Jeffrey Gorton was convicted of two killings in Michigan that were five years apart and, for more than a decade, entirely unconnected in the eyes of the police. Margarette Eby died in Flint in November 1986. Nancy Ludwig died in Romulus, in Wayne County, in February 1991. Both cases stood unsolved until 2002, when a fingerprint and DNA testing pointed to the same man.
Gorton was arrested on February 8, 2002. He was tried by a jury in Wayne Circuit Court for Ludwig's death and convicted of first-degree premeditated murder, felony murder and first-degree criminal sexual conduct; the Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed those convictions in April 2004. On January 6, 2003 he pleaded no contest to murdering Eby and received a life sentence. What followed in the courts was largely legal argument: an unpublished appeal about his trial lawyer, and a civil wrongful-death case brought by Eby's family that reached the Michigan Supreme Court in 2007.
Few personal details about Gorton are on record. My City Magazine reported in 2023 that he came to Michigan from Florida in 1985, and that before the move he had been convicted of breaking and entering in Florida and served about two years of a four-year sentence.
By the time of Eby's death he was working for a lawn sprinkler company owned by his parents. The Michigan Supreme Court described him in 2007 as an employee of his parents' corporation. That company serviced the sprinkler system on the property in Flint where Eby lived, which is the reason his fingerprint was not, on its own, proof of anything. The magazine reported that he later married and had two children.
Margarette F. Eby had lived in Iowa from 1977, the University of Northern Iowa's archives record, and moved to Flint in 1981. That year she began renting a residence in the city, according to the Michigan Supreme Court's account.
Eby died in November 1986. The Michigan Supreme Court's 2007 opinion records that the killing went unsolved for about 16 years. The first investigation produced no arrest, and the case went cold. A civil appeal later noted that police had reasoned that she knew her killer.
Her family did not stop pressing for an answer. In 2002 a wrongful-death suit filed on behalf of her estate by her daughter named Gorton, his parents, their company, the owners of the property and its management firm as defendants, alleging negligent hiring and supervision of Gorton and inadequate security.
Nancy Ludwig died in February 1991 in Romulus, Wayne County. Witness descriptions led to a composite sketch, My City Magazine reported. The Michigan Supreme Court's description of the case is brief: Ludwig was attacked and killed in 1991, and the circumstances were strikingly similar to those of Eby's death.
No arrest followed for more than a decade. Ludwig was married, and it was her husband who later took the question of a link between the two cases to the police.
The link between the two deaths came from the families. The Michigan Supreme Court's opinion states that the police reopened Eby's case at her son's request, after noticing the similarities to Ludwig's death. My City Magazine gives a fuller account: about five years after Ludwig died, Eby's son telephoned her husband and said he believed the same person had killed both women. Her husband contacted the Romulus police, who said they would look further into it.
By the Supreme Court's account, investigators then tested DNA taken from both victims and compared fingerprints left at both crime scenes. On that basis they determined that Gorton had committed both murders. In 2002, My City Magazine reported, detectives reprocessed the fingerprint from the Eby case and a database search returned his name.
The fingerprint was not enough by itself. Because Gorton had worked on the property where Eby lived, a defense lawyer could have argued that the print was left on an ordinary workday. According to the magazine, investigators followed him to a skating rink and collected a drinking cup he had used. Saliva on the rim contained DNA from two people, and one profile matched the evidence from the Ludwig case. The magazine said Gorton denied ever having been in the place where the print was found and refused to confess.
Gorton was arrested and charged with murder on February 8, 2002, according to the dissenting opinion in the Michigan Supreme Court's 2007 decision. Ludwig's case was prosecuted in Wayne County, where Romulus lies.
In Wayne Circuit Court, a jury convicted Gorton of one count of first-degree premeditated murder, two counts of felony murder (one resting on first-degree criminal sexual conduct and one on larceny) and two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. The dates of the verdict and of sentencing are not on record. My City Magazine reported that he was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
The defense put forward at trial, as the Court of Appeals described it, was that another man, who had been a suspect, was responsible. That man had been convicted of an unrelated murder between the offense and the trial. Gorton's lawyer used private investigators to look into the man, brought out through cross-examination that he had been a suspect, and obtained physical descriptions of him and of the man eyewitnesses had seen. The lawyer also hired a psychologist to advise on jury selection and tried to seat as many women as possible on the panel.
The jury did not accept the argument. The evidence of guilt on the murder count, the Court of Appeals later said, was overwhelming. It included DNA evidence the court called virtually incontrovertible and eyewitness identification of Gorton. The court also held that evidence of a strikingly similar crime had been properly admitted. It found proof of premeditation, and clear evidence of larceny supporting the second felony-murder count.
Gorton appealed on a single ground: that his trial lawyer had been ineffective. The trial court held an evidentiary hearing on the claim, known in Michigan as a Ginther hearing, and ruled that counsel had not been ineffective. The Court of Appeals, in an unpublished opinion by Judges Wilder, Hoekstra and Kelly, affirmed on April 22, 2004.
The complaints he raised were that counsel had not cross-examined 12 of the 17 prosecution witnesses, had made no opening statement, had called no defense witnesses, and had given a brief closing argument. The court treated the cross-examination choices as trial strategy. It accepted that the lawyer had held back the opening statement so as not to reveal the defense theory early, and that the planned statement was never given because the defense could not call witnesses. The lawyer had refused to present testimony he believed to be false, and the court cited the United States Supreme Court's decision in Nix v. Whiteside for the point that declining to present perjured testimony is not ineffective assistance. It called the closing argument "quite brief, and arguably less than forceful," but noted that it contested three elements of the charge and that, given the strength of the evidence, it was hard to see what more could have been said.
The hearing produced the strangest testimony in the case. The lawyer testified that during the trial Gorton became upset about the number of women on the jury and in other roles in the courtroom, and said he hated women, had murdered many and would do so again. The lawyer also testified that Gorton said the account he had given of the killing was a lie. Gorton, for his part, testified that the planned defense had been essentially true, and that he believed his lawyer had been pressured not to defend him vigorously. The trial court found the lawyer more credible than Gorton, and the Court of Appeals found no clear error in that judgment. No further killing has been charged, and the remark is recorded as testimony at a hearing, not as a finding.
Eby's case did not reach a jury. On January 6, 2003, according to the dissent in the Michigan Supreme Court's 2007 opinion, Gorton pleaded no contest to a charge of murdering Eby, more than 16 years earlier. The majority opinion states that he was sentenced to life imprisonment. A no contest plea is not an admission of guilt, but it carries the same consequences as a conviction. My City Magazine described the outcome as a guilty plea that spared the family a second trial; the courts' own wording is a plea of no contest.
Eby's daughter, as personal representative of her estate, filed suit in Genesee Circuit Court on August 2, 2002. The claims were negligent hiring and supervision of Gorton, and failures of access control and security at the property.
The defendants argued that the three-year limitations period had run out long before. On October 28, 2003 the trial court held for the estate under a common-law discovery rule, which delays the start of the clock until a claimant could know of a claim, except that it granted judgment to the property owners and the management firm on the security claim. The Michigan Court of Appeals, in a decision dated March 24, 2005 and approved for publication on May 5, 2005, applied the discovery rule to all the claims. The reasoning was that the family could not have known of any cause of action until Gorton was identified as the killer or his access to the residence was established.
The Michigan Supreme Court reversed on July 25, 2007. It held that the statute alone governs when a claim accrues, that courts may not use a judge-made discovery rule where no statutory tolling provision applies, and that the claims had accrued at Eby's death in 1986 and were therefore time-barred. The ruling overruled an earlier line of cases beginning with Johnson v. Caldwell. Two justices dissented. The decision turned on limitations law and not on any doubt about who had killed Eby.
My City Magazine reported in May 2023 that Gorton was serving his sentence in Ionia, Michigan. No appeal from the Eby plea is on record.
Proven by court record: the Wayne Circuit Court jury convictions, affirmed in 2004, and the plea of no contest on January 6, 2003 to Eby's murder, with a life sentence.
Not proven: the remark attributed to Gorton by his own trial lawyer, that he had killed many women. It was reported as testimony at a hearing on the lawyer's performance, the trial court credited the lawyer's account over Gorton's, and no other killing has been charged or attributed to him.
Points of uncertainty: My City Magazine places the Wayne County trial in 2004 and calls the Eby outcome a guilty plea; the Court of Appeals decided the appeal from that trial on April 22, 2004, so the trial cannot have been later, and the Supreme Court records a no contest plea on January 6, 2003. The dates of the Wayne County verdict and of sentencing are not on record.
1981: Margarette Eby moves to Flint from Iowa.
1985: Gorton moves to Michigan from Florida, according to My City Magazine.
November 1986: Eby dies in Flint.
February 1991: Nancy Ludwig dies in Romulus.
About five years after Ludwig's death: Eby's son tells Ludwig's husband he believes one person killed both women, according to My City Magazine.
2002: a fingerprint from the Eby case and DNA from both cases are used to identify Gorton.
February 8, 2002: Gorton is arrested and charged with murder.
August 2, 2002: Eby's estate files a wrongful-death suit in Genesee Circuit Court.
January 6, 2003: Gorton pleads no contest to the murder of Eby and receives a life sentence.
October 28, 2003: the Genesee trial court rules for the estate on the limitations question.
Before April 2004: a Wayne Circuit Court jury convicts Gorton in Ludwig's death.
April 22, 2004: the Michigan Court of Appeals affirms the Wayne County convictions.
March 24, 2005: the Court of Appeals rules on the civil case; approved for publication May 5, 2005.
July 25, 2007: the Michigan Supreme Court holds the wrongful-death claims time-barred.
May 2023: My City Magazine reports Gorton serving his sentence in Ionia, Michigan.