1st trial (1992): found guilty, verdict overturned;
2nd trial (1995): hung jury;
3rd trial (1997): not guilty
An Alamance County man who was convicted in October 1992 for two murders he was later found innocent of is now suing Alamance Coun-ty’s sheriff, seeking thousands in damages for alleged malicious prosecution and fabrication of evidence that had been used to convict him 34 years ago.
Then 23, Mark Elliott Crotts, white, male, had been charged in 1991 with two counts of first-degree murder and tried three times in the November 1990 fatal stabbing deaths of Willie (“Bill”) Gilliam and Alma Gilliam, then 79 and 77 respectively.
At the conclusion of his first trial, in 1992, held in Alamance County, Crotts was found guilty of the two first-degree murders, but that case was subsequently overturned two years later by the state Supreme Court.
At a second trial in 1995, also held in Alamance County’s Historic Court House, the trial ended in a hung jury. Nationally-renowned defense attorney F. Lee Bailey was part of Crotts’ defense team during the second trial.
The third and final trial was held in Granville County in 1997. That trial resulted in a not guilty verdict.
Crotts, now 57, contends that there was never any forensic evidence linking him to the murders – DNA evidence wasn’t widely used by law enforcement until the mid-1990s.
Even after he was exonerated at his third trial in 1997, Crotts claims that sheriff Terry Johnson has continued to portray him as a murderer and that his investigators refused to test the DNA of a man, the cousin of a former chief deputy, who he claims had told his girlfriend on the night of the murders that he and a friend had robbed and killed the couple.
Incumbent sheriff Johnson, who is seeking reelection to a seventh term in this year’s general election, was not the sheriff when Crotts was charged in 1990, nor during any of the three subsequent trials, in 1992, 1995, or 1997. Democrat Richard Frye was sheriff until 2001, when he resigned due to illness. Gary Massey was appointed as interim sheriff in November 2001 and served until November 2002, when Johnson, a Republican, was elected – 12 years after the murders and five years after the final Crotts trial.
While Johnson, who was an SBI agent at the time, was not with the Alamance County sheriff’s office until he was elected in 2002, Crotts alleges that since his final trial Johnson has continued to portray him as the perpetrator in the couple’s murders.
Crotts was initially convicted of both charges of first-degree murder and sentenced to two consecutive terms of life in prison in October 1992. He was tried twice more: a mistrial was declared in November 1995; and he was acquitted of both murders at the conclusion of his third trial in 1997.
Crotts spent two years and three days in prison before he was released from the former Odom Correctional Institution in Northampton County on October 31, 1994, according to the state Department of Adult Corrections. (The state Department of Public Safety closed the prison in 2019.)
On November 13, 2024, Crotts received a pardon of actual innocence from then-Gov. Roy Cooper.
Crotts casts a wide net in his allegations against others whom he alleges were connected to the murders, the investigations, and one or more of his three trials. In some of those allegations, the parties are dead.
Crotts identifies one of the Gilliams’ grandsons, Mark Mize (now deceased), as the actual murderer, also claiming that Mize’s girlfriend had revealed, 27 years later, that he’d confessed to participating in the murders, according to his suit.
Crotts faults the sheriff’s office for having failed to conduct DNA testing related to Mize and another man whom Crotts claims was implicated in the Gilliam murders.
And Crotts claims that Johnson made incriminating statements about the knife evidence and the Governor’s pardon. He also claims crime scene video had been altered 20 to 30 times, although no time frame for when (whether during Frye’s tenure or Johnson’s) is specified.
Crotts alleges that the “jailhouse snitch,” Billy Wilson, who testified at Crotts’ original 1992 trial about Crotts’ supposed confession to him while they were both housed at the jail, had not actually had any conversation with Crotts and had been put up to saying he had by someone within the district attorney’s office.
Further, the lawsuit alleges that two Las Vegas women say Wilson had told them that he’d made up the supposed confession from Crotts.
Crotts also claims that former senior resident superior court judge J.B. Allen, Jr. sought to influence the third trial, held in Granville County, by sending a message to the presiding judge there.
More evidence: Woman to whom real murderer allegedly confessed comes forward 27 years later
Crotts claims that Mize, the alleged murderer, had called his then-girlfriend, identified in his lawsuit only as “Sherry,” the night of the murders and told her he and a friend, identified only as “Saul,” had killed the Gilliams, according to his suit. The suit asserts that Mize was a cousin of Tim Britt, who retired as the sheriff’s chief deputy in November 2018 following a 30-year career in law enforcement.
“Mize told Sherry ‘not to say anything about the money and the checks,’ referring to funds stolen from the Gilliams during the murders,” the suit asserts. Alma Gilliam was Mize’s grandmother, and Willie Gilliam was his step-grandfather, according to Crotts.
In 2016, Sherry had been interviewed by two private investigators, before allegedly telling the sheriff everything she knew about the case the following year, according to Crotts’ suit. The woman purportedly said she hadn’t come forward earlier because Mize had threatened to kill her, telling the sheriff in 2017 that she was terminally ill and “did not want to ‘go to hell’ for withholding the truth” about the murders, the suit asserts.
[Story continues below special subscription offer.]
MORE LOCAL NEWS THAN YOU’LL FIND ANYWHERE ELSE! SUBSCRIBE TODAY!
Crotts further alleges that sheriff’s detective Curtis Morris had asked one of Sherry’s daughters in September 2017 to wear a wire to record her mother, in hopes of catching her admitting to lying about Mize’s confession, and started surveilling the woman and her daughter.
In late 2017, private investigators obtained familial DNA from relatives of Mize and his friend Saul, “the two identified suspects,” and submitted them to the sheriff’s office for testing.
The private investigators were allegedly told, “per the sheriff himself,” that no DNA would be tested unless Crotts provided a new sample of his own, which he emphasizes was in spite of his having already provided two DNA samples and having been acquitted 20 years earlier.
“Feeling coerced and seeking to establish his innocence in light of continued suspicion by the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office and Sheriff Johnson,” Crotts relented and submitted another DNA sample in 2017. He also went on to petition Cooper for a pardon of innocence due to what he insists were “continued efforts to implicate him after three jury trials, an acquittal, and the overwhelming evidence of his innocence,” his suit asserts.
His suit further alleges that a bloody bed sheet, a bloody T-shirt, and bloody socks that had been found along the side of a road near the crime scene were never submitted for forensic testing by the sheriff’s office.
‘I could have put a stop to this if I wanted to’
Meanwhile, current and former district attorneys, judges, and other public officials who had personally worked on the case later submitted letters to the governor, purportedly acknowledging his innocence and urging Cooper to grant a full pardon of innocence, according to Crotts’ suit.
The day after he was pardoned, the sheriff personally delivered a copy to his father, Paul Crotts, and supposedly said in front of a witness, “‘You know I could have put a stop to this if I wanted to, don’t you?’ – allegedly referring to Mark’s pardon,” Crotts alleges in his suit.
The suit further alleges that an Alamance County sheriff’s detective, Eli Gordon, met with the Crotts family in January 2025 and told them that Mark Crotts’ DNA had been found on a knife in evidence – which was entirely different from the buck knife that had been introduced into evidence at his trials.
Afterward, Paul Crotts contacted the sheriff for clarification, and the sheriff reportedly said, in front of two witnesses, the lawsuit alleges, “You know the police planted it on there.” The elder Crotts asked the sheriff to repeat himself, and “Sheriff Johnson reiterated, ‘The police did it,’” the suit asserts.
Nevertheless, the younger Crotts contends that the sheriff has continued to implicate him as the perpetrator in the couple’s murders.
Investigators had claimed that the couple had been fatally stabbed with a buck knife that had a broken tip and had belonged to Crotts. He acknowledges owning the buck knife, which he said had been a birthday present, adding that he broke the tip while “using it to pry a nail from a dog lot for his hunting dogs,” according to his suit.
The buck knife was found discarded in a field adjacent to a house where his mother had once lived. Yet an expert, who’d helped to recreate the Challenger space shuttle explosion in 1986, testified at Crotts’ first trial in 1992 that the patterns left by the knife during a courtroom demonstration didn’t match the victims’ stab wounds.
Crotts further alleges that crime scene video introduced at all three trials “had been deliberately altered on more than 20 to 30 occasions, as supported by three expert opinions.”
The purported motive offered at all three trials had been a turbulent tenant-landlord relationship with the Gilliams, from whom he had rented a building, across from the couple’s home along N.C. Highway 87, where Crotts ran a small sporting goods and taxidermy business, according to his suit.
Willie Gilliam instructed him to vacate the premises in September 1990, about two months before the couple was found stabbed to death – each about 10 times – inside their home north of Burlington. Their murders appear to remain unsolved.
For his part, Johnson had said in late 2017 that he could find no evidence linking Crotts to the crime, based on news reports published at the time.
Prosecution’s key witness allegedly admitted to lying about jailhouse confession
Crotts claims that a prosecutor, whom his suit doesn’t specifically identify, knowingly solicited false testimony from Wilson, with whom he had been housed at the Alamance County jail.
“A jailer informed the Crotts family that the state was ‘planting a witness against Mark,’” while other inmates confirmed that Wilson never interacted with Crotts at the jail and couldn’t have had the alleged conversation, according to his suit.
The state Supreme Court ordered a new trial in October 1994, concluding that Crotts’ constitutional rights to due process, a fair trial, and effective assistance of counsel had been violated.
Following the second trial in 1995 that ended in a mistrial, the state Supreme Court granted a motion by the defense for a change of venue to Granville County, where Crotts was ultimately acquitted two years later.
[Story continues below photos from the 1995 trial held in the Historic Court House in Graham.]
Yet, the lawsuit alleges that then-sheriff Frye had directed one of his captains to meet with then-superior court judge Allen, whose son (who isn’t identified by name) was one of the prosecutors for Crotts’ third trial in Granville County.
“During that meeting, [the judge] provided the captain with a sealed manila envelope to be hand-delivered to the presiding judge in Granville County, Henry Hight, [and] told the captain, ‘I want the Crotts boy to come back guilty,’” the lawsuit alleges.
Crotts is also suing 10 currently unnamed deputies, whose names his lawyers say will be revealed as the case progresses, as defendants for alleged fabrication of evidence and malicious prosecution, in violation of his civil rights under the Fourth and 14th amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
Crotts is also seeking more than $25,000 in damages against Johnson under multiple other alleged claims that include: permitting or encouraging fabrication of evidence; failing to train deputies regarding constitutional requirements for disclosure and evidence handling; encouraging reliance on unreliable testimony from a jailhouse informant; and allegedly failing to intervene or discipline officers for misconduct, which the lawsuit terms a Monell liability.
Additionally, he is seeking more than $25,000 in damages against all of the defendants for intentional infliction of emotional distress and obstruction of justice by: allegedly fabricating and manipulating evidence; coercing false testimony from witnesses (specifically Wilson, who reportedly later admitted to lying under oath); “suppressing exculpatory evidence and ignoring leads pointing to other suspects”; publicly defaming him after his acquittal; “fabricating new DNA evidence” after his acquittal; and allegedly “attempting to interfere with [Crotts’] successful application for a pardon of innocence.”
His father, Paul Crotts, owns Graham Furniture Mart in downtown Graham. He has long advocated for his son’s exoneration, even hiring the famed attorney Bailey – one of the lawyers on the “Dream Team” that represented O.J. Simpson for his 1995 trial in the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman – for the second trial.
Paul Crotts hired two other high-profile attorneys for his son’s third trial. That team included: Raleigh attorney Joseph Cheshire V, the attorney for Greg Taylor, who was exonerated in 2009 after serving 16 years for a murder he didn’t commit; and David Rudolf, who represented Alan Gell, whose wrongful conviction of a 1995 murder resulted in a new trial and a $3.9 million settlement after he sued the State Bureau of Investigation for fabricating evidence against him, according to the attorneys’ respective websites.
Mark Crotts filed the lawsuit against the sheriff, John Doe deputies, and the sheriff’s insurance company in Alamance County civil superior court this summer. Official public records indicate that he lives in Snow Camp. Crotts is being represented by the Hairston Lane law firm in Raleigh.
Though the suit has since been removed to federal court, the defendants do not appear to have filed a response yet.
See related story on Pardon of Innocence, which Crotts received in 2024 from then-Gov. Roy Cooper: https://alamancenews.com/pardon-of-innocence-first-step-to-seeking-payment-for-wrongful-conviction/
