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Trial starts for man accused of kidnapping, killing clerk

Scales of Justice photo
Tim Evanson via Wikimedia | CC BY 3.0
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wikimedia.org

A prosecutor says a man convicted of fatally shooting a jogger and accused of kidnapping and killing a western Michigan gas station clerk possessed hundreds of videos of women being abducted, raped and killed.

Muskegon County Prosecutor D.J. Hilson spoke Tuesday during opening statements in the murder trial of Jeffrey Willis. Hilson says Willis also had computer files containing information about the cases of Rebekah Bletsch, the slain jogger, and Jessica Heeringa, the gas station clerk who disappeared from the Norton Shores gas station in 2013.

Defense attorney Fred Johnson says there's no evidence Willis killed or kidnapped Heeringa, whose body hasn't been found.

Willis was convicted last year in the 2014 fatal shooting of Bletsch. He's serving a life sentence in her death. Willis denied wrongdoing during the trial.