Jeff Titus, who spent nearly 21 years in prison for the deaths of two Michigan hunters in 1990, reached a $5.25 million settlement after alleging police violated his rights by failing to disclose evidence that could have helped him at trial, a lawyer said Monday. Titus, who was released in 2023 and whose murder convictions were erased at prosecutors’ request, blamed the withholding of information for keeping his case from getting a fairer review, the lawyer said.
Lawyer Wolf Mueller said the litigation focused on the disclosure issue rather than on building the settlement around a specific alternate suspect. An email seeking comment from the lawyer who defended a retired homicide detective in the lawsuit was not immediately answered, according to the report.
Mueller said Titus had long maintained his innocence and that the agreement marked a rare endpoint after years of attempts to overturn the convictions. “It’s been a long road for Jeff,” Mueller said. “He’s 74. He lost two decades of his life. The money doesn’t make up for the loss of decades, but it allows him to put this part of his life behind him.”
In 1990, Doug Estes and Jim Bennett were fatally shot near Titus’ property in Kalamazoo County. Titus was initially cleared as a suspect, but prosecutors later filed murder charges in 2002, and the state portrayed him as a hothead who did not like trespassers, according to the report.
After years in prison, the case drew fresh attention as efforts to obtain a new trial intensified. Students and staff at the University of Michigan law school worked to get Titus a new trial, and they helped find a 30-page file from the original investigation at the county sheriff’s office, the report said. Mueller described the file as a key development, saying it referred to an alternate suspect: Thomas Dillon of Magnolia, Ohio.
The report said that Jacinda Davis, a producer at Investigation Discovery, and Susan Simpson, through the podcast “Undisclosed,” had aired questions about Dillon and his possible role. Dillon died in prison in 2011, after being arrested in 1993 and ultimately pleading guilty to killing five people in Ohio who had been hunting, fishing or jogging, the report said.
Mueller said prosecutors’ handling of the matter ultimately changed. The report said the Innocence Clinic at the University of Michigan law school and two investigators helped get authorities to acknowledge that an Ohio serial killer might have been the person who killed the hunters in 1990. Prosecutors then released Titus in 2023 and erased his murder convictions at prosecutors’ request.
Even with the alternate-suspect history, Mueller said the settlement reached Monday did not center on Dillon. Instead, the lawyer said police were accused in the lawsuit of violating Titus’ rights by not sharing information that could have cast doubt on testimony from a key witness at trial.