Lawless: Inmate says police, prosecutors used bogus witnesses to falsely charge him

Indianapolis Star

20-05-2025

ELKHART, Ind. — Christopher Thomas left a trail of blood as he staggered and fell on the ground outside his motel room.
As he lay face down, wearing only a pair of shorts and a wristwatch, several more bullets pierced the left side of his head.
The former U.S. Marine who spiraled into crack addiction died from one gunshot wound to the chest and at least four to the head. Thomas had been a confidential informant for the Elkhart County Drug Task Force for 10 months leading up to his shooting Aug. 19, 1998. He'd helped narcotics detectives by conducting nearly 100 drug buys that incriminated dozens of cocaine dealers.
The murder of Thomas remained unsolved for several months. Investigators had no murder weapon, no fingerprints and no evidence pointing to a suspect. Early eyewitness descriptions of the gunman indicated only that he was a tall, thin Black man who wore dark clothing.
But in early 1999, Elkhart detectives zeroed in on two suspects. Police and prosecutors alleged that Reginald Dillard and Eddie Fredrick, two drug dealers from Michigan, carried out the murder under orders from a local kingpin who wanted Thomas dead for working with the police. A jury convicted them the following year.
Dillard proclaimed his innocence during his trial and at the sentencing hearing.
"We didn't kill the man," Dillard said. "I didn't kill nobody."
The witnesses, the police and the prosecutors all lied, he said. "Everybody."
The men both received the maximum sentence of 65 years in prison, where Fredrick died in 2005.
Dillard, however, is back in court armed with what he and a team of attorneys contend is new evidence the case against him and Fredrick was built on fabricated statements from fake witnesses.
Among their allegations, detailed in a 273-page petition challenging Dillard's conviction: The prosecution's star witness, a woman who said she saw the murder, was not there when Thomas was shot. Instead, they say, she was a false informant tapped to incriminate Dillard and Fredrick by a detective with whom she was having sex.
Prosecutors also arranged favorable plea deals for other witnesses in exchange for fabricated testimonies, Dillard and his attorneys allege. One of these witnesses now claims in an affidavit that he lied because detectives forced him to incriminate Dillard and Fredrick.
As investigators focused on the two men, they failed to investigate other potential suspects with motives to kill Thomas, Dillard's petition alleges.
One of those who was not investigated was a drug dealer who, days before Thomas was killed, called him a "marked man" for being an informant.
Another was a drug dealer whose wife told investigators she helped get rid of shell casings and gun parts tied to the murder weapon.
Elkhart police have used false evidence to convict innocent people before.
Elliot Slosar, a Chicago civil rights attorney who represents Dillard, has alleged the same types of misconduct — the use of fabricated testimonies, the reliance on jailhouse informants and the coercion or manipulation of witnesses — in several other cases.
So far, six people have had their convictions overturned in the Northern Indiana city of a little over 53,000. It's the highest per capita in Indiana and 5th in the country. Four of these people have reached multimillion-dollar settlements — totaling nearly $31 million — with city and county officials to resolve allegations they were framed by police and prosecutors.
A new IndyStar investigation revealed that a group of Elkhart police officers known as the Wolverines abused their power in the 1980s and 1990s, cloaking themselves in a code of silence and operating with impunity. The Wolverines climbed the ranks. Some became detectives. One of the former detectives Dillard accused of helping harass and coerce a witness into testifying was among the Wolverines.
Elkhart County Prosecutor Vicki Becker, a longtime prosecutor who was elected to lead the agency in 2016, declined to comment citing trial rules prohibiting attorneys from making public statements about pending cases. But she has previously rejected broad allegations of misconduct by Elkhart law enforcement. Becker was not one of the prosecutors in Dillard's murder case.
Slosar has three other wrongful conviction claims pending in Elkhart County courts. The four cases are set for a three-day hearing in Elkhart County beginning May 21.
"All these clients we have were framed by the same people in the same way," Slosar told a class last year at Notre Dame Law School, where he's an adjunct professor. These clients, he said, were "disposable in the eyes of the people who framed them."
Dillard, the oldest of five children from Detroit, dropped out of high school. He remembers telling an ex-girlfriend that he was "tired of being broke," so he turned to selling drugs.
In 1995, he began taking his business to Elkhart and later came to know and sell drugs to Thomas. Four years later, he was arrested for killing Thomas, a crime Dillard said he could not have committed because it happened when he was in Detroit.
This account of Thomas' murder, the ensuing investigation and prosecution, and the impact of the misconduct Dillard alleged is based on police reports, court depositions, trial transcripts, witness affidavits, personnel records, letters, notes and interviews.
Tricia Mock had been up for several days and nights, binging on alcohol and crack cocaine.
On the sixth night, Mock told police, she was in a drug house where she often saw Dillard and Fredrick. She'd known them for months. They saw her as their little money maker, she told police. She brought them people who wanted to buy drugs, or she gave them cash she'd made from prostituting herself in the streets. In return, they supplied her drug habit.
Dillard received a call at some point that night, Mock told police.
"It will be done tonight," she claimed to have heard Dillard tell the person on the other line.
Then, Mock said Dillard told her she was coming with him and Fredrick to carry out the task. They left the drug house in a blue sedan and arrived at Three Point Motel, where Thomas was staying.
By then, according to Mock, the two men had filled her in on the plan: The order to kill Thomas came from another drug dealer who'd called Dillard and wanted Thomas dead for working with the police. Mock's job, she said, was to lure Thomas to the door.
Fredrick and Mock got out of the car and walked to Thomas' room. After Mock knocked, Thomas cracked open the door but kept the chain attached, she told police. Fredrick, who Mock said was standing next to her, kicked the door open and walked in.
"Surprise," he told Thomas, according to Mock.
Thomas immediately bolted out of the room, leaving Fredrick and Mock inside. He turned left and then went back and ran in the opposite direction. That's when Mock heard the first gunshot, she told police. She assumed Dillard, who was outside, fired it.
Fredrick came out of the room and walked toward Thomas, who was lying face down on the ground, and shot him a few more times in the head, Mock told police. Then, they went back to the car and drove away.
Dillard and his attorneys allege Mock's account was pure fiction.
They point to two eyewitnesses who lived in trailers near the motel and had a view of Thomas' room from their windows. Both said they saw Thomas run out of his room, chased by a thin and tall Black man who shot him multiple times in the head. Both said the gunman ran off and didn't drive away in a car, as Mock told police.
Neither said they saw a woman that night. Neither were called to testify for the state.
Instead, Dillard and his attorneys allege, police and prosecutors settled on a false story made possible by a detective with a long history of troubling behavior.
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