Speaker 1: November seventeenth, nineteen ninety, was the first Saturday of deer
Speaker 1: season in Michigan. Eager hunters took to the woods, including
Speaker 1: at the Fulton Game Area near Calabazoo. Around four point
Speaker 1: thirty that afternoon. Not long before sunset, two gunshots rang out,
Speaker 1: and not long after that two hunters, Augustus and Jim Bennett,
Speaker 1: were found dead. A couple of days later, Jeff Titus,
Speaker 1: whose farm was directly adjacent to the State Game Area,
Speaker 1: found a shotgun near his property and turned it over
Speaker 1: to the sheriff. Jeff was investigated, but he said he'd
Speaker 1: been out hunting himself that day, nearly thirty miles away,
Speaker 1: and witnesses attested being with him. Jeff was cleared, but
Speaker 1: no other leads than the case panned out either, and
Speaker 1: the case went cold. Ten years later, the case was
Speaker 1: revived and reinvestigated by the recently formned cold case unit.
Speaker 1: They immediately fixated on Jeff as a suspect, based mainly
Speaker 1: on his finding the shotgun and the fact that since
Speaker 1: the murders had hand happened, he'd often brought the case
Speaker 1: up and talked about it with his co workers the
Speaker 1: VA where he worked as security officer. The witnesses who
Speaker 1: had supported his alibi were now either unable to testify
Speaker 1: or appeared unreliable a trial. Instead, the jury heard the
Speaker 1: prosecution's argument that many people had found Jeff's obsession with
Speaker 1: the killings disturbing and alleged the people who came near
Speaker 1: his property were met with threats, and in the end
Speaker 1: their verdict was unanimous. But this is wrongful conviction. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to wrongful Conviction. I'm Susan Simpson, host of the
Speaker 1: Proof and Undisclosed podcast, filling in for Jason Flohm. We're
Speaker 1: here today with a case that's close to my heart.
Speaker 1: I began investigating it in twenty twenty along with Decenda
Speaker 1: Davis and Kevin Fitzpatrick of Red Marble Media when they
Speaker 1: were covering it for their TV show Killer and Question.
Speaker 1: I also covered the case in my podcast un Disclosed.
Speaker 1: There have been a few updates since then, so I'm
Speaker 1: really excited to share the story with you and for
Speaker 1: you to meet our guest, Jeff Titus. Welcome, Jeff, Hi,
Speaker 1: and we also have with us Jeff's attorney and co
Speaker 1: director of the Michigan Innocence Clinic, Dave Moran. Listeners might
Speaker 1: remember Dave from the Terry Caesar episode that Jason covered recently.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being here again, Dave.
Speaker 2: Thanks nice to be here, Jeff.
Speaker 1: Before we talk about what happened in November of nineteen ninety,
Speaker 1: why don't you tell listeners about yourself.
Speaker 3: Well, I come from a family of nine kids. I'm
Speaker 3: the second oldest. There was four boys, a girl and
Speaker 3: four boys. I started working at a dairy fireman at twelve.
Speaker 3: While I went to Penfield High School, I played football.
Speaker 3: I worked on the farm after school, none as summers,
Speaker 3: and then I went to the Marine Corps.
Speaker 1: And as a result of that, you had the honor
Speaker 1: of serving under the president.
Speaker 3: Yes, I was a military policeman in the Marine Corps.
Speaker 3: I was a white House security guard for a President Nickson.
Speaker 3: Then I come home. I went to college and met
Speaker 3: my wife when my future wife and got married in
Speaker 3: August of seventy nine.
Speaker 1: And then you had your two daughters and ended up
Speaker 1: buying a beautiful old farmhouse on eighty acres in Fulton, Michigan.
Speaker 3: The house built in eighteen seventy three, and we went
Speaker 3: through and totally restored it, and we went through and
Speaker 3: brass ceilings and ten ceilings. The original window still had
Speaker 3: wooden plugs in them. I mean it was old and.
Speaker 1: It was directly adjacent to the Fulton Game Area state
Speaker 1: land where people can go and hunt. So, Jeff, let's
Speaker 1: go back to November seventeenth, nineteen ninety, the opening Saturday
Speaker 1: of deer season. You were thirty eight at the time,
Speaker 1: and I know you're an avid hunter. So where were
Speaker 1: you hunting that weekend?
Speaker 3: I owned the first two days at my house. The
Speaker 3: third day I left and went hunting at the northern
Speaker 3: part of Calhoun County, north of Battle Creek, twenty seven
Speaker 3: miles away.
Speaker 1: And your friends Dan Dreschool was with you as well.
Speaker 1: The two of you hunted on two adjacent farms owned
Speaker 1: by family friends of yours, the Crandalls and the Shepherds.
Speaker 3: Yes, they're next to each other. Crandalls have like fifteen
Speaker 3: hundred acres. Shepherds have five to seven hundred acres. I
Speaker 3: think something like that.
Speaker 1: So on that Saturday, the day of the murders, you
Speaker 1: were nearly thirty miles north of your place, around forty
Speaker 1: five minute drive by car. That was a pretty typical
Speaker 1: weekend for you in deer season, right.
Speaker 3: Well, stand and me would hunt crandalls. He would go
Speaker 3: to his spot. I would go to Minke and usually
Speaker 3: we're separated aways and Stan would get deer some year,
Speaker 3: some years he wouldn't. I always seemed to get him.
Speaker 3: I mean, I can shoot. And that night at four thirty,
Speaker 3: I thought I was shooting in the buck, but I
Speaker 3: hit a dough and went up to the farm, got
Speaker 3: my truck, come back, loaded it up with sand, and
Speaker 3: then we left and waved to the farmer and went
Speaker 3: to burger King to eat, and then went home.
Speaker 1: And what did you and stand fine when you got
Speaker 1: back to your farm.
Speaker 3: That night we got back home, I talked to my
Speaker 3: wife and said we were going out back to take
Speaker 3: care of a deer. And where my woods was there
Speaker 3: was all kinds of lights. So I drove over there
Speaker 3: and I introduced myself and said I was a police officer,
Speaker 3: which I was for the Veterans Administration, and I said,
Speaker 3: you know what happened? And they didn't really say much.
Speaker 3: Later I learned that two people had been shot.
Speaker 2: In the Fulton Game area.
Speaker 4: Several hunters heard some shots fired, very loud, shots fired
Speaker 4: in short succession, and when other hunters went to investigate,
Speaker 4: they discovered two bodies in the woods and both had
Speaker 4: been shot in the back, fatally by shotgun. The wounds
Speaker 4: were different because there were different types of shotgun ammunition
Speaker 4: used on the two men. So it was within the
Speaker 4: game area, but it was less than one hundred yards
Speaker 4: from the property line of the back of Jeff Titus's farm.
Speaker 3: I offered for them to go on my farm to
Speaker 3: dry back to the scene, and that's what the ambulance
Speaker 3: did later that night when they went back to get
Speaker 3: to bodies. Then I went down to my neighbors and
Speaker 3: told her what had happened, and that was between eight
Speaker 3: and nine.
Speaker 1: And both their neighbor, Bonnie Huffman and her mother later
Speaker 1: told police that you'd stop by around eight pm that
Speaker 1: night and visited with them for about twenty minutes. The
Speaker 1: police later confirmed that the two victims in the case
Speaker 1: wereked Doug Gustus from Kalamazoo and Jim Bennett, who lived
Speaker 1: near Fulton and Leonidas. They had both gone to the
Speaker 1: Fulton game area that day separately to go deer hunting,
Speaker 1: and they did not know each other. Their bodies had
Speaker 1: been found about one hundred feet behind your property line, Jeff.
Speaker 1: Both been shot in the back, one of them with
Speaker 1: buckshot and the other with a slug. Not long before sunset,
Speaker 1: Doug Estes's eighteen year old stepson, who'd been hunting with him,
Speaker 1: had heard two shots ring out. He thought maybe a
Speaker 1: stepdad Doug had shot a deer, so after a bit
Speaker 1: he went up looking for him to hopefully help him
Speaker 1: carry a deer back. Instead, he found the two bodies
Speaker 1: lying on the forest floor. The next day, the police
Speaker 1: did a grid search that went out about seventy feet
Speaker 1: in every direction from where the bodies were found. Jeff,
Speaker 1: what were they looking for?
Speaker 3: They were searching for a missing gun, and they said
Speaker 3: that they were never more than two feet apart walking
Speaker 3: that whole wood area. Now, the day after that, I
Speaker 3: walked back. I was checking my traps. I walked over
Speaker 3: to that area and found the shotgun. I went up,
Speaker 3: never touched it, went up, called the Sheriff's department. I said,
Speaker 3: I just found the shotgun back on State Land and
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's related to what happened or whatever.
Speaker 3: Then I say, I called the press and let them know,
Speaker 3: and then the police come out. I showed them where
Speaker 3: it was at, and you know, it made me a
Speaker 3: suspect because I found it, and that's when things started.
Speaker 1: That shotgun turned out to have belonged to Augustus and
Speaker 1: had been moved away from the box bodies fairly close
Speaker 1: to your property line, actually not on your property, but
Speaker 1: much closer than the bodies were. And at first the
Speaker 1: police said, well, we would have found it if it
Speaker 1: was there, but as later it was determined their actual
Speaker 1: notes suggest they didn't search the area where you did
Speaker 1: find the shotgun, but for obvious reasons. You were a
Speaker 1: suspect at least one of the suspects in the case,
Speaker 1: and there were two detectives who were working on it,
Speaker 1: Bruce Rosima and Roy Ballot. What did they do to
Speaker 1: look into you?
Speaker 3: They went to Shepherd's Dairy Farming Crandles and talk to them.
Speaker 3: They did this statement they took from Shepherd's. Shepherds signed
Speaker 3: it and both detectives signed it saying that I was
Speaker 3: there and never left that night.
Speaker 1: So at this point the police knew that they had
Speaker 1: the owners of the farm where you were at the
Speaker 1: Shepherds saying that you'd been there hunting at their farm
Speaker 1: until a little after sunset when you and Stan packed
Speaker 1: up and left. They also know that the two victims
Speaker 1: in the case were killed a little before sunset, around
Speaker 1: four thirty pm. So at the time that they were killed,
Speaker 1: you had these alibi witnesses saying that you were there
Speaker 1: at this farm north of Battle Creek, a forty five
Speaker 1: minute plus drive away.
Speaker 3: And my vehicle was sparked right behind their house, and
Speaker 3: you cannot leave that house without making noise because they
Speaker 3: had a crush stone driveway, they would have heard me leave.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So on the strength of this alibi, the original
Speaker 1: detectives where Seema and Dallatt had excluded you as a suspect. Now,
Speaker 1: there were other suspects in the investigation, including a man
Speaker 1: who'd run his car into a ditch off the side
Speaker 1: of the road near the Fulton Game area and the
Speaker 1: aftermath of the murder, but that lead, along with others,
Speaker 1: fizzled out and the case pretty soon went cold. Now,
Speaker 1: even though you've been cleared as a suspect, there were
Speaker 1: still people in the community who either thought you might
Speaker 1: have done it, or at least would spread rumors about
Speaker 1: you to that effect, right, And you also had a
Speaker 1: habit of talking about the case. You'd mentioned it in
Speaker 1: conversation and it was something that came up a few
Speaker 1: times at your workplace as well.
Speaker 3: People would ask me questions about the case where I worked,
Speaker 3: and I would say this or I would say that,
Speaker 3: and they would hear it in a way that they
Speaker 3: wanted to hear it, like I say, And I told them,
Speaker 3: I said, I didn't do nothing. I was another place
Speaker 3: hunting and I'm innocent. But these people turned around start
Speaker 3: calling you better to look at Jeff Titus.
Speaker 1: So eight years go by, and then in nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: the Kalamazoo County Sheriff's Department forms a new cold case unit.
Speaker 1: They're tasked with looking into some of the area's cold cases,
Speaker 1: of which there were quite a few.
Speaker 2: At that time.
Speaker 1: They had had some initial successes. I think they'd solved
Speaker 1: around eight cases, and they were very proud of their
Speaker 1: one hundred percent success rate, as they called it. But Dave,
Speaker 1: as you and I have talked about, cold case unit
Speaker 1: often feature in local convictions, and there are broader problems
Speaker 1: with how they operate. Can you take a minute to
Speaker 1: explain that.
Speaker 4: I do think that the problem with some cold case units,
Speaker 4: and particularly this one, is to justify their existence, that
Speaker 4: they have to not only go back and look at
Speaker 4: old cases, but they have to purport to solve them.
Speaker 4: If they go back and say, yep, that one's a toughie,
Speaker 4: there's really nowhere to go with it, and they do
Speaker 4: that in case after case, Well, people are going to
Speaker 4: wonder why are we funding this exercise and futility in
Speaker 4: the first place. And so there's a real problem of
Speaker 4: pressure internal or possibly external for a cold case team
Speaker 4: to come up with a solution. And then you've got
Speaker 4: a team like this that claims one hundred percent hit rate,
Speaker 4: and so now they've got to solve every case that
Speaker 4: they look at. They've got to fit round pegs and
Speaker 4: square holes and square pegs.
Speaker 2: And round holes in order to keep that record up.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk later on about how that tunnel visionality
Speaker 1: came into play in Jeff's case. But in nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: nine or so, they decided to reopen the case of
Speaker 1: the Fulton Game Area deer hunters, and then in two
Speaker 1: thousand Jeff he received a subpoena.
Speaker 3: And then I went to Kalamazoo talked to them, and
Speaker 3: then when I got done, they said, well, we got
Speaker 3: a search one for your house. So they followed me
Speaker 3: back to my house when I got back there, the
Speaker 3: bomb squad was there, the FBI was there, the sheriff's
Speaker 3: department was there, the different police departments were all there,
Speaker 3: and then each took a section of my barns and
Speaker 3: houses and rooms and started searching.
Speaker 1: And what was some of the evidence, as they put it,
Speaker 1: that they found on your property.
Speaker 3: Had the newspaper articles of when I found the gun,
Speaker 3: and then my videos of being a marine corpse sniper,
Speaker 3: my thing on a gilly suit, the movie Sniper.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the movie based on that Tom Clancy.
Speaker 3: Novel, right, right, But they know they had that.
Speaker 1: As evidence that you were inclined to commit murder, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: The cold case team, well, they did a very thorough
Speaker 1: in some way as investigation. They talked to a lot
Speaker 1: of people, and I know from following their footsteps and
Speaker 1: trying to retrace all their interviews just how much ground
Speaker 1: they covered. And what they managed to find was a
Speaker 1: lot of people who told them didn't like me, A
Speaker 1: lot of people who didn't like you, yeah, and who
Speaker 1: said that you had said things that they thought could
Speaker 1: make you look guilty.
Speaker 3: See. I had a house that was out in the country.
Speaker 3: I had no neighbors for a quarter mile each way,
Speaker 3: and one of the things I said is if you
Speaker 3: come to my house and break in, I'll be picking
Speaker 3: up your body parts when I come home because my
Speaker 3: house was wired, and that was demolitions expert. Well, that
Speaker 3: didn't go over with people, but I'd never had a
Speaker 3: break in.
Speaker 1: But to clarify, your house was not actually wired, No, no,
Speaker 1: it was not. When Jacinta and I were investigating your case,
Speaker 1: we interviewed one of the detectives from the cold case team,
Speaker 1: Detective Workima, as well as one of the prosecutors, Stu Fitten,
Speaker 1: and I remember Detective Workima describes something about his investigative
Speaker 1: technique that he called waking a memory. That's his process
Speaker 1: of going to a witness, talking to them once, and
Speaker 1: then going back to them as many as six or
Speaker 1: seven more times. Each time I am with a little
Speaker 1: more information and feedback mother witnesses, giving the witness a
Speaker 1: chance to basically tell a better story. And according to Werkima,
Speaker 1: this was an effective technique because it managed to get
Speaker 1: witnesses to say things that they would not have originally remembered.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, though this could certainly have the
Speaker 1: effect of getting witnesses to change their statements to come
Speaker 1: up with things that match the detective's version of events,
Speaker 1: even if it contradicted what the witnesses originally remembered happening.
Speaker 1: And that brings us to Bonnie Huffman and her mother.
Speaker 1: Those were your neighbors that you'd gone to see that
Speaker 1: night to tell them about the murders. During the original investigation,
Speaker 1: Bonnie told Detective Worsima that you'd come by around eight
Speaker 1: pm that.
Speaker 3: Night, right Monnie Hoffman and her mother both said I
Speaker 3: was there between eight and nine that night, because it
Speaker 3: was after the ambulance come to my house that I
Speaker 3: went down there and I told them what was going on.
Speaker 1: However, when the cold case team did their investigation and
Speaker 1: went back to talk to Bonnie Huffman again and again,
Speaker 1: they and to awaken a memory, a new one where
Speaker 1: she said first that she saw you at six fifteen
Speaker 1: and then that she saw you at five point thirty
Speaker 1: that afternoon, so very shortly after, within a half hour
Speaker 1: to an hour of when the murders had happened.
Speaker 3: She said, it was just getting dark when I pulled
Speaker 3: in the yard. Now, if I would have been there
Speaker 3: at that time, and she said, I stayed like twenty minutes.
Speaker 3: Then it would have been totally dark.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: The deer haunt ends at dusk, when it's too dark
Speaker 1: to haunt me longer. And that's when the shepherd said
Speaker 1: you and Stan took off from their place. But the
Speaker 1: cold case team came up with a theory of their
Speaker 1: own to account for that. What did they say happened?
Speaker 3: Well, they decided that I had this feeling that there
Speaker 3: was guy's trespassing on my property. I went down there
Speaker 3: in front of them, shot him, stole their deer, and
Speaker 3: drove back to Shepherd's and then left with that deer.
Speaker 3: But now we stopped at Burger King. We had a
Speaker 3: receipt at six forty five. We left. We called Stan's
Speaker 3: wife and there is a receipt showing that if it
Speaker 3: takes me forty minutes to get back there, and then
Speaker 3: it's another time limit to get down to the Burger King.
Speaker 3: It don't make sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the cold case team believed that the original investigators
Speaker 1: had not adequately vetted your alibi. Their crucial realization was
Speaker 1: that although you had people who could vouch for the
Speaker 1: fact you were hunting at the Shepherd's farm, those people
Speaker 1: couldn't vouch for the fact that they had seen you
Speaker 1: at the exact moment when the murders happened. Because when
Speaker 1: you're hunting, you're going into the blind, you're out alone.
Speaker 1: So at the time the shots were fired, the time
Speaker 1: Estas and Bennett were killed around four thirty pm, you
Speaker 1: weren't standing next to Stan. You weren't out in the
Speaker 1: woods in a blind waiting for deer. So to the
Speaker 1: Cold Case team, your alibi was not actually an alibi
Speaker 1: in their version of events. You had time to sneak
Speaker 1: away from the shepherd farm, drive back to your property,
Speaker 1: find and shoot the two men at around four thirty pm,
Speaker 1: steal the deer, one of them at Jot, drive back
Speaker 1: to the Shepherd's farm, meet up with Stan, stop at
Speaker 1: burger king, and then drive back to your place. Oh
Speaker 1: in between all of that, after shooting the men and
Speaker 1: stealing their deer, you had time to stop by your
Speaker 1: neighbor's place for a casual twenty minute chat.
Speaker 3: Yep, that's what they say, ludicris.
Speaker 1: So having done that drive, I would have to agree,
Speaker 1: But the Cold Case team didn't see it that way.
Speaker 1: So on December twelfth, two thousand and one, you were
Speaker 1: arrested and take him to jail where you remain until
Speaker 1: the trial started the following June. You had an attorney,
Speaker 1: Bill Fetti. What did he do to help a pair
Speaker 1: for your case?
Speaker 3: He hired a detective whose name was Swabash, and he
Speaker 3: was supposed to get would the original detectives and have
Speaker 3: them testify. Well, then you never did that. Then they
Speaker 3: had asked about other things, and he would make phone
Speaker 3: calls questioning different things, and that's all I knew.
Speaker 1: So the trial began on June twenty sixth, two thousand
Speaker 1: and two. The prosecutor at trial was Scott Brower. Dave,
Speaker 1: can you tell us about the trial? How did things
Speaker 1: go for Jeff?
Speaker 4: First of all, he had a lawyer who, charitably I
Speaker 4: can say is was not very good. By the time
Speaker 4: that we got involved in the case years later, that
Speaker 4: lawyer had been disbarred and wasn't particularly cooperative with us.
Speaker 4: But the biggest problem in the trial was that the
Speaker 4: lawyer had never contacted detectives Weirsima and Ballot who had
Speaker 4: cleared Jeff way back in nineteen ninety nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 4: and so because he hadn't talked to them, he didn't
Speaker 4: have their evidence. He didn't do the obvious thing, which
Speaker 4: is detective you thoroughly investigated this case with your partner,
Speaker 4: what conclusions did you reach about Jeff Titus? And because
Speaker 4: he didn't contact him, he also wasn't able to use
Speaker 4: a workaround for the Shepherds, both of whom were supposedly
Speaker 4: unavailable to testify because of their mental state.
Speaker 3: They said that the Shepherds had dementia, but it was
Speaker 3: only him, not her. She was sharp as a whip
Speaker 3: and she could have testified, but she was never called.
Speaker 4: But both Shepherds had written out and signed a statement
Speaker 4: just a few weeks after the killings confirming that Jeff
Speaker 4: was there, and that statement should have been able to
Speaker 4: come in through the testimony of the detectives who took it.
Speaker 4: But again, because Jeff's very poor defense attorney didn't even
Speaker 4: interview the detectives who had cleared his client in the
Speaker 4: first place, the jury never heard about any of that.
Speaker 4: But not only had they not been interviewed by Jeff's
Speaker 4: defense layer, they hadn't even been interviewed by the.
Speaker 2: Cold case team.
Speaker 4: So the two guys who had done the initial investigation
Speaker 4: clearing Jeff were just left out in the wilderness while
Speaker 4: this train went through the station and in our opinion,
Speaker 4: went off the rails.
Speaker 1: So the only alibi witness the jury heard from and
Speaker 1: Jeff's defense was Stan, and Stan, unfortunately was not the
Speaker 1: best of witnesses.
Speaker 3: Made it worse.
Speaker 4: Stan was a very problematic witness. And from the transcript
Speaker 4: it sounds like, you know, he doesn't want to cooperate,
Speaker 4: he wants to nitpick questions. And I met Stan on
Speaker 4: a couple of occasions, and that's just the way he was,
Speaker 4: That's the way he talked. But I think to the
Speaker 4: jurors who were there, it comes across like you hiding something.
Speaker 4: And so it was just a memorably bad alibi witness.
Speaker 1: And then of course Jeff's alibi was under mind by
Speaker 1: Bonnie Huffman's testimony or as Detective Workma would say, her
Speaker 1: awakened memory that Jeff had been by to see her
Speaker 1: at around five thirty that day.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: And again that's an area where the defense lawyer's failure
Speaker 4: to even interview detectives Weirsima and Ballot was fatal, because
Speaker 4: had he interviewed them, he would have learned that they
Speaker 4: spoke with Bonnie Huffman and her mother just days after
Speaker 4: the killings. And that they told the detectives that the
Speaker 4: conversation with Jeff happened around eight pm, so hours hours
Speaker 4: after the killing. But because he didn't even interview those detectives,
Speaker 4: Bonnie's changed testimony that the conversation happened hours earlier, as
Speaker 4: early as five point fifteen was unrebutted other than the
Speaker 4: fact that her mother testified to the original timeline. But
Speaker 4: even with that piece of information, the defense lawyer's performance
Speaker 4: was simply lousy. He didn't make a big deal about
Speaker 4: out how they had given a prior statement at eight
Speaker 4: pm that the mom was still saying it was eight pm.
Speaker 2: He just let it go. Just a atrocious job.
Speaker 1: There was also the prosecution's theory that Jeff had wiped
Speaker 1: the shot unclean when he found it in the woods.
Speaker 1: Their story, of course, is that Jeff did not just
Speaker 1: find it in the woods. Rather, he had taken it
Speaker 1: from the crime scene after comuting the murders, and then
Speaker 1: wiped all the finger prints off and then pretended to
Speaker 1: find it. They also had a seemingly endless stream of
Speaker 1: Jeff's coworkers who came in to say they'd overheard Jeff
Speaker 1: or talk to Jeff about the murders, and he'd said
Speaker 1: things that were allegedly incriminating or weird, just things that
Speaker 1: Jeff would often say struck them the wrong way.
Speaker 2: No, I think Jeff will admit he's a talker.
Speaker 4: And two of the things Jeff was very interested in
Speaker 4: is hunting, so he often talked about hunting and killing animals,
Speaker 4: and he often talked about the murders that had happened
Speaker 4: near his property line and how they remained unsolved. And
Speaker 4: over the years, in the minds of the cold case team,
Speaker 4: that became evidence that he'd committed the crime because you
Speaker 4: know who else but the killer would like to talk
Speaker 4: about it. And then there were witnesses who claimed to
Speaker 4: have had confrontations with Jeff after they had trespassed onto
Speaker 4: his property from the game area, and that was that
Speaker 4: was pretty much the prosecution's entire case was he had
Speaker 4: confronted trespassers before he talked about the killings. And Bonnie
Speaker 4: Hoffman now claiming that he was actually in the vicinity
Speaker 4: around five point fifteen.
Speaker 1: So Bill Fetti, jess attorney, was really just phoning it
Speaker 1: in apparently. But he did raise one significant issue at trial,
Speaker 1: something that had it been fully explored by the original
Speaker 1: investigators might have actually brought this case to a close
Speaker 1: back in nineteen ninety because there was an alternate suspect
Speaker 1: in the case.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's the guy who was seen with his
Speaker 4: car stuck in a ditch near the game area not
Speaker 4: long after the shots were heard. It turned out to
Speaker 4: be the fatal shots that killed Mistersses and mister Bennett.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So, this man was seen with his car stuck in
Speaker 1: a ditch by a number of people, including a neighbor
Speaker 1: of Jeff's named Helen Knopf's and her son. When they
Speaker 1: saw the car stuck there, they'd stopped and offered a call,
Speaker 1: but he turned them down, saying he didn't need any
Speaker 1: help and that he'd get his car out somehow. They
Speaker 1: would describe this man to the police as being nervous
Speaker 1: and sweaty. The car, they said, was a blue or
Speaker 1: black hatchback similar to a Chevy Manza, and the guy
Speaker 1: said the car belong to his wife. A composite sketch
Speaker 1: of this ditch guy, as we took to calling him,
Speaker 1: was drawn based on their descriptions. It shows a white man,
Speaker 1: maybe in his thirties, wearing aviator glasses and an orange
Speaker 1: stocking cap as if he'd been not hunting. Police posted
Speaker 1: the picture and even got some calls about it, but
Speaker 1: they weren't able to locate ditch guy, and eventually the
Speaker 1: lead was dropped.
Speaker 4: But that was an obvious alternative suspect, somebody who just
Speaker 4: committed the murders and was driving away at a high
Speaker 4: rated speed and failed to make a curve and went
Speaker 4: into the ditch. At trial, Jeff's lawyer had a theory
Speaker 4: as to who the guy and the ditch might have been,
Speaker 4: but really didn't have any evidence to back it up, so.
Speaker 1: There wasn't much there to sway the jury. Nope, they
Speaker 1: did deliberate though, for several days.
Speaker 3: Finally they come back and said that I was found guilty,
Speaker 3: and I was in a state of shock. I couldn't
Speaker 3: believe it. I looked at my family and they couldn't
Speaker 3: believe it. And then I was gone and taken back
Speaker 3: to the jail. And then three days later I was
Speaker 3: in prison. I was sentenced to life in prison with
Speaker 3: no parole, and I was devastated. I have always been
Speaker 3: an honest and law abiding type person. I mean, like
Speaker 3: I said, I was a police officer. I garried to
Speaker 3: president and everything, and then turnaround and be said that
Speaker 3: I was guilty of something I didn't do. It's horrible.
Speaker 3: I felt like I was violated. And then, like I say,
Speaker 3: I went to prison and that was really a culture shock.
Speaker 1: What did you do while you were in prison? To
Speaker 1: survive and to pass the time?
Speaker 3: I worked as a tutor. First, I had my college degree,
Speaker 3: so I was teaching people how to do stuff, and
Speaker 3: I taught basic aged. Then I took a horticulture course,
Speaker 3: did it in a month and became a tutor. When
Speaker 3: I left there, I was starting to make greeting cards.
Speaker 3: I had wildlife cards, which was my fortepe because I
Speaker 3: loved the outdoors. I made religious ones, I had thinking
Speaker 3: of use, I had birthday sympathy, but I made all kinds.
Speaker 3: I would be doing that every day to pass the time.
Speaker 3: I sold them for a buck and a half to
Speaker 3: two dollars the inmates, because we don't make much money
Speaker 3: seventy four cents a day, a dollar fourteen a day,
Speaker 3: something like that. To be a tutor or a custodio
Speaker 3: or work in a child.
Speaker 1: And during that time, you were also working on your
Speaker 1: post conviction appeals with an attorney named Peter Van Hoague.
Speaker 1: You filed a habeas petition, which unfortunately was denied by
Speaker 1: a federal district court and then again in the Sixth Circuit,
Speaker 1: and then the Michigan Innocence Clinic got involved as well. Dave,
Speaker 1: how'd you hear about Jeff's case?
Speaker 4: When I first heard of the case was in I
Speaker 4: believe late twenty eleven, possibly very early twenty twelve, when
Speaker 4: detectives Weirsima and Ballot contacted me and told me that
Speaker 4: there was a double murder in Kalamazoo County and that
Speaker 4: the wrong man was in prison and they knew the
Speaker 4: wrong man was in prisoned because they had cleared him.
Speaker 1: And when Jeff was convicted, they were blown away and
Speaker 1: they became Jeff's advocates because they knew the wrong man
Speaker 1: had been convicted.
Speaker 4: So, of course we started digging into it, and within
Speaker 4: a fairly short time we decided to take the case.
Speaker 4: And by the time we took it, we had a
Speaker 4: third decorated veteran officer on board on our side, Rich Madison,
Speaker 4: who was a member of the cold case team, and
Speaker 4: it turns out he was a dissenter and he believed
Speaker 4: the case against Jeff made no sense, and because he
Speaker 4: didn't go along, he was actually removed from the Cold
Speaker 4: Case team, at least for this case. They didn't want
Speaker 4: anybody who was going to challenge their preconceived notions, and
Speaker 4: so Rich had some information that was also very helpful
Speaker 4: for us. So we filed a motion for relief from
Speaker 4: judgment better known as a sixty five hundred motion here
Speaker 4: at Michigan, and that's where we alleged a host of
Speaker 4: ineffective assistants claims for failing to interview the original detectives
Speaker 4: and also a Brady claim, which is a claim based
Speaker 4: on failure to turn over evidence, because nobody turned over
Speaker 4: to the defense the evidence about Rich Madison, the descending
Speaker 4: member of the Cold Case team, and how he had
Speaker 4: done some analysis showing that the Cold Case team sery
Speaker 4: didn't make any sense, but that wasn't turned over, and
Speaker 4: so the centerpiece of our theory in that post conviction
Speaker 4: motion was that trial council was ineffective for failing to
Speaker 4: interview Weirsima in ballot and then call them as witnesses
Speaker 4: to make up for the fact that the Shepherds allegedly
Speaker 4: couldn't be called, and to explain how Bonnie Huffmann's story
Speaker 4: at trial about the timing of her encounter with Jeff
Speaker 4: was completely inconsistent with what she and her mother had
Speaker 4: told the police before.
Speaker 1: And then there was the matter of Jeff finding the gun,
Speaker 1: which the prosecution had also brought up a trial.
Speaker 4: The prosecution made a big deal about Jeff finding the gun,
Speaker 4: and they said that there's no way that that gun
Speaker 4: was there before Jeff found it, because the police had
Speaker 4: done this grid search. Well, Detective Weirsomuch showed us exactly
Speaker 4: where the gun was found, exactly where the bodies were found,
Speaker 4: and it was well more than one hundred feet away,
Speaker 4: and so the grid search wouldn't have found it.
Speaker 1: So just imagine if the jury had been able to
Speaker 1: hear three different detectives up there, two of them saying
Speaker 1: that they'd investigated Jeff and cleared him back in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety and a third from the cold case unit saying
Speaker 1: that his team had gotten it wrong.
Speaker 2: The impact of that, I think would have been incalculable.
Speaker 4: And so we had the evident here hearing in front
Speaker 4: of the judge, and we presented all three of those
Speaker 4: decorated police veterans, and yet the judge said no, And
Speaker 4: his reasoning was that none of it would make a
Speaker 4: difference because of all of those people at the VA
Speaker 4: Hospital who heard Jeff talk about the crime. I mean
Speaker 4: as if, as if the fact that Jeff talked about
Speaker 4: the crime without actually admitting he did it to all
Speaker 4: of these people at the VA hospital somehow overcame all
Speaker 4: of that.
Speaker 2: But that was the judge's ruling.
Speaker 1: But then in twenty twenty, when I was investigating this
Speaker 1: case with Sinda and Kevin, we learned of someone who'd
Speaker 1: actually been a suspect back in nineteen ninety three, a
Speaker 1: guy named Thomas Dillon from Ohio. Dave, do you remember
Speaker 1: when I called you about him?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I do. It came completely out of the blue.
Speaker 4: You called me and asked if I'd heard of a
Speaker 4: guy named Thomas Dillon, and I said, no, should I have?
Speaker 4: And you proceeded to tell me about his work in Ohio,
Speaker 4: and I couldn't believe it. I did a search of
Speaker 4: the transcript of Jeff's trial and confirmed that the name
Speaker 4: Thomas Dillon had never come up once during his trial.
Speaker 1: That's right. Thomas Dillon, as we learned, was a serial
Speaker 1: killer with a very specific target. He hunted hunters. In fact,
Speaker 1: he'd killed one hunter the week before the Fulton State
Speaker 1: Game Area shootings, and he'd killed another the week after.
Speaker 1: He was ultimately convicted in nineteen eighty three of killing
Speaker 1: five hunters in Ohio, but he was also a suspect
Speaker 1: in a number of other killings and other states, including
Speaker 1: in the murder of Augustus and Jim Bennett. I think
Speaker 1: the moment that stands out to me the most from
Speaker 1: this case is the moment that I first saw a
Speaker 1: picture of Thomas Dillon. He is an absolute dead ringer
Speaker 1: for the composite sketch that was prepared by the two
Speaker 1: eye witnesses who saw ditch guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's stunning.
Speaker 4: When we saw the side by side comparison of a
Speaker 4: photo of Dylan after he was arrested with drawings of
Speaker 4: the man in the ditch, it was a dead ringer.
Speaker 1: And here's where things get really weird. In nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: not long after Dylan was arrested, Detective Warsma had actually
Speaker 1: brought Helen Nos and her son down to Ohio to
Speaker 1: view a lineup which included Dylan. They were shown the
Speaker 1: line up separately and told that if they recognized the
Speaker 1: man from the ditch to write the number of that
Speaker 1: man down on a piece of paper and hand it over,
Speaker 1: which they both did, and which Sinda and I learned
Speaker 1: from those Ohio files is that Helen and her son
Speaker 1: had both id Thomas Dillon as the ditch guy. But
Speaker 1: because this fact was never revealed to the Michigan authorities,
Speaker 1: where Seema thought there was nothing more to pursue there.
Speaker 1: In fact, he'd told the Ohio authorities, Hey, we just
Speaker 1: want to know if this guy was involved. We won't prosecute,
Speaker 1: we just want to know who did this, and Ohio
Speaker 1: refused to cooperate with them. And there's more. As we
Speaker 1: went on, we discovered that Dylan's wife owned a car
Speaker 1: that was a small gray Hatchback. In fact, it was
Speaker 1: almost exactly the car that the witnesses had described and
Speaker 1: which the ditch guy had said was his wife's car.
Speaker 1: Dylan had also used that car to commit some of
Speaker 1: his murders. We also learned that the day before the murders,
Speaker 1: Dylan had borrowed two shotguns from two different coworkers. When
Speaker 1: he'd returned them the following week, he told both coworkers
Speaker 1: that he'd shot a deer with their gun.
Speaker 4: And the two guys in the game area were killed
Speaker 4: with apparently two different types of shotgun ammunition.
Speaker 1: I also found some notes showing that after dylan arrest,
Speaker 1: he'd been bragging to his cellmate Mike Chappelle about his
Speaker 1: life of crime and the people he'd killed, and he
Speaker 1: even told him about what he called his double header,
Speaker 1: where he'd killed two hunters and one event. But when
Speaker 1: Chappelle told the authorities what Dylan had said to him,
Speaker 1: they did nothing. One of the reasons for that seems
Speaker 1: to have been that the FBI had developed a profile
Speaker 1: that said Dylan would never kill two people at once
Speaker 1: because he was too much of a coward. So, despite
Speaker 1: what Schappelle told them about the confession, the authorities in
Speaker 1: Ohio ruled Dylan out in this case. In addition to that,
Speaker 1: Dylan had an alibi, or so they thought.
Speaker 4: So I went to the Kalamazoo County Sheriff's Department and
Speaker 4: searched the entire file for the sson be At killings,
Speaker 4: and I spent hours and hours going through it. Very
Speaker 4: near the end of my search, I found a thin,
Speaker 4: little manila envelope in the back of one of these
Speaker 4: giant red ropes.
Speaker 2: Somebody written serial killer on.
Speaker 4: It, and it had about thirty pages of materials, mostly
Speaker 4: the materials that we've already discussed, the identification procedures in Ohio,
Speaker 4: which Nobsiner saying picked him out, the borrowed shotguns, the
Speaker 4: description of the wife's car to.
Speaker 2: Sketch, all of that.
Speaker 4: But it also had math calculations, and it turns out
Speaker 4: that that morning of November seventeenth, nineteen ninety, Dylan had
Speaker 4: gone hunting in Revenna, Ohio, on a piece of private property,
Speaker 4: and he got a deer that morning, and then he
Speaker 4: checked out of the game reserve very shortly after noon
Speaker 4: with his deer. And there were calculations that had been
Speaker 4: done by the police that purported to show that Dylan
Speaker 4: couldn't have made it from Revenna to the Fulton Game
Speaker 4: area in time to kill ss and Bennett late in
Speaker 4: the afternoon. But those calculations were wrong in several respects.
Speaker 4: First of all, what they actually calculated was how long
Speaker 4: it would have taken to drive to Kalama Zoo. They
Speaker 4: also assumed that he didn't leave the Revenna Game area
Speaker 4: until well after he'd actually checked out, And they also
Speaker 4: assumed that he drives scrupulously within the speed limit the
Speaker 4: entire time, which nobody in the Midwest does. And so
Speaker 4: if you took away those silk assumptions and just entered
Speaker 4: in how long does it take to get from the
Speaker 4: Ravenna Grounds to the Fulton Game area using Google Maps,
Speaker 4: he could have made it easily with almost an hour
Speaker 4: to spare, without driving so fast that he would have
Speaker 4: attracted the attention of the police.
Speaker 1: So first the cold case detectives concocted a near impossible
Speaker 1: round trip journey to prove Jeff guilty, and then they
Speaker 1: came up with an equally ridiculous math equation to clear
Speaker 1: Thomas Dillon of the murders. So right around the time
Speaker 1: we started our investigation, there was also a new development
Speaker 1: in Michigan. The Attorney General created a statewide conviction integrity unit,
Speaker 1: headed up by a former criminal defense attorney, Robin Frankel.
Speaker 4: So I immediately contacted Robin to tell her about two
Speaker 4: of our cases in particular, and Jess was one of
Speaker 4: those cases. And then eventually Robin got some investigators, and
Speaker 4: the investigators started going out and interviewing witnesses, and then
Speaker 4: they interviewed Jeff himself so the whole process took years
Speaker 4: of investigation and patients. But this whole time we had
Speaker 4: a habeas but pending, and so we agreed with the
Speaker 4: conviction integer unit to put the habeas on hold while
Speaker 4: the conviction Integrity Unit did its thing. So after years
Speaker 4: of investigating and then waiting, they finally got to the
Speaker 4: point where they agreed that the conviction had to be vacated,
Speaker 4: and so we drafted a stipulated order for the federal
Speaker 4: judge to sign granting the habeas corpus petition, so Jeff
Speaker 4: would be released and the conviction would be vacated and
Speaker 4: the sentence would also be vacated.
Speaker 1: And then finally in February of twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: Three, February sixteenth, the fifteenth was my seventy first birthday.
Speaker 3: The next day the students I called them and they said, Jeff,
Speaker 3: we're all together, all three students, as they said they
Speaker 3: would be. And I said, are you telling me you
Speaker 3: got good hoops? And they said yes, And then I
Speaker 3: started bawling, like I'm doing now, and.
Speaker 1: I know your release got delayed a few more days. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: there was an ice storm among other things. But on
Speaker 1: that Friday morning, the twenty fourth of February. What finally happened.
Speaker 3: Well, at ten thirty they said, Jeff, we're here to
Speaker 3: take you up front. I said, it's happening, and so
Speaker 3: they took me up front. Twelve o'clock I walked out.
Speaker 3: I hugged you, Cinda, I hugged Dave and the other
Speaker 3: two students that were there, Naomi and Olivia. I was
Speaker 3: still in a shock that had happened. I mean, even
Speaker 3: listen to me, I sounded like I was crying.
Speaker 1: I should remember that day. And I know that Roy Ballot,
Speaker 1: one of the original detectives in the case who passed
Speaker 1: away a year ago, would have been there too if
Speaker 1: he could have been. But his two sons and his
Speaker 1: honor made it a point to drive through the ice
Speaker 1: storm to be there when you came out.
Speaker 3: Both of them were there, and they had their dad's
Speaker 3: badges and their police ID, and they said, here, hold
Speaker 3: our dad's ID, and they held their badges and we
Speaker 3: had pictures taken.
Speaker 1: So, Jeff, I know it's only been a few weeks now,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure it's been a whirlwind. What have you
Speaker 1: been up to since you've been out.
Speaker 3: The past month? I have been organizing my cards to
Speaker 3: sell them. I have been trying to get some kind
Speaker 3: of IDs so I can open the bank account, and
Speaker 3: just trying to get caught up on the things that
Speaker 3: I need to do to move my life along.
Speaker 1: And I know you're loving getting to be outdoors again.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I've seen as many as fifteen deer in
Speaker 3: the yard. I've had eight gobblers with great, big long beards.
Speaker 3: I've kicked up bunny rabbits. I have all kinds of squirrels.
Speaker 3: I feed the birds. I mean the one day I
Speaker 3: had fourteen cardinals out there, all males.
Speaker 1: So, Dave and Jeff, what's next? Are there any current
Speaker 1: projects that you guys are working on, or any Michigan
Speaker 1: issues that you're hoping to address?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 4: Sure, well, Jeff's case isn't quite over. The prosecution hasn't
Speaker 4: actually dismissed the case against Jeff, so that needs to happen,
Speaker 4: and then there may be some issues, the systemic issues
Speaker 4: that we may have Jeff come in and talk about.
Speaker 4: We do press in the Michigan Innocence Clinic for systemic reform,
Speaker 4: for example, improved eyewitness identification procedures, improve forensic science issues,
Speaker 4: and sometimes we have axoneries come in and testify to
Speaker 4: legislative committees or state Supreme Court, which makes rules about
Speaker 4: ways in which the system went wrong and how it
Speaker 4: hurt them.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much for your work on Jeff's case.
Speaker 1: We'll have a link to the Michigan Innocence Clinic and
Speaker 1: our bio in case any of our listeners want to
Speaker 1: help support the great work that you and your students
Speaker 1: are doing. And now we come to the part of
Speaker 1: our show called closing arguments. First of all, thank you
Speaker 1: both for being here. Jeff, it has been an honor
Speaker 1: to help tell your story, and I'd like to hear
Speaker 1: from each of you just your final thoughts ending at
Speaker 1: all that you'd want to say to our listeners. Dave,
Speaker 1: why don't you go first?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 4: Well, this is one of the craziest cases that we've
Speaker 4: ever handled in the Michigan Innocence Clinic. There just aren't
Speaker 4: too many cases like this where you have such a
Speaker 4: ludicrous theory as to how and why the alleged perpetrator
Speaker 4: committed the and so the lesson to be drawn it
Speaker 4: from this case is that is that you can get
Speaker 4: a jury under the right circumstances to convict somebody based
Speaker 4: on the most ridiculous absurd evidence or lack of evidence
Speaker 4: and crazy theory, and it takes years and years and
Speaker 4: years to undo that injustice.
Speaker 3: Thank you, and I say, it's an honor to be
Speaker 3: here on this show and to tell me, excuse me,
Speaker 3: I'm starting to cry again, to tell my story and
Speaker 3: what happened to me was truly a miscarriage by my
Speaker 3: defense attorneys, by the cops and so on and so forth,
Speaker 3: because the stuff was there and it was ignored. I said,
Speaker 3: I'll take truth serum, I'll take hypnosis. I'll take an
Speaker 3: extensive polygraph that showed it. I'm telling the truth. I mean,
Speaker 3: I spent twenty years fighting to get out and it
Speaker 3: shouldn't take that one for a guy that was innocent.
Speaker 3: People have asked me, well, do you have anger? I
Speaker 3: said no, I might be mad, but I can't let
Speaker 3: that anger eat me and keep eating me, because then
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna heal. And so I go on with
Speaker 3: my life. I do what I do. I do the interviews.
Speaker 3: I took people out and showed them in the woods
Speaker 3: what I liked doing. I show up my cards and
Speaker 3: scratch art, and I just be myself.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'm your guest
Speaker 1: host Susan Simpson. Thanks to executive producers Jason Flahm and
Speaker 1: Kevin Wardis for inviting me to be here, and thanks
Speaker 1: also to our production team Connor Hall, Annie Chelsea Leyla
Speaker 1: Robinson and Jeff Cliburn. The music in this production comes
Speaker 1: from Free Time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure
Speaker 1: to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction,
Speaker 1: as well as Lava for Good. On all three platforms,
Speaker 1: you can find me on Twitter at the View from
Speaker 1: LL two and Instagram at soosim and you can listen
Speaker 1: to my podcast Proof and Undisclosed wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your podcasts. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for
Speaker 1: Good podcast, an association with Signal Company Number one