Murder of Jessica Heeringa

Jessica Lynn Heeringa was a 25-year-old woman from Norton Shores, Michigan, who disappeared on the night of April 26, 2013, while working alone at an Exxon gas station. The last transaction on her register, a cigarette lighter, was recorded at 10:55 p.m. About five minutes later, the station's manager and her husband drove past and saw a man repeatedly opening and closing the rear hatch of a silver minivan before he drove away; a matching vehicle was recorded by nearby businesses' surveillance cameras speeding from the area between 11:02 p.m. and 11:05 p.m. At 11:10 p.m., a customer who could not find Heeringa in the store called 911, and police arriving at 11:25 p.m. found her car, jacket, purse, and cigarettes left behind, along with drops of blood and firearm parts outside the station. DNA testing later matched the blood to Heeringa. Investigators ruled out robbery, since more than $400 remained in her wallet and no cash was missing from the station's register.

Over the next three and a half years, a task force of 75 people across 14 specialized divisions and 15 local, state, and federal agencies logged about 12,000 hours investigating the case. The effort included more than 1,400 tips, 33 search warrants, 20 consensual residential searches, 12 ground searches, and two underwater searches. Heeringa's remains have never been recovered.

In September 2016, Jeffrey Thomas Willis, a Muskegon Township man who had been a frequent customer at Heeringa's workplace, was charged by the Muskegon County Prosecutor's Office with her kidnapping and murder. Investigators said Willis matched a witness's description of a man seen with Heeringa on the night she disappeared, and that his minivan matched the one recorded fleeing the scene. A search of his home turned up a computer folder labeled "vics," which prosecutors said held photographs of Heeringa and the date of her disappearance, along with a separate subfolder of photographs of Rebekah Bletsch, a jogger Willis was later convicted of murdering in an unrelated 2014 case. In December 2016, a Muskegon County judge ruled the evidence was sufficient for Willis to stand trial. Following a trial in May 2018, a jury found Willis guilty of Heeringa's kidnapping and murder on May 16, 2018; he was sentenced the following month to life in prison without parole.

Willis's cousin, Kevin Lavern Bluhm, was charged in June 2016 with lying to police about the investigation and pleaded guilty that August, receiving a sentence of time served. Bluhm later told investigators that he had seen Willis with Heeringa's body, that she had been struck, restrained, and sexually assaulted, and that he helped Willis bury her near Sheridan Road after she died. On November 27, 2017, Bluhm pleaded no contest to being an accessory after the fact for helping dispose of Heeringa's body; he was sentenced on January 9, 2018, to time served, five years of probation, and at least one year wearing a GPS tether.

Heeringa's disappearance led Michigan lawmakers to introduce a bill known as Jessica's Law in December 2013, requested by her parents, which would require gas stations and convenience stores open between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. to install security cameras or to staff at least two employees during those hours. As of March 2020, the bill had not passed the Michigan legislature.