Opening arguments were heard Monday in the case of a man charged with the decade-old rape and murder of a Northwest Airlines flight attendant.

Wayne County prosecutors have charged Jeffrey Gorton (pictured, left), 39, of Clio, Mich., with the murder of Nancy Ludwig (pictured, below).

Investigators said that DNA evidence linked Gorton to Ludwig's death. She was raped and found with her throat cut in a hotel room near Detroit/Wayne County Airport in 1991.

Gorton already has been charged with the 1986 murder of Margarette Eby, a music professor and former provost at the University of Michigan Flint.

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Gorton has been charged with first-degree murder, felony murder-larceny, felony murder-criminal sexual conduct and two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, authorities said.

At the time of his arrest, Gorton was living with his second wife and two children and working as a foreman for a lawn sprinkler service. His criminal record consisted of a 1984 burglary and robbery conviction in Florida and a 1995 arrest on charges of lifting and looking up a woman's skirt at a Flint-area discount store.

Gorton returned to Michigan after serving two years of a 4 1/2-year prison sentence in the Orange County, Fla., robbery and burglary. He pleaded guilty to a charge of being a disorderly person after the skirt-lifting incident and received a 90-day suspended sentence, was fined $205 and ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation.

Investigators said a fingerprint at the Eby murder scene matched Gorton's, and they said his DNA matches samples taken from the Ludwig homicide.

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