, now half red, with big blotches. Pant to the other bed rusty orange blanket, bow up, white sheet, stained red. Behind it a window with gauzy, sheer drapes. Pull shut, heavy drapes, pull open, zoom in on window and wall. Two orange chairs to the right surround a round formica table. Thick blood drops on the wall on the table on each chair, hurl out and around the room during the mayhem. Pan to wall behind the bed. Zooming on painting behind the bed nearest the window. Numerous blood drops on the glass. Pan back to the bed with the body and zoom in on blood-saturated white bath mat that could cover her face that there is a large gap in her mouth.
Speaker 1:Hilton, never meticulous, turns the camera off, leaves the room. Does another take to make sure she hasn't missed anything. Take to make sure he she hasn't missed anything. Shut off door. Zooming in on number 354. Slowly enter room. Turn to the right. Zoom in on while white tile and drops of blood. Zoom in on drops of blood on the yellow uh counter and in the sink down the the short hallways, right foot sticking out, pant to head and zoom in on right hand fingers nearly severe to her furious fight to avoid death. Zoom in on bloody bath mat over the face on bloody bath mat over the face. Zoom in on the small wall-mounted table behind the two beds. Drops of blood were on it and the wall behind it. Zoom in on blood on the glass, on the painting over the other bed, on the wall next to it, on the two orange chairs, the table, the wall next to the window, on the front of the well-mounted heater. To the left of the window, blood everywhere. Some guy is driving a car on the TV. Big head is in profile Pan to the long, well-mounted desk, drops of blood next to the white stationery along the front and top of the desk and fade to black off the desk and fade to black.
Speaker 1:So now Helton took numerous Polaroids and several rolls of 35mm film. Then, as she took dozens of samples to be tested later back at the lab, taking swabs from Ludwig's buttocks and vagina with a sterile cotton swab and cutting fibers from various surfaces, terry went to work painstakingly, shining a laser light about the room to highlight otherwise invisible fingerprints. They had been dusted and photographed. If evidence was wet, they needed to get it dry. The quicker it dried, the less degradation to any DNA it contained. They didn't put samples in plastic, which degrades materials, but in permeable paper envelopes paper envelopes. Bedding was part in large paper bags as it was the bath mat and had been wrapped about her nearly severed neck. Back at the lab the bedding would be laid out in the drying rooms, or large, clean. Let me see how do I put this. So if the evidence was wet, they needed to get it dry. So the quicker they dry, the less degradation to any DNA it contained. So what they did is they put it in permeable paper envelopes, something big or large, such as the bedding that was put in large paper bags, as was the bath mat that had been wrapped around her nearly severed neck. Back at the lab, the bedding would be lay out in the drying room and they do that by laying on Lord, laid the bedding on top of large, clean sheets of butcher paper, put off huge rolls and the cotton swabs would be broken off their sticks and placed into cryovials, which are plastic tubes about one and a half inches tall that were labeled and frozen to be used as evidence when and if the murderer was ever caught.
Speaker 1:Hilton did her work calmly, methodically, no trace of how disturbed she really was. She had worked over other nasty crimes with Snyder one involving the rape of an 18-year-old month girl by the mother's boyfriend, which ripped the girl open so badly she had to have a colostomy, and other murders without him, for example one of a woman beaten to death so violently by her grandson because she wouldn't give him drug money that he had broke a cast iron pan into pieces on her skull, but nothing would approach the violence she felt now and her reaction to it. It wasn't until all the aspects of the scene came together and you really look at the body and realize everything that had happened to her that you could feel the violence in an overpowering scene. The violence hung in the air and it shouted at you. It was the only crime scene that ever made her feel that way. And the other thing that she says is that you would have to be a monster to do what this man did to Nancy Ludwig and the whole process he put her through.
Speaker 1:A long, thick, heavy men's athletic tube sack of considerable volume had been stuffed into her mouth, forcing her lips to distend. Her hands had been bound with twine. She clearly had put up a ferocious fight and the defensive wounds on her hands went to the bone. The degree to which she fought was so striking, according to Helton. Just seeing the wounds on her hands, it was impossible to avoid reliving what she went through. She inflicted some of her own facial wounds, scratches made while trying to remove the gag that was suffocating her while she aspirated on her own blood. There was bruising all over her face and her eyes had been blackened from her beating. There were pinpricks on her face where the killer had lightly jabbed her with the point of a knife, playing with her. After having gotten her gag and bound, there was an elongated z, almost like the mark of the tvl character sorrow above her left knit um nipple.
Speaker 1:Once the killer had gotten her under control, he had played with her. She was tortured over a period of time. There were so many controlling wounds, the knife marks on her face, all of the scrapes, and then there was the wound that killed her, a slashing of her throat that would have decapitated her but for her spine. So cutting through wouldn't have been a quick and easy process because it's more sewing than cutting. So the killer used a serrated knife and you could see the soul marks that it made on Nancy's flesh. There was blunt force trauma to her left, temporal and mid forehead areas. There was so much blood that even though she had been killed the night before, much of it was still wet.
Speaker 1:Around the neck it was clear she had been raped while on her back on the far bed. Semen had drained out of her vagina and after a period of time long enough for the semen to dry completely, the body had been carried over to the other bed, turned over, propped up by four pillows, so that the buttocks were in the air, her arms dangling off the bed so she could have been raped again Afterwards. The killer had smeared his semen on her buttocks. On her buttocks, though Helton had no doubt what she was looking at. A test at the scene confirmed that it was semen. They found bits of human fecal matter on the floor between the beds four racing-sized pieces. What to make of that? At some point, northwest officials faxed over Nancy Ludwig's fingerprints. Debbie confirmed that the dead woman was in fact Ludwig, though they would wait for her husband to make an official identification of the body the next day before releasing her name. More semen stains were found on the pillows used to prop Ludwig up. Hilton cut these and backed them too.
Speaker 1:This second sex act and the second set of semen stains occur well after Nancy Ludwig had died. The murderer was also a necrophiliac, helton could tell, because Ludwig's vagina was distended. Instead of regaining a shape as it normally would, it remained wide open and, according to Helton, she had never seen that before. Because it was so unusual, the two-person crew from the county medical examiners was finally called after hours of painstaking work and arrived about 8 pm the body was rolled over. Not much examination was needed to reveal the manner of homicide and cause the slash neck of death. At 8.30, the body was placed on a gurney and wheeled out of the room. Tv crews outside filmed the body and it came through the fire exit. It is particularly true in Detroit that if it bleeds it leads, and the murder and rape led the news that night and for several thereafter night and for several thereafter.
Speaker 1:Hilton and Terry wrapped up their work in the room through. Their day was hardly over because they would have to start processing the evidence and write reports once they got back to Northville. Adding to the bloody mystery and the chills the murder gave them was that the room was nearly devoid of Ludwig's things. Her clothes were gone and so too were her flight attendant's rolling suitcase. Her purse, her ID, her Seiko watch was gone and her wedding and engagement rings had been pulled from her bloody fingers. The only things that remained from roll-up in the bedding and overlooked by her killer were a burgundy button from her blazer, a thin belt and a small gold charm that had broken off her bracelet. A little goose, that was a memento from her days flying with North Central. The killer was a collector too. Thank you for listening to the Murder Book. Have a great week.
