Jeff Titus Wiki – Jeff Titus Biography
A man was released from a Michigan prison Friday after nearly 21 years, freed from a life sentence after state authorities acknowledged that an Ohio serial killer may have been the person who killed two deer hunters in 1990. . “A state of shock,” Jeff Titus, 71, told The Associated Press moments after being released from a Coldwater jail. “No handcuffs or prison blues.
I can’t wait to get out and walk through the woods.” Titus came to light just hours after a judge threw out his murder convictions under an agreement between the attorney general’s office and the University of Michigan Law School’s Innocence Clinic. Titus’ rights were violated in the 2002 trial when his attorney was never informed that investigators in Kalamazoo County had gathered evidence years earlier against Thomas Dillon, the state’s sentencing integrity unit said.
Jeff Titus Age
Jeff Titus is 71 years old.
Incident Detail
Local prosecutors at the time apparently didn’t know about Dillon either. Attorney General Dana Nessel acknowledged that this was “powerful evidence” that could have prevented Titus from being charged. Titus could still face a second trial, although David Moran of the Innocence Clinic suggested that was highly unlikely.
“We think the case is over,” said Moran, who was present with law students and others when Titus was released. Prosecutor Jeff Getting agreed that the evidence was “absolutely powerful” but said he needed more time to figure out what was coming next.
Doug Estes and Jim Bennett were fatally shot near Titus’s rural property in 1990. Titus was cleared as a suspect: he had been hunting deer 27 miles (43 kilometers) away, but murder charges were brought against him 12 years ago. later, after a new The investigative team had reopened the case. There was no physical evidence against Titus. Prosecutors portrayed him as a hothead who disliked trespassers.
In 2018, the Innocence Clinic went to federal court, arguing that Titus’s constitutional rights were violated because his trial attorney was never told about another police theory about how the victims were killed. Later, while the appeal was pending, Moran made a startling discovery in dusty boxes at the sheriff’s office: a 30-page file from the original investigation that concerned an alternate suspect.
It was Dillon, a man from Magnolia, Ohio, who was never charged. On the other hand, Dillon made headlines in Ohio with his arrest in 1993. He pleaded guilty to killing five people in that state who had been hunting, fishing or jogging, between 1989 and 1992. He died in 2011.
The file revealed that a woman and her son, brought to Ohio by investigators, identified Dillon as the man in a car in a ditch near the Michigan crime scene. The woman also described a car that resembled one owned by Dillon’s wife. A man who had shared a cell with Dillon in 1993 told the FBI that Dillon had referred to killing two people in the woods, according to the file.
Moran said much of the credit belongs to Jacinda Davis and Susan Simpson. Davis, of the Investigation Discovery television network, and Simpson, via the “Undisclosed” podcast, had raised doubts about Titus’s guilt and questions about Dillon’s possible role.
Moran said his reporting inspired him to go to the sheriff’s office where, after six hours, he found the file with “serial killer” written on it in pencil. Simpson also said that she saw the file. “Since that information was not part of the file that was provided to the prosecutor’s office before the charges were authorized and then the trial took place, I don’t know if we’ll ever have a good answer,” Getting said.
Davis and Simpson were in jail when Titus was released Friday. “I’ve been talking to Jeff on a weekly basis for four years,” Davis said. “To finally meet him in person and give him a hug, you can’t put that moment into words.” Simpson said her work has played a role in the release of five people from prison. “The next chapter is all theirs to write,” she said.
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