You never know where a conversation with a stranger may lead you. It has the possibility of being anything from a delightful point of connection to unnecessary but harmless advice to or just plain creepy.
In this case, a friendly conversation in a store took an unexpected turn when she met the stranger again in the parking lot, and he revealed a shocking truth.
In a viral video with more than 530,000 views, content creator Olivia Boblet (@oliviaboblet) shared the wild story of how she met a man who’d been in the news for a shocking reason.
Boblet explains that she’d driven an hour away from home for a chiropractor appointment, and on the way home, she stopped in at a thrift store she’d been meaning to check out.
Unexpected Conversation With A Stranger
As she was checking out after finding a gorgeous marble table, an older man walked in and asked if she’d seen the Christmas side of the store.
Boblet had no idea there was an entire warehouse next door dedicated to Christmas items, so she thanked him for the suggestions and headed over. She says she spent about 30 minutes browsing and eventually buying a Christmas tree skirt. When she came back to the parking lot to load her marble table into her car, the same man pulled up right next to her in his truck.
“I’m like, ‘Oh, no.’ Just like, you know, as a woman, you’re like, ‘Great. Like, what?'” Boblet recalls, recounting the familiar feeling of unease many women have around men they don’t know.
He rolled down his window and asked if she’d found anything. Despite her initial wariness, Boblet says she engaged.
“I just don’t have the heart to, like, not engage,” she admits. She told him about the tree skirt and thanked him for the tip.
The man, she says, offered her a bag of candy for her kids at home. But she politely declined, explaining she didn’t have children. (Also, kid safety 101 is to not take candy from strangers.)
Then he launched into a passionate discussion about collecting coins and dollar bills. And Boblet notes that she was having fun hearing how engaged he was. She says she generally loves talking to people and learning their stories.
“One thing about me, I will talk to anyone and everyone,” she explains. “The second someone’s weird, I have no problem ending the conversation. But if they’re not crossing that line, then, like, we can be best friends.”
The Bombshell
The conversation kept going, with the man revealing he’d allegedly guarded one of the presidents.
Then came the bombshell.
“And then he looks at me, and he goes, ‘And then I went to prison for 21 years for a double murder,'” Boblet recounts.
“I knew it was coming,” Goblet says, noting that she had a feeling something strange may pop into the conversation.
By this point, Boblet says she felt they’d built enough of a rapport to ask the obvious question: “Now why did you do that?”
Boblet started thinking she needed to wrap up the conversation, potentially worried she was in danger.
An Unexpected Turn
That’s when the twist came in.
“The catch is, Olivia. I didn’t do it,” she recalls him saying.
Even with this explanation, Boblet says she remained cautious.
“So in my brain, again, I don’t know this guy. I don’t know anything about him. So I’m still again, as a woman, you’re on high alert,” she says. “Sometimes I’m like, I trust you, but I don’t.”
‘What A Freaking Amazing Story’
The man gave her his business card and told her to look him up. Boblet accepted it, mostly to get out of the conversation at that point. But when she got home, she says she found that he was telling the truth.
“It’s a huge case in the area. I’d never heard of it,” she says. The case went cold in the 1990s, and the man was arrested around 2002. He spent 21 years in federal prison before getting out when people proved he didn’t commit the crime. “He didn’t do it. He genuinely, I mean, I can only form my own opinion at this point based on the research I’ve seen. But he didn’t do it.”
Initially, when he’d handed her his business card and told her to call sometime, she figured she probably wouldn’t. But after learning his full story, her perspective shifted completely.
“Now I’m like, ‘I wanna call you; I wanna hear your entire story. I wanna be best friends because what a freaking amazing story,'” Boblet says. “Like, like, something like, ‘Why did I meet you? Why did we randomly become friends? Why did we just talk in the parking lot for 20 minutes. And why did I learn this about you?'”
“This is why I love talking to people because does it sometimes get me into trouble? Occasionally. But do I usually meet really cool people? All the time. I love it. I literally wanna hear everyone’s life story,” she exclaims.
Boblet Addresses Safety Concerns
In a follow-up video, Boblet addresses people questioning why she’d talk to a random older man in a parking lot. While she’s not always comfortable with strangers, her philosophy is simple: Trust your gut. And walk away if something feels off.
“I’m not afraid of people. I think there’s something to be said about, like, not running away from every conversation,” she says. “If I felt uncomfortable at any point in that conversation, I’d walk away. And I have no problem also saying, ‘This conversation is making me a little bit uncomfortable. I’m gonna go now.'”
She adds that she likes meeting people with different life stories and backgrounds. “You could literally save someone’s life by staying, like, an extra second to talk to them,” Boblet says.
As for the man from the parking lot? Boblet emailed him after doing her research to let him know that his story touched her.
Who Is He?
Many commenters believe the man Boblet met is Jeff Titus. Titus is a Battle Creek, Michigan, resident who was wrongfully convicted of a double murder and spent 21 years in prison before being exonerated in 2023, according to an article from the University of Michigan Law School.
Boblet has not confirmed or denied this speculation.
Titus was convicted in 2002 of murdering two deer hunters killed near his Kalamazoo County farm in 1990. He was a former military police officer who served on President Richard Nixon’s security detail. Titus was initially cleared because he was hunting 27 miles away with a friend. But a cold case team reopened the investigation in 2000. By then, his alibi witnesses had developed dementia or memory issues.
In 2020, documentarian Jacinda Davis and podcaster Susan Simpson discovered the real killer was likely Thomas Dillon, an Ohio serial killer who murdered five hunters and outdoorsmen between 1989 and 1992. Witnesses had identified Dillon in 1993 lineups as a suspicious man seen near the crime scene. But investigators dismissed him due to a math error. Police files about Dillon were reportedly never disclosed to Titus’s defense team.
Titus was released in February 2023—the day after his 71st birthday. And Michigan paid him over $1 million in compensation. He now makes greeting cards, having created an estimated 20,000 cards while in prison.
“I can’t let it eat me,” he has publicly said about the wrongful conviction.
Wrongful Convictions In America
Wrongful convictions are far more common than people realize. There’s been more than 3,175 exonerations in the United States since 1989, according to the Equal Justice Initiative.
More than half of wrongful convictions can be traced to witnesses who lied in court or made false accusations.
Government misconduct by police and prosecutors also plays a major role. Other leading causes include mistaken eyewitness identifications, faulty forensic science ( “junk science” techniques like hair microscopy and bite mark comparisons), and jailhouse informants.
And there’s a distinct racial disparity. African Americans make up 47% of exonerations despite representing only 13% of the population. And innocent Black people are about seven times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder than innocent white people.
Plus, officials like police, prosecutors, and judges are rarely held accountable for misconduct that leads to wrongful convictions. And immunity laws protect them from liability even in cases of gross misconduct.
@oliviaboblet Learn something new every day☺️👏🏼 #storytime
Commenters React
“He is so socially awkward and seeking friendship bc he lost everything during that time—- sometimes ppl need you to listen. He could’ve ended his life but you were a light: you never know what someone’s going thru,” a top comment read.
“You should interview him on here!” a person suggested.
“This story took so many unexpected turns,” another noted.
BroBible reached out to Boblet for comment via email and Instagram direct message.