At 6:45 a.m. on Tuesday, January 24, 1984, 16-year-old Michelle Jackson left her aunt’s home in the 14500 Block of Wildemere Street in Detroit, Michigan, to walk two blocks to catch a bus to Murray-Wright High School. She was temporarily staying with her aunt and was going to move into a new home with her mother in five days.
Late that afternoon, when Michelle did not come home, family members filed a missing person’s report and began searching the neighborhood. The following day, they discovered Michelle’s body in an abandoned, debris-filled garage about two blocks away from the bus stop. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled.
The crime was among about 50 rapes of school girls during the past year in Detroit and prompted the police to call for a summit to try to arrest the perpetrators and prevent further attacks.
The crime was still unsolved months later when 36-year-old Eddie Lloyd, who was at the Detroit Psychiatric Institute after being involuntarily hospitalized for treatment for mental illness, began writing letters to the police department with suggestions on how to solve various murders, including Jackson’s.
Sometimes, the department received three letters a day from Lloyd. In October 1984, after the police received a letter that they believed contained information about the murder that only the perpetrator would know, detectives paid a visit to Lloyd.
During the course of three interrogations, police officers allowed Lloyd to believe that, by confessing and getting arrested, he would help them “smoke out” the real perpetrator. They fed him details that he could not have known, including the location of the body, the type of jeans the victim was wearing, a description of earrings the victim wore, and other details from the crime scene. He was arrested on October 26, 1984 after he signed a written confession and gave a tape recorded statement as well.
Lloyd was charged with first-degree murder.
In April 1985, Lloyd’s appointed attorney, Charles Lusby, who had received $150 for pre-trial preparation but conducted no investigation into Lloyd’s mental state or the confession, fell ill eight days before the trial. Attorney Stanford Rubach was appointed to take his place, but the trial was not postponed. The trial began on May 1 in Detroit Recorder’s Court.
The prosecution played the recorded confession and contended that Lloyd killed Jackson because he had raped her and did not want to be identified.
The prosecution introduced forensic reports that said a semen stain had been identified on long underwear that had been used to strangle Jackson. The reports indicated that a bottle had been recovered that appeared to have been forced into the victim. In addition, semen had been identified on a piece of paper stuck to the bottle. The only testing that had been done was to confirm the presence of semen.
Rubach did not meet with Lusby before the trial. He did not cross-examine the police officer most directly involved in the confession. He called no defense witnesses and gave a five-minute closing argument.
On May 2, after about 30 minutes of deliberation, the jury convicted Lloyd of first-degree murder.
Rubach later said that Lloyd would not permit an insanity defense, saying, “With a psychiatric plea, we might have had a chance. If he’s not goofy, there’s not a dog in Texas."
At the sentencing hearing on May 21, 1985, Lloyd insisted that he was innocent. Asked if he had anything to say, Lloyd answered, “Into each life tears must fall. That means on both sides. [Ms. Jackson] had a right to live, as we all do...she said goodbye...and disappeared in the darkness never to be seen again alive. One day later she was found in a vacant garage. Cold, alone, and lifeless...Eddie Lloyd was focused on as a suspect while he was a mental patient and somewhere along the line he was charged and convicted of the crime, a heinous crime, brutal. What I want to say to the court is that, to the family, M.J. (Michelle Jackson), to the city of Detroit, to everybody who was involved with the case, I did not kill M.J. I never killed anybody in my life and I wouldn’t.”
Judge Leonard Townsend complained that the crime deserved the death penalty instead of the mandatory sentence of life in prison. He said that “termination by extreme con[striction”—hanging—was the “only justifiable sentence.”
Judge Townsend appointed Robert Slameka to handle Lloyd’s appeal. Two years later, after Lloyd complained to the Attorney Grievance Commission that Slameka would not communicate with him except by sending photocopies of notes on a legal pad, Slameka (who would be disbarred years later based on an array of misconduct) replied to the Commission with a one-page reply.
It said, in part, “This is a sick individual who kidnapped, raped, and strangled a young woman…His claim of my wrongdoing is frivolous, just as is his existence. Both should be terminated.”
Lloyd’s appeal was unsuccessful.
In 1995, Lloyd contacted the Innocence Project, seeking assistance in obtaining DNA testing. For years, Innocence Project interns searched for the evidence. Seven years later, the evidence was found with the assistance of the Wayne County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.
In 2002, DNA testing conducted by Forensic Science Associates, a California DNA laboratory, as well as subsequent testing performed by the Michigan State Crime Lab, found the same unknown male profile from sperm cells on the broken glass bottle, the piece of paper, the stain on the long underwear, and samples collected from the victim's body during the autopsy. Lloyd was excluded as the source of the biological evidence..
On August 26, 2002, Lloyd’s attorneys, Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project, and local counsel Saul Green, along with the agreement of Wayne County Prosecutor Michael Duggan, presented a motion to vacate the charges and to dismiss the case. Judge Townsend granted the motion.
Lloyd was released after serving 17 years in prison.
Two years later, on September 22, 2004, Lloyd died of a heart attack. Ultimately, his family settled a lawsuit for nearly $4 million.
In October 2019, 72-year-old Kennith Dupree was charged with the rape and murder after the DNA profile in the evidence was identified as Dupree’s DNA. In 2020, after pleading guilty to second-degree murder, Dupree was sentenced to 50 to 100 years in prison.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-29-2011
Last Update Date: 02-23-2026
