On the evening of August 19, 1985, 30-year-old Nanette Gordon was found murdered in her apartment. She had been strangled to death. By the time police found her, she had already been dead for two-and-a-half days.
Nanette Gordon was originally from Ogdensburg, New York. She moved to Syracuse and was working as a resident pathologist at Upstate University Hospital in 1985. She had started interning at the Onondaga County Medical Examiner’s Office just a few weeks before her death.
Nanette had eventually hoped to do cancer research at Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York City. She enjoyed running, swimming, hiking, playing racquetball, and going to concerts with friends.
At around 11:00 p.m. on August 16, a friend dropped her off at her apartment complex after attending a concert in Skaneateles. The police believe Nanette was killed in the early hours of August 17.
The neighbor who lived directly above Nanette told police that they had heard screams coming from the young doctor’s apartment at around 4:00 a.m. on August 17. No signs of life were seen from Nanette all weekend.
On August 19, around 5:00 p.m., the building manager unlocked Nanette’s door out of concern and saw her lying motionless in bed. They called the police. Investigators noted that Nanette was in her bed, under the covers.
She wasn’t wearing any clothes. Everything appeared to be overly neat and orderly. The quilt on her bed had been smoothed, and the sides were tucked in.
There was no sign of forced entry, missing personal items, or assault. However, there was evidence that a struggle had occurred between Nanette and her murderer.
A houseplant had fallen onto the floor from the nightstand next to her bed, and a large ceramic vase had been knocked over in the dining room.
The medical examiner could not determine her cause of death. Nanette’s family hired an independent pathologist from Philadelphia to review the autopsy results. He concluded that Nanette had been strangled to death.
From the start, detectives treated the case as a homicide. They believed that Nanette’s death scene had most likely been staged.
Two weeks before her death, Nanette noticed money missing from her purse for the second time. She told a friend about it and also mentioned items like her underwear being moved around.
The weekend she died, a neighbor left a message on Nanette’s answering machine saying that he had heard screams coming from her apartment. Then, he called again to say that the message had been a mistake. He had meant to call the building manager.
The caller was a middle-aged man who lived directly above Nanette with his elderly mother. He sometimes did maintenance work for the complex and had a key to Nanette’s apartment.
He gave conflicting statements to the police about what he saw and heard on August 17. He refused to take a polygraph test, hired a lawyer, and never spoke to the police again. He moved away soon after.
Five years after Nanette’s death, a woman called the police and told them they had the right suspect in Nanette’s case. Apparently, she also called the Gordon family lawyer and said, “The guy upstairs did it,” before hanging up.
In January 1992, the woman called again to say the same thing. She was never identified.
In 2019, the only suspect in Nanette’s case passed away. Investigators urged the unknown woman to share what she knew with the police, but she never came forward.
If you have any information about the murder of Nanette Gordon, you are asked to contact the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office at 315-435-3051.
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By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
