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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's Deadly Secret XIV: Inside a Sexual Predator's Arrest
Deep beneath the veneer of an ordinary family man lurked one of Michigan's most disturbing predators. Jeffrey Gordon—quiet, meticulous, and seemingly gentle—maintained a double life that shocked even veteran investigators when it was finally exposed in 2001.
The search of Gordon's modest Flint home revealed an astonishing collection of approximately 1,200 women's undergarments, many labeled with names, dates, and locations—trophies from his countless violations of women's privacy. His disturbing videotapes captured unsuspecting victims in intimate moments, revealing a voyeuristic obsession that had apparently escalated to murder.
Behind the scenes, jurisdictional tensions complicated the investigation. Prosecutor Arthur Busch insisted on proper procedures despite pressure from state police brass eager for media attention. As search warrants were finally executed, investigators discovered the true extent of Gordon's depravity—a meticulously organized collection that reflected the compartmentalized psychology of a predator who had successfully hidden in plain sight for years.
Most shocking was how Gordon's behavior had raised red flags for years. Former neighbors reported multiple incidents of window peeping dating back to 1986. His own brothers reportedly referred to him as "the panty sniffer" behind his back. Yet his wife Brenda maintained she knew nothing of his criminal past in Florida, where he had served prison time for similar offenses.
Gordon's arrest finally connected him to the 1986 murder of Margaret Eby at the prestigious Mott Estate, where his family business had installed sprinkler systems, and the 1991 killing of Nancy Ludwig at a Detroit airport hotel. After fifteen years, advanced DNA technology had finally caught up with a predator who had been hiding behind the facade of normalcy all along.
Join us as we explore how this seemingly ordinary man maintained his secret life for so long, and the dedicated investigators who finally brought him to justice.
Welcome to the Murder Book. I'm your host, chiara, and this is part 14 of Jeffrey Gordon's Deadly Secret. Let's begin. Mike Odedesco was considered Romulus PD Warren's wizard. His specialty was drafting them on a computer template, knowing how best to describe the chain of events and evidence that would readily win approval of prosecutors and judges.
Speaker 1:While other Romulus officers worked surveillance and state police gathered evidence and background information on Gordon, ondenshko corrected warrants. The day and night before the day of the arrest he was en route to the Bahamas for the start of a long-planned vacation which Snyder saw no reason to cancel or delay. After all, the warrants would be a slam dunk. Snyder was used to faxing out the Densko requests to Wayne County prosecutors and having them readily approved, and then faxing them to judges who signed them just as readily. With Snyder, larson and Kilhorn conducting a series of interviews. It failed to malign act to deliver Oddejensko warrants to Bush's office. Petrite, who is the trial division chief, would be the one to sign off on them To him and Bush, a Milianak survivor was part of the problem.
Speaker 1:If they had questions, the lead investigators Larson and Kilborn were the ones that wanted to ask them of. And where were they Doing interviews? Unavailable, the Flint PD sent a detective over, but immediately it was clear he had been kept out of the loop too and couldn't answer any questions. Second, what was a cop from Wayne County doing there? And third, what Odejengo might or might not be good at? And the way he did things in Wayne County were irrelevant in Genesee County. Number four, there was, this time, pressure that wasn't helping anyone. Pressure that wasn't helping anyone. So Bush says. Well, my first concern was that the state police was very anxious to have a press conference. I wasn't so interested in having a press conference as I wasn't positioning the investigation so we didn't have issues that would relate to suppression of evidence. I wasn't going to allow would relate to suppression of evidence. I wasn't going to allow my case to get hijacked so someone could be on TV for a minute or 30 seconds. End quote State police brass had hoped for a noon press conference, which made no sense to anyone except those well up the chain of command.
Speaker 1:It made no sense to Kilbourne or Larson, who had taken their time getting their ducks in a row before heading out to get Gordon. It made no sense to Snyder. It certainly made no sense to Bush being a politician and being that this was the biggest case in decades. He wasn't about to pass up a press conference but there was no way they could have won that soon. He got a pushback to three and Bonnet says that Bush delayed the press conference until then because he wanted to take it over.
Speaker 1:He tried to control it. Bush says he had it delayed because he didn't understand why the state police were in such a hurry for such an old case. In his opinion, they needed to get organized and then have a press conference. As it was, they still held it before warrants were even issued, much less executed, and he said the idea we had made press statements before we executed search warrants was something that bemoaned Bush. The press conference was held across the street from the courthouse in the City Hall, the street from the courthouse in the City Hall office of Mayor Woodrow Stanley, and according to Bush it was a strange place to be. He remembers walking and thinking that there was more brass in that room that he had ever seen in his life and that he was standing there in a black T-shirt and blue jeans and going on TV. Bush asked that no mention of DNA be made. He says it was a tactical request. A search warrant would allow them to get a mouth swab from Gordon and that would make any match to the Ebi murder conclusive. Bonnet and others say it was a tactical decision, all right, believing that Bush wanted to control the release of information over the coming days and keep his name in as many headlines as possible. He wanted to steal the thunder and Bush said that, according to Bush, this was, you know, a pile of bull. And in addition to it being good tactics, he wanted to avoid mentioning DNA because the prosecution is prohibited by law from disclosing any results of tests until they get into court, because it's unethical.
Speaker 1:The Flint and Detroit media were there in swarms Photographers, reporters with notebooks, radio guys with mics, tv trucks up front with their antennas raised. High Politicians and police brass filled a large podium. Even Charles Barna, jeff Nye's boss, had been summoned, wearing his white lab uniform to add to the visuals. And Bush said quote the state police had invested $10 million in a crime lab. When I look at the guy behind me in the lab coat, I knew he wasn't there to run tests at the mayor's office. He was there to show the public the $10 million was well spent. He was show and tell end quote Bush took some satisfaction from noting an absence of national TV media.
Speaker 1:Saying afterward on one hand, convicting him on Channel 4 doesn't meet our goal of taking this character off the street, on the other hand, bush would say that he knew national. He had been on national. If they had let him, he could have used his contacts at CNN and other places In order to make it a national story. You got to do a lot of messaging and he didn't have any time to work with magic, which he usually did. In response to the inevitable question about DNA, instead of giving the answer, bush had requested that details be kept to a minimum pending arraignment. Bonnet says that he accidentally, on purpose, let it slip that DNA was a factor. If Bush would have had a gun, he would have shot me, he says. And then he says, quote if he would have shot me, I didn't care. What was he going to do to me? End quote. Before, during and after the press conference, neither Larson, kilborn, snyder nor Melianak attended.
Speaker 1:Petridis worked on the Warrens. His staff wasn't about to accept Angensko's template work. They were going to start over from scratch and do them their way. They wanted a lot of background information who was Gordon. How and why did his name come up? When? And according to Bush, he says, quote we needed to know what kind of evidence they had collected. End quote.
Speaker 1:To this day, some police believe Petrides slows things down on orders from Bush, that Bush was going to pay them back for keeping him out of the loop by keeping them out in the cold. Literally Keep them waiting outside the keeping them out in the cold. Literally Keep them waiting outside the house in the cold and win a February as a short day gave way to a long night. Petrides, a Flint native and Notre Dame law school grad, joined the prosecutor's office in 1979, and prior to the Gorton case. The biggest case he had work on was using racketeering laws to break up the Spanish Cobra Street gang After Bush dismissed the police from the meeting they were holding. During the break and moving, he told Petridis that the Eby case was breaking wide open and assigned it to him, and assistant prosecutor David Newblood assigned it to him and assistant prosecutor David Newblood. Where Bush was angry, petridis' emotion was excitement he didn't know any other word for it Coming out of the blue. They have their man and they had had rumors over the years and suddenly boom, it's a reality and the feeling was almost like mission control waiting for blast off.
Speaker 1:According to Petridis, if the day seemed to drag for the cops waiting to go into Gordon's house, it seemed to fly for Petridis, a surge of adrenaline rushing the hours by Whilst Gordon was arrested. They had 48 hours to charge him, but the real need for speed was to get search warrants executed for his house, his parents' house and the family business. Newblatt was in charge of drawing up the arrest warrants and Petrides of writing the search warrants. The information on Nogent's warrants was useful, but they were not about to delegate the writing of warrants to some cop from another county they have never met. They needed to confirm his information with Alford and state police. They needed updates on Gordon's interrogation, with the final word being he had not confessed and had asked for an attorney. The search warrants were more complicated than an arrest warrant. They needed to figure out what kind of information they might need and where to find it Typecard records, for example, of the day Ebi died. Invoices sent to the Mott estate. Could they link Gorton to the estate?
Speaker 1:Petritis, one of the last Americans without a cell phone, needed to keep Bush apprised of developments as the press conference approached and after he used an old-fashioned landline and meanwhile Snyder was fuming At a deli across the street from the Flint Post during one break in a very long day, he had been warned about Bush and they were telling him that this guy is going to be a problem. And as the day went on he got madder and madder. He called San Andres on the next tell to warn him the search warrants might be delayed. And he even said quote, you won't believe what's going on down there or down here. And San Andres said well, dan, we don't need them because this is a robberless case too. We will get our own warrants. So Snyder told Bonnet, if it went on much longer, that he would go to the state attorney general if he had to, or to the Wayne County prosecutor. They had a house they needed to secure and the press was starting to show up at the Gordon residence and at police posts. And Snyder said quote, we should have had them by noon. We were sitting and sitting and sitting end.
Speaker 1:Quote, petrides says any allegation of a deliberate slowdown was preposterous. He said quote, I'm leaving proof of that. I was there when Art got the call and shortly after we started churning out the warrants. There were several hours of work to do and it took several hours to do it. If anything, there was pressure from Art to get it done fast. Anything there was pressure from Art to get it done fast.
Speaker 1:Bush says that part of the perception by the cops that things went too slowly is their exuberance over the DNA results. But he says it was simple naivete by the police that the DNA results and the DNA results alone would mean a quick warrant. They thought DNA was enough and he can't blame them for that, because any traffic cop would think that that you get someone on radar and that's it. It's cut and dried Working in another dick at the task force investigators. But he also said the following quote but a prosecutor looking at DNA alone would be my practice. I knew from my own experience that DNA of styrofoam cups and napkins doesn't always turn into gold.
Speaker 1:We needed other evidence. We wanted to prove he was at that guest house. We needed to execute search warrants at the family business and the patient's home and drawing all that up took time, end quote. Ultimately, nye's written report made the difference. Bush got it and called him back to question him about the sample and he asked Knight if the sample was adequate and how close it is. And Knight said that it was barely close enough and so he said in horseshoes clothes is good enough and in getting this warrant that's going to be good enough too. So Bush gave his go ahead.
Speaker 1:Petrides wanted 68th District Court Judge Michael McEra, one of Flynn's best judges, to sign the warrants, and the judge agreed to do so and stay at the office past its normal departure time of 5 pm if necessary. Macara got the paperwork about 7, read it, got sworn statements in his courtroom from Elford and state police trooper Dennis Diggs attesting to the accuracy of the information claimed in the warrants, and about 7.45 pm signed them. Erford by then had left the task force to take the job of captain of the Grand Black Police, but out of courtesy for his past work, kilburn had asked him if he wanted to help out. He would set surveillance a while, then help out with the Warrens. Finally, long after nightfall, melianne called Snyder to say the Warrens were done and he was on the way with them. They could go in the house.
Speaker 1:While awaiting Warrens, halsetto drove over to Don Hemingway's. They would need to talk to Gordon's first wife, especially since she has been in Florida with him when he first ran afoul of the law. She wasn't home, but her son, jeffrey, was, so Halsetto talked to him briefly, gave him a business card and left. Half an hour later Dawn called back and she and Jeffrey were picked up and driven to the Flint post. She recounted to Settle and Dan Snyder her background with Jeff, his arrest, their separation and divorce. She said she had not kept in contact with him and that Jeffrey had not seen his father since he was about two years old. The Gortons had paid child support and if there were any issues in that regard she talked to Brenda, not Jeff. She told police that both before and after she married Jeff she had almost no interaction with his parents. They were very private, she said, and kept to themselves.
Speaker 1:While Don was being interviewed, brenda was briefly visiting the Tuscola Roadhouse, then, following state police to the Flint Post. Just after she got there about four, mike Larson came out to the small lobby, introduced himself, said he would be busy for a bit and asked her to wait there for a few minutes till he could come back and get her. She sat down and she was rocking back and forth and she just kept saying to herself why am I here for? Why am I here? For An ex-smoker? She probably had never wanted or needed a cigarette more. She went over to the desk surgeon and asked if she could borrow a smoke. Sympathetically, he said he didn't smoke but would ask around. He came back a minute later with a cigarette and matches. The post, like all Michigan government buildings, is smoke-free. So she went outside.
Speaker 1:She came back in, sat down, resuming her rocking. There was a teenager sitting near her on one of the few lobby chairs. She had barely registered his presence, assumed he was there on other business. At one point he leaned toward her and said you must be Brenda. And she turned and said who are you? And as she was saying it, she knew that it was who he was and he said I'm Jeff Jr. So they stood up and gave each other a big hug, though they lived in the same metropolitan area and one of the reasons Brenda needed to work part-time was to pay the child support that had recently ended on Jeff Jr's 18th birthday. They had never met. Jeff Jr had sent his dad a prom picture and an invitation to his graduation but had never heard back. And she said oh my God, you just. You look just like my son, and she pulled pictures of her kids out of her wallet to show Jeff, his half-sister and half-brother.
Speaker 1:Larson came out, finally and led her back to the interview room. She asked if she could call her sister-in-law, jeff's sister Sarah and her husband Greg, who lived just a block away from their house on Tuscola, and Larson said no. Snyder led the interview. Brenda wanted to know what was happening and he said he would tell her in a bit, but that he needed to ask some questions. And he led her through a brief history of the relationship where they had met and a bar.
Speaker 1:What kind of guy was he? She said he was a good husband, a good father. He worked long hours in the summer. In the winter he was unemployed and put the kids on the school bus, picked them up after school, helped them with their homework every day, went to church on Sunday, kept the house clean while she worked. Did he have a temper? The answer was no. He had never raised his voice in all their years of marriage. One time, while pushing a car stuck in the snow in their driveway, he swore what was their relationship like with her in-laws? She said that the only contact she ever had with his parents was on Christmas Eve. Despite the fact they all worked together and lived near each other, they hardly ever saw each other outside of the context of water pipes. Brenda could only recall two times in their entire marriage, including holidays, that Jeff's parents had even been in the house. Did they have a lot of friends? She said she did. She was outgoing. But Jeff was quiet, didn't have many friends. He had not talked to his best friend, kevin Bosch, a buddy of his from high school and the best man at their wedding in at least two years.
Speaker 1:Snyder asked Brenda if Jeff got along with her family. She said absolutely. Everyone thought the world of him. Did Jeff have any kinky habits? She said well, he did like her to wear nylons to work so he could rub her feet when she got home. He liked the feel of the nylons when he massaged her.
Speaker 1:In a follow-up interview with Larson nearly two weeks later, brenda would come clean and she had first caught him with nylons in their bed just a few days before their son was born. Jeff said he had been out to a girly bar with Bosh and a stripper had dropped them on their table. Then, three or four years ago, she had found a pair of canny hoes tucked between the box springs and the mattress and she had confronted him. He admitted to having had a fetish for women's clothes since he was a kid and had been told in counseling he was something you were born with and had been told in counseling it was something you were born with. She had made him promise not to let the kids see him worrying such things and she had been so disgusted she had taken to sleeping on the couch a lot.
Speaker 1:Another question that they asked was did she know about an incident at a Pamida store? The answer no. Did she know Jeff had gotten in trouble in Florida? The answer no. Did she know Margaret Ebby or Nancy Ludwig? The answer, once again no and no. Not only didn't she know them, she had never even heard of them. In fact she thought they were asking about a woman with the last name of A Evie. Snyder was disbelieving because she had never heard of Margaret Evie. It certainly seemed hard to believe, given that Brenda had been living in Flint in 1986 and the murder had been the biggest thing to hit town since the internal combustion engine.
Speaker 1:With a knowing irony, today she explained her lack of knowledge. She said quote I'm not a news person. We were not raised to watch the news or read the paper. We couldn't care less about the news. In our family we go on with our lives and when the news hits us in the face we deal with it. It hit her square in the face then. It wasn't until mention of the modest state that some of it finally came back to her.
Speaker 1:Every Mother's Day the Mott estate was a big public to-do and the previous Mother's Day Brenda had gone there with her sister-in-law, sarah and Jeff's mother. Jeff's sister had pointed out the gatehouse and told her about the mysterious murder of Long Ago. It was the first and only time Brenda had heard about it. So she asked again what did this have to do with her husband? And Snyder said we think he did it and it didn't register. So she just said yeah right, what are you telling me? And they repeated we think Jeff killed Margaret, ebby and Nancy Ludwig. She wanted to tell them they were nuts. Her husband had not done any such thing. She was on the verge of losing it. So she asked can I speak to Jeff? They said of course no and say I'm sorry. She asked Snyder if he would call her pastor, doc Klein. He did. It would turn out he was not yet back from getting a tooth pulled and Snyder left a message on the machine. Brenda asked if he would call her sister. Snyder did and a few minutes later Dan Laga's wife showed up and let Brenda out of the post. They drove to their mother's house. In the meantime Brenda's pastor had gone to work and was there, as was Dan.
Speaker 1:Dan had been laying some hardwood flooring down at his house when his wife had called and said something horrible was up. But he had no idea what. Her mother, fearing the worst and not wanting to hear it, had gone upstairs and literally put her head under the covers. So Brenda said get to the point about Jeff. He has been arrested for a terrible, terrible thing. But she couldn't say the word. So Patty leaned in toward Dan and whispered murder and he was in shock and he said what did you just tell me? And she repeated it. He went downstairs. He couldn't find words to tell his mother-in-law what had happened. He said it was serious and they would be back. And then he and Brenda drove over to the house in Tuscola to see what the police were up to there.
Speaker 1:So Dan heard on the news the name Margaret Ebby, and he heard the other name, nancy Ludwig. Then kept abreast of the news, he read the papers. He immediately recalled the murder at the airport. He remembered seeing stories about the reward and the composite drawing. And he remembered, too, reading about the car. He had been seen in the Hilton parking lot and saying to his wife quote Jeff's got a gold Monte Carlo end quote, and then, of course, thinking nothing more about it. It was just an item of interest, it was somehow a coincidence. End quote the dinner. And the friend said yeah, I know, and she said you know, and the, and the friend said yeah, I saw it on the tv news.
Speaker 1:Jeff wouldn't be arraigned till the next day, um, and that's when his name would be officially released. He, um, but leaks had sprung from the time he was picked up, flowing from any number of sources to trusted reporters and from there to by word of mouth to just about everyone in Flint. Kitty Knapp, one of the Gorton's neighbors, who was shocked when she heard the news racing through the neighborhood. They had been friends a dozen years. Jeff and Brenda had been at their daughter's wedding. He was always doing things with the kids, and she said, quote. I can't say anything bad about the man. I have never seen the man lose his temper. I have never heard the man swear, he's just been a good guy. Her husband elsewhere said, quote he doesn't do much talking and he doesn't do much smiling. End quote. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1:When Melianak called to say he was on the way with the warrants, there was all the cops at the house needed. They didn't wait for the warrant to physically arrive at the scene. They went in St Andriac, brandon, milenia, snyder, state Trooper Jaime Corona. Before they were done, another 10 state troopers would arrive to help out, including Galvin Smith, the fingerprint specialist who had helped break the case open. At 8.10 pm, just as officers were setting up in Gorton's house, larson did a oral swap of Gorton vigorously rubbing a cotton swap back and forth against the lining of his cheek. Nice results might very well not stand up in court, but they wouldn't need to. This swap would either clear Gorton or nail his hide to the wall. At the house they set up the command center in the kitchen where they would photograph and lock whatever they came across that was of interest. A tow truck came and hauled the Monte Carlo back to the Flint post where technicians would go through it looking for bloodstains and bits of hair. Nothing of every interior value was ever found.
Speaker 1:Meanwhile, snyder and Brandemille took the master bedroom, which was rather small and cramped. First thing Snyder did was raise up a corner of the top mattress. It was a hair-raising moment, literally one that sent chills through Brandemille. There, on Jeff's side of the bed, were a bunch of women's undergarments bras, pantyhose, panties the comfort zone of a psychotic. According to Brandemille, flint cops had been looking for a trophy keeper since 1986. Romulus cops had been looking for one since Lutwick had been found in 1991 with her luggage and belongings missing. Were these trophies of other murders? They found a church flyer and in it was a picture of the Gordon family. Brenda Mill opened a drawer in the nightstand on Jeff's side of the bed and it was filled with undergarments. On Jeff's side of the bed, and it was filled with undergarments.
Speaker 1:The bed was in the corner of the room, just far enough from the wall to allow a large entertainment center to be fit in, with a narrow pathway between it and the bed. Near the entertainment center was a small closet with several shelves built in and a ladder that connected to a small entry portal into the attic above. They would send someone up there later. Opposite the entertainment center was a large walking closet, both its doors covered with mirrors to give the room an illusion of space. Brenda Mill looked in the entertainment center, saw a video camera aiming out into the room toward the mirror doors opposite and a VCR In the closet. His wife's clothes were jammed on hangers on the pole that ran its length. Boxes were stacked on and behind each other, filling up all the available space. Some held household appliances such as mixers and coffee pots extras gathered over the years. There was a plastic storage tub too. They pull it out and open it and inside were bundles of underwear, some with names and street addresses attached, and for them that was jackpot. Rummaging through the underwear, brandemille found a videotape and popped it into the VCR. He and Snyder saw enough in a few minutes to convince them this was their guy and that he was one sick puppy. Not that they needed much convincing on each count.
Speaker 1:The opening scene was a spy camp that has been hidden near ground level, to the front and left of a toilet Past the toilet had. On an opposite wall is a window. It is daylight out. There's a plant that dangles down from a pot beneath the window. Dangles down from a pot beneath the window and then at the beginning nothing happens. But then there's a woman in a fancy long dress that walks in, puts down her underpants, holds her dress in one hand, squats like 8 to 10 inches above the toilet seat and defecates. She wipes herself, flushes the toilet and leaves. Seconds later a younger woman in a blue dress walks in, sits down and urinates.
Speaker 1:Then there's a scene two, a long shot zoomed in on a neighbor cutting her lawn on a riding mower. Dressed in blue shorts and a bathing suit, top, back and forth, she goes as the camera follows her for several minutes. And then there was this seats in rapid order there was bits from America's Funniest Home Videos maybe. There's an old lady that gets off a bus and her pants slip down, revealing her underwear. There's another woman that is dancing Her skirt slips down and it reveals the cheeks of her butt. Then there's a woman that gets out of a car. The car takes off, her dress is caught in the door and rips off, revealing her underwear.
Speaker 1:So there's this montage of several bits of movies, followed quickly, none lasting more than a few seconds, including a love scene with a man holding a woman from behind as they fall on a bed and there's even a rape scene, home video. There is perhaps the Gordon's house and there is a Christmas tree in the corner, brightly lit, adults and kids and presents filled the front room. The camera zooms in on a woman in a chair, knees slightly apart, and the focus is on her crotch. Then pan to tree, pan back to woman, zoom in on her crotch. Scene from a movie. There's a young man that holds a woman and she says please, let me go. There's a young man that holds a woman and she says please, let me go. There's a long silent pause. Perhaps he will, but then he throws her on the bed, grips her hands over her head with one hand, rips off her underwear with the other hand, rapes her while she cries and when he finishes she says so, how was it? Then there was a playlist shoe source ad-up of a woman's foot and an empty shoe. Then a few seconds from a Lex Pantyhose ad. Then there's a scene from Home Improvement where Tim Allen is driving a car. His wife is changing clothes in the back seat Lying down you could see her legs visible above the front seat and Tim Allen turns his head around to sneak a peek. And then there's more movie scenes cut to Sharon Stone getting raped in an elevator, cut to the voyeur in body double window peeping on Melanie Griffith. Then there's a hijacker that jumps up, puts his gun to the head of a female flight attendant and drags her into the cockpit. So this is what is in that video.
Speaker 1:Now, meanwhile, zeddy had finished writing up reports on Don and Brenda at the Flint Post and joined the search of the house. Romulus had the bedroom, so he and fellow trooper Eric Schroeder took the large metal storage shed out back of the garage and in it were 15 or 30 large containers. They thought they would struck go-to, but it was just Halloween and Christmas decorations and other harmless stuff. Next was the garage and the first thing that struck them was the absolute meticulousness. Everything was just so Tools hanging on nails, labels on everything. They had opened up a drawer at a workbench and see labels for finishing nails, for long nails, for medium nails, for short nails, for washers of one size, washers for another, for screws of one sort or another, for nuts and bolts. A place for everything and everything in its place and labeled in a neat hand. They did strike gold in the garage because among the storage boxes were four or five large 18-gallon hinged top plastic rubber band containers and police. When they pried off the lids, they found that when what had been placed, there was an almost unimaginable assortment of every conceivable size, color and type of women's undergarment. Many of them were labeled in the same neat hand, tacked with bits of paper detailing names, dates, location. One of the smaller troopers climbed up into the attic through the bedroom closet, popping open the small square in the closet ceiling and served as the entryway. There were two by ten boards covering the rafters and blown insulation. He lifted up the boards and prodded the insulation from nothing.
Speaker 1:At some point Brenda returned to the house with her brother-in-law, dan Loga, who had a video camera of his own In the kitchen. Brenda denied at first knowing anything about the undergarments in the bedroom. Finally, though, she admitted to knowing her husband had a fetish. They had been hoping to find a few items of Ludwig's clothing, but instead they found 700 or 800 items a cataloging and processing nightmare. San Andre was thrilled it was the Michigan State Police, and not Romulus, in charge of shooting the photos and entering all that stuff, item by item, into a computer database. They will be busy for days and Reese, who executed the search at Gordon's parents' house on Linden Road in Flint, ended up spending a week logging all of Jeff's trophies into a computer and he even said, quote I never thought I would get tired of looking at women's underwear, but let me tell you I got tired of looking at it. End quote. That was in the end of it. Worried that they have missed something.
Speaker 1:Police returned months later and Brenda voluntarily let them do another search. They spent more time in the attic this time found hidden behind the chimney a spot they had missed the first time, a spot they had missed the first time. Hundreds more articles bring in the total haul to somewhere around 1,200 items in all. They had collect and catalog other stuff, too mundane items that showed their suspected serial killer lived a life not always too dissimilar from their own. He shopped at Sears with a Sears Premier card. He belonged to the Bonus Savings Club at Farmer Jack. He had a Genesee District Library card. His family health coverage was through Health Plus of Michigan. He had a credit card for Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse and he liked fireworks enough to have a membership card for fireworkscom.
Speaker 1:Finally, early in the morning their long day over. The police headed back to the Flint Post. At some point earlier someone had been sent out to a party store before it closed to pick up some beer. Too tired to move, too elated not to celebrate Malianak, and Brandemille violated one of Michigan's drinking laws. They broke out a six-pack and had a cup of beers each in a car in the parking lot of the state police post, and then they made the long drive back down I-75.
Speaker 1:Hours earlier, about 4.25 pm, police called gordon's parents, lawrence and shirley, but they were not home. About 6 10 pm sergeant reeves and sergeant mike davis went in person and found them there. This time the officers told them their son had been arrested. Reeves said that gordon's mother was badly shaken and seemed surprised, but that oddly, the father seemed to take it in stride as if it didn't come as that much of a shock. They wanted to interview the parents separately, but Mrs Gordon insisted on staying with her husband and so a joint interview was conducted in the kitchen. They said they had founded Buckler Automatic Lawn Sprinkler Company in 1980 and had been contractors for the Mott estate since 1982. Before founding the company, lawrence had worked for another company at the estate. He chose the name Buckler, he told them, because there was an established irrigation supply company called Buckner and he thought it might help if people thought his new company was the old, established one.
Speaker 1:As for Jeff's trouble in Florida, they professed remarkable ignorance. They knew he had gotten some sort of trouble and they had sent him money, reportedly about $5,000, to pay his legal fees. And they knew he had gone to prison. But they claimed they had no idea what it was or about what he had done or been charged with. Jeff they said had kept it quiet. What they didn't tell police was that one of Jeff's grandmothers had spoken at his sentencing in Florida on his behalf and surely had heard the charges recounted, the litany of assaults and B&Es Hard to imagine. She had not told his parents or that they have not asked her. The Courtons also say they never observed a suspected abnormal behavior by Jeff and had never received any complaints from clients.
Speaker 1:Mr Gordon remembered seeing Margaret Abbey around the estate and one time she asked the guys on one of his crews to help her unload her car. He didn't know her, had only said hi to her once, didn't find her attractive At 6.45, mrs Gordon told them she felt as if she was about to be sick and asked if she could go outside. At 7.10, mr Gorin authorized a search of the house but Mrs Gorin refused. She told them that she had been on the phone to the Flint Post and was mad they would not let her talk to her son or see him. At 7.35, their daughter, debbie Ross, and one of their other sons, greg, and his wife Sarah, arrive and police allow them in. At 7.50, the Gortons were told a search warrant for the house and business next door had been signed and a few minutes later Reeves and four other officers searched the house and the business in the presence of Mrs Gorton, the business in the presence of Mrs Gordon. There were several large storage buildings on the property and six officers searched those. As Mr Gordon and Greg looked on, they contained nothing of value. Mrs Gordon kept the company books, including in items taken from the house were eight file cards showing work done on the modest date since Buckler was founded, cards showing work done on the modest state since Buckler was funded and W-2 forms and timesheets for all employees. In addition to the modest state, the company did the sprinkler work for all the McDonald's, burger Kings and Taco Bells in the Flint area.
Speaker 1:Jeff may have been a foreman in the family business but his W-2 forms would show that if he were ever to get rich it would be by inheritance or the lottery, not from his labors. His base pay in 1997 was $12,160. It was the same in 1998. Counting overtime and a modest bonus, he made nearly $23,000 a year. In 1991, he made $10 an hour Thanks to overtime, generally 12 to 14 hours a week. He took home $375 to $385 a week.
Speaker 1:Some other things caught the cop's eyes and were confiscated. There were 10 porno magazines. Later company employees would tell police that at least some of Jeff's brothers, usually behind his back, referred to him as the panty sniffer. Brian Gorton felt like he had been hit in the stomach. When he heard a news account late Friday afternoon that his younger brother had been arrested for the murder at the Amada estate at the Amada State, he was willing to talk. When State Police Sergeant Daniel Pecrue and Trooper Jason Teddy knocked on the door of his Flint house just after 5 pm he invited them in and over the next hour and a half told them that Jeff had always been the good son, then had been a heavy drinker and committed suicide and the other brothers had their weaknesses. But Jeff had always done the right thing. He was the eighth student at Southwestern. He had been the star chess player. He didn't abuse drugs, rarely drank, never raised his voice with his wife and kids. In nearly 40 years Brian had never seen him lose his temper. He would never own a gun, didn't like to hunt, seemed a gentle soul.
Speaker 1:Occasionally Buckler would get assignments that took a crew or two out of the Flint area, particularly jobs for McDonald's and the Proclaim chain of laundry centers. It was pretty common if a crew was out of town or on an overnight assignment to go out hitting the bars at night or find a topless joint. He remembered being in the Detroit area in November of 2000 and the four Gordon brothers all going out to a topless bar. Jeff always had an eye for the women and would make comments about women he would see, but according to Brian he always seemed to prefer classy women who were dressed up. He knew Jeff had been in trouble in Florida for window peeping. He thought and he said that as far as he could remember the last time he had seen Jeff other than at work had been the previous 4th of July. Except for his younger brother, greg. Jeff wasn't very close to any of his family.
Speaker 1:Detective Gonzalez and Sergeant Alan Ock went to Steve Gordon's house in nearby Linden and he said Jeff had been in some kind of trouble in Florida involving a woman but didn't know any details other than that he had gone to jail. He said Jeff was known for his meticulousness but added that he was always a little perverted. And when asked to explain, steve said that Jeff and his buddy Kevin Bosch used to always go to topless bars together but that he thought Jeff had settled down since. He was shocked at the charges against Jeff, of course, but said that several years earlier a customer had complained that Jeff had gone through a movement stressor drawers, a charge Jeff denied was remarried and was afraid that in all the hubbutt over Jeff her kids would find out that their dad had died as a suicide and not of accidental causes. Eventually she agreed to meet with Larson at her house. She had married Dan a year after the Ebi murder and divorced him 10 years later. Just after the divorce he had gone out to his company van and turned on the air compressor. She was well familiar with the Abby case because at the time she and Dan had been living just two blocks away and the murder had creeped her out.
Speaker 1:Jeff's immediate family claimed to be in the dark about his past, but Tammy knew all about it. She knew he had spent time in prison in Florida for stealing a woman's clothing and had always considered him a pervert. She said Dan used to come home from work and tell her about Jeff's antics, that he would follow women while on the job and would be so obsessed by them that he would miss turns on the road. Obsessed by them that he would miss turns on the road. She told Larson there was little love in the Gordon family. She did stay in touch with Griff's wife, sarah, by phone but since her divorce Mr and Mrs Gordon had no contact whatsoever with her kids, their grandkids, who then were 16 and 18. Who then were 16 and 18. She told Larson that Sarah had talked to her quite a lot about the news. Mrs Gordon had asked Sarah to visit Jeff in jail but Sarah had told her she would quit the family business or they could fire her because she would go see him. Tammy also told Larson that in the past Sarah had asked her not to tell Brenda Gordon anything about her husband's troubled past that Jeff had asked her to relay this message to her.
Speaker 1:Tammy and others had kept Jeff's past a secret from Brenda, who they said she was a very nice woman and she said that she was aware of at least one complaint filed against Jeff during his employment at Buckler. She said Sarah had told her some women had called to say that Jeff had been going through some boxes in her house but that she didn't know if anyone had ever followed up on the complaint or if Jeff had been disciplined. Greg and Sarah Gorton's former next-door neighbor, laurie Tafoya, also found it hard to believe. The family had little or no inkling of Jeff's dark side. After hearing the news of Jeff's arrest she called the Flint PD and they referred her to the state police. Rest. She called the Flint PD and they referred her to the state police. She told Greg Kilbourne that she had numerous run-ins with Jeff from 1986 to 1989, beginning with when her daughter had seen Jeff peeping in through her bedroom window one morning when she was getting ready for school. She screamed and mom came running. Lori didn't see Jeff herself but she went next door to tell Greg about what his brother had been doing. Greg said he would settle it and asked her not to call police.
Speaker 1:The next incident occurred at a birthday party for Greg and Sarah's daughter. After the Gortons had moved to another house less than a mile away, lori drove her three daughters to the house. Jeff was there and shortly after they arrived Jeff said he had to leave to pick up his girlfriend Brenda. Laura then realized she had forgotten the birthday present. She drove back home to get it. Jeff's Monte Carlo was in her driveway. She entered and found Jeff in the rear of the house in the laundry room, looking for it looks like sorry. It looks like he was scared half to death in the process. He closed the door and as she approached and held it shut while she and her daughters tried to force it open, screaming at him all the while. So again she told Greg that he told her that he would take care of it and to please not call the police.
Speaker 1:So in April of 1988, lori moved to another house just three blocks from Greg and Sarah, and not long after that she saw someone peeping into her bathroom window about 5.30 in the morning, but because of the distortions in the glass she couldn't identify who it was. But she was sure it was Jeff. So she called Flint police. They came out, followed footprints from the window to the parking lot of a nearby business. In 1989, she was looking out a window one night when suddenly Jeff came face to face with her. She ran out, turned on a deck light. He froze in his tracks, then took off running to the same nearby parking lot and got into his Monte Carlo. She found a cement block he had placed under her window to give him a better view. She called Flint police but they said her brief look at the peeping Tom in the dark was not enough to make an arrest.
Speaker 1:In 1990, she purchased a big black dog and for the first few weeks it would bark hysterically during the early morning hours, frantic, as if someone was in the yard. And after a while his barking stopped and Jeff was never seen. There again were a lot of undergarments, including a long white slip, a long black slip with a matching chemise, a red teddy, a red wool dress and a royal blue dress. Another of Greg and Sarah's former neighbors the name was Tony Trombley told of different series of encounters with Jeff in the summer of 1996. She had rented a room from her cousin next door to Greg and Sarah Gordon.
Speaker 1:It still freaked her out, more than 15 years later, when she recounted for police, how she would come home one day and discovered that Jeff was something more than the quiet, gentle guy who had been stopping by lately to engage her in conversation, that he was also a guy capable of sneaking in her house to leave her a bouquet of flowers and a note and, while he was at it, completely cleaning the house, including washing the laundry, folding it and putting it away, she had ordered him to stay away. She bought a padlock for her bedroom. She came home one day to find the padlock broken off and she would move away soon after. Broken off and she would move away soon after. Thank you for listening to the Murder Book. Have a day, a great week.
