Jessica Heeringa Case: Jeffrey Willis, Kevin Bluhm, and the Remains

The Jessica Heeringa case centers on a 25-year-old mother who vanished on the night of April 26, 2013, while working alone at an Exxon gas station in Norton Shores, Michigan. After three years and more than 2,000 tips, a convicted serial killer named Jeffrey Willis was charged with her kidnapping and murder. A jury convicted him in May 2018, and he is serving life in prison without parole. Her body has never been found.

The Night She Disappeared

Heeringa was working the closing shift at the Exxon Mobil station on East Sternberg Road. An off-duty employee, Susan Follett, was riding motorcycles nearby with her husband when she noticed a silver minivan pull into the lot and drive around behind the station rather than up to the pumps. She later told investigators the behavior struck her as odd for that hour. Minutes later, she saw the van leave with a man behind the wheel.¹

Shortly after, a customer arrived and found no clerk behind the counter. Heeringa’s car was still in the parking lot, and nothing appeared to have been stolen. The customer called 911. Detectives found no signs of forced entry, but a closer look at the scene turned up a small drop of blood, the cover of a handgun laser sight, and what appeared to be tiny batteries on the ground.¹

The investigation grew fast. At its peak, a 45-officer task force worked the case, and investigators fielded more than 2,000 tips. Heeringa’s boyfriend, Dakotah Quail-Dyer, was investigated and cleared; the lead detective later described him as fully cooperative.² Investigators identified the silver minivan from witness accounts and interviewed Jeffrey Willis, a regular customer at the gas station who owned a matching vehicle. Willis provided an alibi and showed police a clean van. There was nothing at that point to charge him with.¹

How the Case Broke Open

Heeringa’s case went cold for nearly three years. Then, on April 16, 2016, a 16-year-old girl named Madison Nygard was walking home from a party in rural Muskegon County when a man in a silver van pulled up and offered her a ride. She got in after he said she could use his phone to call home. Once inside, she realized the phone was dead. The man began staring at her, then pulled a gun from under the driver’s seat and pointed it at her. Nygard unlocked the door and jumped from the moving van, running to a nearby home to call 911. Investigators later found two unspent bullet cartridges near the scene, suggesting the gun had jammed.¹

Police located security camera footage of the silver van and traced it back to Willis. Nygard identified him from a photo lineup.¹ Willis was arrested on May 17, 2016, while driving home from his job.³

What the Search of Willis’s Van and Home Revealed

The evidence pulled from Willis’s van and home tied him not only to the Nygard abduction attempt but to Heeringa’s disappearance and to the 2014 murder of Rebekah Bletsch, a 36-year-old mother shot to death while jogging near her home in Dalton Township.

Inside the van, investigators found a locked black metal toolbox hidden in a compartment behind the front passenger seat. It contained handcuffs, a ball gag, chains, rope, ammunition, and a laminated diagram of a female body marking “injection sites” at varying speeds. A second lockbox under the driver’s seat held a Walther pistol, loaded magazines, syringes, and a bottle of insulin.⁴ At trial, an expert testified that a large dose of fast-acting insulin injected into a non-diabetic person could leave the victim’s brain “basically toast” within four to five minutes.⁵

The gun recovered from the lockbox was forensically linked to evidence from both the Heeringa and Bletsch cases.¹ On Willis’s portable hard drive, detectives found a folder labeled “vics” containing subfolders marked with the initials of both women. The subfolder for Bletsch included photos of her, wanted posters from her case, and a photograph of a woman resembling her lying on a bed. The drive also contained thousands of videos depicting kidnapping, rape, and torture.⁶

The Trial and Conviction

Willis was first tried and convicted of Rebekah Bletsch’s murder on November 2, 2017, and sentenced to mandatory life without parole.¹ Before that trial, Judge William Marietti denied a defense motion to suppress the evidence found in Willis’s home and van, ruling that the search warrant relied on good-faith investigative efforts.⁶

On May 16, 2018, a jury convicted Willis of the kidnapping and murder of Jessica Heeringa. He received a second life sentence without parole.¹ Nygard testified during that trial about her escape.⁷ Prosecutors later dropped the attempted-kidnapping charges related to Nygard, reasoning that Willis was already serving two life sentences.⁸

Kevin Bluhm’s Role

Willis’s cousin, Kevin Bluhm, became a complicated figure in the investigation. Initially treated as a potential witness, Bluhm drew suspicion when he contacted detectives to report a “vivid dream” about a handgun magazine with an “orange top.” He later told investigators that Willis had shared details of his crimes and kept “souvenirs” from his victims. Bluhm claimed to have seen Heeringa’s nude body in the basement of a home that had belonged to their late grandfather. He said he helped Willis carry the body to a van and bury it, and he offered to lead police to the burial site. When investigators went to the location Bluhm described, they found nothing. He then retracted the entire account, telling police he had been “making the whole thing up.”⁷

Bluhm was charged as an accessory after the fact in Heeringa’s murder and pleaded no contest. On January 9, 2018, he was sentenced to time served, 476 days in the Muskegon County jail, plus five years of probation and a GPS tether.⁹ Muskegon County Prosecutor D.J. Hilson has said publicly that he believes Bluhm knows where Heeringa’s body is.⁷

The Search for Her Remains

More than a decade on, Heeringa’s body has not been found. Retired Norton Shores Police Lt. Michael Kasher, the lead detective on the case, believes she is buried in the Manistee National Forest near the Lake-Mason county line, northwest of Baldwin. Kasher has pointed to phone records showing Willis traveled to that remote area in June and August 2013, calling in sick to work on those days, which Kasher interprets as evidence Willis was “visiting or burying her even better.”¹⁰ Willis was familiar with that terrain as a hunter and snowmobiler.

Beginning in 2017, police conducted at least six searches in the Sauble Township area of Lake County using cadaver dogs, helicopters, and infrared cameras. None produced results. Investigators also searched an area near railroad tracks at South Sheridan Road and East Laketon Avenue based on statements from Kevin Bluhm. Nothing was found there either.² Kasher, who retired after the case, has said he thinks about it every day.¹⁰

Where the Case Stands Now

Willis is incarcerated at the Carson City Correctional Facility in Michigan, serving two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.⁸ The Michigan Court of Appeals upheld his conviction for Heeringa’s murder in 2019 and for Bletsch’s murder in 2020, characterizing the evidence linking him to the Heeringa kidnapping and murder as “untainted.”¹⁰

Willis continues to maintain his innocence. In 2024, through his appellate attorney, he filed a motion for relief from judgment in Muskegon County Circuit Court, alleging ineffective assistance of counsel and prosecutorial misconduct and seeking new trials on both convictions. A hearing on that motion was scheduled for June 29, 2026, before Judge Matthew Kacel. Assistant Prosecutor Heather Bloomquist noted that the legal standard for such motions is “quite high,” though there is no prohibition on filing them.¹¹

Heeringa’s family has publicly expressed doubt about the conviction. Her son, three years old when she vanished, is now a teenager and is being raised by her sister, Samantha. Quail-Dyer has since remarried and maintains visitation with his son. Her sister has said she does not believe Willis killed Jessica and that “she is still out there.” Their mother continues to operate a “Help Find Jessica Heeringa” Facebook page under the motto “No Jessica, No Justice.”²

1
ABC News. Two Attacks on Two Michigan Women: How Investigators Pieced It Together
2
WOOD-TV. A 10-Year Mystery: The Search for Jessica Heeringa
3
MLive. Who Is Jeffrey Willis: What We Know
4
MLive. Tool Box That Contained Torture Items Found in Willis’ Van
5
WWMT. Jury Hears From Insulin Expert on First Full Day of Testimony in Willis Trial
6
WOOD-TV. Evidence Suppression Denied Before Willis Trial
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FOX 17. Heeringa Missing 10 Years: Interrogation Tapes Reveal Connections Between Jeffrey Willis and His Victims
8
Manistee News Advocate. Who Is Killer Jeffrey Willis and Where Is He Now
9
CBS News Detroit. Murder Suspect’s Cousin Avoids New Jail Time in Jessica Heeringa Case
10
Holland Sentinel. Where Is Jessica Heeringa: Ten Years Later, Former Detective Thinks He Knows
11
MLive. Rebekah Bletsch’s Sister Reacts to Jeffrey Willis Hearing