"IN AN ONGOING INVESTIGATION, FLORIDA TODAY IS STUDYING DOCUMENTS, NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS AND MICROFILM TO LEARN ABOUT THE CASES IN WHICH JOHN PRESTON WAS INVOLVED."
FLORIDA TODAY;
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Background: Bill Dillon, was 22 when he was sentenced to life in prison in 1981, for killing a man in Canova Beach on the eastern coast of the state. During the trial, Dillon was adamant that he had not committed the crime. But a man named John Preston testified in court that he and his scent-tracking German-Shepherd connected Dillon to the killer’s bloody t-shirt. Preston, who billed himself as a "scent-tracking expert", said his dog, “Harrass 2,” even tracked Dillon’s scent repeatedly in later tests. Nearly three decades later, in 2007, DNA testing proved that Dillon’s DNA did not match the DNA on the killer’s shirt. The dog was wrong. Just eight months ago, after 26 years behind bars, Bill Dillon walked out of prison a free man. Preston was exposed by a Florida judge in 1984, who became suspicious of Preston and set up his own test for Harrass 2. The dog failed terribly. CNN unearthed documents which demonstrated that Harrass 2 could not even follow a scent for one-hundred feet. The judge determined the dog could only track successfully when his handler had advance knowledge of the case. Preston and his four-legged so-called expert were discredited in 1987 - but according to CNN, "the state of Florida never reviewed cases on which he’d testified . And nobody ever told Bill Dillon – who sat in prison another 20 years before he ever knew a thing about it. It wasn’t until 2006 that he heard Preston was a fake." The Dillon case is now attracting massive media attention in response to the Florida’s Innocence Project's well publicized concerns that dozens of inmates around the country may have been wrongly convicted as a result of John Preston and his dog. The focus now shifts to Florida's response to the Innocence Project's call for an investigation of those cases. Meanwhile, CNN informs us that Preston, the dog’s handler, died last year. He was never charged with perjury or convicted of a crime."
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0: Gary Bennett, sentenced to life in prison in for the 1983 murder of a woman neighbor in Palm Bay.
0: Frank Berry, sentenced to 124 years in prison for raping a Merritt Island woman in 1981.
0: Scott Carroll, a serial rapist suspected in numerous Brevard County cases, tried and convicted in New York where he remains in prison.
0: Wilton Dedge, exonerated and released in 2004 after spending 22 years in prison for a 1981 rape that DNA evidence showed he didn't commit.
0: William Dillon, charges dropped last year after DNA evidence excluded him from being connected to a key piece of evidence. Dillon spent 27 years in prison for a 1981 murder.
O: Gary Dirk, sentenced to life in prison for burglary and rape in 1985.
0: James Elmen, 17 years old when a jury acquitted him of burglary and murder charges in 1984.
0: Mark Wayne Jones, serving double life sentences for the murders of two Titusville women to whom he had given a ride in 1981.
0: Elton Kimbrough and Kenneth Michael Burch, murder charges dropped, sentenced to 10 years on burglary charges, in the robbery and death of an 89-year-old Titusville woman. All charges were dropped against two other men.
0: Juan Ramos, found not guilty during a second trial in 1987 after being sentenced to death for rape and murder of a neighbor in 1982.
0: Willie Jessie Snipes, paroled in 1986 after serving four years for manslaughter that occurred during a robbery in 1981.
0: Gerald Stano, a serial killer who confessed to 41 murders. He was convicted in Brevard County for the murder of 17-year-old Cathy Lee Scharf in 1983 and executed.
0: Christopher Wilder, a serial killer who was killed during a struggle with Massachusetts police in 1984. He was accused of murdering a Satellite Beach resident earlier that year.
0: Eugene Wiley, served 11 years for second-degree murder in the death of a Saudi Arabian exchange student in an alleged drug deal.
Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;
