24 Hour News 8 reports, an attempted abduction and two murder cases against Jeffrey Willis will be decided separately, a judge ruled Friday.
It took Judge William Marietti less than an hour to make his decision.
Before announcing the ruling, he acknowledged trying Willis on each case would drain resources. However, he said he thought “it would be a nightmare” for a jury to make distinctions between the evidence in a three-part trial.
Muskegon County Prosecutor D.J. Hilson argued in court Friday that he want to combine the trial for the 2013 kidnapping and the murder of Jessica Heeringa, the 2014 murder of Rebekah Bletsch and the 2016 attempted abduction of a teenage girl because “they are so interconnected and interwoven.” Hilson said the attempted abduction opened the door to everything else.
However, Willis’ attorney said he was worried combining the attempted abduction case with the two murders would “taint the waters.”
The three crimes took place over three years in three different locations.
The court says Willis’ trial for Bletsch’s murder, which was scheduled to start in June, will now be delayed. It has not yet been rescheduled.