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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 Gortons Deadly Seccret Part IX: Connecting Evidence Across Decades
A stunning forensic breakthrough connects two of Michigan's most notorious cold cases, revealing the chilling work of a serial killer who eluded justice for decades.
Detective Sergeant Kilbourne, a seasoned Michigan State Police veteran with experience in everything from undercover narcotics to high-profile murder investigations, faces his most challenging assignment yet. Taking charge of the 1986 Margaret Ebi murder case fifteen years after the crime, he discovers a chaotic evidence collection that forces him to rebuild the investigation from the ground up. "We don't have a crime scene, but we got pictures of a crime scene," his superior reminds him as they forge ahead.
The turning point arrives when DNA samples preserved from the Ebi crime scene, previously thought degraded beyond use, are submitted to Michigan's state-of-the-art crime lab. What happens next electrifies the investigation – the genetic fingerprint matches DNA from the unsolved 1991 murder of flight attendant Nancy Ludwig in Romulus. Two seemingly unrelated high-profile murders, connected by the invisible thread of a killer's DNA.
As the investigation widens, we meet Detective Mike Larson, Kilbourne's counterpart described as "Mr. Yang to Kilbourne's Mr. Ying" – opposite personalities united in their pursuit of justice. Their work parallels the revolutionary case chronicled in Joseph Wambach's bestseller "The Blooding," which documents how DNA profiling first caught a serial killer in England, forever changing criminal investigations worldwide.
The path forward becomes complicated when territorial issues arise between state and local agencies. Detective Gordy Melianak, who devoted years to the Ludwig case, finds himself sidelined by departmental politics just as the breakthrough occurs. Will interagency tensions derail the investigation, or can these dedicated detectives overcome bureaucratic obstacles to finally bring closure to two of Michigan's most haunting unsolved murders?
Subscribe to The Murder Book for the conclusion of this riveting true crime investigation that demonstrates how modern forensic science can breathe new life into cases long gone cold.
Welcome to the Murder Book. I'm your host, kiara, and this is Jeffrey Gordon. Deadly Secret, part 9. Let's begin.
Speaker 1:Detective Sergeant Kilbourne was a person that he studied criminal justice at Michigan State. He joined the Michigan State Police in 1977. He spent seven years as a uniform patrol officer. He went on to undercover narcotics and stolen property surveillance work. In 1986, he was promoted to detergent sergeant detective sergeant, I should say and he was assigned to the criminal intelligence division under the state's attorney general. So here he would work politically sensitive cases, usually referred to the state police by local cops, leery of taking on local politicians accused of crimes and, you know, chicanery. Later he worked undercover investigating murder for hire and prostitution, then was assigned to be part of an FBI task force investigating bookmaking in western Michigan.
Speaker 1:Kilburn worked more than his share of odd, high-profile cases, the most famous of which was that of Richard Davis. Richard Davis, his wife, supposedly died in a suspicious horse riding accident and years after the murder her body was exhumed and new lab tests were able to determine that she had been poisoned. There is even a movie about this, I believe Lifetime or something like that has that movie. But when this happened, of course guy davis was long gone. But then they were able to capture him. He was on his sailboat and he returned to to michigan after the case was aired on unsolved mystery. So it was because of unsolved mysteries that they found him, personally asked to join the task force by Bonnet and assigned to head up the Ebi case early in June of 2001,. He had been only vaguely aware of it and it was just another murder case in Flint for him. He and Detective Bonnet rounded up two large boxes of notes and scribbling that they gathered on the case over the years, as well as crime scene photos and sketches.
Speaker 1:The state police keep detailed and well-organized notes during investigations. It was culture shock for Kilborn and Bonner when they first went through the Flint PD material because almost none of it was in the neat type update, dated, narrative form that they expected. Much of it was handwritten notes, not always dated, not always readable, often accompanied by the doodling and personal sort of shorthand one uses in making notes. So it was very chaotic to go and to try to sort those notes. So according to Kilbourne, it was a tactical decision to keep reports at a bare minimum. To keep reports at a bare minimum the Flynn PD had not wanted to have to hand over reports to the media under terms of the state's sunshine laws. So no reports, problem solved. They would go back and draft official reports when and if the case was solved. It never had been so. No reports. So for Bonnet and Kilburn, of course it was mind-boggling. It never had been so. No reports. So for Bonnet and Kilburn, of course it was mind-boggling because the guys were saying this is going to be an impossible task. What are you thinking? So Bonnet told his detectives you know, don't complain and cry and jump up and down about what we don't have. We will start with what we have we do have and we will start the case over, build our own files, start from the beginning. We don't have a crime scene, but we got pictures of a crime scene.
Speaker 1:So Bonnet told Kilborn and Dennis Dix, who was at that time a rookie detective, to pull in from the CID office in East Lansing to take the boxes of stuff back to the Flint State Police Post, ensconce themselves in an office, take all the time they needed to make as much sense as they could of what was there. Kilburn read it all first, then Diggs read it all and then they began to organize it, figure out what it had told them what they hadn't. And Dave King may not have been the most organized record keeper and much of the lack of formal reports was intentional, but he was happy to help them. So he bent over backwards to meet with us and go over his notes and he gave me every tidbit of information that he could remember according. These are words from Detective Kilburn. And it helped too too, that Gary Effort, the Flint detective in charge of the original crime scene, who had retired and become an investigator for the Genesee County Prosecutor Arthur Bush, was assigned to the task force because he was able to smooth things out between the task force and members of the Flint PD.
Speaker 1:About the time the Michigan State Police was forming its own cold case squad. Bush had asked the state for funding for his own cold case unit. He had been turned down and would remain mightily miffed over what he perceived to be a slight to him and meddling by the state. He wanted to get his own guy on the squad. For their part, bonnet and Kilbourne knew and respected effort and were happy to have him. He would prove invaluable in helping sort out the old reports and give them insights into the different players.
Speaker 1:More than two weeks after hauling the boxes of notes back to the state post, kilbourne was ready to begin his own investigation, basically working the case from the beginning, starting with the arrival of Hyde and Smith at Ebby's on that Sunday, nearly 15 years earlier, and then moving on to the list of Abby's lovers and to the mod employees. A common response was quote. I already talked to the cops, end quote, but they have not talked to the state cops. And now they would.
Speaker 1:Kilburn began interviewing family members too. He needed to clear them, of course, but he also wanted to get a feel for the person behind the headlines. Clear them, of course, but he also wanted to get a feel for the person behind the headlines. Dale, abby's oldest child and an attorney, told him now how she and her mother had remained close, despite one living in Indianapolis and the other in Flint. She told, after talking by phone once or twice a week of the time, her mother had concocted some story to get her to visit her at the gatehouse in July of 1986, and when she got there it turned out to be a surprise party for her 35th birthday. She told Cobourne that her mother's house had been broken in several times. There was some sort of secret passageway or tunnel that led into the basement of the gatehouse from the outside, and her mother had once found a mod employee in her basement and demanded that the tunnel be locked. Kilbourne also put out a description of the Ebi killing on a national law enforcement network called VICAP for Apprehension Program where police can compare MOs of various solved and unsolved crimes. They got numerous responses of similar crimes with known and unknown perps nationwide and began trying to link those killers to Flint.
Speaker 1:Since the purpose of the task force was to see if new lab techniques could be successfully applied to all cases, kilburn and Dix went through the evidence to see if the Michigan State Police New State of the Art Crime Lab in Lansing could be of assistance. A lab report that said semen samples from the crime scene likely had been degraded, but he couldn't find anything to say conclusively that they were of no value. Dna testing was in its infancy in 1986. Not a lot of cops knew much about it. King and others on the Flint PD had assumed, based on that lab report at the time, that the DNA was bad. But was it or could something that would have been considered degraded by the standards of 1986, now, with much more refined techniques, be unstable or I should say not unstable, sorry. It might be usable. More important, did they even still have it?
Speaker 1:Kilbourne learned that the blood and semen samples had indeed been kept in cold storage at Bridgeport Lab by the MSP but that they had never been submitted for DNA analysis. He asked that the regional crime Lab in Bridgeport, which had been keeping the samples on ice, submit them for testing to the DNA lab in Lansing. They arrived there on June 19. The first result came back on July 6. Charleston was finally and officially cleared as a suspect.
Speaker 1:Dna technology was light years ahead of where it had been when the original testing of samples taken from Abby was done early in 1987. Those tests couldn't tell anything about Abby's attackers blood type or couldn't provide a DNA profile. Now new tests were able to show a DNA profile for her killer and Stone's profile didn't match. That was news, but not big news. All it did was clear a suspect, which was something they were doing a lot in the early days of the Renew investigation. The big news came on Monday, august 6, about 3 pm when the director of the DNA lab, charles Barna, paige Kilbourne, who immediately called him back. It was about the Ebi case, about the samples that have arrived.
Speaker 1:On June 19th there has been a case-to-case hit with the DNA, according to Barna. Does that mean we have solved the case, as Kilborn and Barna said no, and then he explained it to him. He said sources of DNA can be collected at crime scenes from blood, semen, teeth, skin, hairs, urine, bones and muscles. The DNA is then entered into a national database of DNA samples known by the acronym CODIS. That means Combined DNA Index System. In February of 1995, michigan hooked up to the nationwide CODIS system which had begun with a pilot program in Minnesota in 1991. There are two populations of samples in the database those of convicted fellows or felons I should say and those from unsolved crimes.
Speaker 1:The match made on the samples from the Abby scene was to an unsolved crime in Romulus in 1991. When Michigan had hooked them to CODIS, one of the first things Lynn Helton had done was to enter in the DNA from the Ludwig murder told them that the same person who had raped and murdered Margaret Abbey in 1986 had raped and murdered Nancy Ludwig, the flight attendant. They now knew they had a serial killer but they still didn't know who it was the two highest profile murders in the state in the last 20 years. The two highest profile murders in the state in the last 20 years in the last 50 years if you didn't count Jimmy Hoffa were committed by the same person. It was an energizing moment for all as Kilburn spread the word to the members of the FBI's profile had sent everyone down at that end in 1986 and 1987. They now had a focus due south of Flint, about a 90-minute drive south on I-75 to the airport-dominated city of Romulus. The link between the two cases was good news, of course, but bad in a way. The task force members already had huge to-do lists involving tracking down all witnesses, all friends and acquaintances and all suspects. Now there were literally thousands of new names to deal with and another cold case suddenly was theirs to solve too. At 3.45, kilburn called the Romulus PD and there Commander Dave or David Early recounted details of the Ludwig case which were chilling in their similarity to the case he was now familiar with. Kilburn told him he would be down to talk to him in person the next day. We'll be right back Now.
Speaker 1:There was a book that famous former cop and eventually true crime writer Joseph Wambach wrote. It was called the Blooding and the Blooding was a bestseller in 1989. And it soon became a required reading for Task Force members. For them, the book was a recounting of a manhunt for a serial killer in England and the new technology that finally caught him, and it was both a primer on DNA and an encouragement that their serial killer, who, like the villain of the book, had raped and murdered two women and had avoided capture for years despite intense publicity and ongoing investigations, could be caught.
Speaker 1:Dna has become so much part of the law enforcement vocabulary and a major part of the plot of crime novels, movie scripts and popular TV shows such as CSI, that is often forgotten just how recent its application to solving crime has been been. For example, linda Mann, 15, was raped and murdered November 21st 1983. It was like a little village, english village in Narborough. Despite some massive investigation involving 150 police, thousands of man-hours of work, hundreds of interviews, numerous suspects, intense media coverage on TV and radio, the tabloids, the murder went unsolved In September of 1984, crime detection would change forever, though no one knew it at the time, and that was when Alec Jeffrey, a 34-year-old research scientist at England's and hopefully I'm not butchering this name Leicester University, looked at X-ray films that had just been developed and he had his eureka moment.
Speaker 1:He stared at clear visual proof that his theory was correct that if you identify regions of the DNA molecule that have the most variation from person to person and came up with a way to highlight those regions with a radioactive probe, you would have the equivalent of a genetic fingerprint. So Jeffries took DNA from blood cells, cut them into pieces by adding enzymes. By adding enzymes, the bits were dropped onto a gel and exposed to an electric field, which caused the larger fragments to separate from the smaller. Radioactive material was added and the sample then was X-rayed. The film, when developed, showed Jeffries that his theory was correct, because what you see is that the DNA is separated into bands that look much like a barcode, and each person's barcode, with the exception of identical twins, was distinct. It's unique. So Jeffries immediately applied for a patent and his wife Susan drew up a list of commercial applications.
Speaker 1:At the top was settling immigration disputes a very big issue then. In Great Britain, proven citizens claimed to be blood relatives of British citizens. If their claim was true, they were entitled to enter into the country. But many of the claims were fraudulent and there was no easy way to prove the issue one way or another until now. Another application was to determine the suitability of bone marrow transplants. A third was improved animal husbandry.
Speaker 1:On July 31, 1986, another 15-year-old girl, dawn Ashworth, was missing, raped and then murdered. Her body was discovered on another wooded footpath, just a few hundred yards from where Mann's body had been found. And this time police were quick to solve the murder. And this time, police were quick to solve the murder. They arrested a porter at a nearby mental hospital, a misfit with a history of molesting young girls, and he quickly confessed to the murder. But although the two murders were sample taken from the porter, the results were conclusive and shocking. The murders and rapes had indeed been committed by the same person, but that person was still at large. The porter had not done it. His confession was false.
Speaker 1:On November 21st 1986, judicial history was made DNA evidence was used for the first time in a murder case. Police and the court were convinced by the scientists that Jeffrey's DNA tests were accurate and unassailable and charges were dropped against the porter. The police, having lost one suspect because of DNA testing, decided to turn the technology to the advantage and began taking blood samples and running DNA tests of all the young men in the Narborough area. The killer, the improbable name Colin Pitchfork, a baker and cake decorator, was eventually caught and convicted. The irony was that he passed his blood test by altering a password and getting a friend to pass off his blood as Pitchfork's. The friend eventually told other friends while out at a pub and one of them called the police. Pitchfork was picked up, readily confessed, submitted to a legitimate blood test and was linked conclusively to both murders. In 1987, jeffries Technology went commercial when the chemical company ICI opened up a blood testing center in Cheshire, england, and law enforcement at least that portion of it dealing with murder or rape would never be the same.
Speaker 1:Mike Larson is Mr Young to Kilburn's Mr Ying. Where one is taciturn and by the hook, the other is brash, outgoing, quick to laugh and play it by the seat of his pants. When asked to cooperate for a book on the Eby and Lockwick murders, kilbourne, by then retired from the state police. An investigator with the State Gaming Commission said he had been asked by the Flint prosecutor not to comment until after a trial. Larson, still with the Michigan State Police, invited a reporter to his office, engaged in several long and detailed interviews, providing plenty of material both on and off the record and had begun making photocopies of the MSP reports when it dawned on him, you know, after a third interview he said I probably ought to go through channels. There's a media guy in Lansing you probably should contact. Larson looks as he has engaged now since graduation from high school and even though he was a grandfather at this time he was still very active. He would play hockey once a week in the winter. He keeps his backup equipment and sticks on the back seat of his state-issued car.
Speaker 1:He also joined the army when he was young, did a four-year stint at the Superhush National Security Agency and for years its existence was officially denied. It was the agency that dared not to speak its name and Larson was a computer specialist at its Fort Meade, maryland headquarters, which contained more computer power than any organization or business in the world, more than most of them combined. Larson was a technician installing programs, doing maintenance, changing magnetic tapes on the giant mainframes of the world's most secretive intelligence organization. And he also moonlighted with a Maryland moving company and, because he had a top-secret security clearance, got the jobs that involved places like the White House and the CIA. Larson then returned to Muskegon in western Michigan, attended community college, refereed high school athletics, got a job in a factory to support his young family. His wife's uncle was a state cop and Larson had been intrigued by that. One day a recruiter visited campus, signed him up for a civil service test in 1979.
Speaker 1:Larson then returned um. So let me back up a little bit. Um, so he joined, larson, joined the Michigan State Police, 96th Recruiting Clat, and at the time of the Avery murder Larson worked out of the Bridgeport Post, across the driveway from the crime lab whose crew had worked the crime scene. Larson was the second member Bonnet had handpicked for the task force in May of 2001. And while Kilborn dug into the Ebi case, larson took on the string of the prostitutes who started showing up in 1998, and eventually he and Reeves would give DNA swaps to more than 400 people and they would soon discover that there were at least two different unrelated serial murderers involved and stumble across a serial rapist of prostitutes as well. Things moved fairly smoothly and eventually one murderer of two prostitutes would be caught and convicted, as would the rapist. But Larson couldn't be involved in the end of those cases and on August 6th came the case-to-case hit on CODIS and that same day bonded Paul Larson of the prostitute case and into the AB Ludwig murders. And now Ying and Yang will be working together.
Speaker 1:So on August 7, 2001, gordy Melianak was, as usual, in a very bad mood and he was one of those hard-nosed cops that could play bad cop with the best of them. And his bad cop, paired with Dan Snyder's good cop, was a work of art, and he had a reputation around the rummeless PD for hard work, for a bulldog approach to detective work that was both respected and irritating. He liked working long days, carrying a heavy caseload that made some of his peers look like shirkers. He worked twice as hard and twice as long as anybody else. He would work 14, 15 hours a day, seven days a week. And you know Snyder said we didn't always get along, but he was a hell of a cop and the best cop I ever worked with. So the last thing Malinuk ever did was suffer fools. He was the one when the department sent him and Snyder out to meet with FBI profilers at a convention a month after Ludwig's death to proclaim early on that they were a bunch of assholes and that they didn't know anything, said that he was what a white male big deal. Most serial killers were, and taking what they had to say with a grain of salt went against his grain and they are useless. And he would tell Dan or anyone who cared to listen that In 1981, malianak became one of the original five hires of the new Romulus Police Department and in May of 1989, he was promoted to detective sergeant working with Snyder. He was promoted to detective sergeant working with Snyder and in February of 1991, they got their biggest, nastiest case, which was the Ludwig murder.
Speaker 1:Ten years later, in August of 2001, miliunac had good reason to be mad. The Romulus police force is riddled with politics. In a small town where politics were often down and dirty and you never know who you might run afoul of or for what. And the mayor didn't like you and the chief needed to curry favor with the mayor. Well, if such things were demotions made Three months earlier, melianak's boss in the detective bureau, commander Dave Early, had given him the word. Malianak was keeping his rank of lieutenant but being moved out of the DB and back into uniform duty in a patrol car. So Early said you are back in uniform. And Malianak said well, that's effing nice. I had a big chip on my shoulder. So Melianak with a chip on his shoulder wasn't a pleasant thing to behold. They wanted him on patrol. Fine, he will be on patrol. He came into the station as little as possible. He couldn't stand to see either Early or Kirby. And one thing remained the same he humped his butt Even after his first run in with Kirby and he was busted back to patrol. He would work so hard and what you were doing he would do five times as much as anyone else.
Speaker 1:For some reason or another now forgotten Manianak was in the station, out doing something at the front desk behind the plexiglass in the lobby, when three guys walk in at 9.30 am, looking businesslike, not like the usual Romulus residents wanting to file a report, and one of them asked is Gordy Melinek here? And he said I am Gordy Melianak, who are you? And Detective Kilburn introduced himself I'm Greg Kilburn, I'm for the Michigan State Police Crime Task Force, and with him were State Police Detective Jamie Corona and Gary Elford. And he was thinking what in the world had he done, or did they think he had done, to bring three plank claws and why they were looking for him. So he asked what is this all about? He said you don't know. He said no, so well, we came up with a link between a killing we have been investigating in Flint and the Nazi, the Nancy Ludwig case. And he's like oh, you're kidding me. I said no, we're not. So they talked to early and done some background checking with Lynn Helton and now we're there to get up to speed on the Ludwig case. Kilburn needed to look at the reports, get copies, see what they had, how it was organized and how they could use it to get started on phase two of what was already an exhaustive investigation. And here they were, having driven down from Flint, only to find out that one of the two guys they needed to talk to had not even been told they were coming or that they had been a dramatic breakthrough in the Ludwig case. And Melianak said that floored me and I was stunned. As soon as they told me I said to myself you gotta be kidding me, I was just fuming, and this I'm quoting Melianak himself. So Kilburn, corona and Effort were bussed into sea early.
Speaker 1:Melianak called Snyder at home. Snyder had been promoted to lieutenant in the patrol division and was no longer in the DB. He had found out late the day before but had not had a chance to call Melianak. So Barna had called Helton after he would talk to Kilborn, knowing that she would work the Ludwig scene, and Helton had called Snyder at home. As soon as Helton had called him, snyder called Kilborn saying he was no longer in the DB but wanted on the case and would make himself totally available. He was hoping to elicit Kilburn's support.
Speaker 1:Melianak went into the room where all the voluminous files were stored Snyder is a knick-knack and because they had been his files they were meticulously organized and squared away no more Because someone had been rummaging through them, spilling stuff on the floor, probably trying to get some background on the case and where it stood. Snyder reported in and went to talk to Kirby. Snyder was head of the officers' union and he and Kirby had butted heads over union issues, contract negotiations and just about everything else. Snyder's disdain for his boss was well known. Snyder, unlike his partner, could suffer fools, but he refused to suffer Kirby. As Snyder tells it, he told Kirby he would work the case with the state police on his own time on weekends, at nights, taking vacation time, whatever it took, and Kirby said no, you're not to be involved at all.
Speaker 1:Snyder was stunned because Kirby had gotten word that Snyder had talked to Kilburn the day before and was ticked off. What right do you have to call them? He said it's my case. So Kirby told him emphatically that it wasn ticked off. What right do you have to call them? He said it's my case. So Kubrick told him emphatically that it wasn't his case, it was Early's case and he ordered him to have no contact with the state police whatsoever.
Speaker 1:And Malianak said that this was the dumbest thing he had ever heard of. So later Malianak heard scuttlebutt that the Romulus PD was going to turn everything over to Kilburn and Larson, not just the files, which was understandable, but the case itself. They were going to give up our case and not assign anyone to work with the MSP. This is crazy, said Malianak. There was bad blood right from the beginning. Kirby might have told Snyder not to have any contact with the state police, but he had not given Melianak any orders. So he called Kilburn and left a message and said there is a lot of internal bickering going on here. You need to contact Dan Snyder. He knows this case better than anyone. End quote.
Speaker 1:But Kilbourne needed Kirby's cooperation and Early's. He wasn't about to get embroiled in office politics if he could avoid it. He said that he decided right away that he wasn't going to be involved in all that and he didn't stick around Early's back because that was not going to help anyone. It was Early's case and so it was Early he would work with. On Thursday, the 9th, early met with Kilbourne and then Bonnet at the Michigan State Police Second District Headquarters in Northville. They wanted to set the groundwork for a joint investigation. The meeting wasn't promising. Early said his department was overlooked but down to just three detectives, and that he couldn't be able to spare anyone full time. He was willing, though, to offer clerical help to assist in entering tips or other computer work. Thank you for listening to the Murderbook. Have a great week.
