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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
Jeffrey Gorton: Deadly Secret Part VIII: Nancy Ludwig's Unsolved Murder
The brutal 1991 murder of Northwest Airlines flight attendant Nancy Ludwig in room 354 of the Airport Hilton stands as one of Detroit's most perplexing cold cases. This gripping episode delves deep into the exhaustive investigation that followed, revealing how detectives Snyder and Malianak pursued over 2,300 tips in their relentless search for justice.
We explore the fascinating case of Michael Flynn, a pathological impostor who presented himself as a Northwest pilot while actually working as a firefighter on disability. Flynn's elaborate fabrications, strange behavior, and connection to the victim initially made him a compelling suspect until DNA evidence eliminated him from consideration. His story serves as just one example of the countless leads that investigators pursued and ultimately ruled out in this frustrating investigation.
The episode also highlights the extraordinary efforts of Nancy's widower, Art Ludwig, who transformed his grief into action. Drawing on his media background, Art orchestrated a years-long awareness campaign that included national television appearances, newspaper advertisements, reward posters, and even arranging for the Teamsters union to contribute $30,000 to help catch his wife's killer. Despite facing suspicion himself—an unfortunate reality for many spouses in murder investigations—Art never stopped fighting to keep Nancy's case alive in the public consciousness.
A decade after the murder, advancing DNA technology brought new hope in the form of a specialized cold case task force in Flint, Michigan. The collaboration between Police Chief Bradford Barksdale and Michigan State Police Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bertie demonstrates how institutional partnerships can overcome bureaucratic obstacles when solving heinous crimes becomes the priority.
What drives investigators to pursue justice years after a case goes cold? How does a family survive the aftermath of such a brutal crime? Listen now to understand the profound impact of unsolved murders and the dedicated professionals who refuse to let killers escape accountability, no matter how much time has passed.
Welcome to the Murder Book. I'm your host, kiara, and this is part 7 of Jeffrey Gordon's Deadly Secret. Let's begin. Detective Snyder passed another early tip on to Malianak to chase down and this one was from a Mark Ebby about some similar murder of his mother in Flint. Neither Snyder nor Malianak had heard of the Ebby killing but it was worth looking into by their standards. All the tips were.
Speaker 1:Malianak called the Flint PD and was referred to King. He left a message for King, left another, left several more and he kept leaving messages and leaving messages but he never called him back. And finally, after a while he was finally getting a hold of him and he told him about the Ludwig killing and the tip and asked if there were any similarities enough to be of interest. And King agreed that there certainly were similarities and he told Malianak that they got a grouping, that they were looking for a guy who's type A. So he asked do you have any serological evidence on your case? So he asked do you have any serological evidence on your case? And King told them no, that everything they had was degraded and because it's 1987, the semen was too degraded for the technology that was available for that time. But it held secrets. It's stored in ice at the state police crime, like in Bridgeport. That might one day be unlocked. Now. King told Malinak that they knew who had killed Ebi. They just couldn't prove it but they would get him eventually. Their guy in the Flint case was type O. They were not looking for the same killer. Had he been the Pooning type, king might have told him that it was a stone cold certainty. And so Malianak said well, thanks anyway. He hung up, followed his report on the result of the tip and that was for him another dead end. Eventually, some 2,300 tips were be phoned in. Months later, after the flow had dried up, they were reorganized and renumbered For no particular reason, just happenstance. The co-found, mark Eby, was designated as tip number one.
Speaker 1:The people who run and walk downtown was a creation of Detroit's Central Business District Association in 1983. The pro-business group thought it might be able to use the running room boom to create cash flow and profits for downtown restaurants and bars. What was traditionally one of the slowest nights in town. The CBDA ran a small ad in a weekly shopper asking if there were runners out there interested in getting together after work. On Tuesdays, about 30 show up for the first organizational meeting and the group had been meeting at a different downtown bar or restaurant after work every Tuesday since On summer Tuesdays as many as 200 would show up, on cold winter nights as few as 30. It was an eclectic mix of old and young, black and white, blue collar, white collar, suburbanite Detroiter. Though many of the group were single, it wasn't a typical singles bar scene with people hitting on each other frenetically. People were more likely to talk about track workouts or recent 10K times than their signs of the Zodiac.
Speaker 1:In 1989, michael Flynn started showing up on Tuesdays and made a big first impression. He was charming and gregarious, the kind of guy to walk up to strangers, thrust out a hand and offer a big smile. He was a pilot for Northworth Airlines. He often arrived in his pilot's uniform, either just getting in from a flight or on his way out of town. He would change in the bar restaurant into his running clothes, go out for a six-mile run, then return. If he had to catch a flight, he would change back into his uniform and leave. If he was just in from a flight, then he would have a few beers and chat up the women. He was one of the group's nice guys. So much so, in fact, that at the club's annual Super Bowl party in 1990, when he was scheduled to make an afternoon flight to the West Coast, he made up a huge batch of chili and dropped it off the party for others to enjoy during the game while he was heading West. One of the women he chatted up was a pretty young engineer named Patricia Bosch. She was a triathlete, very attractive, and she was single and was an obvious object of attention of many of the single men in the group. It wasn't long before Michael and Patricia were dating. The Gilgravius pilot and the curvaceous engineer made quite a match.
Speaker 1:There was one odd thing the better runners in the club noticed, though. On Tuesdays Michael would tell about his latest PR over the weekend, pr being running lingo for a personal record at one distance or another. Each Tuesday, michael would tell of having run yet another 10k 6.2 miles at yet another record pace. He soon was breaking the 40-minute mark in the 10k that many runners consider the benchmark for qualifying as a very good recreational runner. Except that when Michael went out to run each Tuesday night with the other runners in the club who could also break 40 minutes, he could never come close to keeping up. He would be with them for a mile or two, gasping furiously, then fall quickly off the pace, ending up running the last few miles by himself. And this all happened at a pace of maybe 7 minutes and 30 seconds a mile, versus the 6.15 that he claimed he could do at races. So it was a BS artist. The other good runners quickly decided about him. No way could he break 40 minutes on Saturday and die like a dog on Tuesday.
Speaker 1:Another of his claims he was divorced and carried around a picture of his young boy dressed in his hockey uniform. Flynn said he got to be best friends with Bill Ford Jr of the famous Fords who dominate Detroit business and cultural circles. Seems Flynn was at a local hockey rink to watch his son play and had gone to the concession stand. On his way back he saw a tot falling off the back of the bleachers lining the rink and had made a miraculous catch just before the child slammed into the concrete. It was Bill Ford's child and he and Flynn had since grown close.
Speaker 1:A third claim that his background was diverse. He introduced himself to another single young woman in the group one night, julie Hamilton, a psychotherapist at Eastwood Clinic, and Flynn said that it was a small world because he had worked there for years as a therapist too. After a month or so of dating, patricia found that Michael's running wasn't the only thing he inflated. Somehow word got to her that he wasn't a pilot with Northwest and that he was a fireman in his district or East Detroit, I should say and apparently not a very good one either. Word was that he was afraid of heights not recommended in that line of latter-aided work and on disability. She confronted him with it and at first he denied it. He was angry, demanded that they not break up. He called insensibly, came over, pleaded his case, didn't want to give up on the relationship. Later Patricia noticed clothing disappearing from her house and suspected Michael was sneaking in and taking things. Word about all of that went through the club like wildfire. Interestingly enough, though, the club members tolerated his deceptions about running and flying. No one ever called him on them to his face.
Speaker 1:He kept coming out on Tuesdays in his pilot's uniform and he kept telling about improbable times at weekend races. And people kept telling stories about him behind his back. In October of 1990, fellow club members turned him in for cheating at the Detroit Free Press International Marathon. He finished in 3 hours and 15 minutes and qualified for the Boston Marathon. In the process he had beaten out several of the runners he couldn't keep up with on Tuesdays and in the process had beaten out several of the runners he couldn't keep up with on Tuesdays, and a review of film from various cameras set up along the way to catch cheaters. He was nowhere to be seen until after the midpoint in the race when suddenly he appeared, ridiculously enough, in his first appearance on film. He was wearing a nylon jacket on a hot day and had not started sweating yet, though he was supposed to be more than 13 miles into his run. Later shots of him showed the nylon jacket tied around his waist and sweat pouring down. Late in the race he was walking. He requested a hearing with race officials to dispute the charges but didn't show and was disqualified.
Speaker 1:Late February or early March of 1991, michael Hara, a sports reporter who covered the Detroit Lions for the Detroit News, wally Pupor, a computer specialist at Ford, and two other members of the Downtown Runners had separated themselves from their fellow club members for a conversation Tonight. The talk wasn't of training, pace or race times. It was of murder and of the suspect in their midst, someone wanted to throw out something for comment, but only to a small circle of trusted friends. And one of them said you guys have been following the murder of that Northwest stewardess. And they nodded and said yeah, sure, who has not, who hadn't? And they, they said anything jump out of you. And O'Hara said Michael Flynn. And the first speaker said yeah, you got it. And one asked Flynn, why Flynn?
Speaker 1:And speculation was rife in the media that since there were no signs of violence outside ludwig's hotel room, no signs of forced entry, perhaps the killer was someone who had gained her trust. Between the lines there seemed to be a bit of blaming the victim, that she had maybe been picked up in the hotel bar and you know the comment was well, you know, she's a flight attendant, right. And then they you know they're saying it might have been someone she knew or someone she might have met, that she had reason to trust. And this is the first speaker saying that said it must be a fellow employee, maybe a pilot, know anyone who hangs around bars in a pilot's uniform. And again someone said Michael Flynn. So what should we do? He said well, there's an 800 number to call it's a tip line, should we call it? And they decided that they got to. And then they also asked what if he didn't do it? And then somebody would say, well, but what if he did? So Flynn's deceptions no longer seem humorous and, what's more, it was widely reported that Ludwig's clothes were missing and Patricia suspected that Flynn was taking her things too. After this conversation, someone volunteered to call the tip line.
Speaker 1:On succeeding Tuesdays, the small group of people who ran downtown would continue to speculate about Flynn and the love with murder. No one from the Romulus PD ever acknowledged getting the tip or mentioned whether or not they follow up on it. The group of runners never knew if Flynn was investigated and, if so, if he had been cleared. Whenever Flynn came up to them over the following years, grinning his big grin, glad, handing them, they pictured a raped and mutilated flight attendant in a hotel room at the airport. So they avoided him and the image whenever they could. What O'Hara and the others wouldn't find out for 11 years was that the cops had indeed acted on the tip, that it had been the second best one they would have get out of the 2,300.
Speaker 1:Concurrently, flame's name had come up by way of the Macomb County Sheriff's Department, which called Snyder on March 8. They were holding Flynn at the county jail and thought that Romulus PD ought to hustle their way up there. Flynn had shown up in a Navy uniform at an elementary school claiming to be a pilot just back from Desert Storm. He wanted to arrange a speech before an assembly. Suspicious school officials called the sheriff's department. He agreed voluntarily to a search of his car and the sheriff's deputy found ID for Northwest Airlines and a Northwest captain's uniform in his trunk.
Speaker 1:Snyder raised up I-94 to Mr Clemens, or to Mount Clemens, and interviewed Flynn in the county jail. He told them he was in fact a lieutenant with the East Detroit Fire Department and had been a cop in East Detroit too. Flynn told them that the last time he had been to the airport was in October to fly to a marathon in Minneapolis and that he had never been to the Hilton. His former girlfriend, patricia Bosch, was cooperative and she still had one of Flynn's coats which she turned over to Snyder and Melinek, and it was a Navy pea coat bearing the tag Lieutenant Flynn, uss, midway In the pocket of the coat. This got their hearts going. It was a letter Flynn had written to Bosch just days after Ludwig's murder and in the letter Flynn said he knew Ludwig, that she was a fine person and that it make him sick to think about what had been done to her. And Snyder said Bingo, this is our guy. Flynn readily agreed to give Malinak and Gordon or Malinak, I should say a saliva sample for a DNA test. And when it came back weeks later, the bingo turned into bust because his DNA didn't match the seaming at the scene. He wasn't the killer, he was just a duck with a good line and nice uniforms. He was just plain imposter.
Speaker 1:Snyder found out that profilers from the FBI and various police agencies around the country were having a convention in Iowa in March. Iowa in March. Northwest offered free flights and crowds, sprung money from the budget for a hotel and food and sent Malianak and Snyder to see what they could come up with. Malianak thought it was a bunch of hooey. Snyder thought it would be like chicken soup couldn't hurt. Besides, who wants to pass up a trip to Iowa in March?
Speaker 1:According to, according to Malinak, the profilers told them that the killer was a white male. Big deal, haven't they all that's useless. One profiler told them the killer may have been mentally disturbed which, given what he had done to the body before and after death, including just after sawing off her head with a serrated knife, struck Malinak as no shit, sherlock. The profilers also told them the killer surely lived within five miles of the airport and had likely taken Ludwig's belongings to build a shrine to her and her murder in the basement of his house. If it was typical of a Romulus house, the horror of the shrine would be hidden behind the normal exterior of a small aluminum-sided bungalow. The shrine would include her underwear, pantyhose, wallet, purse, diamond earrings, three pieces of burgundy, northwest flight attendant luggage, credit cards, uniform and an ID tag. The killer was certainly single, probably did not have a girlfriend, likely had been dominated by his mother and may still live with her. He was probably no taller than 5'10", probably changed his jobs frequently, probably never served in the military. His car was likely an old junker filled with just about everything he owns.
Speaker 1:In another conclusion, the killer was an organized rapist and a disorganized murderer. He had planned the rape but had not planned the murder. It was something that just got out of hand. Snyder was skeptical. This was no accidental murder, no disorganized killer. He had gone to the Hilton to rape and kill. He had raped and killed and so far he had gotten away with it. And Snyder asked hey, you have seen those films from gas station cameras where a guy goes to interrupt the place. The robbery goes bad. He ends up shooting the clerk. What does he do? He freaks out. He runs out of there as fast as he can. There's an accidental killer. If Nancy's killer didn't intend to kill her, he wouldn't have stuck around and clean up, unlike the Flint PD.
Speaker 1:Snyder and Malianak took what the profilers had to say with a grain of salt. A good thing too, since most of it would many years later prove to be dead wrong About. The only thing they believed was that the killer might very well be in the mist, living in one of those rummeless bungalows they drove by every day. It wasn't much of a return on the investment of plane tickets to Iowa, because the profilers had not helped. They were no closer to solve the case, as had the Ebi murder.
Speaker 1:The Lowood murder faded into one of those filler stories editors assign on slow news days or on anniversaries or year-end roundups. There was so much interest in the case. There wasn't a year that went by when, on the anniversary, someone in the media didn't call to ask about it. Someone in the media didn't call to ask about it. Clues, scares and death of flight attendant that was a headline for the free press six months after the murder. Flight attendant's slaying still unsolved that was the headline in their December 28, 1991 edition. Under December 28, 1991 edition by then all the leads had been dead ends and the case had long gone. Now Michael Flynn wasn't the only good suspect, not the first bingo and not the first bust. The first had been the shuttle bus driver fired for screaming at the Northwest flight attendant. Another early suspect was a violent crack cocaine addict who was picked up on drug charges and during routine questioning said he couldn't remember what he had been doing Sunday night. But he may have done it. He was cleared too.
Speaker 1:Not long after the murder a former manager at the Hilton called in a tip. Six months earlier he had been working the desk when a white male came up to him and said his key card wouldn't open his door and he wanted a replacement. The manager recognized it as a missing master key for another floor. He called police and stole the guy until they could arrive. Stalling meant in this case listening to the guy with the unlikely last name of Straight, talking about his satanic cult and how he was going to Atlanta to chop off some arms and heads. Extremely disoriented, he told police he was the Antichrist and wanted to find someone in the hotel to have sex with so he could get rid of himself of his evil spirit. His mother was calling, he was in charge. Pretty hot tip. A guy known for possession of stolen key cards wanted to have sex to purchase demons and hoping to cut off heads. Melanie Akensteiner paid him a visit, tracking him down at Papa Romano's Pizza Joe nearby where he was a delivery man. He said he was on medication these days. He had been in church with his parents.
Speaker 1:The night of Lewitt's murder he did give a saliva sample and was cleared. Waitresses at the Wheat and Rye restaurant near the airport flagged a waiter at the Holiday Inn. His girlfriend was a Northwest flight attendant and he liked to beat her up, but he was also cleared. Blood and saliva tests cleared some 60 suspects in the first few months. Eventually, saliva, blood or DNA tests would clear 200 persons, including Art Ludwig, who's neither reluctantly asked to take a test about six months after the murder as a formality asked to take a test about six months after the murder as a formality. Periodically some sickle, having read about room 354, would show up at the front desk and specifically ask for that room. Look for some thrill in spending a night where Ludwig had died. Police were called each time. Each time the suspect was cleared. For years room 354 was taken out of circulation, stripped of furniture, carpeting, used as storage area, even after the hotel was sold and became the Royce Hotel. Today the hotel is a DoubleTree Hotel and the room is back in service with the same number. The same number.
Speaker 1:In May 1992, it looked again as if police by half their man, leslie Allen Williams, age 38, had been arrested for four rape, murders and other assaults in Oakland County. Ludwig had been killed on a Sunday and Williams' last six known assaults had come on weekends. His blood type was A positive. He had bound his victims' hands. All of his assaults were spontaneous and premeditated crimes of opportunity. In June, though, police announced he was not the killer. Further lab tests show he had the wrong enzymes in his blood.
Speaker 1:The year 1995 was a busy year for hot leads. Ann Arbor police called Snyder to tell them they had arrested James Kleppinger for raping and murdering his girlfriend Of interest was his MO. He had used ligatures to bind her hands and he lived just down Merriman Road from the airport, but Steider determined he had been in Ohio when Ludwig died. Glenn Rogers was arrested in Kentucky in connection with a cross-country killing spree that claimed the lives of women in Mississippi, florida, california, louisiana. That claimed the lives of women in Mississippi, florida, california, louisiana. Breyer's sister told police her brother might have killed more than 50 women nationwide. Charles Rathbun, a freelance photographer who had once worked in Michigan, admitted that he had killed Linda Sobeck, a cheerleader for the Los Angeles Raiders, but he said it was accidental. He was suspected of killing a second woman and had been charged with rape in 1979. Romulus police investigated both men. Blood samples cleared them of Ludwig's murder. Then they got word of a mirror image killing in Minneapolis of places with center hearts racing. James Luther Carton, a 40 year old man, uh who was a construction laborer and crackhead, had been arrested for the torture, rape and murder of a 26 year old office worker named Judy Lee Dover. Her hands had been bound and she had been gagged. There were seven puncture wounds on her right shoulder and three were above her right breast. A slashing wound to her neck had severed all major arteries and vessels and she had been raped. Blood tests cleared him and the Ludwig case.
Speaker 1:Three years later, another heart-thumping bingo started with a teletype out of a small police department in Minnesota telling the Romulus PD that they have arrested a former Michigan resident from the affluent Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe. Two women get in their van at a Walmart. The driver hears something, turns, sees this guy in the back holding a hunting knife. She jumps out screaming. He panics, jumps out, wants to pick up, squeals out of there. She gets the license plate and calls the cops. The cops find him in a motel, the knife is wrapped in a towel, in the truck next to a large bottle of bleach, like he was planning to clean up a mess. They ran his name found he had been arrested in Michigan in 1986, his name found he had been arrested in Michigan in 1986, went to jail and got out in December of 1990, just in time to murder Ludwig. His blood work in Michigan showed he was a positive, just what they were looking for, though his PGM grouping was a not. Milindak wanted him to submit to another sample, this time to find his PGM, but he refused. 14 months later he finally agreed to another blood test, wrong PGM grouping. He was clear on Ludwig. The next hot suspect would not surface until 2002.
Speaker 1:Art Ludwig wasn't a passive victim, anything, but he decided early on to do what he did best. He was a media guy, he had worked on the media so he would keep the story alive. He would keep the heat on. He would do what he could could do to get Nancy's killer one way or another sooner or later. Early on there was a delay getting the 800 number tip line started, something with budget problems in the police department. Ludwig told Ken Krause that he would pay for the tip line if he had to, but he wanted a line up and running ASAP. Krause called him back, his bosses had okayed the line and and Rumlis would pay for it.
Speaker 1:Ludwig kept coming back to Detroit to do radio and TV interviews. He was accessible to the reporters at the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press and they were happy to keep the story alive. Everything he did he made sure he told his growing number of media contacts. About A month after the murder he videotaped an appeal for information and had it disseminated to Detroit media outlets and the headline read Victim's Husband Tapes on Appeal. Two months after the murder, art flew into town and met with a psychic from Brighton and a clairvoyant from Farmington Hills and room 354 at the airport Hilton. They told him they were able to pick up the same image of the killer and that their image didn't match Arcee's description of the composite in the newspapers either. But they couldn't actually describe what they thought they were seeing Privately. Ludwig thought they were useless but nonetheless it was a father for headlines, a way to keep the story alive.
Speaker 1:Grieving husband calls on psychics to find wife's killer. At first neither, and I felt that they have solved this fairly fast, says Ludwig, quote. And then he says also quote. But then I felt the more we kept it on the front burner, the better off you would be One. There was less chance the Romulus police would go on to something else if there was a lot of hue and cry and second, it would generate leads. End quote Love. We got the Teamsters Nancy was a member of Local 2747 to kick in $30,000 to the reward fund. Headlines was Teamsters Join Hunt for Killer Truckers to Circulate Flyers About Slain Flight Attendant. That was the headline in the Detroit News on August 21, 1991. Art's picture accompanied the story with a cut line Art Ludwig. He wants answers.
Speaker 1:The award announcement coincided with a big campaign to splash wanted posters all over town with details of Nancy's slaying and photos of the composite drawings of the killer. Art held a press conference at the Marriott Hotel on August 26 to announce that there would be a barrage of posters the next day. Papers prominently carried the story. Unfrustrated Lowell was quoted as saying in the news quote my mission is to raise public awareness. End quote. He also took out big display ads featuring the poster in all the dailies and suburban weeklies in the Detroit area. The Teamsters said they would run the reward poster in their union magazine and their 1.6 million members nationwide would distribute the bright yellow flyers at hotels, restaurants and airports. Nationwide Teamsters members and Art and his daughters taped posters up on light poles around town. On September 16, advo Systems, a direct mail company in suburban Livonia, began distributing copies of the poster to all households within five miles of the airport.
Speaker 1:Art knew how to pull the media strings and he pulled them with good timing and great effect. He had mentored a lot of successful TV executives and reporters over the years. Now he would call in all favors, all chits, to get the airtime he could. He got on the Mavripovich show out of New York. He made appearances on A Current Affair Inside Edition. He let cameras follow him around to fill the B-rolls of their feature stories and he later on said I prostituted myself to the media While in New York taping the Povitch Show. Lowe would make with an author he had heard about who was writing a true crime book on unsolved cases. His wife's brother ended up garnering a chapter in the book titled Rewards.
Speaker 1:On the first anniversary of his wife's death, ludwig took out display ads and the Detroit area papers and the first line read In loving memory of my wife, northwest Flight Attendant Read. The second and in huge, bold letters the third line read Nancy Jean Ludwig, the body of the ad, said in part that Nancy was raped and murdered at the airport Hilton Hotel in Romulus on Sunday night, february 17th 1991. The person responsible for this horrible act is still free and probably still in the Detroit area. It is absolutely essential that we get this person off the streets and into treatment before he strikes again. The next victim could be someone you love wife, mother, girlfriend, daughter or neighbor. Tips poured in Snyder and Meliniak ran down. All of them Nothing. Each anniversary Art had something planned that would bring the story back to life for a day or two. Someone knew something he was sure If he kept the story alive they might catch a break. If he let it die. Well, that wasn't going to happen.
Speaker 1:Just after the fourth anniversary of Nancy's death, ludwig's forlorn visage peered out at readers from the cover of the pre-pressed magazine of March 12, 1995, her wrote in a story by Ben Burns, a former editor of the Detroit News who was dean of journalism at Wayne State University. It was a story that grew out of a 15-week project he assigned his students in a class on investigative reporting. Lubbock told Burns that he was willing to do anything, anything go anywhere, to catch the killer. He killed two people that night. He killed Nancy and he killed me. On the fifth anniversary of her murder, the free press carried a five-column story with the headline Six Sisters Search for Stepmother's Death. The story announced that four of Ludwig's daughters were arriving at what had been the airport Hilton. It had been sold since the murder and it was then called the Royce Hotel for Minneapolis that day to kick off a campaign to find their stepmother's killer. They would be in for several days doing interviews, passing out new flyers and beating the drums. The story said that the hotel had agreed to let them place flowers and light candles in room 354, which had not been used since the murder Snyder was quoted.
Speaker 1:I have never had a case for this length of time that has kept the attention of so many people. I don't know why. That is A two-word explanation. Art Ludwig, what tips poured in? Nothing. Despite everything he did over the years, nothing stopped some people from thinking he had either killed his wife or, more likely, hired someone to do it. There were rumors that he had lost money in an investment in a failed bread bakery, which was true, and needed insurance money, which is false. He felt the cold shoulder from some, the glances from others faces quickly averted when he turned to them. Always he felt as though he were under a cloud of suspicion.
Speaker 1:Seven or eight years after Nancy's death, art got a call from a close friend who wanted to alert him that a mutual acquaintance was spreading dirt about Art. The mutual acquaintance was one of Art's closest childhood friends, one of his fellow busboys during summers at Lennon Lakes Bar and Cafe in Brainerd. On weekends, when they got out of work too late to avoid breaking curfew they would sleep in the employee bunk room on the second floor of the restaurant. The friend was much bigger than Art but they have wrestled and engaged in typical horseplay. They were inseparable in high school and kept in touch. Over the years the friend had become a cop. He was telling people quote I'm a cop and I know Art did it. It's just matter of time till they prove it. End quote. Art said that he was absolutely stunned. He said quote we have lived together. We went to high school together. I have been in his home. When he got sick I visited him in the hospital. End quote. Art hasn't spoken with him since the friendship, another victim. But for all of Art's working for media, for all of Snyder's and Malianak's bulldog relentless deaths, eventually they had to admit it was nothing more to be done. It was a cold case. They were at a dead end.
Speaker 1:Bradford Barksdale has an unusual academic background for chief of police, with an affinity and talent for biology, chemistry, calculus and physics. He went to Cass Technical High School in Detroit and Margaret Evey's alma mater In 1970, when Barksdale graduated. It was, and today still is, an oasis of learning in a largely dysfunctional school system riddled with incompetence and indifference, where high school seniors routinely cannot read or calculate above second or third grade levels. Cass Tech is where the smartest and most motivated of the city's kids go, often arriving by city bus from many miles and several transfers away. Barksdale went to the University of Michigan-Flint and spent his first three years as a math major, switching to African-American studies. As a senior he switched over after an incident that proved for him that math was too theoretical to pursue as a life's occupation. A professor one day went through a counterintuitive proof that if you take .9999 and extend the nines to infinity, the number became equivalent to one For Barksdale it was hogwash to one. For Barksdale it was hogwash. He didn't care how many nines there were If you kept having one nine after another. To him you were approaching as close as you could get to one, but still were not there Of such a tiny thing the difference, or lack thereof, between one and a decimal point followed by an infinity of
Speaker 1:nines. Would Flint's police chief ultimately be made? Like many big cities in the mid-1970s, flint was recruiting blacks to diversify its police force and Barksdale thought he would give it a shot. He started out working undercover narcotics because he was a fresh face no one would recognize. He made sergeant in 1984, lieutenant in 1987, about the same time he was assigned to the Flint Area Narcotics Group, or FANG, a multi-jurisdictional task force that included members of the state police police. In 1995, Barksdale was promoted to captain and on October 3, 2000, 23 years to the day after he started training at the police academy, he was named chief of police. Coincidentally, in 1981, during a 15-month layoff from the PD during one of Flint's recurring economic slums, barksdale got to know Ebi. He took a temporary job as director of safety and security at UM-Flint and was in several meetings with her. He was working vice and narcotics when Ebi was murdered and had no involvement with the case, though like everyone in Flint he was well-versed in his
Speaker 1:particulars. While working with Fang, barksdale had become friends with his supervisor on the task force, captain Robert Bertie. They were both no-nonsense, straight-shooting cops with reputations for knowing how to get things done and done right. Bertie had been a small-town kid growing up in Michigan's thumb. He graduated from high school in 1970, went to college for a year, didn't like it and dropped out. In 1973 he took a part-time job as cop in his hometown of North Branch, a job that came with not a minute of training. He just raised his right arm, took an oath, got his uniform. He fell in love with being a cop, joined the state police academy the next year and, upon graduation, became a road trooper for $4.82 an hour in Pontiac, a city very much like Flint in that its auto factory economy was suffering through hard times as imports caught into the Big Three's market share. Birdie worked undercover in Detroit three years, then worked on several motor jurisdictional teams in an affluent Oakland County north of Detroit, in western Michigan and in Flint. In 1996, he was promoted to captain and placed in charge of the state police's criminal investigations division, where he oversaw covert operations such as the installation of hidden cameras and microphones during investigations and reporting to the state's attorney general, investigating all allegations of corruption, of malfeasance by the state's elected politicians. By the time Barksdale was appointed, chief Birdie had become a lieutenant colonel with the state police and was its highest-ranking career officer, reporting only to a political appointee who held the rank of
Speaker 1:colonel. In 2000, flint was in another downturn, this one severe enough that Michigan's Governor, john Engler, had repeatedly threatened to have the state take over the running of the city, and in fact, a trustee was eventually appointed to oversee Flint's day-to-day operations and tried to rein in its huge budget deficits, reducing the mayor to a figurehead. Reducing the mayor to a figurehead. The police department was going through layoffs and in even more of a budget crunch than normal. Eventually, the department would lose 100 positions, going from about 350 officers in the late 1990s to about 250 in
Speaker 1:2002. When he heard his old friend had made chief Bertie, gave Barksdale a call and suggested they get together. He thought they might be something the MSP could do to help his old friend battle the bad guys in Flint. And he said quote I wanted us to be more fluid and flexible in our approach to crime solving. If you see something, offer your assistance. Some police departments want your help, others don't. End quote. So he figured that Barksdale would, that Barksdale would. And he said that he had never found a chief of police that cared for his community more than Brad Barksdale cares for his. He was willing to be creative and, more important, willing to allocate resources to come to Flint's aid. So Bertie even was willing to go so far as to pull in detectives or troopers from other
Speaker 1:districts. Before the end of the year 2000, bertie and Barksdale met for lunch, having worked together in FAN. Both were supporters of multi-jurisdictional task forces. Both were also big proponents of DNA technology and well-versed and recent technological advances that might make it possible to solve all crimes. They decided to form a cold case task force that, so as not to step on any toes, would only target very old cases no longer being worked. That would also reduce the possibility of opposition, either from within the ranks of the PD or from local politicians, democrats, all who were very leery of perceived meddling by the state or its Republican governor. They also decided to target cases where crime scene evidence could lend itself to updated DNA analysis. There was one case that jumped out to Barksdale as fitting every criteria. The Ebi case was at the top of the list, he says he asked Bertie if he was familiar with the case. He wasn't. Barksdale, filled him in, said nothing would impact our community more than solving
Speaker 1:this. Brady went back to his Lansing office at the MSP's headquarters and told his assistant, mark Dugovito, who supervised all the detectives in the state, to work on the nuts and bolts of putting a task force together. He told him there was no line item amount in the budget for a task force and he said just do it and do it right and I'll get you the funding. And so, with the full support of his boss, colonel Mike Robinson, on May 3, 2001, dugovito met with Dan Bonnet and Lt Gary Hagler from the Flint PD. Bonnet was a former hippie Vietnam War protester, was a detective lieutenant overseeing all the MSP detectives and tent posts stretching over 13 counties in central northern Michigan, and the idea of a cold case task force struck a dart with him. For one thing, he had worked at the Flint Post from 1994-1999, when it was the crime capital of the world, he says. For another, an unclear major crime is unacceptable. We didn't close cases, he says. I didn't care if it was 20 years old. I told my people investigate crimes like they happen to your
Speaker 1:family. Bonnet said Bertie had asked him before the meeting what he would need to go into Flint with a major crimes task force. His answer 10 detectives and a lot of funding. Flint had no money so it would all have to come from the MSP Michigan State Police. Barksdale was back in Flint thinking maybe the MSP would offer up two or three detectives for the squad. Birdie offered 10. Flint would assign two or three officers they would target the Ebby case and one or two others. It was decided that the squad would be housed in the Flint PD headquarters downtown and that Flint would provide some basic office necessities such as room and mailboxes. The MSP would provide most of the band power GPS surveillance devices when needed, computers, high-speed data lines, 800 megahertz radios. Bonnet was told he could handpick his detective. His first two choices were Sergeants Greg Kilbourne and Mike Larson. According to Bonnet, the best two detectives worked in the state at the time and to team them up On May 16, larson and Officer Mark Reeves began the actual physical work of setting up a place to
Speaker 1:work. They rounded up all MSP file cabinets and other office equipment. They were not being used. They hauled it in computers. They got the phone company to install high-speed lines to connect the computers and phones directly to the Flint MSP Port 35, west of town. And Birdie told him whenever you need to get it running, if you need to use my name, go ahead. I was dropping his and Reeve said that he was dropping his name like apples from a
Speaker 1:tree. The Homicide Task Force was born and even if it did have just one tiny room that would barely fit three officers, much less the plan 12 or 13. Even if the room with 30 beige walls and scruffled scratched linoleum floors was just across from the bathroom and the sound of flushing toilets and the old plumbing came through the thin walls so clearly you could barely keep a phone conversation going. But there were still obstacles to overcome. Almost as soon as Larson and Reeves started trucking in staff, the Flint PD sergeant's union filed a complaint with the Michigan Employment Relations Commission alleging a violation of state labor laws that the task force was an illegal outsourcing of Flint police work. They went to Genesee County Circuit Court Judge Richard Yulee and asked him to grant an injunction to stop the state police from investigating any of Flint's old homicides. And the union president, police Sergeant Rick Hetherington, said the city is outsourcing jobs. That should be done by city
Speaker 1:sergeants. Barksdale had no comment for reporters but he had plenty of comments for the sergeants. He was mightily mad to the point of apoplexy and Brad Barksdale when mad, is very, very mad. And he said quote. I told them they were embarrassing themselves. Don't let people think you are more concerned with your paycheck than putting murderers in jail End quote. Bunner was equally ticked off, especially that the union was fighting them on the Evie case. He said, quote my God, I wanted to get that one solved. I mean, you're talking about a case lying down in the basement just sitting there in a file and all the detectives who work it are retired and gone End
Speaker 1:quote. Barksdale knew some of it was just a road response from a union sick of seeing officers laid off. Part of it was fear that this was the first step in the door of a state takeover of Flint. They were getting paranoid and it was, you know. For some, according to Barster, it was even ridiculous. He said I thought it was ludicrous but I understood what the paranoia was. End
Speaker 1:quote. There was also a fiasco involving the FBI that was still fresh in a lot of people's minds In the mid-1990s. The FBI had offered the Flynn PD help in setting up a crime task force. Flynn provided office space in the police headquarters, but it was a scam. All they wanted to do was come in riot the police building and city hall with bugs and look for corruption. The feds got a quick boot when it was discovered what they were up to. The Feds got a quick boot when it was discovered what they were up
Speaker 1:to. Barksdale was worried that the brouhaha would cause Birdie to rethink his offer. He was afraid he would pull out. But Birdie says we'll work it out, we'll get it done. And the union came to its senses. The issue was settled during negotiations. The union was promised that the task force would only work cold cases, that those at least a year old that had gone cold and were no longer being actively worked. The task force would be given the green light for a year and then its existence would be open to further negotiation. And as a face-saving gesture without much other significance, the union made and was granted another demand the name of the task force would be changed from the Homicide Task Force to the Violent Crimes Task Force. The union thought the first name might imply the Flint cops didn't know how to solve homicides, though why the second name is any better is a matter of conjecture. Pettiness prevailed though. For example, the Flint cops wouldn't let the state cops use their LAIN machine downstairs, the computerized system for seeing who got warrants out on them anywhere in the
Speaker 1:state. The Abbey case was at the top of the task force list. It fit all the criteria. Plus, if it could be solved, the PR impact would be enormous, both for showing the value of joint task forces and in getting more money from state legislators to fund DNA testing, the task force would work. Two other cases, one involving a suspected serial murderer, work. Two other cases one involving a suspected serial murderer and according to Bonnet they had a lot of dead prostitutes. They would have them falling over like flies. The other case was the killing of a GM worker, a guy who got his vacation check and started hitting the local bars trying to find some cocaine. Police thought that someone went out with him to his van, supposedly to make a sale, and instead the killer shot him in the back of his head and took his money. Detective Sergeant Kilhorn was put in charge of the Ebi case and Sergeant Larson got the prostitutes. Larson got the prostitutes. Thank you for listening to the Murder Book. Have a great week.
