[chris]

A jury convicted Jeffrey Thomas Willis on November 2, 2017, of first-degree murder and a felony firearm charge in the fatal shooting of Rebekah Bletsch, 36, as she jogged near her home in Dalton Township, Michigan.

Bletsch was jogging on a rural road on the evening of June 29, 2014, when she was shot several times in the head. A couple driving on Automobile Road found her on the shoulder and stopped to help.

The first report to Muskegon County dispatchers described a jogger who appeared to have been struck by a vehicle, according to trial testimony. Michelle Klint, a registered nurse who lived nearby and coached Bletsch's daughter in basketball, reached the scene and found the woman still breathing. Klint later testified she did not immediately recognize her neighbor. Her husband placed the 911 call as the couple tried to help until deputies and paramedics arrived, and a recording of the call was played years afterward at the murder trial.

Investigators determined Bletsch had been shot three times, not hit by a car. The killing drew no obvious motive and no suspect, and it went unsolved for nearly two years while the sheriff's office publicized a reward and appealed for tips.

The break came in April 2016, when a 16-year-old girl told police she had escaped from a minivan by jumping out as the driver tried to abduct her. A search of that van turned up a .22-caliber handgun and ammunition, according to prosecutors. Ballistics tests matched the weapon to shell casings recovered from the road where Bletsch was killed.

Willis, then 46, of Muskegon County, was charged with the murder on May 25, 2016. Prosecutors said a search of his computer and van turned up images of bound women and a file linked to Bletsch. At trial, Willis tried to blame a cousin for the shooting. He was sentenced weeks later to life in prison with no possibility of parole.

In 2018, Willis was convicted again, in the 2013 kidnapping and killing of Jessica Heeringa, a gas station clerk in nearby Norton Shores whose body was never found. Willis refused to face Bletsch's family during victim statements at his sentencing, and Michigan lawmakers later passed a measure, signed in 2018 and named for Bletsch, requiring convicted defendants to remain present for such statements.