Two Fullers, One County: A Kalamazoo Sheriff, an MSP Detective Sergeant, and Decades of Cases That Didn’t Close

Raymond McCann and Jeff Titus were ensnared in separate wrongful-conviction cases. The law-enforcement institutions at the center of those cases are connected by two brothers: MSP Detective Sergeant Bryan Fuller and Kalamazoo County Sheriff Richard Fuller.

What the Record Shows

The record now establishes a direct family and institutional connection. Richard C. Fuller III has run the Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Department since 2008 and worked there since 1989. His brother, Bryan S. Fuller, is a Michigan State Police detective sergeant whose career included the MSP Fifth District Cold Case Team beginning in January 2011 and the Wayland Post beginning in 2014. The Fifth District expressly includes Kalamazoo County. Bryan Fuller’s documented assignments therefore connect the Kalamazoo sheriff’s immediate family directly to the district cold-case structure and to MSP Wayland.

Two Brothers, Two Wrongful-Conviction Cases

The Raymond McCann and Jeff Titus cases arose from different homicides, different investigations, and different alleged failures. What connects them is no longer speculation: the law-enforcement officials at the institutional center of each story are brothers.

Bryan S. Fuller was the lead MSP detective in the investigation of 11-year-old Jodi Parrack’s murder. That investigation wrongly focused on Raymond McCann, a reserve police officer whom Fuller pressured using false claims about scientific evidence. McCann was not convicted of Parrack’s murder, but he was charged with perjury during the investigation and imprisoned. The actual killer was later identified and convicted. In 2023, a federal jury awarded McCann $14.5 million in his civil-rights suit against Fuller; Michigan later resolved the litigation for $11 million.

Jeff Titus was convicted in 2002 of killing Doug Estes and Jim Bennett at the Fulton State Game Area and spent 21 years in prison. In 2020, a folder containing thirty to forty pages of evidence pointing toward Ohio serial killer Thomas Dillon surfaced after allegedly being withheld by KCSO cold-case detectives Michael Werkema and Michael Brown. Titus was exonerated in 2023 and filed a $100 million lawsuit against the detectives.

Richard Fuller is not accused of hiding the Dillon file, and he did not become sheriff until 2008, six years after Titus was convicted. But he had worked at KCSO since 1989—before the 1990 murders—and led the department for roughly twelve years before the missing material surfaced. His brother, meanwhile, was the individual defendant in McCann’s successful federal civil-rights trial.

The Same Failures in the McCann and Titus Cases

The McCann and Titus cases were not identical, but the investigative breakdowns rhyme. Both began with unsolved homicide investigations that law enforcement was under intense pressure to resolve. Both hardened around a chosen local suspect. Both failed to give competing evidence the weight it deserved. Both inflicted years of damage while the actual evidentiary picture remained obscured. And in both, meaningful accountability came from outside the agencies responsible for the original work.

Tunnel Vision Replaced Objective Investigation

In the Jodi Parrack investigation, Bryan Fuller focused on Raymond McCann and used false claims about scientific evidence to pressure him. McCann became the center of the case even though the investigation did not produce evidence capable of convicting him of Parrack’s murder. The actual killer was identified only later.

In the Fulton State Game Area case, investigators built their case around Jeff Titus while evidence pointing toward Ohio serial killer Thomas Dillon sat outside the case presented to the defense. Titus was convicted, while the alternative-suspect evidence remained buried for nearly two decades.

Evidence That Challenged the Theory Was Suppressed or Distorted

The central failure in both cases was not simply that investigators guessed wrong. It was what happened to evidence that did not support their chosen theory. McCann was confronted with purported scientific evidence that did not exist. Titus was denied access to a thirty-to-forty-page file pointing to another suspect. One case used nonexistent evidence to intensify pressure; the other kept existing evidence away from the accused. Both practices distorted the truth-seeking process in the same direction.

Cold-Case Authority Magnified the Damage

Both cases carried the urgency and prestige of major cold-case work. That authority can produce answers, but it can also make a flawed theory harder to challenge. Fuller later served on MSP’s Fifth District Cold Case Team. Werkema and Brown were KCSO cold-case detectives when they allegedly withheld the Dillon material. In both systems, specialized investigators operated with enormous influence over which facts were elevated, which were discounted, and which were disclosed.

The Institutions Did Not Correct Themselves

Neither agency promptly exposed its own failure. McCann obtained accountability through federal civil-rights litigation and a jury verdict. Titus obtained freedom after the missing Dillon file surfaced in 2020 and outside review dismantled the conviction. The corrections arrived years later, after the damage was done, and through pressure beyond the original investigative chain.

The Consequences Extended Beyond Two Wrongly Accused Men

McCann lost years of his life while the Parrack investigation pursued him. Titus spent 21 years in prison. Their families carried the consequences. At the same time, fixing on the wrong men delayed scrutiny of the actual perpetrators and weakened public confidence in every case handled by the same institutions.

The Sheriff’s Long Tenure Over Unresolved Cases

Fuller joined the Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Office in 1989, according to his own department biography. He rose through the ranks as a deputy, sergeant, and detective before winning election as sheriff in 2008. That tenure now covers most of two decades as sheriff and thirty-seven years with the department overall.

It also covers three of the county’s longest-unsolved cases. Doug Estes and Jim Bennett were shot to death at the Fulton State Game Area in November 1990, the year after Fuller joined the department. Jeff Titus was convicted of the killings in 2002 and spent 21 years incarcerated before a 2020 discovery upended the case: a manila folder containing thirty to forty pages of evidence pointing to Ohio serial killer Thomas Dillon as the likely suspect, a folder that two Kalamazoo County cold case detectives, Michael Werkema and Michael Brown, allegedly withheld for two decades. Titus was exonerated and has since filed a $100 million lawsuit against both detectives.

Erik Cross died on June 26, 1983, walking home from a party in Vicksburg. The case sat with the department for decades before a renewed push in the 2010s, under then-Undersheriff Paul Matyas, produced five recommended suspects and a 2017 referral to the county prosecutor. The prosecutor declined to file charges. The Michigan Attorney General’s office reviewed the file independently and declined again in 2020, citing insufficient evidence. Clutch Justice has separately documented that Cross’s case shares a geographic footprint in Schoolcraft Township with two other unsolved county homicides, all under the same department’s exclusive jurisdiction.

None of this shows that Sheriff Fuller personally mishandled any of these cases. It describes institutional continuity: one department, one family at its head for most of two decades, holding several of the county’s most contested unsolved cases with no parallel agency reviewing the same files.

The Detective Sergeant’s Documented Record

Bryan Fuller’s Michigan State Police career, according to a preserved department biography, began in January 1995 with the 111th Trooper Recruit School and an assignment to the Hastings Post. He spent 2008 to 2010 undercover with the Southwest Enforcement Team, returned briefly to Hastings, and joined the Fifth District Cold Case Team in January 2011. In 2014 he was reassigned to the Wayland Post. He became a trooper investigator in February 2015 and was promoted to acting detective sergeant in September 2016, a rank made permanent later that year. His biography credits him with lead experience in homicide, criminal sexual assault, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, public corruption, the Aundria Bowman cold case, and multiple officer-involved shooting investigations.

Fuller also has a documented history that predates and postdates that biography. He was the lead Michigan State Police detective in the 2007 investigation into the murder of 11-year-old Jodi Parrack in Constantine, an investigation that wrongly targeted Raymond McCann, a reserve police officer pressured with false claims of scientific evidence before he was charged only with perjury. The actual perpetrator was later caught and convicted. In September 2023, a federal jury awarded McCann $14.5 million in his civil rights suit against Fuller. Michigan later settled the case for $11 million, according to the Michigan Senate Fiscal Agency’s litigation report. Fuller continued working for MSP after both the verdict and the settlement.

Separately, Clutch Justice reported in March 2023 that a FOIA request to the Wayland Post turned up no official documentation of a case turn-in arrangement Fuller had handled, only his personal text messages. MSP has not reopened that matter.

The disclosure problem is not merely historical. Barry County continues to withhold information sought by people trying to identify Bryan Fuller’s role in cases he handled. That matters because the missing-record problem follows the same official from the McCann litigation to Wayland: first an investigation condemned by a federal jury, then official case activity preserved only in personal texts, and now continued resistance to disclosing the full scope of his work. Asking what else remains undisclosed is the obvious response to that record.

The Brothers Connection Is Documented

A 1999 Harnett County cemetery and obituary index for Richard Charles Fuller names his surviving wife as Kathleen Flynn Fuller and his children as Richard C. Fuller III, Bryan S. Fuller, Terrence A. Fuller, and Cynthia K. Kosmos. Kalamazoo County election records identify the sheriff by the exact legal name Richard C. Fuller III. The record therefore identifies the sheriff and Bryan S. Fuller as sons of the same father.

A 2020 obituary for Cynthia “Cindy” Fuller England independently corroborates the family. It identifies her parents as Katherine Fuller and the late Richard Fuller and names her surviving brothers as Richard, Bryan, and Terry Fuller. A 2025 obituary for their father’s sister Darla adds a second-generation check by identifying her deceased brother as Richard Fuller II and naming their parents as Josephine and Richard Fuller Sr.

The lineage is documented: Richard Fuller Sr.; his son Richard Charles Fuller II, who died in 1999; and Richard II’s sons Richard C. Fuller III, the Kalamazoo County sheriff, and Bryan S. Fuller of the Michigan State Police. The earlier publication-grade proof gap is closed.

Erik Cross: The Cold-Case Team and Wayland Overlaps

The first meaningful overlap begins before Wayland. According to Jackie Mitchell’s account, Kalamazoo County Detective Mike Werkema and a county cold-case team reinterviewed witnesses around 2000–01 before that effort ended amid budget cuts. Around 2010, Mitchell’s advocacy, renewed media coverage, access to the old police report, and citizen work that included Missy Hatfield helped revive the case. After Werkema retired, Detective Rich Madison began another round of interviews.

Bryan Fuller joined the MSP Fifth District Cold Case Team in January 2011. Contemporary reporting on the Jodi Parrack homicide independently identifies him as a Fifth District cold-case investigator and says he had worked that investigation since January 2011. The unit was active, Fuller was doing homicide cold-case work through it, and the district expressly included Kalamazoo County. Erik Cross’s case was being revived inside that same district at that same time. The public is entitled to the records showing whether the case was screened, discussed, assigned, reviewed, or carried forward by the team.

The second overlap begins after Fuller transferred to the Wayland Post in 2014. He became a trooper investigator in February 2015, the year Paul Matyas publicly described major new information and a systematic cover-up involving multiple people. Fuller became acting detective sergeant in September 2016. In 2017, KCSO referred the Cross case to the county prosecutor with five recommended suspects, the most significant procedural step the case had taken in three decades.

Jurisdiction complicates that overlap. MSP identifies Paw Paw Post as serving Kalamazoo and Van Buren counties; Wayland serves Allegan and Barry. If a source’s recollection of someone from MSP Wayland touching the Cross investigation is accurate, ordinary post geography would not explain it. A district-wide cold-case assignment, specialty-investigator or supervisory role, or a formal interagency assistance request might. Clutch Justice has not located a record establishing any of those possibilities.

Available public reporting describes the Cross investigation as a KCSO matter led by then-Undersheriff Paul Matyas and county detectives, while a source with knowledge of the case’s local history recalls an MSP Wayland connection. The records needed to resolve that connection have not been produced. In light of the McCann verdict, Fuller’s personal-text record keeping at Wayland, and current withholding disputes in Barry County, the absence of a disclosed record is part of the accountability problem—not a reason to stop asking.

The Command Network Around the Case

The new records also widen the inquiry beyond one state police post. Jim VanDyken was temporarily assigned as a KCSO detective in Criminal Investigations in 2000, promoted to detective sergeant in 2001, remained in that role for seven years, and became lieutenant of Investigations in 2008. That places his investigative assignment almost exactly across the first formal Cross cold-case review described by Mitchell. No located record yet establishes that he worked, supervised, or was briefed on that review.

VanDyken’s father, James F. VanDyken, spent nearly 32 years at KCSO and served at different points as detective or sergeant, lieutenant of the Criminal Investigation Section, undersheriff, and captain or chief deputy. He served as undersheriff from 1984 to 1986, immediately after Cross was killed in June 1983. His exact title on the date of the homicide has not been established, so any role in the original investigation remains an open question.

Michelle Greenlee supplies another confirmed institutional bridge. A June 22, 2011 career profile identified her as a KCSO deputy conducting criminal investigations in the operations division. A later profile says she had worked undercover narcotics and provided direct assistance to MSP’s Southwest Michigan Enforcement Team. Bryan Fuller was assigned to SWET from 2008 through 2010 before moving to the Fifth District Cold Case Team in January 2011. The sources do not date Greenlee’s SWET assistance, so they do not prove that she and Fuller served together. They establish an institutional connection and a plausible overlap window that should be tested against assignment rosters and case records.

Greenlee became a lieutenant in 2012 and later moved through command positions before becoming undersheriff on September 28, 2024, before Fuller’s November reelection. She replaced Jim VanDyken, who returned to the chief-deputy bargaining unit during his retirement transition. Her public description of the undersheriff as the official responsible for keeping the sheriff fully informed and advising him before important decisions underscores that this is an operational and advisory post, not a ceremonial one.

Why the Fulton State Game Area Case Matters

Sources contacted Clutch Justice describing the Fulton State Game Area case as an important connection—and rightfully so. The case centers on the November 1990 murders of Doug Estes and Jim Bennett, two men with reported ties to marijuana cultivation and sales. Sources also point to a January theft of drugs, cash, and weapons from a police evidence lockup. Their account says contemporary reporting attributed the theft to someone with police access. That part of the story demands renewed document retrieval, including the original coverage, incident report, evidence logs, access records, and any internal investigation.

The evidence failure that is already documented is staggering. Kalamazoo County cold-case detectives Michael Werkema and Michael Brown were accused of withholding a folder containing roughly thirty to forty pages of evidence pointing toward Ohio serial killer Thomas Dillon. The material included an alternative-suspect trail the defense never received. It remained buried until 2020—three decades after the murders and nearly two decades after Jeff Titus was convicted.

Outside investigators broke through where the original system had failed. Journalist Jacinda Davis examined the case for Investigation Discovery, while Susan Simpson investigated it across sixteen episodes of the Undisclosed podcast. Their reporting developed the Dillon lead and exposed fundamental problems with the conviction. David Moran of the Michigan Innocence Clinic subsequently found the Dillon file inside the Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s records. Michigan’s Conviction Integrity Unit concluded that Titus had been denied a fair trial because favorable evidence was withheld. He walked out of prison in 2023 after nearly 21 years, and the charges were later dismissed.

This is also where the Proof connection enters the larger story. Simpson and Davis later became the investigative team behind Proof: A True Crime Podcast. The Titus work ran under Undisclosed and Investigation Discovery, but it reflects the same outside-investigation model: go back to the witnesses, reconstruct the evidence trail, test what police said, and locate what the official record left out.

The Fulton case is not a side story. It is the clearest demonstration of what can remain hidden inside a southwest Michigan cold-case investigation until journalists, podcasters, innocence lawyers, and outside reviewers force the file open. The same regional network now links KCSO, Sheriff Richard Fuller, his brother Bryan Fuller’s cold-case and Wayland assignments, the McCann verdict, and continuing disclosure disputes. Readers can decide for themselves how much confidence that record deserves.

The SWET Years: Another Overlap Worth Naming

Bryan Fuller’s MSP biography lists a 2008 to 2010 undercover assignment with the Southwest Enforcement Team, a multijurisdictional narcotics task force covering Kalamazoo, Allegan, Barry, Berrien, Branch, Calhoun, Cass, St. Joseph, and Van Buren counties. Michigan court descriptions have characterized SWET as operating under MSP supervision with participation by county sheriff personnel. KCSO materials have identified both the Fifth District and SWET among the department’s law-enforcement partners, and current material describes participation in the drug team as a specialized-unit function.

That history makes Greenlee’s documented assistance to SWET an established interagency link, but not proof that she and Fuller worked together. Her precise undercover and SWET dates remain unknown. It also does not connect SWET, Fuller, or Greenlee to the Fulton State Game Area murders. Fuller’s SWET assignment does not fall within the known 1999 reopening or the 2020 discovery of withheld evidence in that case.

What the sequence establishes is an enduring institutional pipeline: Greenlee’s KCSO investigations and SWET assistance; Bryan Fuller’s move from SWET to the Fifth District Cold Case Team and then Wayland; and repeated KCSO command responsibility under Matyas, VanDyken, and Greenlee during Sheriff Fuller’s tenure. The next evidentiary step is not inference. It is obtaining assignment histories, team rosters, assistance requests, meeting logs, and the names of everyone who participated in the Cross charging review.

Why This Matters

The record shows a sheriff’s department with decades of command continuity, an established pipeline to MSP specialty units, a confirmed evidence-withholding scandal in the Titus wrongful conviction, a multimillion-dollar civil-rights verdict arising from Bryan Fuller’s treatment of Raymond McCann, official Wayland case activity found only in Fuller’s personal texts, and continuing resistance in Barry County to releasing information about cases Fuller handled. These are not isolated abstractions. They form a repeated disclosure and accountability problem running through two brothers, two agencies, and multiple major cases.

What Would Close These Loops

The most useful records are now narrowly defined. Was the Erik Cross case entered, screened, discussed, or reviewed by the MSP Fifth District Cold Case Team between 2011 and 2014? Was Bryan Fuller assigned, copied, consulted, or briefed? Did he retain involvement after transferring to Wayland? Did KCSO request help from Wayland or another MSP unit during the 2015–17 charging push? Who attended charging-package meetings, and did MSP conduct interviews, polygraphs, forensic work, evidence review, or credibility assessments?

Separate records questions concern the KCSO command network: Jim VanDyken’s role, if any, in the 2000–01 review; James F. VanDyken’s exact assignment in June 1983; and Michelle Greenlee’s assignment history from 2001 through 2013, including exact dates of undercover narcotics work and SWET assistance. The family question no longer belongs on that list: Sheriff Richard C. Fuller III and D/Sgt. Bryan S. Fuller are documented brothers.