On the night of August 19, 1998, 35-year-old Christopher Thomas was fatally shot outside the Three Point Motel on Bypass Road in Elkhart, Indiana. Thomas was living in room 18 and had been working as a drug informant for the Elkhart Police Drug Task Force. He was shot once in the chest, fell down, and was shot at least four times in the head.
As a consequence of his murder, at least seven drug cases that were pending were dismissed by the Elkhart County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. The cases were the result of Thomas making purchases of cocaine while working as a police informant. Without his testimony, the cases were no longer viable.
Six months later, on February 18, 1999, police arrested 30-year-old Reginald Dillard for the murder. On March 11, 1999, police arrested 22-year-old Eddie Fredrick for the murder as well.
On January 11, 2000, Dillard and Fredrick went to trial in Elkhart County Superior Court. The prosecution said that Thomas’s murder was a “hit” that had been ordered by Savanne Williams, a local drug dealer, because Thomas had “snitched” on Williams.
Lead prosecutor Michael Christofeno told the jury in his opening statement that the case would rely on the testimony of four witnesses; Tricia Mock, a sex worker who claimed to have been with Dillard and Fredrick when Thomas was murdered, and three men who claimed that Dillard and Fredrick had made admissions to the crime in their presence. Two of the men, Tyrand Terry and David Brownlee, were jailhouse informants. The third was Chris Brown, who was Fredrick’s uncle, who was facing his own criminal charges.
The prosecution presented evidence from first responders who were summoned after the shooting and had found Thomas dead on the ground in front of the motel.
Lieutenant Barry Snyder testified that after Thomas was arrested on a drug charge in 1997, he began working as a confidential informant, making controlled drug buys, to obtain leniency in the charge against him. Snyder testified that even after Thomas’s case had been resolved, he continued to work for the Drug Task Force because it was lucrative work. He was paid $50 for each undercover buy. The Task Force also paid for Thomas’s room at the motel.
James Fazio, an Indiana State Police Laboratory firearms examiner, testified that two different calibers of bullets were recovered from Thomas’s body. One was a .35-caliber bullet, a type fired by a nine-millimeter pistol. The four bullets that were recovered from Thomas’s head were .22 caliber, Fazio said.
Tricia Mock testified that she and Thomas were “lovers” who smoked crack cocaine together. She said that Dillard and Fredrick sold crack cocaine out of her apartment and that she brought customers to them in exchange for money or cocaine. She admitted that at the time of the crime her drug use was severe—she was frequently high and often went days without sleeping.
She said she was arrested on January 21, 1999, for possession of crack cocaine, a class B felony carrying a possible sentence of up to 20 years in prison. While she was in jail, Elkhart police detective Stephen Rezutko took her into a room and asked her if she knew anything about Thomas’s murder. She said she knew nothing about it. She told the jury that was a lie she told because she didn’t want to get into trouble.
She testified that Rezutko left, but returned later that day. At this meeting, she gave a statement that Rezutko typed up. She said she was not present for the murder, but that Dillard and Fredrick re-enacted it a week later.
On February 10, 1999, Mock had given a third statement, saying that she had witnessed the murder. This statement was riddled with inconsistencies, as was her trial testimony. At the trial, she said she purchased crack cocaine from Dillard and Fredrick at their house in Elkhart. She said that on that day she had not slept and had split a fifth of rum with two others. She said that Dillard was on the phone when she arrived and heard him say “it would be done tonight.”
Mock said that Dillard got off the phone and said she could not leave. When she tried, she said Fredrick put a gun to her head. Dillard then told others who were there to “get the guns.”
A few hours later, she said she left with both men in Dillard’s car, a blue four-door sedan with paint peeling off the hood. In the car, she said that Dillard told Fredrick that “Vane,” referring to Savane Williams, for whom she had sold cocaine in the past, had ordered the hit.
She said she realized where they were going as they neared the Three Points Motel. She said that she had been there with Thomas the night before, drinking and smoking crack cocaine and having sex. Mock said they pulled into the parking lot, and Dillard told her to knock on the door so that Thomas would answer.
She said Fredrick walked beside her and then he stepped behind her when she reached the door. After she knocked, she saw the curtain move in the window to her left, and Thomas opened the door about six to 10 inches. At that point, Fredrick kicked the door open and pushed Mock inside the room. Fredrick walked in, saying, “Surprise, m----------r.”
Mock said Thomas ran out of the room, first to the left and then back past the open door to the right. She said she heard a gunshot. She went to the doorway and saw Thomas run down the sidewalk and then fall. Mock said Fredrick went outside, stood over Thomas, and fired three or four shots into Thomas’s head. She quoted him as saying, “I’m making sure this snitching m----------r’s dead.”
She said she didn’t see the gun that Fredrick used, but saw him pull something out of his pants before the shots were fired. She said she ran back to the car and got in. Fredrick drove while Dillard was in the front passenger seat. On the way back to their house, she said Dillard told her to keep her mouth shut or she “would be next.”
Despite the threat, she continued to buy crack cocaine from Dillard and Fredrick. A week later, she testified, Dillard and Fredrick re-enacted the murder, laughing as they mimicked the surprised and fearful look on Thomas’s face. Mock got off the witness stand to show how Dillard raised his hand and pointed an imaginary gun and Fredrick straddled an imaginary body and pretended to shoot it.
She also testified that while in the jail, waiting to see the jail psychiatrist, Dillard walked up to the waiting room door. She said he pushed on the door, but she held it closed. He said, “You know I’m going to get you,” she said. When she stepped back from the door, he saw there were others in the room and so he said, “Well, you know they’re gonna get you. They’re gonna get you for lying.”
She testified that she had pled guilty to the cocaine possession charge as a class D felony on April 19, 1999. The charge carried a reduced penalty of three years in prison. She claimed that her plea was not conditioned on her testimony and that she had not been promised any benefits for her testimony.
During cross-examination, the defense pointed out numerous discrepancies between her testimony and her pretrial deposition. In her deposition, she said that she knew Thomas, but “didn’t know him well.” She said the house where the conversation about the hit took place was white and on Sixth Street, but she had told police prior to the trial that it was yellow and on Moody Avenue.
She had told police that she saw an AK-47 and a .44-caliber gun at the house, but at the trial said she never saw a gun that day.
Her testimony that a gun had been held to her head was a fact she had never mentioned before in any of her interviews. She said it came back to her in a nightmare about a month before the trial.
Shown a map of the Three Points Motel and asked to circle Thomas’s room, she circled the wrong room.
The defense also showed her a letter she had written to a friend that said she would be sentenced to time served under her plea agreement. She said the statement she gave police was a lie.
The prosecution called Mock’s criminal defense attorney, Jeffrey Majerek, who testified that she pled guilty one week after he filed his appearance. He said the reduction in the charge was “not out of the ordinary.”
Chris Brown, Fredrick’s uncle, testified that he had not seen Fredrick, who had been living in Detroit, for about 10 years before the summer of 1998. Brown said that on the night of Thomas’s murder, Fredrick admitted to Brown that he was present at the shooting. Asked by the prosecutor if Fredrick said anything about any informant being murdered, Brown said that Fredrick had said, “The ‘mf’ will not be talking no more.”
Brown said that as Fredrick was talking, Dillard approached and angrily said, “You talk too much, shut up.”
Tyrand Terry testified that in February and March 1999, he and Dillard were both in the Elkhart County jail. At the time, Terry was facing an attempted robbery charge. He said that Dillard mentioned that someone had “told on him.” Terry left the jail soon after when he was sentenced to prison on the attempted robbery charge. He was released in September 1999 and two weeks later was arrested for felony cocaine possession. He said that Dillard and Fredrick were “running round the jail bragging about what they did to Mr. Thomas.”
Terry said that they were bragging that “these bitches ain’t got the evidence on us and we [are] gonna go…home.” He said he took some notes of a conversation he had with Dillard and Fredrick because it was hard for him “to sleep some nights knowing that these two heartless killers might be released at any given day.”
Terry said Dillard told him that Savane Williams called Dillard and Fredrick and offered them two ounces of cocaine each if “they go take care of…business for him.” According to Terry, both men said that Williams “had sold some drugs to Mr. Thomas…and Mr. Thomas was an informant.”
Terry said they told him they paid Mock a couple of bags of cocaine to act as a decoy. Terry said they described how Thomas ran out of the room and they shot him. Terry said that Dillard told him that after shooting Thomas, he and Fredick “went and got high.”
Terry said he expected no benefits and received no promises of leniency on his cocaine charge. He said he was facing a minimum of 20 years and a maximum of 50 years on the charge. He also denied that he had told another prisoner in the jail, Aaron Tacy, that he was worried that police would renege an offer to help him if he helped them because he had nothing in writing.
David Brownlee, who was in the jail with Dillard and Fredrick, testified that Fredrick confessed to shooting Thomas in the head “three or four times” and that Savane Williams had paid them to do the hit. The jury was instructed that Brownlee’s testimony was only to be considered against Fredrick and not against Dillard. Brownlee, like Terry, was facing a cocaine possession charge. He denied that he was promised leniency or that he expected any favorable treatment because of his testimony.
Elkhart police captain Larry Towns, coordinator of the Drug Task Force, testified that Thomas had worked 99 cases for the task force, including the case against Savane Williams. Towns said that Williams had been in court on a charge of dealing cocaine eight days before Thomas was murdered.
The defense presented Aaron Tacy, who testified that he and Terry had been housed in adjacent cells in the isolation ward in December 1999. He said that Terry told him that the police came to the jail earlier that week and asked him to testify against Dillard and Fredrick. He had balked until the police told him that if he helped them, they would help him. He was worried, Tacy said, because he had asked for a written guarantee, but the police refused and said he had to trust them.
Toby Torren Maxwell, another former prisoner in the jail, testified that Brownlee told him he had been trying to elicit information from Dillard and Fredrick about their case.
Glen Woodhouse, another prisoner in the jail, testified that he had known Fredrick since 1996. He said that Fredrick and Dillard told him they did not kill Thomas. He also testified that he caught Terry searching Fredrick’s belongings in their shared cell.
Matthew Price testified that he was a bartender and that he lived in a trailer on a property behind the motel. He said he used the motel driveway to get to his trailer and that when he pulled in around 11:45, he saw two men in a white Honda Prelude parked along the driveway. He also saw Thomas, whom he knew, walking alongside the motel as if he was on his way to use the pay phone in the front office. He said they nodded at one another. Then, he went to the trailer, bolted the door, and made dinner.
As he was eating, he heard a loud bang, He said his window was 20 feet from room 18. He said he saw Thomas run out of the room to the left. A man wearing all black with a black stocking hat followed and fired a gun. Thomas fell to the ground, and the man ran up and shot him three more times, Price said.
He said the man ran toward Price’s trailer, then turned left, and ran. He said he saw a second man, who appeared to be shirtless, run out of Room 18, approach Thomas’s body, and then run off. He testified that he did not see any woman present.
The defense presented evidence that Dillard and Fredrick were never registered tenants at the house on Sixth Street where Mock said they lived.
During closing arguments, the prosecution told the jury that the case hinged on Dillard and Fredrick’s “evil partnership” with Savane Williams to “conduct evil business.”
During the rebuttal argument, co-prosecutor Curtis Hill ridiculed the defense theory that the witnesses were promised deals in exchange for their testimony. “If you listen to the defense, you would believe that [co-prosecutor] Christofeno and I are Monty Hall on ‘Let’s Make a Deal,’” Hill declared. “Well, shame on me if that were true.”
Hill said there was “absolutely no evidence, none, that any of the State’s witnesses received any consideration in exchange for testimony or future consideration for testimony,” Hill said. “No evidence of that at all.”
On January 14, 2000, the jury convicted Dillard and Fredrick of first-degree murder. At sentencing on February 17, 2000, Dillard was asked if he had anything to say.
He did.
“I want to say to the Thomas family we [are] not the ones that killed your brother,” Dillard declared. “We didn’t kill the man. I didn’t kill nobody. This whole trial, everybody got up on that stand from the star witness to the nurse and lied. This man, Mike Christofeno, lied. Asked us to lie on Savane Williams. I don’t even know Savane Williams. The man asked us to testify on Savane Williams for a lesser time. I told him no, man. I don’t know…this man. I didn’t know even if this man did this shit. We didn’t do it.”
He continued, “I’m sorry that I’m speaking like this, but you all got the wrong men up here. What’s wrong is that Tricia Mock got up on the stand and lied to you, lied to the jury, lied to the community, and even lied on us and got us looking at 65 years for some shit we don’t even know nothing about. I can’t tell you how to get out to Three Points Motel.”
The judge then sentenced him and Fredrick to 65 years in prison each. Fredrick died in prison in 2005.
In July 2022, more than 22 years later, the Notre Dame Exoneration Justice Clinic filed a 273-page petition for post-conviction relief. The petition outlined what it called “an epidemic” of wrongful convictions in Elkhart, a city of 52,000. It noted that at that time there had been five people exonerated in Elkhart County—Keith Cooper, Christopher Parish, Mack Sims, Lana Canen, and Andrew Royer—since 2006. Two of those cases, Cooper and Parish, involved misconduct by Rezutko and the failure of police and prosecution to disclose evidence favorable to the defense.
The petition stated that, prior to Dillard’s trial, Detective Rezutko had been disciplined after a 1996 Elkhart Police Department internal investigation found that he had paid a female informant in one of his homicide cases for sexual acts. Then, shortly after Dillard and Fredrick’s trial, Rezutko had been forced to resign from the department after admitting that he paid female informants and witnesses for sexual acts going back to 1994—well before Dillard’s trial. The petition stated that “Detective Rezutko had a pattern of paying Elkhart prostitutes…for sexual interactions, and then falsely transforming them into supposed witnesses in criminal investigations.” The petition stated that none of this evidence was disclosed to Dillard’s counsel. Rezutko took his own life in 2019 shortly after evidence of his misconduct was reported on publicly.
The petition further alleged that “Mock was engaged in a paid sexual relationship with Detective Rezutko prior to her transformation into an eyewitness.” The petition presented evidence from multiple witnesses of Mock’s sexual relationship with Rezutko. Mock died in 2022.
Chris Brown, Fredrick’s uncle, had recanted his testimony, saying that “the only statement Eddie made to me about the murder was that he did not commit it. He always maintained that he and Reggie were innocent. Reggie, too, never made any statements to me about the murder.”
He said that his “false statement” implicating Dillard and Fredrick was “made up by Detective Rezutko and others.” Brown had pending charges at the time which were dismissed after his testimony, information that was not disclosed to the defense at the time of the trial.
The petition also alleged that Elkhart County Chief Deputy Prosecutor Christofeno withheld evidence that Terry, Brownlee, and Brown were promised and received consideration in exchange for their testimony. Less than a week after the trial, prosecutor Christofeno wrote a letter to the prosecutor on Tryrand Terry’s case noting his testimony in the trial. “Consequently, I would like to see Mr. Terry provided with a very favorable plea bargain agreement,” he wrote. He also wrote to the defense attorney representing Terry and Brownlee, offering to meet with the defense attorney and the prosecutors on those cases to assist in getting “a fair plea bargain agreement.”
He wrote similar letters to the prosecutors on Brownlee and Brown’s cases. In addition, the prosecutor’s file included a letter from Tyrand Terry to prosecutor Christofeno in which Terry complained about a plea offer he had received and stated, “Mr. Christofeno, you said that if your deputy doesn’t handle things right, that you would personally take care of it … I respect you for being a man of your word.” The petition alleges that none of this evidence was disclosed to Dillard’s trial attorney.
Mock, the petition noted, was allowed to leave the jail to spend time with her family prior to the trial, which was never disclosed to the defense.
The petition further stated that, on January 15, 2000, the day after Dillard and Fredrick were convicted, a woman named Kim Evans called the Elkhart Police Department. She was crying, hysterical, and in fear for her life. She said that her boyfriend, Hezile Frison, and Hezile’s brother, Homer Frison, were the ones who killed Thomas.
She said that, before Thomas was killed, Hezile had learned that Thomas was the “snitch” in a drug case against him. She said that Hezile made a comment about how Thomas had to be “dealt with.” Then, on the night of the crime, Hezile said that he “had some bus[iness] to take care of” and left the house wearing all black. Evans said that she knew that Thomas was going to die that night. When Hezile returned later, he was dressed in different clothes and acting differently. He forced her to dispose of cartridge casings and portions of the gun used in the murder and threatened to kill Evans if she ever told anyone what had happened. This police report was never disclosed to Dillard’s trial lawyer, the petition said.
The petition said that notes from the Elkhart County Prosecutor’s Office file showed that Hezile Frison had learned that Thomas was the informant against him; and among the drug cases that were dismissed because of Thomas’s murder was a case against Hezile Frison.
The petition detailed how Rezutko and other officers were members of a rogue group of police officers called the “Wolverines.”
The petition said a new witness, John Hamilton, who was a night watchman for a community located next to the motel, said he lived in a trailer on the property, and his window faced the door to room 18, where Thomas lived. He said that on the night of the crime, he was looking out his window when he saw Thomas run out of his room being chased by a man wearing a hooded sweatshirt. He said the man looked to be white, Hispanic, or a light-skinned Black man.
The man shot Thomas, then leaned over, grabbed him by the hair, “pulled his head up and fired two more shots into Chris’s head,” Hamilton said. The man then walked away from the motel. Hamilton said he did not see any other man or woman out there or come out of Thomas’s room.
The petition said a witness had been located who said that Mock, despite her testimony to the contrary, never associated with Thomas.
The petition also said that another man, J.C. Cooper, had bragged to others that he killed Thomas. Cooper also had a case dismissed because of Thomas’s death. In addition, Cooper’s wife was having an affair with Thomas, the petition said. The police had received a Crime Stoppers tip after the murder that Cooper had committed the crime because he was angry about the affair. That information was not disclosed to the defense, the petition said.
Savane Williams, who was in prison on drug convictions, provided an affidavit saying that he was a friend of Thomas and never ordered him killed. He said Thomas took him under his wing. “He taught me everything about the drug business,” Williams said. “Chris gave me a purpose, a way to belong. Chris helped me gain respect among my peers. I was born poor and had nothing and Chris gave me a life. I owe everything to Chris.”
After the petition was filed, there was an extensive legal battle over whether the judge assigned to the post-conviction proceedings, Teresa Cataldo, should recuse herself based on the fact that she had previously made a finding that allegations of “systemic misconduct” in Elkhart were “defamatory,” even though she had not heard any evidence in the case. She also was a former deputy prosecutor in Elkhart County.
She had recused herself from the Royer case after making this finding, but refused to do so in not only the Dillard case, but in other similar post-conviction proceedings.
In August 2024, the Indiana Supreme Court ordered the judge to be recused. The court noted that the judge’s agreement to be recused in the Royer case “would lead an objective observer to reasonably question her impartiality in these cases.”
Elkhart County Superior Court Judge Christoper Spataro took over the case. In June 2025, the Elkhart County Prosecutor’s Office was disqualified from the case based on evidence of a conflict of interest. A special prosecutor, E. Nelson Chipman Jr. from Marshall County, was appointed to represent the State.
Judge Spataro held two days of hearings on February 18 and 19, 2026. The defense was represented by attorneys Elliot Slosar, Kevin Murphy, and Lenora Popken, along with Notre Dame Law School students Andrew Zimlich and Albert Kwon. At the conclusion of the hearing, the prosecutor conceded that the prosecution had withheld exculpatory evidence from Dillard. In particular, the prosecutor admitted that the police report from the day after Dillard was convicted implicating Hezile Frison in Thomas’s murder should have been disclosed to Dillard’s defense. Judge Spataro vacated Dillard’s conviction based on this evidence.
On February 23, 2026, Judge Spataro granted a prosecution motion to dismiss the case, and Dillard was released. He had spent more than 27 years in prison.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 03-05-2026
