MUSKEGON, Mich. (WOOD) — Convicted murderer Jeffrey Willis was in court Monday ahead of the start of his trial in the April 2013 kidnapping and murder of Jessica Heeringa.
A judge denied a motion to combine the Heeringa murder case and the attempted abduction of a teen girl in 2016 into one trial. The abduction case will be heard after the Heeringa case, according to the Musekgon County Prosecutor's Office.
The Heeringa trial is expected to begin in early May. She vanished from a gas station in Norton Shores during her shift on the night of April 26, 2013.
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The defense also filed multiple motions like those before the Rebekah Bletsch murder case, including not allowing evidences from the other cases. The judge is expected to make a decision on the motions by Friday.
Before the Bletsch trial, Judge William Marietti denied the prosecution’s request to combine the trials.
Heeringa’s body has never been found, but prosecutors say a file titled "VICS" found on one of Willis' hard drives and containing a subfolder labeled with Heeringa's initials and a code indicating the date of her disappearance is evidence she's dead. Another subfolder in that "VICS" file was labeled with Bletsch's name and a code for the date of her death.
Bletsch, 36, was shot and killed in June 2014 while jogging along a road near her home in Dalton Township, north of Muskegon.
In December, Willis was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for felony first-degree murder as well as a consecutive three-year sentence on a felony firearm charge in the Bletsch case.