Could a new analysis finally prove Mario Willis’s innocence in Detroit firefighter’s death?

Part IV in our ongoing investigation into the case of Mario Willis.

Clara Mitchell was preparing for a funeral.

Mitchell, who would pastor her own congregation years later, served as executive secretary of Community Christian Fellowship Church on Detroit’s east side in 2008 when parishioner Walter Harris died.

“I lost a good friend,” she says. “He was an excellent minister. He was an excellent provider for his family.”

Along with filling key roles at church and home, Harris wore the title of hero in the community after the night he lost his life at age 38, following a blaze at a vacant house. Mitchell says she remains loyal to the firefighter’s family and loved ones. She also says it’s time to bring home from prison the man who mounting evidence appears to prove wrongfully convicted in Harris’s death. A comprehensive new analysis criticizing the Detroit Fire Department’s (DFD) investigation and court testimony concerning the tragedy will help exonerate Mario Willis, his supporters say.

“The case itself — from my view, sitting in the courtroom on behalf of both of the families — was wrong from the beginning,” adds Mitchell.

Willis, 43, serving year 14 of a 12- to 30-year sentence for Harris’s murder, expects the 36-page review by Grand Rapids fire expert Marc Fennell to correct a life-changing judicial error.

“This vindicates me,” he tells Metro Times in a phone call from Saginaw Correctional Facility.

A gradually swelling number of community voices, including Mitchell’s, are expressing hope that a judge agrees with Willis about the new evidence his legal team recently presented in a court filing. If all goes well for Willis, he could be granted a new trial or possibly even released as soon as this year.

The scientific critique, conducted by Fennell’s MDF Forensics, supports a confession by Darian Dove, who Willis hired to maintain properties including 7418 East Kirby, where Harris responded to the fire. Dove, 56, declined to answer Metro Times’s questions about a handwritten, detailed account in 2010, confessing that he used the vacant house to entertain a woman. Later, in a sworn 2014 affidavit, Dove stated, “Mario Willis had nothing to do with the fire.”

But differing versions of the story Dove told in and out of courtrooms led to his own second-degree murder conviction — and Willis’s campaign for freedom.

A closer look

Numerous inaccurate findings about the fire, along with misrepresentations to the jury at Willis’s 2010 trial, influenced a “guilty” verdict, according to Fennell’s analysis. Findings included:

• the blaze was “purposely set”
• gasoline was poured on walls to cause damage most quickly by vertically destabilizing the house
• 7418 East Kirby was unoccupied when the fire began

Fennell, who is certified with the International Association of Arson Investigators, and who is also a licensed private investigator, cites “scientific method” according to National Fire Protection Association guidelines in disputing Rance Dixon, the DFD officer who testified at Willis’s trial.

“Dixon’s methodology was flawed from the start because he did not collect critical data (Darian Dove’s explanation for the initiation of the fire) to include in hypothesis development and testing,” Fennell writes.

In Dove’s letter, penned months after he testified that Willis paid him $20 to burn the home, he describes taking “beer & weed” to 7418 East Kirby about 3 a.m. on Nov. 15, 2008, then pouring “a little gas” onto wood and metal to start a blaze just for warmth. His companion, identified only as “Felisha,” was soon in tears of horror, writes Dove, stating that he “forgot to move the plastic gas can…and we was kissing, and before I knew what was going to happen — please, please — I was not trying to put the house on fire.”

At Willis’s trial, arson officer Dixon testified: “I eliminated electrical, mechanical and accidental. Electrical utilities weren’t on in the house. I eliminated accidental because the house was vacant, so no one could have been there to accidentally set a fire.”

Dixon further stated that gasoline was distributed in a manner that would “weaken the structural members of the walls,” saying the flames were “purposely set.” Dixon could not be reached for comment after DFD failed to respond to a Metro Times interview request.

Fennell’s review states that, based on investigative documents and records available through the Freedom of Information Act, Dixon misled the jury.

“There is no forensic evidence to show that the fire’s origin is correct,” Fennell writes.

Because Dixon testified that there was no utility service activated at 7418 East Kirby and no sign of “squatters,” Fennell adds that it’s “clear, then, that he did not comply with a fundamental step of the scientific method, because he did not consider the Darian Dove version(s) of how the fire started.”

Fennell continues, “Thus, the objective data collected and tested would be consistent with Dove’s ‘accidental spilling of gasoline on the floor’ story. It would be inconsistent with investigator Dixon’s trial testimony where he testified that gasoline was ‘poured along the walls,’ which suggested that ‘they wanted to do the most damage in probably the least amount of time.’”

Even without Dove’s original statements to Detroit Police, regarding the accident, Fennell adds, laboratory findings and research conflict with Dixon’s assessment. Fennell writes, “No investigator could credibly conclude this fire was arson, based on the evidence available to the State’s investigator at trial. This is as true today as it was at the time of Mr. Willis’s 2010 trial.”

Even without knowledge of the tragic mistake Dove described, “The only scientifically supportable conclusion was that the fire cause was ‘undetermined,’” Fennell states.

Unfortunately for Willis, a 2023 Wayne County Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) probe stopped short of revisiting science associated with his case, relying primarily on an interview with Dove. Even after Willis’s appellate attorney Craig Daly presented the CIU with Dove’s written confessions about the night with Felisha, Dove told CIU Director Valerie Newman and investigator Tracy Weinert that Willis is “trying to play innocent.” In a recorded interview, Dove spoke off-topic and at length about the amount of pay he received from Willis while working as a handyman. He also made new claims, including that Willis promised him $5,000 from insurance proceeds for burning 7418 East Kirby. But Daly additionally presented CIU with a statement from the Southfield-based Korotkin Insurance Group, stating that only the mortgage company would have benefited from a fire, due to forced-placed insurance.

“There were numerous references made that Mario Willis had pure financial reasons to obtain proceeds or profit from a fire at E. Kirby on Nov. 15, 2008,” reads the statement. “Mario Willis, again, would not have been entitled to any of the insurance proceeds.”

Korotkin Insurance (which was not associated with the case) stresses that Willis actually no longer owned the home after selling it to his eventual wife, Megan, who “would also not have received any direct benefit.” Forced-placed coverage solely protects “the mortgage company for the amount owed to them,” according to the statement.

In spite of Korotkin’s determination, Dove’s affidavit stating Willis’s innocence, and other documents supporting Willis, CIU declined to recommend his exoneration. Director Newman did not respond to a request to speak with Metro Times.

But Willis is confident that Fennell’s new fire analysis, expertise that wasn’t made available at his original trial, won’t be ignored.

“One thing about evidence is evidence is stubborn, and evidence doesn’t change. It can’t be manipulated,” Willis says.

Part of Willis’s push for exoneration is based on the fire department’s own records and investigation, he adds.

“None of the experts that we’ve acquired had to re-work anything.”

Gaining an ally

Since the beginning in 2022 of Metro Times’s ongoing investigation into Willis’s case, not a single City of Detroit administrator has responded to any of numerous interview requests. Multiple Freedom of Information Act inquiries concerning Detroit Police and Fire Department files went unanswered, and even a letter from Metro Times Editor-in-Chief Lee DeVito, written to Assistant Corporation Counsel Ivars Steins, received no response. Following an October 2023 article titled “City of Detroit repeatedly violates state law on public records” by MT staff investigative reporter Steve Neavling, Corporation Counsel Conrad Mallett facilitated release of Walter Harris homicide and 7418 East Kirby files, more than a year after the legal deadline.

Willis says he and his supporters are disturbed by the pattern of silence and lack of transparency from entities and individuals who show little interest in even the possibility of his innocence.

DFD Commissioner Charles “Chuck” Simms, who, like Dixon, served as arson investigator in Walter Harris’s case, has especially disappointed Willis and his family. Unbeknownst to Simms and Willis at the time, Simms was filmed in a police interrogation room, confirming that Willis had given an alibi for his whereabouts Nov. 15, 2008. In a clip posted at the website justiceformariowillis.com, Simms is identified before saying, “You remember what you told me, right? … I remember you told me y’all went out that night. Y’all went out to dinner or something.”

Actually, Willis says he hadn’t remembered what he and wife Megan had done, since the interview with Simms took place eight months after the fire, but Simms validated what the couple had already told investigators, Willis says. Detective Scott Shea, however, would testify at trial that neither Willis, nor Megan, offered an alibi. Judge Michael Callahan cited “perjury” in Willis’s punishment.

“The prosecution rested on that,” Willis says. “One of the last things they said was that I tried to deceive the court by telling Megan to lie on the witness stand and say we were together that night.”

He adds, “That hurt me even more than Dove.”

Simms, who was named to DFD’s top post in 2023, has not responded to multiple Metro Times requests to discuss the case, nor to direct appeals from Willis’s family, Willis says.

Shea, who was no longer with the Detroit Police Department when contacted by Metro Times in 2022, declined to comment about his testimony. Detective Lance Sullivan, who Dove accuses of pressuring him to lie about Willis’s involvement in the fire, could not be reached for comment. Written requests in 2022 and again in 2024, for interviews or statements about the homicide investigation, received no response from Detroit Police Media Services.

Detroit Fire Chief James Harris, in charge of public affairs, also failed to respond to inquiries regarding the Walter Harris tragedy.

Not even John Roach, media relations director for Mayor Mike Duggan, has replied to requests concerning any aspect of Metro Times’s investigation.

But District 3 Detroit Police Commissioner Cedric Banks has begun speaking on Willis’s behalf, asking outgoing Police Chief James White to revisit the Harris homicide during an Oct. 24 Board of Commissioners meeting last year. Banks was referred to Assistant Chief Charles Fitzgerald for further discussion. Banks again raised the subject of Willis’s conviction Oct. 31 when Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy addressed the Commission; Worthy said she is “very familiar.”

At a third Board meeting, on Nov. 14, Banks directly asked interim Police Chief Todd Bettison, “Can we possibly revisit this case, or someone reach out to the family?”

Banks said about interview footage of Shea listening to Willis’s alibi, “I saw that the detective, Shea, literally committed police misconduct; I saw that with my own eyes on the video.”

Bettison recommended the CIU.

“What got me interested in the Mario Willis case,” Banks tells Metro Times, “is when the detective was interrogating Mario Willis and his girlfriend. The detective said they didn’t give him information, the alibi — which they did tell the detective.”

Banks, who is bishop of Heart of Jesus International Deliverance Church, viewed footage of the investigation at justiceformariowillis.com.

“Now the problem I have here, because I deal with corruption and misconduct all the time, as a police commissioner, is I thought maybe the officer’s superior — a sergeant, a captain, or a lieutenant — should have gone over the interrogation, looked into it,” adds Banks.

Although the Commission lacks authority to address criminal matters, Willis is grateful Banks has taken a public stance.

“Finally, finally, somebody is saying this is wrong!” says Willis. “We always said there were still some good people in this world, but for Commissioner Banks to come forward, it makes me feel encouraged. He’s the first one to take it up a notch when he could have easily said, ‘We don’t deal with cases like that.’”

Willis says he hopes the call for justice from influential officials like Banks is “the first of many” breaking their silence.

Banks adds, “I think it’s very disrespectful, out of order, that they don’t respond. Just to totally ignore Metro Times, or any person in the media, I think it’s a very disrespectful thing, especially because we’re talking about lives at stake.”

He adds, “We’re talking about a man who did 14 years in prison already. We’re talking about his loved ones hurting, in pain.”

‘Can’t stop, won’t stop’

It was August 2022 when Clara Mitchell became pastor of True Visions Community Church on Kercheval Avenue, a few miles from where her friend Harris made his final emergency run as a firefighter. While Mitchell still interacts with Harris’s loved ones, she embodies the small degree of separation between his family and Mario Willis’s. Well before the fire, Mitchell says, the church she and Harris attended hosted alternative high school students who learned broadcast production from a local studio owner named Marvin Willis, Mario’s dad.

Mitchell never imagined her mutual ties with the Harrises and Willises leading her to the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice where, one day, she heard a familiar voice.

“Is that my Clara?” called Syri Harris, Walter’s widow.

“Is that my Syri?” Mitchell answered.

They hugged. The scene appeared perfectly normal to observers who knew them both — but later Mitchell detected murmurs about her warmness toward Mario’s mother Maxine Willis in the courtroom.

“It was a weird place for me to sit, because I love both families,” Mitchell recalls.

But, to the credit of all involved, in 14 years since Mario’s conviction, Mitchell has “never heard anything bad from one side spoken against the other.”

So Mitchell didn’t view it as choosing allegiance when she hosted “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop,” a gathering in fall 2024 as part of True Visions’ “We Will Win” conference. About 100 participants attended from Michigan and from as far as North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida.

“The truth is that he has been wrongfully convicted,” Mitchell says. “That’s truth. We just want the truth to finally come out. That’s why we did the service that day. We can’t stop and won’t stop until we bring him home.”

Even where there is legal guilt, the church’s role is not to judge, but to love, she adds.

“There are other families who don’t have the connections and the resources that we’ve been able to gather for Mario,” says Mitchell.

Support for Willis has also grown in Michigan’s social activism community throughout the past year. Led by founder and director Elisheva T. Johnson, grassroots advocacy organization Emergent Justice mobilized about 30 members and others who traveled to Lansing in June, sharing Willis’s story with state Rep. Amos O’Neal.

Tony Lampkin, a volunteer researcher for Emergent Justice, was asked by Johnson to review the background of Willis’s conviction to determine if it fit their case criteria.

“I got kind of frustrated reading it because it was obvious that a lot of it was not true,” says Lampkin.

Along with the uninsured status of 7418 East Kirby, Lampkin says he found the police interactions with Dove particularly concerning.

“Now you’ve got this gentleman who said he burned up the house for Mario,” says Lampkin. “How long have you interrogated this gentleman? What promises have you made him?”

In Dove’s handwritten letter he describes being told to make a phone call while in police custody, with the goal of coaxing Willis to incriminate himself.

But “that did not work at all,” Dove states, “so they got mad and put me back in the cell.”

Dove was ultimately “coerced” into lying on the witness stand, says Lampkin, who has been examining the commonly used Reid Technique of interrogation. Developed by John E. Reid, an ex-cop in Chicago, the Reid Technique has often been criticized for its association with false confessions like Dove initially admitted to issuing.

Lampkin, who works as a state-certified assessor, has also researched what became of the property at the center of the tragedy. Despite the fact that it would be deemed a crime scene, Willis says 7418 East Kirby was razed by the city just three weeks after the fire. Megan was never informed.

“A friend of mine called and said, ‘Hey, man, you need to turn on the news. I think they’re tearing Megan’s house down,’” Willis remembers. “I said, ‘Are you serious?’”

The City of Detroit’s permit to demolish the structure was not issued until two days after the home was already leveled, Willis adds.

So Lampkin found it curious that in February 2024, he discovered an order for demolition at 7418 East Kirby. A spokesperson for the city says the filing was for a structure that stood at the same address, not for the house that caught fire. Metro Times’s queries to the City of Detroit, concerning the 2008 demolition, were not answered.

Dion RiggenEl, a prison reform advocate, learned of Willis’s conviction at the Emergent Justice gathering in Lansing. He began communicating with Willis directly.

“After reading about that brother’s case, how the house had no insurance and all of that, I thought about how our court system says you have to be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and there was a lot of doubt in his case,” says RiggenEl.

RiggenEl, along with incarcerated co-hosts Susan Brown and RiggenEl’s nephew Demel Dukes, launched the “Free people Free people” podcast in 2020. Heard Fridays at 9:30 a.m. via Facebook Live, wrongful conviction and excessive sentencing — both of which Willis’s defenders say he has endured — are among discussion topics. RiggenEl interviewed Mario and Maxine Willis for the “Free people Free people” podcast.

“This city has got a dark cloud over it from the past corruption,” adds RiggenEl. “Some people do have to be the fall guys, but Mario shouldn’t have had to be the fall guy, because he was a commendable citizen. Why would anybody who was raised the way he was raised start doing crime? That didn’t make sense to me.”

Willis attended Catholic school, played in the band, and earned a college football scholarship before ultimately becoming an entrepreneur.

Beyond misconduct RiggenEl attributes to the investigation of Harris’s death and Willis’s conviction, he says Dove’s role exemplifies a lack of loyalty that has become common in the Black community.

“I hope and pray that we can get back to how it used to be with us being more supportive of one another,” he says.

Surprise witness

During an election year and presidential campaign like none in modern memory, no single development in the final quarter of 2024 weighed in at the level of a political game-changer. Commonly referred to as the “October surprise,” the term has come to be associated with explosive, yet unforeseeable, influences that upend a likely outcome in voting. While the new fire analysis had been requested by Willis’s attorney early in 2024, and anxiously awaited until it was provided in September, Willis received his own version of an October surprise when a man he’d met in prison resurfaced after 10 years.

Shannon Thomas Porter, 51, was paroled in the spring, having been transferred from Saginaw to multiple Michigan Department of Corrections facilities. While in Adrian, he met and became friends with a fellow inmate who liked to be called “Gino,” but whose legal name is Darian Ivan Dove.

Porter’s October affidavit adds yet another layer of evidence that appears to support Willis’s innocence.

“I first met Mario Willis in approximately 2011 while housed at Saginaw Correctional Facility,” reads the sworn statement. “There I learned that he had been convicted of arson and second-degree murder…He told me that a firefighter had died, and that the police were looking for a scapegoat to blame…I later met up with Darian Dove in approximately 2016… Dove told me that he was in prison for setting a fire in Detroit in 2008 that killed a Detroit firefighter…I then recognized that he was talking about the same fire that Mario Willis had described, and for which he was serving time…

“Dove confided in me that he was fooling around with a woman at the house that night, and accidentally started a fire when he kicked over a can that was used to keep them warm. He said the police threatened him with life in prison without parole, so he had to do what he had to do, to not get a life sentence.”

Willis says he hadn’t recently communicated with Porter, who contacted Willis’s team by emailing the justiceformariowillis.com website. Porter is the third current or former inmate to report that Dove confessed a virtually identical story of Harris’s death.

The accumulation of new developments and community support has boosted Willis’s optimism as he reflects on the 7418 East Kirby tragedy and how it derailed his plans for the years that followed.

“The truth lies in the evidence,” he says, sharing eagerness for Judge Margaret M. Van Houten to receive it all.

“My prayer,” adds Willis, “is that, once this evidence is presented before her, the judge is fair and just in her ruling.”