July 7, 2025 • 38 mins
A stunning forensic breakthrough connects two of Michigan's most notorious cold cases, revealing the chilling work of a serial killer who eluded justice for decades.
Detective Sergeant Kilbourne, a seasoned Michigan State Police veteran with experience in everything from undercover narcotics to high-profile murder investigations, faces his most challenging assignment yet. Taking charge of the 1986 Margaret Ebi murder case fifteen years after the crime, he discovers a chaotic evidence collection that forces him to rebuild the investigation from the ground up. "We don't have a crime scene, but we got pictures of a crime scene," his superior reminds him as they forge ahead.
The turning point arrives when DNA samples preserved from the Ebi crime scene, previously thought degraded beyond use, are submitted to Michigan's state-of-the-art crime lab. What happens next electrifies the investigation – the genetic fingerprint matches DNA from the unsolved 1991 murder of flight attendant Nancy Ludwig in Romulus. Two seemingly unrelated high-profile murders, connected by the invisible thread of a killer's DNA.
As the investigation widens, we meet Detective Mike Larson, Kilbourne's counterpart described as "Mr. Yang to Kilbourne's Mr. Ying" – opposite personalities united in their pursuit of justice. Their work parallels the revolutionary case chronicled in Joseph Wambach's bestseller "The Blooding," which documents how DNA profiling first caught a serial killer in England, forever changing criminal investigations worldwide.
The path forward becomes complicated when territorial issues arise between state and local agencies. Detective Gordy Melianak, who devoted years to the Ludwig case, finds himself sidelined by departmental politics just as the breakthrough occurs. Will interagency tensions derail the investigation, or can these dedicated detectives overcome bureaucratic obstacles to finally bring closure to two of Michigan's most haunting unsolved murders?
Subscribe to The Murder Book for the conclusion of this riveting true crime investigation that demonstrates how modern forensic science can breathe new life into cases long gone cold.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Murder Book.
I'm your host, kiara, and thisis Jeffrey Gordon.
Deadly Secret, part 9.
Let's begin.
Detective Sergeant Kilbourne wasa person that he studied
(00:25):
criminal justice at MichiganState.
He joined the Michigan StatePolice in 1977.
He spent seven years as auniform patrol officer.
He went on to undercovernarcotics and stolen property
surveillance work.
In 1986, he was promoted todetergent sergeant detective
(00:50):
sergeant, I should say and hewas assigned to the criminal
intelligence division under thestate's attorney general.
So here he would workpolitically sensitive cases,
usually referred to the statepolice by local cops, leery of
taking on local politiciansaccused of crimes and, you know,
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chicanery.
Later he worked undercoverinvestigating murder for hire
and prostitution, then wasassigned to be part of an FBI
task force investigatingbookmaking in western Michigan.
Kilburn worked more than hisshare of odd, high-profile cases
(01:34):
, the most famous of which wasthat of Richard Davis.
Richard Davis, his wife,supposedly died in a suspicious
horse riding accident and yearsafter the murder her body was
exhumed and new lab tests wereable to determine that she had
been poisoned.
There is even a movie aboutthis, I believe Lifetime or
(02:06):
something like that has thatmovie.
But when this happened, ofcourse guy davis was long gone.
But then they were able tocapture him.
He was on his sailboat and hereturned to to michigan after
the case was aired on unsolvedmystery.
So it was because of unsolvedmysteries that they found him,
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personally asked to join thetask force by Bonnet and
assigned to head up the Ebi caseearly in June of 2001,.
He had been only vaguely awareof it and it was just another
murder case in Flint for him.
He and Detective Bonnet roundedup two large boxes of notes and
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scribbling that they gatheredon the case over the years, as
well as crime scene photos andsketches.
The state police keep detailedand well-organized notes during
investigations.
It was culture shock forKilborn and Bonner when they
first went through the Flint PDmaterial because almost none of
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it was in the neat type update,dated, narrative form that they
expected.
Much of it was handwrittennotes, not always dated, not
always readable, oftenaccompanied by the doodling and
personal sort of shorthand oneuses in making notes.
So it was very chaotic to goand to try to sort those notes.
So according to Kilbourne, itwas a tactical decision to keep
(03:40):
reports at a bare minimum.
To keep reports at a bareminimum the Flynn PD had not
wanted to have to hand overreports to the media under terms
of the state's sunshine laws.
So no reports, problem solved.
They would go back and draftofficial reports when and if the
case was solved.
It never had been so.
(04:02):
No reports.
So for Bonnet and Kilburn, ofcourse it was mind-boggling.
It never had been so.
No reports.
So for Bonnet and Kilburn, ofcourse it was mind-boggling
because the guys were sayingthis is going to be an
impossible task.
What are you thinking?
So Bonnet told his detectivesyou know, don't complain and cry
(04:22):
and jump up and down about whatwe don't have.
We will start with what we havewe do have and we will start
the case over, build our ownfiles, start from the beginning.
We don't have a crime scene,but we got pictures of a crime
scene.
So Bonnet told Kilborn andDennis Dix, who was at that time
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a rookie detective, to pull infrom the CID office in East
Lansing to take the boxes ofstuff back to the Flint State
Police Post, ensconce themselvesin an office, take all the time
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they needed to make as muchsense as they could of what was
there.
Kilburn read it all first, thenDiggs read it all and then they
began to organize it, figureout what it had told them what
they hadn't.
And Dave King may not have beenthe most organized record
keeper and much of the lack offormal reports was intentional,
but he was happy to help them.
So he bent over backwards tomeet with us and go over his
(05:33):
notes and he gave me everytidbit of information that he
could remember according.
These are words from DetectiveKilburn.
And it helped too too, thatGary Effort, the Flint detective
in charge of the original crimescene, who had retired and
become an investigator for theGenesee County Prosecutor Arthur
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Bush, was assigned to the taskforce because he was able to
smooth things out between thetask force and members of the
Flint PD.
About the time the MichiganState Police was forming its own
cold case squad.
Bush had asked the state forfunding for his own cold case
(06:17):
unit.
He had been turned down andwould remain mightily miffed
over what he perceived to be aslight to him and meddling by
the state.
He wanted to get his own guy onthe squad.
For their part, bonnet andKilbourne knew and respected
effort and were happy to havehim.
He would prove invaluable inhelping sort out the old reports
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and give them insights into thedifferent players.
More than two weeks afterhauling the boxes of notes back
to the state post, kilbourne wasready to begin his own
investigation, basically workingthe case from the beginning,
starting with the arrival ofHyde and Smith at Ebby's on that
Sunday, nearly 15 years earlier, and then moving on to the list
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of Abby's lovers and to the modemployees.
A common response was quote.
I already talked to the cops,end quote, but they have not
talked to the state cops.
And now they would.
Kilburn began interviewingfamily members too.
He needed to clear them, ofcourse, but he also wanted to
get a feel for the person behindthe headlines.
(07:24):
Clear them, of course, but healso wanted to get a feel for
the person behind the headlines.
Dale, abby's oldest child andan attorney, told him now how
she and her mother had remainedclose, despite one living in
Indianapolis and the other inFlint.
She told, after talking byphone once or twice a week of
the time, her mother hadconcocted some story to get her
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to visit her at the gatehouse inJuly of 1986, and when she got
there it turned out to be asurprise party for her 35th
birthday.
She told Cobourne that hermother's house had been broken
in several times.
There was some sort of secretpassageway or tunnel that led
into the basement of thegatehouse from the outside, and
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her mother had once found a modemployee in her basement and
demanded that the tunnel belocked.
Kilbourne also put out adescription of the Ebi killing
on a national law enforcementnetwork called VICAP for
Apprehension Program wherepolice can compare MOs of
(08:27):
various solved and unsolvedcrimes.
They got numerous responses ofsimilar crimes with known and
unknown perps nationwide andbegan trying to link those
killers to Flint.
Since the purpose of the taskforce was to see if new lab
techniques could be successfullyapplied to all cases, kilburn
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and Dix went through theevidence to see if the Michigan
State Police New State of theArt Crime Lab in Lansing could
be of assistance.
A lab report that said semensamples from the crime scene
likely had been degraded, but hecouldn't find anything to say
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conclusively that they were ofno value.
Dna testing was in its infancyin 1986.
Not a lot of cops knew muchabout it.
King and others on the Flint PDhad assumed, based on that lab
report at the time, that the DNAwas bad.
But was it or could somethingthat would have been considered
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degraded by the standards of1986, now, with much more
refined techniques, be unstableor I should say not unstable,
sorry.
It might be usable.
More important, did they evenstill have it?
Kilbourne learned that the bloodand semen samples had indeed
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been kept in cold storage atBridgeport Lab by the MSP but
that they had never beensubmitted for DNA analysis.
He asked that the regionalcrime Lab in Bridgeport, which
had been keeping the samples onice, submit them for testing to
the DNA lab in Lansing.
They arrived there on June 19.
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The first result came back onJuly 6.
Charleston was finally andofficially cleared as a suspect.
Dna technology was light yearsahead of where it had been when
the original testing of samplestaken from Abby was done early
in 1987.
Those tests couldn't tellanything about Abby's attackers
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blood type or couldn't provide aDNA profile.
Now new tests were able to showa DNA profile for her killer
and Stone's profile didn't match.
That was news, but not big news.
All it did was clear a suspect,which was something they were
doing a lot in the early days ofthe Renew investigation.
(10:56):
The big news came on Monday,august 6, about 3 pm when the
director of the DNA lab, charlesBarna, paige Kilbourne, who
immediately called him back.
It was about the Ebi case,about the samples that have
arrived.
On June 19th there has been acase-to-case hit with the DNA,
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according to Barna.
Does that mean we have solvedthe case, as Kilborn and Barna
said no, and then he explainedit to him.
He said sources of DNA can becollected at crime scenes from
blood, semen, teeth, skin, hairs, urine, bones and muscles.
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The DNA is then entered into anational database of DNA samples
known by the acronym CODIS.
That means Combined DNA IndexSystem.
In February of 1995, michiganhooked up to the nationwide
CODIS system which had begunwith a pilot program in
(12:03):
Minnesota in 1991.
There are two populations ofsamples in the database those of
convicted fellows or felons Ishould say and those from
unsolved crimes.
The match made on the samplesfrom the Abby scene was to an
unsolved crime in Romulus in1991.
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When Michigan had hooked themto CODIS, one of the first
things Lynn Helton had done wasto enter in the DNA from the
Ludwig murder told them that thesame person who had raped and
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murdered Margaret Abbey in 1986had raped and murdered Nancy
Ludwig, the flight attendant.
They now knew they had a serialkiller but they still didn't
know who it was the two highestprofile murders in the state in
the last 20 years.
The two highest profile murdersin the state in the last 20
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years in the last 50 years ifyou didn't count Jimmy Hoffa
were committed by the sameperson.
It was an energizing moment forall as Kilburn spread the word
to the members of the FBI'sprofile had sent everyone down
at that end in 1986 and 1987.
They now had a focus due southof Flint, about a 90-minute
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drive south on I-75 to theairport-dominated city of
Romulus.
The link between the two caseswas good news, of course, but
bad in a way.
The task force members alreadyhad huge to-do lists involving
tracking down all witnesses, allfriends and acquaintances and
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all suspects.
Now there were literallythousands of new names to deal
with and another cold casesuddenly was theirs to solve too
.
At 3.45, kilburn called theRomulus PD and there Commander
Dave or David Early recounteddetails of the Ludwig case which
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were chilling in theirsimilarity to the case he was
now familiar with.
Kilburn told him he would bedown to talk to him in person
the next day.
We'll be right back Now.
There was a book that famousformer cop and eventually true
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crime writer Joseph Wambachwrote.
It was called the Blooding andthe Blooding was a bestseller in
1989.
And it soon became a requiredreading for Task Force members.
For them, the book was arecounting of a manhunt for a
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serial killer in England and thenew technology that finally
caught him, and it was both aprimer on DNA and an
encouragement that their serialkiller, who, like the villain of
the book, had raped andmurdered two women and had
avoided capture for yearsdespite intense publicity and
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ongoing investigations, could becaught.
Dna has become so much part ofthe law enforcement vocabulary
and a major part of the plot ofcrime novels, movie scripts and
popular TV shows such as CSI,that is often forgotten just how
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recent its application tosolving crime has been been.
(16:14):
For example, linda Mann, 15,was raped and murdered November
21st 1983.
It was like a little village,english village in Narborough.
Despite some massiveinvestigation involving 150
police, thousands of man-hoursof work, hundreds of interviews,
numerous suspects, intensemedia coverage on TV and radio,
the tabloids, the murder wentunsolved In September of 1984,
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crime detection would changeforever, though no one knew it
at the time, and that was whenAlec Jeffrey, a 34-year-old
research scientist at England'sand hopefully I'm not butchering
this name Leicester University,looked at X-ray films that had
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just been developed and he hadhis eureka moment.
He stared at clear visual proofthat his theory was correct that
if you identify regions of theDNA molecule that have the most
variation from person to personand came up with a way to
highlight those regions with aradioactive probe, you would
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have the equivalent of a geneticfingerprint.
So Jeffries took DNA from bloodcells, cut them into pieces by
adding enzymes.
By adding enzymes, the bitswere dropped onto a gel and
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exposed to an electric field,which caused the larger
fragments to separate from thesmaller.
Radioactive material was addedand the sample then was X-rayed.
The film, when developed,showed Jeffries that his theory
was correct, because what yousee is that the DNA is separated
into bands that look much likea barcode, and each person's
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barcode, with the exception ofidentical twins, was distinct.
It's unique.
So Jeffries immediately appliedfor a patent and his wife Susan
drew up a list of commercialapplications.
At the top was settlingimmigration disputes a very big
issue then.
In Great Britain, provencitizens claimed to be blood
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relatives of British citizens.
If their claim was true, theywere entitled to enter into the
country.
But many of the claims werefraudulent and there was no easy
way to prove the issue one wayor another until now.
Another application was todetermine the suitability of
bone marrow transplants.
A third was improved animalhusbandry.
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On July 31, 1986, another15-year-old girl, dawn Ashworth,
was missing, raped and thenmurdered.
Her body was discovered onanother wooded footpath, just a
few hundred yards from whereMann's body had been found.
And this time police were quickto solve the murder.
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And this time, police werequick to solve the murder.
They arrested a porter at anearby mental hospital, a misfit
with a history of molestingyoung girls, and he quickly
confessed to the murder.
But although the two murderswere sample taken from the
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porter, the results wereconclusive and shocking.
The murders and rapes hadindeed been committed by the
same person, but that person wasstill at large.
The porter had not done it.
His confession was false.
On November 21st 1986, judicialhistory was made DNA evidence
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was used for the first time in amurder case.
Police and the court wereconvinced by the scientists that
Jeffrey's DNA tests wereaccurate and unassailable and
charges were dropped against theporter.
The police, having lost onesuspect because of DNA testing,
decided to turn the technologyto the advantage and began
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taking blood samples and runningDNA tests of all the young men
in the Narborough area.
The killer, the improbable nameColin Pitchfork, a baker and
cake decorator, was eventuallycaught and convicted.
The irony was that he passedhis blood test by altering a
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password and getting a friend topass off his blood as
Pitchfork's.
The friend eventually toldother friends while out at a pub
and one of them called thepolice.
Pitchfork was picked up,readily confessed, submitted to
a legitimate blood test and waslinked conclusively to both
murders.
In 1987, jeffries Technologywent commercial when the
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chemical company ICI opened up ablood testing center in
Cheshire, england, and lawenforcement at least that
portion of it dealing withmurder or rape would never be
the same.
Mike Larson is Mr Young toKilburn's Mr Ying.
Where one is taciturn and bythe hook, the other is brash,
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outgoing, quick to laugh andplay it by the seat of his pants
.
When asked to cooperate for abook on the Eby and Lockwick
murders, kilbourne, by thenretired from the state police.
An investigator with the StateGaming Commission said he had
been asked by the Flintprosecutor not to comment until
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after a trial.
Larson, still with the MichiganState Police, invited a
reporter to his office, engagedin several long and detailed
interviews, providing plenty ofmaterial both on and off the
record and had begun makingphotocopies of the MSP reports
when it dawned on him, you know,after a third interview he said
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I probably ought to go throughchannels.
There's a media guy in Lansingyou probably should contact.
Larson looks as he has engagednow since graduation from high
school and even though he was agrandfather at this time he was
still very active.
He would play hockey once aweek in the winter.
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He keeps his backup equipmentand sticks on the back seat of
his state-issued car.
He also joined the army when hewas young, did a four-year stint
at the Superhush NationalSecurity Agency and for years
its existence was officiallydenied.
(23:11):
It was the agency that darednot to speak its name and Larson
was a computer specialist atits Fort Meade, maryland
headquarters, which containedmore computer power than any
organization or business in theworld, more than most of them
combined.
Larson was a technicianinstalling programs, doing
(23:35):
maintenance, changing magnetictapes on the giant mainframes of
the world's most secretiveintelligence organization.
And he also moonlighted with aMaryland moving company and,
because he had a top-secretsecurity clearance, got the jobs
that involved places like theWhite House and the CIA.
Larson then returned toMuskegon in western Michigan,
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attended community college,refereed high school athletics,
got a job in a factory tosupport his young family.
His wife's uncle was a statecop and Larson had been
intrigued by that.
One day a recruiter visitedcampus, signed him up for a
civil service test in 1979.
(24:25):
Larson then returned um.
So let me back up a little bit.
Um, so he joined, larson,joined the Michigan State Police
, 96th Recruiting Clat, and atthe time of the Avery murder
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Larson worked out of theBridgeport Post, across the
driveway from the crime labwhose crew had worked the crime
scene.
Larson was the second memberBonnet had handpicked for the
task force in May of 2001.
And while Kilborn dug into theEbi case, larson took on the
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string of the prostitutes whostarted showing up in 1998, and
eventually he and Reeves wouldgive DNA swaps to more than 400
people and they would soondiscover that there were at
least two different unrelatedserial murderers involved and
stumble across a serial rapistof prostitutes as well.
(25:34):
Things moved fairly smoothlyand eventually one murderer of
two prostitutes would be caughtand convicted, as would the
rapist.
But Larson couldn't be involvedin the end of those cases and
on August 6th came thecase-to-case hit on CODIS and
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that same day bonded Paul Larsonof the prostitute case and into
the AB Ludwig murders.
And now Ying and Yang will beworking together.
So on August 7, 2001, gordyMelianak was, as usual, in a
(26:20):
very bad mood and he was one ofthose hard-nosed cops that could
play bad cop with the best ofthem.
And his bad cop, paired withDan Snyder's good cop, was a
work of art, and he had areputation around the rummeless
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PD for hard work, for a bulldogapproach to detective work that
was both respected andirritating.
He liked working long days,carrying a heavy caseload that
made some of his peers look likeshirkers.
He worked twice as hard andtwice as long as anybody else.
He would work 14, 15 hours aday, seven days a week.
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And you know Snyder said wedidn't always get along, but he
was a hell of a cop and the bestcop I ever worked with.
So the last thing Malinuk everdid was suffer fools.
He was the one when thedepartment sent him and Snyder
out to meet with FBI profilersat a convention a month after
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Ludwig's death to proclaim earlyon that they were a bunch of
assholes and that they didn'tknow anything, said that he was
what a white male big deal.
Most serial killers were, andtaking what they had to say with
a grain of salt went againsthis grain and they are useless.
And he would tell Dan or anyonewho cared to listen that In
(27:50):
1981, malianak became one of theoriginal five hires of the new
Romulus Police Department and inMay of 1989, he was promoted to
detective sergeant working withSnyder.
He was promoted to detectivesergeant working with Snyder and
in February of 1991, they gottheir biggest, nastiest case,
which was the Ludwig murder.
Ten years later, in August of2001, miliunac had good reason
(28:18):
to be mad.
The Romulus police force isriddled with politics.
In a small town where politicswere often down and dirty and
you never know who you might runafoul of or for what.
And the mayor didn't like youand the chief needed to curry
favor with the mayor.
Well, if such things weredemotions made Three months
earlier, melianak's boss in thedetective bureau, commander Dave
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Early, had given him the word.
Malianak was keeping his rankof lieutenant but being moved
out of the DB and back intouniform duty in a patrol car.
So Early said you are back inuniform.
And Malianak said well, that'seffing nice.
I had a big chip on my shoulder.
(29:02):
So Melianak with a chip on hisshoulder wasn't a pleasant thing
to behold.
They wanted him on patrol.
Fine, he will be on patrol.
He came into the station aslittle as possible.
He couldn't stand to see eitherEarly or Kirby.
And one thing remained the samehe humped his butt Even after
(29:24):
his first run in with Kirby andhe was busted back to patrol.
He would work so hard and whatyou were doing he would do five
times as much as anyone else.
For some reason or another nowforgotten Manianak was in the
station, out doing something atthe front desk behind the
plexiglass in the lobby, whenthree guys walk in at 9.30 am,
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looking businesslike, not likethe usual Romulus residents
wanting to file a report, andone of them asked is Gordy
Melinek here?
And he said I am Gordy Melianak, who are you?
And Detective Kilburnintroduced himself I'm Greg
Kilburn, I'm for the MichiganState Police Crime Task Force,
(30:12):
and with him were State PoliceDetective Jamie Corona and Gary
Elford.
And he was thinking what in theworld had he done, or did they
think he had done, to bringthree plank claws and why they
were looking for him.
So he asked what is this allabout?
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He said you don't know.
He said no, so well, we came upwith a link between a killing
we have been investigating inFlint and the Nazi, the Nancy
Ludwig case.
And he's like oh, you'rekidding me.
I said no, we're not.
So they talked to early anddone some background checking
with Lynn Helton and now we'rethere to get up to speed on the
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Ludwig case.
Kilburn needed to look at thereports, get copies, see what
they had, how it was organizedand how they could use it to get
started on phase two of whatwas already an exhaustive
investigation.
And here they were, havingdriven down from Flint, only to
find out that one of the twoguys they needed to talk to had
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not even been told they werecoming or that they had been a
dramatic breakthrough in theLudwig case.
And Melianak said that flooredme and I was stunned.
As soon as they told me I saidto myself you gotta be kidding
me, I was just fuming, and thisI'm quoting Melianak himself.
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So Kilburn, corona and Effortwere bussed into sea early.
Melianak called Snyder at home.
Snyder had been promoted tolieutenant in the patrol
division and was no longer inthe DB.
He had found out late the daybefore but had not had a chance
to call Melianak.
So Barna had called Heltonafter he would talk to Kilborn,
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knowing that she would work theLudwig scene, and Helton had
called Snyder at home.
As soon as Helton had calledhim, snyder called Kilborn
saying he was no longer in theDB but wanted on the case and
would make himself totallyavailable.
He was hoping to elicitKilburn's support.
Melianak went into the roomwhere all the voluminous files
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were stored Snyder is aknick-knack and because they had
been his files they weremeticulously organized and
squared away no more Becausesomeone had been rummaging
through them, spilling stuff onthe floor, probably trying to
get some background on the caseand where it stood.
Snyder reported in and went totalk to Kirby.
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Snyder was head of theofficers' union and he and Kirby
had butted heads over unionissues, contract negotiations
and just about everything else.
Snyder's disdain for his bosswas well known.
Snyder, unlike his partner,could suffer fools, but he
refused to suffer Kirby.
As Snyder tells it, he toldKirby he would work the case
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with the state police on his owntime on weekends, at nights,
taking vacation time, whateverit took, and Kirby said no,
you're not to be involved at all.
Snyder was stunned because Kirbyhad gotten word that Snyder had
talked to Kilburn the daybefore and was ticked off.
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What right do you have to callthem?
He said it's my case.
So Kirby told him emphaticallythat it wasn ticked off.
What right do you have to callthem?
He said it's my case.
So Kubrick told himemphatically that it wasn't his
case, it was Early's case and heordered him to have no contact
with the state police whatsoever.
And Malianak said that this wasthe dumbest thing he had ever
heard of.
So later Malianak heardscuttlebutt that the Romulus PD
(34:03):
was going to turn everythingover to Kilburn and Larson, not
just the files, which wasunderstandable, but the case
itself.
They were going to give up ourcase and not assign anyone to
work with the MSP.
This is crazy, said Malianak.
There was bad blood right fromthe beginning.
(34:23):
Kirby might have told Snydernot to have any contact with the
state police, but he had notgiven Melianak any orders.
So he called Kilburn and left amessage and said there is a lot
of internal bickering going onhere.
You need to contact Dan Snyder.
He knows this case better thananyone.
(34:45):
End quote.
But Kilbourne needed Kirby'scooperation and Early's.
He wasn't about to getembroiled in office politics if
he could avoid it.
He said that he decided rightaway that he wasn't going to be
involved in all that and hedidn't stick around Early's back
because that was not going tohelp anyone.
It was Early's case and so itwas Early he would work with.
(35:09):
On Thursday, the 9th, early metwith Kilbourne and then Bonnet
at the Michigan State PoliceSecond District Headquarters in
Northville.
They wanted to set thegroundwork for a joint
investigation.
The meeting wasn't promising.
Early said his department wasoverlooked but down to just
(35:30):
three detectives, and that hecouldn't be able to spare anyone
full time.
He was willing, though, tooffer clerical help to assist in
entering tips or other computerwork.
Thank you for listening to theMurderbook.
Have a great week.
Welcome to the Murder Book.
I'm your host, kiara, and thisis Jeffrey Gordon.
Deadly Secret, part 9.
Let's begin.
Detective Sergeant Kilbourne wasa person that he studied
(00:25):
criminal justice at MichiganState.
He joined the Michigan StatePolice in 1977.
He spent seven years as auniform patrol officer.
He went on to undercovernarcotics and stolen property
surveillance work.
In 1986, he was promoted todetergent sergeant detective
(00:50):
sergeant, I should say and hewas assigned to the criminal
intelligence division under thestate's attorney general.
So here he would workpolitically sensitive cases,
usually referred to the statepolice by local cops, leery of
taking on local politiciansaccused of crimes and, you know,
(01:13):
chicanery.
Later he worked undercoverinvestigating murder for hire
and prostitution, then wasassigned to be part of an FBI
task force investigatingbookmaking in western Michigan.
Kilburn worked more than hisshare of odd, high-profile cases
(01:34):
, the most famous of which wasthat of Richard Davis.
Richard Davis, his wife,supposedly died in a suspicious
horse riding accident and yearsafter the murder her body was
exhumed and new lab tests wereable to determine that she had
been poisoned.
There is even a movie aboutthis, I believe Lifetime or
(02:06):
something like that has thatmovie.
But when this happened, ofcourse guy davis was long gone.
But then they were able tocapture him.
He was on his sailboat and hereturned to to michigan after
the case was aired on unsolvedmystery.
So it was because of unsolvedmysteries that they found him,
(02:29):
personally asked to join thetask force by Bonnet and
assigned to head up the Ebi caseearly in June of 2001,.
He had been only vaguely awareof it and it was just another
murder case in Flint for him.
He and Detective Bonnet roundedup two large boxes of notes and
(02:52):
scribbling that they gatheredon the case over the years, as
well as crime scene photos andsketches.
The state police keep detailedand well-organized notes during
investigations.
It was culture shock forKilborn and Bonner when they
first went through the Flint PDmaterial because almost none of
(03:15):
it was in the neat type update,dated, narrative form that they
expected.
Much of it was handwrittennotes, not always dated, not
always readable, oftenaccompanied by the doodling and
personal sort of shorthand oneuses in making notes.
So it was very chaotic to goand to try to sort those notes.
So according to Kilbourne, itwas a tactical decision to keep
(03:40):
reports at a bare minimum.
To keep reports at a bareminimum the Flynn PD had not
wanted to have to hand overreports to the media under terms
of the state's sunshine laws.
So no reports, problem solved.
They would go back and draftofficial reports when and if the
case was solved.
It never had been so.
(04:02):
No reports.
So for Bonnet and Kilburn, ofcourse it was mind-boggling.
It never had been so.
No reports.
So for Bonnet and Kilburn, ofcourse it was mind-boggling
because the guys were sayingthis is going to be an
impossible task.
What are you thinking?
So Bonnet told his detectivesyou know, don't complain and cry
(04:22):
and jump up and down about whatwe don't have.
We will start with what we havewe do have and we will start
the case over, build our ownfiles, start from the beginning.
We don't have a crime scene,but we got pictures of a crime
scene.
So Bonnet told Kilborn andDennis Dix, who was at that time
(04:45):
a rookie detective, to pull infrom the CID office in East
Lansing to take the boxes ofstuff back to the Flint State
Police Post, ensconce themselvesin an office, take all the time
(05:09):
they needed to make as muchsense as they could of what was
there.
Kilburn read it all first, thenDiggs read it all and then they
began to organize it, figureout what it had told them what
they hadn't.
And Dave King may not have beenthe most organized record
keeper and much of the lack offormal reports was intentional,
but he was happy to help them.
So he bent over backwards tomeet with us and go over his
(05:33):
notes and he gave me everytidbit of information that he
could remember according.
These are words from DetectiveKilburn.
And it helped too too, thatGary Effort, the Flint detective
in charge of the original crimescene, who had retired and
become an investigator for theGenesee County Prosecutor Arthur
(05:57):
Bush, was assigned to the taskforce because he was able to
smooth things out between thetask force and members of the
Flint PD.
About the time the MichiganState Police was forming its own
cold case squad.
Bush had asked the state forfunding for his own cold case
(06:17):
unit.
He had been turned down andwould remain mightily miffed
over what he perceived to be aslight to him and meddling by
the state.
He wanted to get his own guy onthe squad.
For their part, bonnet andKilbourne knew and respected
effort and were happy to havehim.
He would prove invaluable inhelping sort out the old reports
(06:40):
and give them insights into thedifferent players.
More than two weeks afterhauling the boxes of notes back
to the state post, kilbourne wasready to begin his own
investigation, basically workingthe case from the beginning,
starting with the arrival ofHyde and Smith at Ebby's on that
Sunday, nearly 15 years earlier, and then moving on to the list
(07:02):
of Abby's lovers and to the modemployees.
A common response was quote.
I already talked to the cops,end quote, but they have not
talked to the state cops.
And now they would.
Kilburn began interviewingfamily members too.
He needed to clear them, ofcourse, but he also wanted to
get a feel for the person behindthe headlines.
(07:24):
Clear them, of course, but healso wanted to get a feel for
the person behind the headlines.
Dale, abby's oldest child andan attorney, told him now how
she and her mother had remainedclose, despite one living in
Indianapolis and the other inFlint.
She told, after talking byphone once or twice a week of
the time, her mother hadconcocted some story to get her
(07:45):
to visit her at the gatehouse inJuly of 1986, and when she got
there it turned out to be asurprise party for her 35th
birthday.
She told Cobourne that hermother's house had been broken
in several times.
There was some sort of secretpassageway or tunnel that led
into the basement of thegatehouse from the outside, and
(08:06):
her mother had once found a modemployee in her basement and
demanded that the tunnel belocked.
Kilbourne also put out adescription of the Ebi killing
on a national law enforcementnetwork called VICAP for
Apprehension Program wherepolice can compare MOs of
(08:27):
various solved and unsolvedcrimes.
They got numerous responses ofsimilar crimes with known and
unknown perps nationwide andbegan trying to link those
killers to Flint.
Since the purpose of the taskforce was to see if new lab
techniques could be successfullyapplied to all cases, kilburn
(08:47):
and Dix went through theevidence to see if the Michigan
State Police New State of theArt Crime Lab in Lansing could
be of assistance.
A lab report that said semensamples from the crime scene
likely had been degraded, but hecouldn't find anything to say
(09:08):
conclusively that they were ofno value.
Dna testing was in its infancyin 1986.
Not a lot of cops knew muchabout it.
King and others on the Flint PDhad assumed, based on that lab
report at the time, that the DNAwas bad.
But was it or could somethingthat would have been considered
(09:32):
degraded by the standards of1986, now, with much more
refined techniques, be unstableor I should say not unstable,
sorry.
It might be usable.
More important, did they evenstill have it?
Kilbourne learned that the bloodand semen samples had indeed
(09:54):
been kept in cold storage atBridgeport Lab by the MSP but
that they had never beensubmitted for DNA analysis.
He asked that the regionalcrime Lab in Bridgeport, which
had been keeping the samples onice, submit them for testing to
the DNA lab in Lansing.
They arrived there on June 19.
(10:14):
The first result came back onJuly 6.
Charleston was finally andofficially cleared as a suspect.
Dna technology was light yearsahead of where it had been when
the original testing of samplestaken from Abby was done early
in 1987.
Those tests couldn't tellanything about Abby's attackers
(10:35):
blood type or couldn't provide aDNA profile.
Now new tests were able to showa DNA profile for her killer
and Stone's profile didn't match.
That was news, but not big news.
All it did was clear a suspect,which was something they were
doing a lot in the early days ofthe Renew investigation.
(10:56):
The big news came on Monday,august 6, about 3 pm when the
director of the DNA lab, charlesBarna, paige Kilbourne, who
immediately called him back.
It was about the Ebi case,about the samples that have
arrived.
On June 19th there has been acase-to-case hit with the DNA,
(11:18):
according to Barna.
Does that mean we have solvedthe case, as Kilborn and Barna
said no, and then he explainedit to him.
He said sources of DNA can becollected at crime scenes from
blood, semen, teeth, skin, hairs, urine, bones and muscles.
(11:41):
The DNA is then entered into anational database of DNA samples
known by the acronym CODIS.
That means Combined DNA IndexSystem.
In February of 1995, michiganhooked up to the nationwide
CODIS system which had begunwith a pilot program in
(12:03):
Minnesota in 1991.
There are two populations ofsamples in the database those of
convicted fellows or felons Ishould say and those from
unsolved crimes.
The match made on the samplesfrom the Abby scene was to an
unsolved crime in Romulus in1991.
(12:23):
When Michigan had hooked themto CODIS, one of the first
things Lynn Helton had done wasto enter in the DNA from the
Ludwig murder told them that thesame person who had raped and
(12:47):
murdered Margaret Abbey in 1986had raped and murdered Nancy
Ludwig, the flight attendant.
They now knew they had a serialkiller but they still didn't
know who it was the two highestprofile murders in the state in
the last 20 years.
The two highest profile murdersin the state in the last 20
(13:11):
years in the last 50 years ifyou didn't count Jimmy Hoffa
were committed by the sameperson.
It was an energizing moment forall as Kilburn spread the word
to the members of the FBI'sprofile had sent everyone down
at that end in 1986 and 1987.
They now had a focus due southof Flint, about a 90-minute
(13:34):
drive south on I-75 to theairport-dominated city of
Romulus.
The link between the two caseswas good news, of course, but
bad in a way.
The task force members alreadyhad huge to-do lists involving
tracking down all witnesses, allfriends and acquaintances and
(13:56):
all suspects.
Now there were literallythousands of new names to deal
with and another cold casesuddenly was theirs to solve too
.
At 3.45, kilburn called theRomulus PD and there Commander
Dave or David Early recounteddetails of the Ludwig case which
(14:21):
were chilling in theirsimilarity to the case he was
now familiar with.
Kilburn told him he would bedown to talk to him in person
the next day.
We'll be right back Now.
There was a book that famousformer cop and eventually true
(14:48):
crime writer Joseph Wambachwrote.
It was called the Blooding andthe Blooding was a bestseller in
1989.
And it soon became a requiredreading for Task Force members.
For them, the book was arecounting of a manhunt for a
(15:09):
serial killer in England and thenew technology that finally
caught him, and it was both aprimer on DNA and an
encouragement that their serialkiller, who, like the villain of
the book, had raped andmurdered two women and had
avoided capture for yearsdespite intense publicity and
(15:31):
ongoing investigations, could becaught.
Dna has become so much part ofthe law enforcement vocabulary
and a major part of the plot ofcrime novels, movie scripts and
popular TV shows such as CSI,that is often forgotten just how
(15:52):
recent its application tosolving crime has been been.
(16:14):
For example, linda Mann, 15,was raped and murdered November
21st 1983.
It was like a little village,english village in Narborough.
Despite some massiveinvestigation involving 150
police, thousands of man-hoursof work, hundreds of interviews,
numerous suspects, intensemedia coverage on TV and radio,
the tabloids, the murder wentunsolved In September of 1984,
(16:43):
crime detection would changeforever, though no one knew it
at the time, and that was whenAlec Jeffrey, a 34-year-old
research scientist at England'sand hopefully I'm not butchering
this name Leicester University,looked at X-ray films that had
(17:04):
just been developed and he hadhis eureka moment.
He stared at clear visual proofthat his theory was correct that
if you identify regions of theDNA molecule that have the most
variation from person to personand came up with a way to
highlight those regions with aradioactive probe, you would
(17:27):
have the equivalent of a geneticfingerprint.
So Jeffries took DNA from bloodcells, cut them into pieces by
adding enzymes.
By adding enzymes, the bitswere dropped onto a gel and
(17:48):
exposed to an electric field,which caused the larger
fragments to separate from thesmaller.
Radioactive material was addedand the sample then was X-rayed.
The film, when developed,showed Jeffries that his theory
was correct, because what yousee is that the DNA is separated
into bands that look much likea barcode, and each person's
(18:10):
barcode, with the exception ofidentical twins, was distinct.
It's unique.
So Jeffries immediately appliedfor a patent and his wife Susan
drew up a list of commercialapplications.
At the top was settlingimmigration disputes a very big
issue then.
In Great Britain, provencitizens claimed to be blood
(18:33):
relatives of British citizens.
If their claim was true, theywere entitled to enter into the
country.
But many of the claims werefraudulent and there was no easy
way to prove the issue one wayor another until now.
Another application was todetermine the suitability of
bone marrow transplants.
A third was improved animalhusbandry.
(18:56):
On July 31, 1986, another15-year-old girl, dawn Ashworth,
was missing, raped and thenmurdered.
Her body was discovered onanother wooded footpath, just a
few hundred yards from whereMann's body had been found.
And this time police were quickto solve the murder.
(19:20):
And this time, police werequick to solve the murder.
They arrested a porter at anearby mental hospital, a misfit
with a history of molestingyoung girls, and he quickly
confessed to the murder.
But although the two murderswere sample taken from the
(19:50):
porter, the results wereconclusive and shocking.
The murders and rapes hadindeed been committed by the
same person, but that person wasstill at large.
The porter had not done it.
His confession was false.
On November 21st 1986, judicialhistory was made DNA evidence
(20:11):
was used for the first time in amurder case.
Police and the court wereconvinced by the scientists that
Jeffrey's DNA tests wereaccurate and unassailable and
charges were dropped against theporter.
The police, having lost onesuspect because of DNA testing,
decided to turn the technologyto the advantage and began
(20:32):
taking blood samples and runningDNA tests of all the young men
in the Narborough area.
The killer, the improbable nameColin Pitchfork, a baker and
cake decorator, was eventuallycaught and convicted.
The irony was that he passedhis blood test by altering a
(20:55):
password and getting a friend topass off his blood as
Pitchfork's.
The friend eventually toldother friends while out at a pub
and one of them called thepolice.
Pitchfork was picked up,readily confessed, submitted to
a legitimate blood test and waslinked conclusively to both
murders.
In 1987, jeffries Technologywent commercial when the
(21:17):
chemical company ICI opened up ablood testing center in
Cheshire, england, and lawenforcement at least that
portion of it dealing withmurder or rape would never be
the same.
Mike Larson is Mr Young toKilburn's Mr Ying.
Where one is taciturn and bythe hook, the other is brash,
(21:42):
outgoing, quick to laugh andplay it by the seat of his pants
.
When asked to cooperate for abook on the Eby and Lockwick
murders, kilbourne, by thenretired from the state police.
An investigator with the StateGaming Commission said he had
been asked by the Flintprosecutor not to comment until
(22:04):
after a trial.
Larson, still with the MichiganState Police, invited a
reporter to his office, engagedin several long and detailed
interviews, providing plenty ofmaterial both on and off the
record and had begun makingphotocopies of the MSP reports
when it dawned on him, you know,after a third interview he said
(22:28):
I probably ought to go throughchannels.
There's a media guy in Lansingyou probably should contact.
Larson looks as he has engagednow since graduation from high
school and even though he was agrandfather at this time he was
still very active.
He would play hockey once aweek in the winter.
(22:50):
He keeps his backup equipmentand sticks on the back seat of
his state-issued car.
He also joined the army when hewas young, did a four-year stint
at the Superhush NationalSecurity Agency and for years
its existence was officiallydenied.
(23:11):
It was the agency that darednot to speak its name and Larson
was a computer specialist atits Fort Meade, maryland
headquarters, which containedmore computer power than any
organization or business in theworld, more than most of them
combined.
Larson was a technicianinstalling programs, doing
(23:35):
maintenance, changing magnetictapes on the giant mainframes of
the world's most secretiveintelligence organization.
And he also moonlighted with aMaryland moving company and,
because he had a top-secretsecurity clearance, got the jobs
that involved places like theWhite House and the CIA.
Larson then returned toMuskegon in western Michigan,
(23:58):
attended community college,refereed high school athletics,
got a job in a factory tosupport his young family.
His wife's uncle was a statecop and Larson had been
intrigued by that.
One day a recruiter visitedcampus, signed him up for a
civil service test in 1979.
(24:25):
Larson then returned um.
So let me back up a little bit.
Um, so he joined, larson,joined the Michigan State Police
, 96th Recruiting Clat, and atthe time of the Avery murder
(24:50):
Larson worked out of theBridgeport Post, across the
driveway from the crime labwhose crew had worked the crime
scene.
Larson was the second memberBonnet had handpicked for the
task force in May of 2001.
And while Kilborn dug into theEbi case, larson took on the
(25:13):
string of the prostitutes whostarted showing up in 1998, and
eventually he and Reeves wouldgive DNA swaps to more than 400
people and they would soondiscover that there were at
least two different unrelatedserial murderers involved and
stumble across a serial rapistof prostitutes as well.
(25:34):
Things moved fairly smoothlyand eventually one murderer of
two prostitutes would be caughtand convicted, as would the
rapist.
But Larson couldn't be involvedin the end of those cases and
on August 6th came thecase-to-case hit on CODIS and
(25:55):
that same day bonded Paul Larsonof the prostitute case and into
the AB Ludwig murders.
And now Ying and Yang will beworking together.
So on August 7, 2001, gordyMelianak was, as usual, in a
(26:20):
very bad mood and he was one ofthose hard-nosed cops that could
play bad cop with the best ofthem.
And his bad cop, paired withDan Snyder's good cop, was a
work of art, and he had areputation around the rummeless
(26:42):
PD for hard work, for a bulldogapproach to detective work that
was both respected andirritating.
He liked working long days,carrying a heavy caseload that
made some of his peers look likeshirkers.
He worked twice as hard andtwice as long as anybody else.
He would work 14, 15 hours aday, seven days a week.
(27:02):
And you know Snyder said wedidn't always get along, but he
was a hell of a cop and the bestcop I ever worked with.
So the last thing Malinuk everdid was suffer fools.
He was the one when thedepartment sent him and Snyder
out to meet with FBI profilersat a convention a month after
(27:26):
Ludwig's death to proclaim earlyon that they were a bunch of
assholes and that they didn'tknow anything, said that he was
what a white male big deal.
Most serial killers were, andtaking what they had to say with
a grain of salt went againsthis grain and they are useless.
And he would tell Dan or anyonewho cared to listen that In
(27:50):
1981, malianak became one of theoriginal five hires of the new
Romulus Police Department and inMay of 1989, he was promoted to
detective sergeant working withSnyder.
He was promoted to detectivesergeant working with Snyder and
in February of 1991, they gottheir biggest, nastiest case,
which was the Ludwig murder.
Ten years later, in August of2001, miliunac had good reason
(28:18):
to be mad.
The Romulus police force isriddled with politics.
In a small town where politicswere often down and dirty and
you never know who you might runafoul of or for what.
And the mayor didn't like youand the chief needed to curry
favor with the mayor.
Well, if such things weredemotions made Three months
earlier, melianak's boss in thedetective bureau, commander Dave
(28:42):
Early, had given him the word.
Malianak was keeping his rankof lieutenant but being moved
out of the DB and back intouniform duty in a patrol car.
So Early said you are back inuniform.
And Malianak said well, that'seffing nice.
I had a big chip on my shoulder.
(29:02):
So Melianak with a chip on hisshoulder wasn't a pleasant thing
to behold.
They wanted him on patrol.
Fine, he will be on patrol.
He came into the station aslittle as possible.
He couldn't stand to see eitherEarly or Kirby.
And one thing remained the samehe humped his butt Even after
(29:24):
his first run in with Kirby andhe was busted back to patrol.
He would work so hard and whatyou were doing he would do five
times as much as anyone else.
For some reason or another nowforgotten Manianak was in the
station, out doing something atthe front desk behind the
plexiglass in the lobby, whenthree guys walk in at 9.30 am,
(29:50):
looking businesslike, not likethe usual Romulus residents
wanting to file a report, andone of them asked is Gordy
Melinek here?
And he said I am Gordy Melianak, who are you?
And Detective Kilburnintroduced himself I'm Greg
Kilburn, I'm for the MichiganState Police Crime Task Force,
(30:12):
and with him were State PoliceDetective Jamie Corona and Gary
Elford.
And he was thinking what in theworld had he done, or did they
think he had done, to bringthree plank claws and why they
were looking for him.
So he asked what is this allabout?
(30:34):
He said you don't know.
He said no, so well, we came upwith a link between a killing
we have been investigating inFlint and the Nazi, the Nancy
Ludwig case.
And he's like oh, you'rekidding me.
I said no, we're not.
So they talked to early anddone some background checking
with Lynn Helton and now we'rethere to get up to speed on the
(30:57):
Ludwig case.
Kilburn needed to look at thereports, get copies, see what
they had, how it was organizedand how they could use it to get
started on phase two of whatwas already an exhaustive
investigation.
And here they were, havingdriven down from Flint, only to
find out that one of the twoguys they needed to talk to had
(31:20):
not even been told they werecoming or that they had been a
dramatic breakthrough in theLudwig case.
And Melianak said that flooredme and I was stunned.
As soon as they told me I saidto myself you gotta be kidding
me, I was just fuming, and thisI'm quoting Melianak himself.
(31:42):
So Kilburn, corona and Effortwere bussed into sea early.
Melianak called Snyder at home.
Snyder had been promoted tolieutenant in the patrol
division and was no longer inthe DB.
He had found out late the daybefore but had not had a chance
to call Melianak.
So Barna had called Heltonafter he would talk to Kilborn,
(32:05):
knowing that she would work theLudwig scene, and Helton had
called Snyder at home.
As soon as Helton had calledhim, snyder called Kilborn
saying he was no longer in theDB but wanted on the case and
would make himself totallyavailable.
He was hoping to elicitKilburn's support.
Melianak went into the roomwhere all the voluminous files
(32:27):
were stored Snyder is aknick-knack and because they had
been his files they weremeticulously organized and
squared away no more Becausesomeone had been rummaging
through them, spilling stuff onthe floor, probably trying to
get some background on the caseand where it stood.
Snyder reported in and went totalk to Kirby.
(32:50):
Snyder was head of theofficers' union and he and Kirby
had butted heads over unionissues, contract negotiations
and just about everything else.
Snyder's disdain for his bosswas well known.
Snyder, unlike his partner,could suffer fools, but he
refused to suffer Kirby.
As Snyder tells it, he toldKirby he would work the case
(33:15):
with the state police on his owntime on weekends, at nights,
taking vacation time, whateverit took, and Kirby said no,
you're not to be involved at all.
Snyder was stunned because Kirbyhad gotten word that Snyder had
talked to Kilburn the daybefore and was ticked off.
(33:38):
What right do you have to callthem?
He said it's my case.
So Kirby told him emphaticallythat it wasn ticked off.
What right do you have to callthem?
He said it's my case.
So Kubrick told himemphatically that it wasn't his
case, it was Early's case and heordered him to have no contact
with the state police whatsoever.
And Malianak said that this wasthe dumbest thing he had ever
heard of.
So later Malianak heardscuttlebutt that the Romulus PD
(34:03):
was going to turn everythingover to Kilburn and Larson, not
just the files, which wasunderstandable, but the case
itself.
They were going to give up ourcase and not assign anyone to
work with the MSP.
This is crazy, said Malianak.
There was bad blood right fromthe beginning.
(34:23):
Kirby might have told Snydernot to have any contact with the
state police, but he had notgiven Melianak any orders.
So he called Kilburn and left amessage and said there is a lot
of internal bickering going onhere.
You need to contact Dan Snyder.
He knows this case better thananyone.
(34:45):
End quote.
But Kilbourne needed Kirby'scooperation and Early's.
He wasn't about to getembroiled in office politics if
he could avoid it.
He said that he decided rightaway that he wasn't going to be
involved in all that and hedidn't stick around Early's back
because that was not going tohelp anyone.
It was Early's case and so itwas Early he would work with.
(35:09):
On Thursday, the 9th, early metwith Kilbourne and then Bonnet
at the Michigan State PoliceSecond District Headquarters in
Northville.
They wanted to set thegroundwork for a joint
investigation.
The meeting wasn't promising.
Early said his department wasoverlooked but down to just
(35:30):
three detectives, and that hecouldn't be able to spare anyone
full time.
He was willing, though, tooffer clerical help to assist in
entering tips or other computerwork.
Thank you for listening to theMurderbook.
Have a great week.
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The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
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