.jpg)
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 Part I
A children's roller skating party becomes the unlikely setting for a high-stakes undercover operation as police close in on Jeffrey Gorton, a seemingly ordinary family man they believe responsible for two of Michigan's most brutal unsolved murders.
Investigators suspect a predator of unimaginable savagery behind his façade of normalcy—a devoted husband, father of two, church member, and eager school volunteer. For over fifteen years, two horrific cases had haunted Michigan law enforcement: the 1986 murder of Margaret Eby, a prominent Flint university provost and musician found nearly decapitated in her home, and a 1991 case involving a flight attendant in Romulus who suffered a similarly brutal fate.
Advances in DNA technology had connected these crimes through preserved evidence, but police needed a fresh sample from their suspect to confirm their theory. Enter Mike San Andre, a scrappy undercover narcotics officer with silver hoop earrings and a shaved head, looking entirely out of place among elementary school families. His mission: to collect anything with Gorton's DNA—a napkin, cup, cigarette butt—anything that might finally close cases that had remained open for over a decade.
The episode follows this tense surveillance operation and the meticulous forensic work that followed while delving into the shocking details of the cold cases and their victims' stories. We witness the collision of scientific advancement with old-fashioned police work as investigators struggle with minute amounts of DNA and the pressure of knowing a potential predator remains free in the community.
Could a half-empty Mountain Dew cup and some twisted napkins finally bring closure to cases that had baffled police for generations? Join us for this riveting exploration of how the most minor pieces of evidence can sometimes break the most significant cases.
Welcome to the Murder Book. I'm your host, kiara, and today we're starting a new case, the case of Jeffrey Gorton. Let's begin. It had been a very snowy February of 2002 in mid-Michigan. Snow was piled up in the walls along the Gortons driveway in Vienna, north of Flint. It was barely 6 pm, but it had long since been pitch black when the Gortons, jeffrey, brenda and their two kids, wally, age 10, and Jenny, 7, loaded into the station wagon and slowly eased out onto the busy two-lane highway to Scholar Road that ran in front of the house. It was February 7, the first Thursday of the month, which meant it was their kids' elementary school's monthly roller rink party at Skateland.
Speaker 1:A couple of miles away in North Dordt Highway in the small city of Mount Morris, jeff was too busy to go in the fall and spring, putting in long hours in his parents' lawn sprinkler installation and maintenance business, but in the winter he was happy to go. He liked doing things with Brenda and the kids. He had volunteered at their school's fun fair each year when the school rooms masqueraded as a carnival. He had decorated the classrooms. He would pitch in whatever needed to be done, same as he had volunteered in the school's haunted house each Halloween, hanging lights and whatnot. He volunteered functions at their Baptist church too, which he attended each Sunday, and was active in Boy Scouts. Jeff loved holidays. He liked more than spending hours decorating his house and grounds in the theme of the season decorating his house and grounds and the theme of the season, not just the usual Halloween and Christmas, but others too Thanksgiving, easter, fourth of July. Brenda took pride in her husband's interest in holiday decorating.
Speaker 1:Now they drove the three or four miles to the rink and as usual the place was jammed and loud Music playing, kids laughing and screaming. Everyone knew everyone. The kids would skate till they were hungry. They'd grab a slice of pizza and a soda pop in the adjacent grill room and skate some more adjacent grill room and skate some more. Some of the parents skated too. Or they would sit up in the bleachers or chat over some food in the grill or step out for a smoke. Jeff was a bit of a flirt. Always had been. Brenda didn't mind, as Jeff, as usual, circulated chatting up the other moms, circulated chatting up the other moms. They didn't seem to mind either. Again, everyone knew everyone. Well, this Thursday, not quite One guy stood out like a swollen thumb.
Speaker 1:Everyone knew everyone, but no one knew him. He was very stocky, broad-shouldered, big-bellied, had his head shaved, wore big hooped silver earrings and grungy blue jeans and a flannel shirt. He looked like he belonged in a biker bar, not at an elementary school function. There was another stranger in the rink too, but the bald guy was the one they noticed. But the bald guy was the one they noticed. And Brenda, months later, would say we see a stranger walking around. You don't know how many times I wanted to say to him who you were with or who you're here with. You do all these good functions. You know everyone.
Speaker 1:We thought there was going to be a child snatching. I will never forget him. I will never forget what that man looked like, end quote. There was going to be a snatching, all right, but not the kind. Brenda feared it wouldn't be a kid. But if it went the way the stranger hoped, it would be worse than anything she ever imagined.
Speaker 1:He wasn't there looking for kids. His name was Mike C Andre and he would have fit right in at a biker bar. In fact he fit right in at biker bars all the time. He was an undercover narcotics cop from the hardscrabble blue-collar downriver Detroit suburb of Romulus, whose chief downtown attraction is a topless joint known as the Landing Strip and whose major employer and taxpayer is the Metropolitan Detroit Airport, which sits smack dab in the middle of the city's 36 square miles. There are a lot of felons serving time in Michigan prisons who got the shock of their lives when they found out San Andre wasn't who he appeared to be this night. San Andre wasn't interested in kids and he wasn't interested in drugs. He was there to keep an eye on Jeff Gordon. He wanted to watch him to see if he ate or drank something. He wanted to see if he sucked out of a straw, put a cup to his lip, wiped his face with a napkin, used a fork or a knife, went outside to puff on a cigarette and tossed the butt to the ground.
Speaker 1:Sanandro wanted to keep an eye out for any of that stuff and snatch it if he could and get it to the Michigan State Police Crime Lab in Lansing. They needed to see if Gorton's DNA matched semen the state police scientist had kept frozen for more than 15 years in one Flint case and nearly 11 years in a Romulus case. Both crimes had involved almost unspeakable savagery, slow torture ending in the near decapitation of victims who were raped and murdered. Both cases likely involved necrophilia too. Not counting Jimmy Hoffa, they were the two highest profile unsolved murder cases in Michigan in the last 50 years. And this was the guy who did it, if he was responsible and something with his DNA on it needed statching. St Andrew wanted to be the one who snatched it, his adrenaline barely under control. Sure, he was working the case of a lifetime.
Speaker 1:St Andrew watched and waited and followed Gordon around as he chatted up. The wives, went in the rink to watch the kids. And then here it comes, returned to the food area, got in line and picked up some pizza Good old, messy pizza. He watched Gordon chow down. He watched the sauce grease accumulate on Gordon's lips and the corner of his mouth. He watched Gordon wipe his mouth, eat some more, then wipe it again. Gordon went through one napkin a second. He did Sanandra a favor by twisting his used napkins into strings so there would be no mistaking which were his. San André watched Gordon drink his pop. He watched and watched and then he snatched. He snatched Mike.
Speaker 1:San Andre gave up his dreams of playing hockey and decided to become a cop. After graduation from Trenton High in 1979, he paid his own way to the Metro Detroit Police Academy, then got a job patrolling the area here in Clinton Metro Parks that ring Detroit, pretty much the bottom rung of Floyd Forsman. In 1984, he applied for a job in Romulus and to his surprise, snyder his old boss when he was a paper boy now a cop in Romulus too was the one who'd show up at his house to interview him. Snyder remembered him as a hard-working, reliable kid on his paper route and hired him. In 1989, sinandra was assigned to a DEA task force at Metropolitan Airport, working undercover to ferret out drugs smugglers and people illegally carrying large sums of money. With its proximity to Canada, metro was a major transit point for couriers.
Speaker 1:Mostly San Andres worked tips from airline personnel evolving out of overhead conversations or educated hunches. Usually San Andres had no probable cause. When he approached a suspect coming off a plane, the tips would never have stood up in court. But there's no law against asking people if they were submitted to a search and no law against them being stupid enough to agree. All they have to say was nope, and they would have been able to keep on going. San Andres was amazed by how many say okay instead, and within minutes you would find pounds of cocaine or bags of pot or bundles of cash in suitcases, in some instances more than a million dollars.
Speaker 1:When the 1991 case of a murder flight attendant met headlines for weeks in the Detroit papers and in the If it Bleeds it Leads department dominated local TV news night after night. Sanandro had been one of the guys who worked the airport hard. Armed with composite sketches made by eyewitnesses, he spent many hours scanning faces, looking for a traveler returning to the scene of the crime or, more likely, some airline employee who had used the uniform to avoid raising the suspicions of his victim. His surveillance at the airport was futile. Nearly a decade later, in 2000, he was assigned to Romulus Special Investigations Unit, which mostly did undercover narcotics work, but now, at the behest of the Michigan State Police, he was taking a break from drugs and up in the Flint area trying to catch the same perp he had been looking for in 1991. Michigan State Police that a suspect had finally emerged and Romulus' help was needed for round-the-clock surveillance.
Speaker 1:Within 20 minutes, snyder and his partner Gordy Melaniak went underway to the state police post on Corona Road just west of the city of Flint. Just west of the city of Flint. Four other Romulus cops and Andre Greg Brandemille, jeff Linak and Mike Ondesko would later join them. After getting briefed, accompanied by State Police Sergeant Mark Reeves, melianak, andre Brandemille and Linak went out to relieve state troopers who had been watching the Gorton house all day.
Speaker 1:Instead of the tedium that a crew of state police had suffered through all day, cold, nothing happening, time dragging by less than half an hour into their shift out came the Gorton family piling into a blue 1993 Pontiac station wagon and heading out, driving separate cars scattered around the area one by one. The police pulled in behind Gorton Soon. They were at the rink, said Andrea and blandil. So kids and parents line up at the door and worry they wouldn't fit in. But there was nothing to do for it. St Andrea went in first, paying $5 admission. Where are your kids, asked the attendant, expecting to be collecting more money. They're already in, he said. Blandemil waited a few minutes and then followed him inside.
Speaker 1:Brandemill, the son of a cop, spent four years in army intelligence in Germany before joining the Romulus police in 1987. He was an evidence tech for the department at the time of the 1991 murder but ironically was not called to the scene. Snyder, the detective in charge of the crime scene knew the case was going to be a big one and no disrespect to his own people but, wanting the best help he could get, had chosen to call in a state police evidence team instead. Brandemille was a member of SIU and inside the ring he and and San Andre pretended they were old friends who coincidentally had run into each other. And Brandon said hey, how are you doing? And San Andre spotted Gordon. His kids and his wife were putting on skates. They went into the rink. Gordon followed, taking a spot in the bleachers, san Andre on an adrenaline rush and acting. The cowboys sat behind Gordon, close enough to touch him. He got out the next cell and called Snyder, who was back at the Flint Post, and he said you won't believe what's going on. I'm sitting behind your best friend. I could tap him on the shoulder If it seemed a foolish thing to do. Well, st Andrew would admit to being brazen. The ring was very loud Music and the screams and hollering of what seemed like hundreds of kids covering up his conversation. Later San Andre would say Brenda May was looking at me like I don't believe you.
Speaker 1:Gordon got up and left the rink. San Andre must side out after him into the adjoining entryway where Gordon circulated from woman to woman. Sanandri was surprised by how easily Gordon seemed to fit in. The women knew him, they seemed to like him and he had an ease with them. That seemed odd for a suspected serial killer whose brutality had been so vivid in the crime scene photos, who had playfully tortured his victims for quite some time before trying to decapitate them with a serrated knife, who had posed his victims after death, who had taken the time to clean up and in one case had been so cool as to make several trips to his car hauling off the woman's belongings. But although gordon seemed too at ease with the women, he was nervous, too fidgety, looking over his shoulder. Something Vandermeer said later, quote in our mind he doesn't know anything. He had gotten away with what he had done all these years. But it was odd that he would act so nervous. He didn't know we were there. Then we realized he would done so much over the years he was always nervous. End quote.
Speaker 1:Gordon circulated for 20 minutes and finally his kids came back out. They wanted to eat and the Gordons went into the snack bar. The room was filled with long tables. St Andrew and Blatham Hill sat two tables away from the Gordons. Jeff's wife and kids stayed at the table and he got in line to get food. San Andre got in line behind him. Gordon picked up some styrofoam cups and ordered pizza and a pitcher of Mountain Dew. San Andre ordered two pops and took his seat. A spot opened up at the table next to the Gordons and the two cups slid over. Gordon wiped his greasy mouth with a napkin, then twisted it into a string First one, then a second. And Andre said to himself you know what we got you.
Speaker 1:The Gordons put their refuse on their trays and pushed them aside. In front of an empty seat Someone came up, asked if the Gordons were done, then pushed the trays further down the table to make room. Andret said to his partner watch this, it was 7.25 pm. His next move was bracing. San Andre would counter that what seems bracing really wasn't that the bolder you are, the more invisible you can be, or so he thought. He walked over, tapped Gordon on the shoulder and said are you done with your tray? If you're done, I'll take it. And Gordon nodded and said Andrew, pick it up and walk to the far end of the room where Brandemille had gone Making sure the Gordons were not looking. Brandemille quickly opened up a Manila evidence bag and sent Andrea, dumped the trade contents. But they still didn't have Gordon's cup and they were determined to get it. Piece of chewing gum would be nice too, or a cigarette butt.
Speaker 1:A few minutes later the two kids went back into the rink to resume skating. Gordon remained seated. There were several cups over the table and one right in front of him. San Andrea eyeballed it. Gordon reached out, poured Mountain Dew into it from a pitcher, took four or five swallows, set it down and got up.
Speaker 1:Zedendra walked over, picked up the half-filled cup and set it inside a large-sized cup so he wouldn't have to touch it any more than necessary. He noticed people looking at him. It was like hey, if you want a pop that bad, we'll buy you one. Little did he know that Gordon had looked back and seen him grab the cop too, and he told his wife that guy just took my pop. And his wife was skeptic and she said yeah right, jeff. She was willing to believe the scruffy guy with the earrings was a child snatcher, but who steals someone's half-empty cup of pop?
Speaker 1:St Andrew passed the cup to Brandemille. He went outside and gave the evidence back and the cup to Maliniak, then returned to the rink, hopefully to get more DNA evidence. Malianak went over to Reeves' car and gave the bag and cup to him. Reeves poured the pup out on the ground, put the cup inside a cup in another evidence bag, started his car and headed for the Flint post. The plan was he would give this stuff to fellow state trooper, hal Settle, who would drive it west on I-69 to the small town of Perry.
Speaker 1:Jeff Nye, a chemist and DNA specialist at the crime lab in Lansing, lived in Perry. He had been alerted that a team was going to try to get something with Gordon's DNA. When and if they did, they would call Nye, no matter what the time, and he would meet someone in the parking lot of a Burger King at exit 105 to Perry and then take the evidence to the lab to be analyzed. And then take the evidence to the lab to be analyzed. St Andrew and Brenda Mill got on the next stealth to Snyder and said we got him, we got him. And then they talked to each other about the same thought that they have independently had Months later. St Andrew said quote it was kind of sad we were looking at his kids beautiful kids, two beautiful little children and we're thinking you know what, if this goes right, this is going to be the last night you were ever going to end with your father. We thought about it being parents thinking the things these kids are going to have to go through, they're going to pay for it. His wife is going to pay for it. End quote, if it went right.
Speaker 1:Hal Settle grew up in northern Michigan, in West Branch, which is a town that is surrounded by forests and lakes, and he had been with the state police since getting out of high school. In 1976, when he was 21, he joined the academy and became a full-fledged trooper In June of 2000, he was assigned to a new cold case Violent Crimes Task Force in Flint and was one of four troopers assigned to a series of 10 prostitute murders. As it turned out, there were at least two serial murderers killing the prostitutes. There were at least two serial murderers killing the prostitutes. Settle helped take 450 DNA swaps on the case with one of them. And Settle helped take 450 DNA swaps on one case and with one of them, finally leading to the arrest and conviction of Keith Cummings for murdering two women and leaving them in abandoned houses. So he was convicted for that.
Speaker 1:Two weeks after Cummings' arrest, zetto was assigned to the unsolved 1986 murder of a Flint woman and, to everyone's surprise, a DNA test using new technology had linked it to a 1991 case in Romulus. So Sato spent hundreds of hours going through all files, re-interviewing witnesses, taking DNA swabs, tracking down people who had been interviewed. But should have been way back when. And on February 6, 2001, a long overdue FBI report that the cold case squad had requested came back with startling news. A partial print found at the Flint homicide scene A very partial print, one long thought to be impossible to work with had come back with a positive identification. Not only that, but the guy it identified still lived in the Flint area. A print at a scene is hardly evidence of murder. Most crime scenes contain hundreds of prints of innocent people, but this had been a bloody print those you don't find too many of.
Speaker 1:Zero was part of the surveillance team quickly assembled the afternoon of February 6th. The next morning, michigan State Police team out of Lansing took over the surveillance duties for the day. Shift Settled and other members of the cold case squad Greg Kilbourne, mike Larson and Dennis Diggs scrambled to amass as much data on the suspect, jeff Gordon, as they could Employment history, known addresses checking out his time spent in Florida running down his military record. The time flew by Zetto started early in the morning and the next thing I knew this is Zetto saying this. He said I got a call at the post that they had a styrofoam cup he had been drinking from and a couple of napkins. About 8.10 pm Reeves arrived at the post, handed the evidence to Zetto and off he went. He said quote, I had a little Corsica, a state-issue rattle trap, and I pushed that thing all the way there end. Quote. A 40-mile drive to Perry took less than half an hour, as planned. He met with Nye at the Burger King and his adrenaline was pumping. His adrenaline was pumping and he had worked already 36 out of the last 44 hours and was still going strong.
Speaker 1:Knight was a former entrepreneur turned happy civilian state employee. He has two master's degree in soil science and toxicology and had worked for seven years at the Michigan Biotechnology Institute in Lansing, an incubator trying to spin Michigan State University research into for-profit companies. This job involved a lot of spending, very little profit. Most of the companies there struggled to find real products to sell to real markets and suffered through a kind of hand-to-mouth existence, surviving, if they did, on a series of small research grants from different federal agencies. Tired of the insecurity never knowing if the next grant would be awarded in time to meet payroll, nye had left the world of entrepreneurship for the nice pay and benefits that accrued to civilian employees at the State Police Crime Lab, which moved into a new state-of-the-art facility in 1999. Nye was in the biology unit at the lab, analyzing semen, blood and footwear impressions. He worked crime scene investigations too.
Speaker 1:Nye had already played a crucial role in the reopened investigation into the Flint homicide of 1986. Semen and blood samples had been collected at the time, but technology had taken quantum leaps since then. Something called PCR for polymerase chain reaction had drastically reduced the amount of DNA needed to identify a suspect, and a computerized system called CODIS allowed DNA samples to be matched both to known individuals and to unsolved cases where the DNA had been typed but not linked to a known perpetrator. Nye, as part of his ongoing work updating store evidence, had run the samples from the Flint case through a PCR and entered the results into the CODIS system. Codis couldn't link the DNA to a known individual but did link it to another unsolved case. But did link it to another unsolved case, that of the rape and murder of the flight attendant in Romulus in 1991. Linking those two profile cases had put the AMSP cold case investigation on a front burner and quieted criticisms from Flint police politicians and prosecutors that the state was meddling in the city's business. So when Nye had been called about two in the afternoon to ask if he could conduct a rush test on Gordon's DNA if evidence could be gathered, he said he would be happy to. Any time of the day or night. Just give him a call, he will shortcut all chain of command issues.
Speaker 1:At 8.10 pm Knight got his call and about 9 pm he was meeting Settle and the Burger King. By 9.15, he was at the lab. He opened up the large manila envelope. A styrofoam cup was wedged inside a larger Pepsi cup. He could see the Mountain Dew residue on the sides. There were two soil napkins, twisted piece of salt evident it wasn't a good start. Napkins have pores, so is styrofoams. Liquids don't leak through it but they don't absorb into it because it acts as a sponge so it's tough to work with. He would have preferred something glass or ceramic, a metal plus a plastic fork, perhaps.
Speaker 1:Knight took cuttings from the napkins and wiped the rim of the cup with the sterile swab. He put the cuttings and the cotton swab tip in two tubes, then added a liquid solution, something called a proteinase K enzyme, which breaks open cells, chews up everything but DNA. He then washed off the cellular debris and what was left was some yet-to-be-determined amount of DNA in clear liquid. He got nothing off the napkins, despite the presence of sauce that had been on gordon's face and lips. He got just the tiniest of bits from the cup. He eyeballed the dewdrop's speck of liquid. Guess it would be about 15-20 microliters. Dna would only be a small fraction of that.
Speaker 1:In the old days of something called RFLP testing of DNA samples, which produced bands of different widths to be compared with other samples to see if the bands line up, you needed at least 300 nanograms of DNA. Now you normally need at least one nanogram preferably more if you can, a nanogram being just a billionth of a gram, or one one billionth of one twenty-eighth of an ounce an incomprehensibly small amount, and Knight figured he had 0.5 nanograms at best. So Knight was crestfallen because it means he didn't have enough, so he would go through the motions, run the sample, through his equipment to see if he could still get a match to the semen samples on hand. But it was doubtful, highly doubtful. About midnight he called Greg Kilbourne and he said Greg, we don't have enough DNA. I'm going to run the test anyway, but it doesn't look like we have enough, sorry. Kilburn called Snyder, who was back home for the night, and he said no go. Snyder called Malinak and Brandemille and said Andre, at their homes. The bad news weighed heavily on them and they went to bed. We'll be right back. We are going to go a little bit back before all this happened, before the DNA testing, and trying to connect Jeffrey Gorton to these potential cold cases.
Speaker 1:Florida Florida has long been a place for second chances People sick of winter, sick of their lives, sick of their spouses, sick of their jobs, strip malls, shopping centers, amusement parks and freeways to satisfy the needs of the millions of lives that headed there to start anew. Marie Galeano was one of them. A native of Asbury Park, new Jersey, the place made famous by Bruce Springsteen, she was married at 21, divorced at 29, stuck in a rut as a paralegal at 32, and more than ready and eager for something different. In 1982, when her best friend, donna Smith, phoned and convinced her to move to Orlando and join her in her new life. Marie was a tiny thing, girlish looking but pretty short fashion model, thin, dark brown hair. She was lively spirited, an animated talker by nature who regained her animation with the move. Florida energized her, got her back to being herself. After the marriage had gone sour and the inevitable post-divorce funk. She was fun to be around and she and Donna fit right in with the mostly single crowd at their Grove Park apartments on Curry Road. With her new life came a new car, a 1982 Volkswagen Rabbit, a present to herself for starting her new life. It was the first major purchase she made after divorcing her husband, and she called it my pride and joy.
Speaker 1:Marie had tired of what she termed the dirtbags she dealt with in New Jersey in her role as a paralegal. For a public defender, a new life meant just that, and though she had gone to school to be a paralegal and was good at it, it had been time to end that chapter in her life too. In Orlando she had found a job as a sales clerk in cosmetics at Burdine's in the Fashion Square Mall, one of the seemingly endless series of malls that was built up in the 1970s and 80s on the highways, spoken out from the central city as Disney World and Epcot and the other theme parks open and lure tens of thousands of workers and millions of visitors. She liked meeting new people all day. She liked selling them things.
Speaker 1:It was April 29, a Friday night, a big night as usual for many of her new friends in the apartment complex. For her, though, it was supposed to be just a routine night. Stop on the way home for a few groceries, kick back from a week on her feet, get a bite to eat, go to bed. Donna likely would like to be out on a date or partying, maybe down the hall from their second floor apartment with some of the other Friday night partiers, and maybe of somewhere else in the town.
Speaker 1:Bird jeans closed at 9 pm and Marie headed out to her rabbit around 9.30. It was warm, clear night. She stopped at the Albertsons, around the block from her apartment complex, for bread and milk and a few other staples, set her single brown bag in the back of her car and headed home. A car followed her out of the lot, whether it had been following her from Burdine's or just started at the grocery store, she will never know. Her apartment building had two entrances. She pulled into the first one. The other car drove past, then entered the driveway on the far side of the building and pull into the large parking lot out back, still unnoticed. It was 10 pm. The lot was pretty well lit with mercury vapor lights. It wasn't one of those lots you felt you have to scurry out of.
Speaker 1:Marie got out and as she walked behind her car she noticed off to the right a man heading her way. She immediately thought guy walking his dog. She turned to face the rear of the car, put in the key, opened the hatchback and lifted the brown bag. And as she did, her subconscious mind flashed a warning. She wouldn't necessarily have seen a dog, given the cars in the lot, but something about the way the man was walking meant no dog. A jolt of fear hit her as she strained up the bag still in her arms, she turned to the left. By then, given his rate of speed, he would have been past her 10 yards, 20 yards somewhere to her left and receding. But the man wasn't walking and he wasn't past her. He was standing right there his face, filling her vision of food from hers In a slasher movie.
Speaker 1:It would have been one of those moments when the audience jumped. A tight shot of a woman in a car. Woman turns Man's head, enters, shot from left. Audience gasp in mass. Marie screamed as the man reached down, lifted her skirt, grabbed her lower legs and flipped her over backwards. She landed on her left wrist and butt groceries flying through the air and scattering across the pavement. He wrapped her ankles and lifted and she went flat on her back. She screamed one long scream and he held her tightly by each ankle and dragged her toward the nearby dumpster.
Speaker 1:After a nationwide search and review of several finalist officials at the Flint Campus of the University of Michigan announced in the spring of 1981 that they have chosen Margaret Ebby to fill the post of Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, the second highest administrative position at the university. A picture of every greeted readers of the Flint Journal at the right side of a story that spread across the entire top of page six. It showed a woman with sparkling eyes, dark bangs swooping down over her forehead, a huge smile and dimples. The headline would be just her first of many. Abby had been serving as dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls. But she wasn't just an academic. She was also a talented musician who had given harpsichord, organ and piano recitals throughout the Midwest, and she was also named a full professor of music with tenure at the Flint campus. It would be a triumphant return to her home state for Abby, a Detroit native who got her PhD in musicology from the University of Michigan's main campus in Ann Harbor after many years of part-time studies while raising her four children. Years of part-time studies while raising her four children. After getting her doctorate in 1971, abby headed the humanities department at the University of Michigan's Dearborn campus in suburban Detroit, where she founded the school's music history and applied music departments. In 1977, she joined the faculty at Northern Iowa as a music professor and dean of humanities and fine arts. Even before her arrival in Flint, eager to show that she would be an active booster of the arts and culture, she became a sponsor of the Flint Institute of Arts.
Speaker 1:Upon her arrival, ebi proved herself to be energetic, even vivacious, a supercharged dynamo who said she played music for her soul, swarmed the school pool on her lunch hour instead of eating and walk to work every day. She was a widow, nearing 50, but didn't act or look it. She was trim and attractive and seemed younger, a product of her times, the 60s, the pill, the sexual revolution, and now single. She was happy and willing to catch the eye of men she came into contact with. On August 2nd, the journey ran its next story about her, a lengthy feature that quoted past colleagues as praising her for her talent, friendliness and conscientiousness. It feels like I have come home, she said a flint.
Speaker 1:As provost she had been given the mission of bringing more discipline and accountability to a growing faculty in 23 departments, a faculty that was perceived by some as generally lax and soft. But she told the paper quote I don't intend to just storm in making changes right and left, nor do I intend to sit alone in judgment of the quality of education. That would take colossal ignorance. It is inconceivable for one person to have all the necessary knowledge in all the different program areas to make that kind of judgment end. Quote Ebi soon began enlisting support in a project that at first seemed like tilting at windmills in the factory-dominated city of Flint In Iowa, she had begun planning a 300th birthday bash festival for JS Beck, who had been born on March 21, 1685.
Speaker 1:Now she would still put on a festival, but she would do it in Michigan instead. Slowly she got others in her growing social and civic circle to commit time and money. Evie recruited a cadre of 25 Flint boosters to help organize the festival, which was to begin in January of 1985. It reached its zenith on March 21st and then taper off with a variety of events through June 1st Margaret Abbey's Crazy Dream a festival to put Flint in the front aisle seat for John Sebastian Bach's 300th birthday party. Moving to the real world this week, as the group planning the event received word of a $20,800 grant.
Speaker 1:We read a story in the Flint Journal on August 25, 1983. The grant had come from National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington DC for the full amount requested by Evie in her role as president of the Flint Commission Cultural Festivals Inc. The festival ended up a roaring success Four months of jam-packed culture in a town more known for its six-pack approach to recreation. The 40-event festival did the unheard of. It raised $48,000, more in revenue than projections call for. In April Gutz von Balmer, the American consul general from West Germany, awarded Evie with the German-American Friendship Medal. Today the festival concluded on Saturday, june 1st with an evening of music and fireworks on the Flint River. The journal named Evie is winner of the week.
Speaker 1:But not everyone was enamored with Evie. She had been brought in to whip the faculty into shape and those getting whipped didn't much appreciate it, and those getting whipped didn't much appreciate it. Abby could drive others to distraction, whether it was faculty at the Flint campus or workers on the festival committee. She likes perfection, according to Margaret Strobel, who was hired to work for the festival in January of 1984, told a journal reporter she doesn't hesitate to ask you to do something over if it's not right. I have had to do that. I think it would drive other people, but when I have done a job over again I could see that she was right. She's the most stimulating female I have ever worked with. She has lots of ideas and she knows what to do with her ideas. She can do things at the spur of the moment. She doesn't have to hide behind an organizational chart. But universities are all organizational charts, hierarchies, picking orders. There are also internex sign battlegrounds with raging eagles, dirty fighters. As her festival approach, as it was held, as she triumphed in the media, some of her colleagues sharpened their knives, a metaphor that police would soon think might have crossed the boundary into the world of literal action. Ebi was again in the journal on March 17 of 1986 to a story that detailed a successful B&E evening with Schubert organized by Ebi at the University of Michigan Flint Theater. Shoeboard organized by Abby at the University of Michigan Flint Theater. The next story to the journal and the journal on Abby, accompanied by pictures of her in the back festival t-shirt and the house she rented on an estate not far from campus and Bold Headlines, ran on November 10, 1986.
Speaker 1:By then the woman, who could do no wrong in her career, had run afoul of her enemies. Carping and complaints had led to her losing her post as provost roast. She could be silly, charming and engaging with her friends, but hyper-demanding, caustic and verbally abusive with those she worked with. Smart enough to negotiate tenure before she left Iowa, she still held the single title of music professor. But despite the loss of her pro-Rose position, life was still good. She was doing good work, she had a lot of friends, she was a lay minister at the First Presbyterian Church downtown, she was close to her children and she had a dream place to live a two-story gatehouse on the biggest estate in town that was a steal at $375 a month including utilities and which was just a walk from campus. Evie constantly entertained on the grounds of the estate, hosting parties that included gifted students, corporate bigwigs, academics, intellectuals and artists. She held annual Yule Log parties and arranged croquette matches and long bowling tournaments and any manner of cocktail parties and barbecues.
Speaker 1:It was the fall of 1986, and Mark Eby, who was a civilian employee of the US Army Tank Command, had been on assignment in Germany for a year. His wife, cindy, was there with him, and one project he had decided on before he left home to sort of keep in touch with his tight-knit family and was to organize and catalog the 36 years of family photos that trace out the history of the Ebbies from the time of his mother's marriage to his dad in 1950. He put the last photo in the first book. It told the first nine years of a family's tale. It also chronicled the parallel tales of the burgeoning baby boomer era and of the growth of the American suburb. There was another tale too, hidden behind the shots of young babies growing children, new houses, new cars.
Speaker 1:It was the story of a typical young American housewife, doing the not so cynical or so typical, I should say going to college part-time first for her bachelor's, then her master's, then her PhD. A woman who wouldn't harness her ambitions or her mind just because she had married at age 18 and started a family. Margaret Fink was the second of five children whose mother was a strict, gut-fearing German immigrant. Her younger sister, ruth, would later spend most of her adult life as a missionary in Brazil. Margaret quit Wheaton College in Illinois to get married to Stuart Eby and delay her bachelor's till she was 23. She was a woman determined to go places, figuratively and literally, a woman who would make her mark, a woman who, like many others of her generation or the one to follow, would ultimately explore a sexuality beyond the limits of her conservative upbringing. We'll be right back. Let's go now to 1986.
Speaker 1:Tony Trombley met the boogeyman in the summer of 1986. He was just back in the area from Florida and his brother and sister-in-law lived next door to the house where Tony rented a room from her cousin in a house in Flint. He was quiet, smart and enjoyed talking to her. Pretty soon he was stopping by every day to chat. Nothing romantic, just friendly conversation. One day Tony came home to find he had been there. He had gotten in somehow and left a bouquet of flowers and a note for her. She looked around. Nothing was as she or her cousin had left it. He had completely cleaned the house. It was spotless. He had also washed the laundry, folding it and putting it away before he left. Tony freaked out. She confronted him later and told him to stay away from her, and she got a padlock for her bedroom door. One day she came home to find the padlock broken off. She soon moved out. She came home to find the padlock broken off. She soon moved out, and that was the last she heard of him for more than 15 years.
Speaker 1:In 1986, margaret Eri's calendar was always busy. It would have been busy just with demands at school. She was also a director of the classical radio station WFBE, and she had a wide circle of friends running the gamut, from lovers to artists, to fellow churchgoers to musicians she played with in various ensembles. At 55, she showed no sign of slowing down, whether it was her schedule or her natural high-energy metabolism. Abby still had the petite figure of a schoolgirl. She was 5 feet 1 inch tall and weighed 123 pounds. The only concession to age was her dyed brown hair, which she wore in a loose perm that was then fashionable.
Speaker 1:The weekend of Friday November 7th through Sunday November 9th was typical. At 4 pm Friday she was supposed to meet with a woman friend but got out of that engagement so she could accept an offer to attend a dinner party at the home of Richard and Mary Newman in nearby Clio. The Newmans were fellow members of First Presbyterian Church, a grand old stone edifice on S Saginaw Street in downtown Flint. Also attending were John Hyde, an assistant principal at the Ottawa County Vocational Center, southern Smith, a teacher at the Flint Academy who sang with Abby at the church, and William Reneker, the church's chief organist and choir director. Saturday she had to go down to Detroit to pick up her three-year-old granddaughter, jessie. That was off the Detroit Institute of Art with her, and then that night to a concert at Hill Auditorium on the University of Michigan's Ann Arbor campus. Sunday she had a 2 pm concert to attend in Flint. Sunday she had a 2 pm concert to attend in Flint, and at 4 pm Hyde and Smith were stopping by the two-story, two-door gatehouse she rented on the Mott estate. Evie had some geraniums she prized and Hyde was going to transplant them to his greenhouse before a killer frost did them. In this time of year a frost was overdue.
Speaker 1:Friday's dinner was a quiet affair. The night before at choir practice, all four of the guests had agreed to meet at Ebby's at 6.15 and make the short drive to Clio in one car. Ebby brought a cold seafood salad. Abby told everyone she was upset at having recently received a letter from an attorney for the Mott estate saying that she might soon have to leave her beloved gatehouse home, that the estate planned to hire a full-time gardener and his contract might require that the estate provide him a place to live. At one point Nevy asked the group if anyone thought it was possible for someone to have a full social life and still be lonely, and Smith would later recount quote. I wonder if it was a question of a professor to stimulate conversation or if she was talking about herself. End quote.
Speaker 1:At 11 pm the four headed back to Flint At the gatehouse. All three men got out of the car and walked every to the front door of the gatehouse, but her key wouldn't work the lock, and she said this lock is schizophrenic Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. The four then walked to a side door where Abby used the same key to get inside. Before she closed the door she turned and gave all three men quick, friendly pecks on the cheek. Good night, sunday afternoon.
Speaker 1:Hyde, a meticulous type, noticed when he pulled into Ebby's driveway in his beard regal that he was eight minutes late. Ebby's cherry was in the driveway. He went up to the front door the schizophrenic one from Friday night. This time it was a few inches ajar. He pulled it shut and then knocked loudly with the big brass knocker. When there was no response he went back to his car, got out a windshield scraper and used that to pry the geraniums loose from the pots. He then returned to his car with the plants. Smith arrived a few minutes later in his Honda Accord. He and Hyde were planning to drive to the city of Holland on the western side of the state.
Speaker 1:Later that evening the two men went up to the door and clanked the knocker again. Still no answer. They then opened the door and cautiously stepped in. It was dusk outside and the dim light inside the house added to a sinister ambience. Smith thought they were out of line for walking in, but Hyde prevailed. Avery's purse and keys were visible on the dining room table. They call out no response.
Speaker 1:Smith and Hyde talk about what they should do. That is seem odd. The door would be open and her purse and keys there, but she wouldn't have heard them by now. Of course, after a long weekend she could have been taking a nap. I said so he would go upstairs and take a peek.
Speaker 1:He walked up the stairs. As he reached the top he could see her through the open bedroom door, see her as he looked into a scene of unspeakable carnage and depravity. She was lying on her stomach, her right arm on the floor, her left arm bent behind her. There was a small puddle of congealed blood under her right hand, in a huge pool of it next to her head. On the mattress. Her head had been nearly severed from her torso. She had been tied up and raped. She had been stabbed repeatedly. I thought he was going to throw up, but the feeling passed and he stumbled downstairs. He said Margaret's up there and there's a lot of blood.
Speaker 1:So Smith dialed 911. The dispatcher wanted a house number. They didn't know it. Hyde went out to look and couldn't find one. It was the gatehouse at the front of the Mott estate, for God's sake. The dispatcher didn't seem to be able to work around the lack of an address. They didn't need an address, damn it, they needed to get there. Hysterical Smith later remembered thinking they needed to hurry up because he had a long drive to make and needed to get going. Of course he would go in nowhere. Thank you for listening to the Murder Book. Have a great week.
