June 9, 2025 • 25 mins
Some murder cases haunt communities for decades, leaving behind unanswered questions and shattered lives. The brutal killing of Northwest Airlines flight attendant Nancy Ludwig at the Airport Hilton in Romulus, Michigan in 1991 is exactly such a case.
When Art Ludwig received a phone call that a body had been discovered in Detroit that might be his wife, his world began crumbling. Through a raging blizzard, he made his way to the airport, beginning what he would later describe as the worst days of his life. The devastating visit to the county morgue where he had to identify Nancy's brutally beaten body left him with images that would haunt him for years. "My last image of her is the four or five seconds of looking at her face," Art recounts. "It was so badly beaten you can't imagine going through it."
The investigation followed standard protocol—the spouse is always the first suspect. While Detective Milaniak conducted a thorough interrogation, Detective Snyder showed remarkable compassion, refusing to subject Art to a polygraph test given his obvious trauma. Meanwhile, the murders became particularly challenging as the transient nature of airport hotels meant potential witnesses scattered across the country. What makes this case even more compelling is its possible connection to another unsolved murder. Mark and Jonathan Eby noticed striking similarities between Nancy Ludwig's killing and their mother Margaret's murder in Flint in 1986—both women bound, gagged, raped, with their throats cut. Despite their efforts to alert authorities in both cities, these potential connections went largely unexplored.
Have you ever wondered how seemingly separate violent crimes might be connected? Listen to this episode to understand how two grieving families sought answers, how trauma reverberates through lives for years, and how crucial investigative connections sometimes fall through the cracks. If you appreciate true crime that explores not just the acts themselves but their devastating human impact, subscribe to The Murder Book for more compelling stories of justice delayed and the ongoing quest for truth.
Mark as Played
Transcript
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 part six of Jeffrey Gordon's
Deadly Secret.
Let's begin.
Art Lewick was not feeling well.
He wasn't sinking fast, but hewas sinking and his thought was
(00:23):
when you're never sick, it seemsto hit you so much harder than
when you are.
About 3 pm.
The phone rang.
He was lying on the couchreading, leading a perfect
existence, thinking now andagain about the ski trip to
Tahoe and hoping that he wouldget rid of the call by then.
(00:45):
When Nancy's supervisor was onthe phone in the Bowman and she
asked him is Nancy there?
He said no, she's at work.
She won't be back for a fewdays, he said are you sure?
He said yes, I dropped her offat the airport yesterday.
So Linda said Art, nancy didnot make the connection with her
(01:15):
flight this morning.
Can you do me a favor?
There's a policeman at yourdoor.
Can you let him in?
He went to the front door and,sure enough, there was a
Minnetonka cop on the porch.
Apparently he had been incommunication with the
supervisor at her office.
Art let the cop in and wentback to the phone.
(01:36):
He said well, Art, they found abody in a Detroit hotel and
they are afraid it might be.
Nancy, can you make it out tothe airport tonight?
There's a flight to Detroit andthey want you to come.
The rest of the day was a dark,hoarded, haze Time frozen, panic
(01:59):
ebbing and flowing, nothing todo, everything at stake.
The cop never said anything.
Apparently he had been therejust to make sure Art didn't
kill himself or something.
When he saw that Art seemed tobe composed, he left.
Art called his best friend fromthe TV station, art Kintup, an
apt salesman who lived nearby,explained the situation and
(02:23):
asked for a ride to the airport.
There was a blizzard ragingoutside and it took them forever
to get there, slugging andsliding their way at a few miles
an hour.
They got there at 7.
Bowman met Art and sat with himin a private Northwest lounge.
The blizzard would delay, maybeeven cancel, the flight out.
(02:45):
They sat in the windowless roomwaiting out the storm for
nearly four hours.
If there was anything Artwanted to do less than fly to
Detroit right now, it was to betold.
The flight was canceled and hadto drive home.
Then come back again in themorning and sit through this
(03:08):
with Bauman one more time.
While he was sitting there,detroit's Channel 4, wdiv-tv,
went on the air with a reportthat a flight attendant named
Nancy Ludwig had been raped andmurdered at the airport Hilton.
The body had not been ID'd yetand standard practice in the
industry is to withhold thevictim's name until immediate
relatives have been identified.
But someone at the hotel hadleaked the name to a reporter
(03:33):
and the station went with it.
The story was picked up byMinneapolis TV stations.
Nancy's six stepdaughters gotthe word that way, watching
television, as did many of herfamily and friends.
Finally, the storm abated a bitand they were cleared for
takeoff.
(03:53):
At 2 am, art arrived in Detroitand was taken to an airport
hotel, not the Hilton.
The worst day of his life wasfinally over.
The next day would be worse,much worse.
In his hotel room, art staredat the ceiling in hope against
hope.
He didn't have much.
(04:14):
He didn't delude himself.
He said end quote.
I knew they wouldn't havecalled me without being pretty
sure it was Nancy.
End quote.
Have called me without beingpretty sure it was Nancy.
End quote.
Finally, mercifully, at a timeof the year when night clings
selfishly to its existence inMichigan, light broke the
darkness.
Detective Milaniak picked himup and they drove to the
(04:38):
Northwest Flight Services officeat Metro Airport, there was a
handful of FBI agents waiting.
Desert Storm was at his hideand since Ludwig was a flight
attendant and her ID, passportand uniform was missing, the
Feds were worried her deathmight be an act of terrorists
plotting something worse.
They put out a nationwidebulletin asking security agents
(05:02):
at airports to watch for herstolen Northwest ID.
The feds had a few questionsfor him.
Melania had a lot and startedin at 9.25 am.
You always look at the husbandfirst, for a good reason.
Lots of them had killed thewives or hired someone to do it.
(05:23):
They wanted to solve this firstand fast, and when you solve a
murder quickly it's usuallybecause you have taken immediate
and careful aim at the spouse.
Art would be guilty unto proveninnocent.
There was no easy way toproceed.
Detective Melaniac needed toclear Art and to do that he had
(05:46):
to ask some pretty pointedquestions.
Was there anything wrong withthe marriage?
Had there been fighting?
Was she seeing anyone?
Was he seeing anyone?
Was there anyone he knew of whomight want to do this?
Could he account for hiswhereabouts?
It went like that for half anhour.
(06:06):
Could he account for hiswhereabouts?
And it went like that for halfan hour.
If he had not been a cop,according to Art, he would have
tried to punch him out.
He understood shortlythereafter that he was just
doing his job.
The husband is the first guyyou suspect, and he starts with
(06:28):
a similar circle and works out.
But you resent getting askedthose questions.
Detective Milaniuk wanted topolygraph him, but Detective
Snyder said no, not on your life, no freaking way.
He didn't see him as the killer.
He had been through enough.
He wasn't going to have himhooked up to a machine.
(06:51):
And then things got really bad.
They drove for 20 minutes upI-94 to the county morgue in
downtown Detroit.
The morgue, which has sincebeen replaced, was an old,
creaky building not far from theeven creakier police
headquarters on Beaubion Street.
All the bleach in the worldcouldn't get rid of the stench
(07:14):
of death and embalming fluidthat punched you in the nose
when you walked in the frontdoor.
An employee lit art to a widecurtain-off window.
Someone on the other sidewheeled the body to the window
and pulled the curtain.
Art stared, however, at themutilated, purple bruise and
(07:36):
bloodied face of his dead wifebeing told someone has found a
body in a hotel room and itmight be your wife is one thing.
Told someone has found a bodyin a hotel room and it might be
your wife is one thing.
To see that, to see her faceand a neck nearly severed from
his shoulders was beyondimagining.
Art nodded that it was Nancyand they pulled the curtains and
(07:57):
let him outside to air he couldbreathe.
Art said, end quote.
To this day I don't know why itwas necessary to have me look
at her.
I would have thought they wouldbe able to do it with
fingerprints.
My last image of her is thefour or five seconds of looking
at her face.
(08:17):
It was so badly beaten youcan't imagine going through it.
It was the worst thing in mylife and the rage that I felt
afterward that someone could dothat to another human being.
End quote.
They told him they wouldn't beable to release the body for a
few days.
They told him the cliché don'tleave town without telling us.
(08:41):
At 5 pm I called DetectiveSnyder and told him he was
leaving town.
He would be in Minnetonka ifanyone needed him.
A few hours later, back inMinneapolis, patty Alt had been
feeling ill.
Though it was in the middle ofthe day, she went into the
(09:02):
bedroom and tumbled onto the bed.
Seconds later, maybe minutes orhours, she had no idea how long
she was that dead asleep.
She was aware of someoneshaking her.
She gradually came back toconsciousness.
It was her husband, still sick.
She struggled to sit up.
He told her there was bad news.
It was her husband, still sick.
She struggled to sit up.
He told her there was bad news.
(09:25):
It was on TV.
Nancy had been murdered.
It pretty much killed me, sayArt, breaking into tears.
12 years later, when askedabout it, she says, unquote it
was one of the hugest thingsthat ever happened to me.
(09:45):
It put me into a tailspin thatwas transforming.
I just stayed depressed.
It was one of those shockingthings.
People die of cancer or in acar wreck and you get over it,
but this, it was so senselessthat someone who didn't know her
would do this for no reason.
(10:05):
You never get over it.
Art Ludwig went home in a blindrage and depression that lasted
for months.
Every time he tried to sleep,nancy's face shocked him into
consciousness.
Nancy's face shocked him intoconsciousness.
He thought of suicide.
He said that the first sixmonths were really terrible.
He started grief counseling buthe decided the grief counselor
(10:36):
needed more help than he did.
He would fantasize for hoursabout getting a gun and moving
to Romulus, hanging out in thebars and strip joints and hotels
and motels until one day,sooner or later, he would come
across Nancy's killer and shoothim dead.
His family, like good familiesdo, helped save him.
They have resented Nancy atfirst but have grown to like him
and love her in the years aftermarriage.
(10:57):
Art said that his kids tookturns babysitting him.
He was getting daily calls,something like that If you don't
have great family support andgreat friends, you don't know
what you do.
They spent a lot of time withhim.
Art hated living in the bighouse.
(11:18):
Nancy had picked out anddecorated Her keys and her ID
had been stolen and he keptdreaming the killer was coming
for him too.
Eventually he sold it.
Now the town of Romulus is likea big square donut, six miles on
the side with a huge squarehole in the middle.
(11:39):
The sprawling MetropolitanAirport is the hole.
The airport dominates thegeographic area of the city and
its tax base.
There's no real downtown in thecity.
What people call downtown ismore like an intersection at
Shook and Goddard Roads with acouple of old buildings to show
(12:01):
at least something in the cityis more than 30 years old and
that at least something herepredates the airport.
Romulus is a city technically,but not the way you would
picture one normally.
It has little culture, no movietheaters, no real place for
people to congregate.
The major business downtown isthe Landing Strip, a current
(12:24):
topless joint that says a signon the building that offers
nonstop live entertainment.
The city is an odd mix ofcornfields, trailer parks, a
smattering of nude subdivisionsof large homes.
Rumless has always been aninteresting place to be a cop.
The city has more than a shareof cheap bars and motels that
(12:47):
cater both to the transientspassing through the airport and
to those passing through life,looking for cheap prostitutes or
a cheap place to smoke theircrack or snort their coke as
tens of thousands of southernersflock to Detroit's auto
factories in the city inmid-20th century, each
(13:08):
blue-collar community thatsprung up seemed to have a need
to look down on its neighboringblue-collar community to feel
that it somehow was a cut above,and the way it did it was the
unique southeastern Michiganregionalism of taking the Taki
ending of Kentucky and affixingit to the beginning of whatever
(13:30):
city or town was in need ofdenigration Like Rummataki, will
be Rummeless.
In 1991, the city was in sharpcontrast to many others in the
county.
Where average density in thecounty was more than 3,000 per
square mile, it was just 477 persquare mile in Romulus, thanks
(13:53):
in large part to the huge chunkin the middle giving over to the
airport.
Over to the airport, it hadjust 17,165 residents.
The city was known for havingfar more than its share of weird
crimes drunken brawling, drugdealing, mayhem and murder.
Borden was not a pair of acop's job Mayhem and murder, for
(14:17):
instance.
Then Snyder had worked severalcases like the girl who was set
on fire on her 19th birthday andthrown out of a moving car, the
mom who poured Drano down herdaughter's throat while she was
sleeping.
There were a string ofprostitute murders.
(14:45):
Or the suicide.
Who checks into a motel, drinkshalf a fifth of booze, lister
his wrist but doesn't do a goodjob, finishes off the fifth, or
his bleeds out, runs out ofbooze, gets in in the car
trailing blood, goes to theliquor store, buys another fifth
, leaving red stains on thecounter, goes back to the motel,
(15:08):
starts working on that fifthand finally dies Because of his
expertise working weirdhomicides in Romulus, nearby
Brunburen Township, asked forSnyder's help on a case of a
gutted hooker.
Not only had she been guttedbut both breasts had been cut
off, with one of them left overher face.
(15:28):
While they were working thecrime scene, a guy drops up in
his van.
A cop looks in the window, seesa bloody axe and a machete on
the back seat and arrests him.
True to the cliche, he hadreturned to the scene of the
crime.
Later, in the 1990s, snyderwould work one of Dr Death's
cases.
(15:49):
Melaniac worked a lot of them.
It was Jack Koworkins, thefamous or infamous advocate of
assisted suicide, that left abunch of bodies in Romulus.
His patients would fly in fromaround the country.
(16:09):
He would meet them in a hotelnear the airport, help them to
do their deed, then call police.
So it was always something inRomulus.
So it was always something inRomulus.
Snyder had seen it all, orthought he had, till he stepped
into room 354.
We'll be right back.
(16:33):
There was one major complicationwith the Lowercase that set it
apart from other murders.
Detective Snyder had worked.
This murderer wasn't somedrunken grandmother passed out
sleeping on a shotgun or sometrailer trash who knifed a
neighbor and is still coveringblood when the police show up,
or some crack-addled junkiepulling a gun on a clerk while
(16:57):
the video camera films away.
By the time the body was found,chances were most of the
witnesses were time zones awayand the murderer could literally
had been anywhere on earth.
They interviewed the hotelemployees but didn't learn much
more than they already knew.
They got a list of NorthwestAirlines employees who would
(17:21):
have been at the Hilton andstarted putting out the word
they needed to talk to them.
It helped that Metro was aNorthwest hub.
So one by one, as theirschedules allowed, phil Arcia,
frederick Roybal, lynn Nelms andthe others came back to town to
(17:42):
give statements.
The picture of the badlydressed stalker began to emerge.
The all-news radio stationstrumpeted the story for days.
The daily newspapers played fora week.
Mark Eby, who was living inMichigan in 1991 between
assignments in Germany, washaving his morning coffee and
(18:03):
reading the free press the dayafter Ludwig's body had been
found.
The local story caught his eye.
The details struck him asawfully similar to his mother's
death.
He called Snyder at the RomulusPolice Station and left them a
message that they ought to checkwith the Flint Police and look
(18:24):
into a possible connection tothe murder of Margaret Margaret
Eby in 1986.
And then he called his brother,jonathan, and he asked him did
you see the article in the FreePress this morning?
Is Brother Jonathan?
And he asked him did you seethe article in the free press
this morning?
And the brother said yeah, Ijust got off the phone with the
Flint police.
I told them they have talked tothe Romulus Police Department.
(18:46):
As far as I can tell, it lookslike the same MO A dozen years
later.
Mark would say it went beyondthe similarities of rape and
murder.
Both brothers were hit by it atthe same time that somebody
(19:07):
needs to look at this.
So on March 8, 1991, jonathanAbbey wrote Arthur Ludwig a
letter and the letter said thefollowing Please accept my
deepest sympathy on the terribleloss of your wife.
You have been in my thoughtsand prayers since the news hit
the papers here in Detroit and Iwonder then if I should write
(19:28):
to you.
Given the lack of substantiveprogress in the investigation
and your personal appeals in theDetroit area for information, I
decided to bring to yourattention a similar situation to
allow you to respond as youconsider appropriate.
My mother, margaret Ebby, wasmurdered in Flint in November of
(19:51):
1986 in the gateway of themansion and the police had
failed to solve the case.
She had been bound, gagged,possibly raped, and her throat
had been cut, and there was nosign of a forced entry.
When the news about your wifewas aired, we were struck by the
(20:12):
similarities of the crimes andwe alerted police both in
Romulus and in Flint.
In our experience, however, wewere assured early in the
investigation that they believedthat the case would be rapidly
solved and we were advised notto become involved or post a
reward and basically to allowthe police to handle it.
(20:35):
We did.
I regret not having done moreearlier.
We did post a reward and hirean investigator about 10 months
later to know effects.
I bring this before you not tocast aspersions on the efforts
of the police, but to encourageyou to continue in to personally
(21:00):
do all that you can to move thecase forward.
While they certainly want thecase solved, they have other
agendas as well a lack ofmotivation of those whose lives
have been so significantlyaffected by the crime.
Lives have been sosignificantly affected by the
crime.
It is a long shot.
I'm sure that our cases areconnected, particularly if the
(21:22):
perpetrator in your case is avery young man, but I wonder if
publicity of the sort you'redoing in Detroit might yield
results if the situation and theman's picture were shown in
Flint.
So he said the officer whohandled our case was Sergeant
(21:51):
David King.
If I can be of any other use toyou, I can be reached at and
give him the phone number.
My prayers for God's grace,peace and strength continue to
be with you and your familySincerely.
(22:14):
Jonathan S Eby Ludwig turned thenote over to the Romulus police
.
He was getting a lot of crankmail and calls and didn't know
if this was another one, but itseemed worth passing on.
Neither one of the Abbeys heardback from the cops in either
city.
King didn't follow up on histip.
The Romulus PD did.
Ludwig's further efforts atpublicity, including posting and
(22:36):
mailing flyers.
Buying ads that displayedcomposite drawings and offering
a reward, did not extend toFlint.
Thank you for listening to theMurder Book.
Have a great week.
Welcome to the Murder Book.
I'm your host, kiara, and thisis part six of Jeffrey Gordon's
Deadly Secret.
Let's begin.
Art Lewick was not feeling well.
He wasn't sinking fast, but hewas sinking and his thought was
(00:23):
when you're never sick, it seemsto hit you so much harder than
when you are.
About 3 pm.
The phone rang.
He was lying on the couchreading, leading a perfect
existence, thinking now andagain about the ski trip to
Tahoe and hoping that he wouldget rid of the call by then.
(00:45):
When Nancy's supervisor was onthe phone in the Bowman and she
asked him is Nancy there?
He said no, she's at work.
She won't be back for a fewdays, he said are you sure?
He said yes, I dropped her offat the airport yesterday.
So Linda said Art, nancy didnot make the connection with her
(01:15):
flight this morning.
Can you do me a favor?
There's a policeman at yourdoor.
Can you let him in?
He went to the front door and,sure enough, there was a
Minnetonka cop on the porch.
Apparently he had been incommunication with the
supervisor at her office.
Art let the cop in and wentback to the phone.
(01:36):
He said well, Art, they found abody in a Detroit hotel and
they are afraid it might be.
Nancy, can you make it out tothe airport tonight?
There's a flight to Detroit andthey want you to come.
The rest of the day was a dark,hoarded, haze Time frozen, panic
(01:59):
ebbing and flowing, nothing todo, everything at stake.
The cop never said anything.
Apparently he had been therejust to make sure Art didn't
kill himself or something.
When he saw that Art seemed tobe composed, he left.
Art called his best friend fromthe TV station, art Kintup, an
apt salesman who lived nearby,explained the situation and
(02:23):
asked for a ride to the airport.
There was a blizzard ragingoutside and it took them forever
to get there, slugging andsliding their way at a few miles
an hour.
They got there at 7.
Bowman met Art and sat with himin a private Northwest lounge.
The blizzard would delay, maybeeven cancel, the flight out.
(02:45):
They sat in the windowless roomwaiting out the storm for
nearly four hours.
If there was anything Artwanted to do less than fly to
Detroit right now, it was to betold.
The flight was canceled and hadto drive home.
Then come back again in themorning and sit through this
(03:08):
with Bauman one more time.
While he was sitting there,detroit's Channel 4, wdiv-tv,
went on the air with a reportthat a flight attendant named
Nancy Ludwig had been raped andmurdered at the airport Hilton.
The body had not been ID'd yetand standard practice in the
industry is to withhold thevictim's name until immediate
relatives have been identified.
But someone at the hotel hadleaked the name to a reporter
(03:33):
and the station went with it.
The story was picked up byMinneapolis TV stations.
Nancy's six stepdaughters gotthe word that way, watching
television, as did many of herfamily and friends.
Finally, the storm abated a bitand they were cleared for
takeoff.
(03:53):
At 2 am, art arrived in Detroitand was taken to an airport
hotel, not the Hilton.
The worst day of his life wasfinally over.
The next day would be worse,much worse.
In his hotel room, art staredat the ceiling in hope against
hope.
He didn't have much.
(04:14):
He didn't delude himself.
He said end quote.
I knew they wouldn't havecalled me without being pretty
sure it was Nancy.
End quote.
Have called me without beingpretty sure it was Nancy.
End quote.
Finally, mercifully, at a timeof the year when night clings
selfishly to its existence inMichigan, light broke the
darkness.
Detective Milaniak picked himup and they drove to the
(04:38):
Northwest Flight Services officeat Metro Airport, there was a
handful of FBI agents waiting.
Desert Storm was at his hideand since Ludwig was a flight
attendant and her ID, passportand uniform was missing, the
Feds were worried her deathmight be an act of terrorists
plotting something worse.
They put out a nationwidebulletin asking security agents
(05:02):
at airports to watch for herstolen Northwest ID.
The feds had a few questionsfor him.
Melania had a lot and startedin at 9.25 am.
You always look at the husbandfirst, for a good reason.
Lots of them had killed thewives or hired someone to do it.
(05:23):
They wanted to solve this firstand fast, and when you solve a
murder quickly it's usuallybecause you have taken immediate
and careful aim at the spouse.
Art would be guilty unto proveninnocent.
There was no easy way toproceed.
Detective Melaniac needed toclear Art and to do that he had
(05:46):
to ask some pretty pointedquestions.
Was there anything wrong withthe marriage?
Had there been fighting?
Was she seeing anyone?
Was he seeing anyone?
Was there anyone he knew of whomight want to do this?
Could he account for hiswhereabouts?
It went like that for half anhour.
(06:06):
Could he account for hiswhereabouts?
And it went like that for halfan hour.
If he had not been a cop,according to Art, he would have
tried to punch him out.
He understood shortlythereafter that he was just
doing his job.
The husband is the first guyyou suspect, and he starts with
(06:28):
a similar circle and works out.
But you resent getting askedthose questions.
Detective Milaniuk wanted topolygraph him, but Detective
Snyder said no, not on your life, no freaking way.
He didn't see him as the killer.
He had been through enough.
He wasn't going to have himhooked up to a machine.
(06:51):
And then things got really bad.
They drove for 20 minutes upI-94 to the county morgue in
downtown Detroit.
The morgue, which has sincebeen replaced, was an old,
creaky building not far from theeven creakier police
headquarters on Beaubion Street.
All the bleach in the worldcouldn't get rid of the stench
(07:14):
of death and embalming fluidthat punched you in the nose
when you walked in the frontdoor.
An employee lit art to a widecurtain-off window.
Someone on the other sidewheeled the body to the window
and pulled the curtain.
Art stared, however, at themutilated, purple bruise and
(07:36):
bloodied face of his dead wifebeing told someone has found a
body in a hotel room and itmight be your wife is one thing.
Told someone has found a bodyin a hotel room and it might be
your wife is one thing.
To see that, to see her faceand a neck nearly severed from
his shoulders was beyondimagining.
Art nodded that it was Nancyand they pulled the curtains and
(07:57):
let him outside to air he couldbreathe.
Art said, end quote.
To this day I don't know why itwas necessary to have me look
at her.
I would have thought they wouldbe able to do it with
fingerprints.
My last image of her is thefour or five seconds of looking
at her face.
(08:17):
It was so badly beaten youcan't imagine going through it.
It was the worst thing in mylife and the rage that I felt
afterward that someone could dothat to another human being.
End quote.
They told him they wouldn't beable to release the body for a
few days.
They told him the cliché don'tleave town without telling us.
(08:41):
At 5 pm I called DetectiveSnyder and told him he was
leaving town.
He would be in Minnetonka ifanyone needed him.
A few hours later, back inMinneapolis, patty Alt had been
feeling ill.
Though it was in the middle ofthe day, she went into the
(09:02):
bedroom and tumbled onto the bed.
Seconds later, maybe minutes orhours, she had no idea how long
she was that dead asleep.
She was aware of someoneshaking her.
She gradually came back toconsciousness.
It was her husband, still sick.
She struggled to sit up.
He told her there was bad news.
It was her husband, still sick.
She struggled to sit up.
He told her there was bad news.
(09:25):
It was on TV.
Nancy had been murdered.
It pretty much killed me, sayArt, breaking into tears.
12 years later, when askedabout it, she says, unquote it
was one of the hugest thingsthat ever happened to me.
(09:45):
It put me into a tailspin thatwas transforming.
I just stayed depressed.
It was one of those shockingthings.
People die of cancer or in acar wreck and you get over it,
but this, it was so senselessthat someone who didn't know her
would do this for no reason.
(10:05):
You never get over it.
Art Ludwig went home in a blindrage and depression that lasted
for months.
Every time he tried to sleep,nancy's face shocked him into
consciousness.
Nancy's face shocked him intoconsciousness.
He thought of suicide.
He said that the first sixmonths were really terrible.
He started grief counseling buthe decided the grief counselor
(10:36):
needed more help than he did.
He would fantasize for hoursabout getting a gun and moving
to Romulus, hanging out in thebars and strip joints and hotels
and motels until one day,sooner or later, he would come
across Nancy's killer and shoothim dead.
His family, like good familiesdo, helped save him.
They have resented Nancy atfirst but have grown to like him
and love her in the years aftermarriage.
(10:57):
Art said that his kids tookturns babysitting him.
He was getting daily calls,something like that If you don't
have great family support andgreat friends, you don't know
what you do.
They spent a lot of time withhim.
Art hated living in the bighouse.
(11:18):
Nancy had picked out anddecorated Her keys and her ID
had been stolen and he keptdreaming the killer was coming
for him too.
Eventually he sold it.
Now the town of Romulus is likea big square donut, six miles on
the side with a huge squarehole in the middle.
(11:39):
The sprawling MetropolitanAirport is the hole.
The airport dominates thegeographic area of the city and
its tax base.
There's no real downtown in thecity.
What people call downtown ismore like an intersection at
Shook and Goddard Roads with acouple of old buildings to show
(12:01):
at least something in the cityis more than 30 years old and
that at least something herepredates the airport.
Romulus is a city technically,but not the way you would
picture one normally.
It has little culture, no movietheaters, no real place for
people to congregate.
The major business downtown isthe Landing Strip, a current
(12:24):
topless joint that says a signon the building that offers
nonstop live entertainment.
The city is an odd mix ofcornfields, trailer parks, a
smattering of nude subdivisionsof large homes.
Rumless has always been aninteresting place to be a cop.
The city has more than a shareof cheap bars and motels that
(12:47):
cater both to the transientspassing through the airport and
to those passing through life,looking for cheap prostitutes or
a cheap place to smoke theircrack or snort their coke as
tens of thousands of southernersflock to Detroit's auto
factories in the city inmid-20th century, each
(13:08):
blue-collar community thatsprung up seemed to have a need
to look down on its neighboringblue-collar community to feel
that it somehow was a cut above,and the way it did it was the
unique southeastern Michiganregionalism of taking the Taki
ending of Kentucky and affixingit to the beginning of whatever
(13:30):
city or town was in need ofdenigration Like Rummataki, will
be Rummeless.
In 1991, the city was in sharpcontrast to many others in the
county.
Where average density in thecounty was more than 3,000 per
square mile, it was just 477 persquare mile in Romulus, thanks
(13:53):
in large part to the huge chunkin the middle giving over to the
airport.
Over to the airport, it hadjust 17,165 residents.
The city was known for havingfar more than its share of weird
crimes drunken brawling, drugdealing, mayhem and murder.
Borden was not a pair of acop's job Mayhem and murder, for
(14:17):
instance.
Then Snyder had worked severalcases like the girl who was set
on fire on her 19th birthday andthrown out of a moving car, the
mom who poured Drano down herdaughter's throat while she was
sleeping.
There were a string ofprostitute murders.
(14:45):
Or the suicide.
Who checks into a motel, drinkshalf a fifth of booze, lister
his wrist but doesn't do a goodjob, finishes off the fifth, or
his bleeds out, runs out ofbooze, gets in in the car
trailing blood, goes to theliquor store, buys another fifth
, leaving red stains on thecounter, goes back to the motel,
(15:08):
starts working on that fifthand finally dies Because of his
expertise working weirdhomicides in Romulus, nearby
Brunburen Township, asked forSnyder's help on a case of a
gutted hooker.
Not only had she been guttedbut both breasts had been cut
off, with one of them left overher face.
(15:28):
While they were working thecrime scene, a guy drops up in
his van.
A cop looks in the window, seesa bloody axe and a machete on
the back seat and arrests him.
True to the cliche, he hadreturned to the scene of the
crime.
Later, in the 1990s, snyderwould work one of Dr Death's
cases.
(15:49):
Melaniac worked a lot of them.
It was Jack Koworkins, thefamous or infamous advocate of
assisted suicide, that left abunch of bodies in Romulus.
His patients would fly in fromaround the country.
(16:09):
He would meet them in a hotelnear the airport, help them to
do their deed, then call police.
So it was always something inRomulus.
So it was always something inRomulus.
Snyder had seen it all, orthought he had, till he stepped
into room 354.
We'll be right back.
(16:33):
There was one major complicationwith the Lowercase that set it
apart from other murders.
Detective Snyder had worked.
This murderer wasn't somedrunken grandmother passed out
sleeping on a shotgun or sometrailer trash who knifed a
neighbor and is still coveringblood when the police show up,
or some crack-addled junkiepulling a gun on a clerk while
(16:57):
the video camera films away.
By the time the body was found,chances were most of the
witnesses were time zones awayand the murderer could literally
had been anywhere on earth.
They interviewed the hotelemployees but didn't learn much
more than they already knew.
They got a list of NorthwestAirlines employees who would
(17:21):
have been at the Hilton andstarted putting out the word
they needed to talk to them.
It helped that Metro was aNorthwest hub.
So one by one, as theirschedules allowed, phil Arcia,
frederick Roybal, lynn Nelms andthe others came back to town to
(17:42):
give statements.
The picture of the badlydressed stalker began to emerge.
The all-news radio stationstrumpeted the story for days.
The daily newspapers played fora week.
Mark Eby, who was living inMichigan in 1991 between
assignments in Germany, washaving his morning coffee and
(18:03):
reading the free press the dayafter Ludwig's body had been
found.
The local story caught his eye.
The details struck him asawfully similar to his mother's
death.
He called Snyder at the RomulusPolice Station and left them a
message that they ought to checkwith the Flint Police and look
(18:24):
into a possible connection tothe murder of Margaret Margaret
Eby in 1986.
And then he called his brother,jonathan, and he asked him did
you see the article in the FreePress this morning?
Is Brother Jonathan?
And he asked him did you seethe article in the free press
this morning?
And the brother said yeah, Ijust got off the phone with the
Flint police.
I told them they have talked tothe Romulus Police Department.
(18:46):
As far as I can tell, it lookslike the same MO A dozen years
later.
Mark would say it went beyondthe similarities of rape and
murder.
Both brothers were hit by it atthe same time that somebody
(19:07):
needs to look at this.
So on March 8, 1991, jonathanAbbey wrote Arthur Ludwig a
letter and the letter said thefollowing Please accept my
deepest sympathy on the terribleloss of your wife.
You have been in my thoughtsand prayers since the news hit
the papers here in Detroit and Iwonder then if I should write
(19:28):
to you.
Given the lack of substantiveprogress in the investigation
and your personal appeals in theDetroit area for information, I
decided to bring to yourattention a similar situation to
allow you to respond as youconsider appropriate.
My mother, margaret Ebby, wasmurdered in Flint in November of
(19:51):
1986 in the gateway of themansion and the police had
failed to solve the case.
She had been bound, gagged,possibly raped, and her throat
had been cut, and there was nosign of a forced entry.
When the news about your wifewas aired, we were struck by the
(20:12):
similarities of the crimes andwe alerted police both in
Romulus and in Flint.
In our experience, however, wewere assured early in the
investigation that they believedthat the case would be rapidly
solved and we were advised notto become involved or post a
reward and basically to allowthe police to handle it.
(20:35):
We did.
I regret not having done moreearlier.
We did post a reward and hirean investigator about 10 months
later to know effects.
I bring this before you not tocast aspersions on the efforts
of the police, but to encourageyou to continue in to personally
(21:00):
do all that you can to move thecase forward.
While they certainly want thecase solved, they have other
agendas as well a lack ofmotivation of those whose lives
have been so significantlyaffected by the crime.
Lives have been sosignificantly affected by the
crime.
It is a long shot.
I'm sure that our cases areconnected, particularly if the
(21:22):
perpetrator in your case is avery young man, but I wonder if
publicity of the sort you'redoing in Detroit might yield
results if the situation and theman's picture were shown in
Flint.
So he said the officer whohandled our case was Sergeant
(21:51):
David King.
If I can be of any other use toyou, I can be reached at and
give him the phone number.
My prayers for God's grace,peace and strength continue to
be with you and your familySincerely.
(22:14):
Jonathan S Eby Ludwig turned thenote over to the Romulus police
.
He was getting a lot of crankmail and calls and didn't know
if this was another one, but itseemed worth passing on.
Neither one of the Abbeys heardback from the cops in either
city.
King didn't follow up on histip.
The Romulus PD did.
Ludwig's further efforts atpublicity, including posting and
(22:36):
mailing flyers.
Buying ads that displayedcomposite drawings and offering
a reward, did not extend toFlint.
Thank you for listening to theMurder Book.
Have a great week.
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