A Michigan man convicted of murdering another after his victim identified him as his same-sex crush during a 1995 TV taping of the Jenny Jones show will soon be released from prison, PEOPLE confirms.

A Michigan Department of Corrections spokesman confirmed the parole of Jonathan Schmitz, who was 24 when he fatally shot an acquaintance, Scott Amedure, 32, on March 9, 1995. The killing came three days after Amedure revealed his infatuation with Schmitz during the nationally syndicated program’s taping on the topic of “secret crushes.”

Schmitz, who was not gay, was sentenced to 25 to 50 years in prison for second-degree murder. He was initially convicted in 1996 and served about two years before he was tried and convicted again in 1999, after the first verdict was overturned on appeal.

Due to “good behavior” credit, says DOC spokesman Chris Gautz, Schmitz will be released after serving about 22 years of his sentence.

The Jenny Jones episode featuring Amedure was never broadcast and authorities have argued the show itself played some role in what happened.

After Amedure’s murder, the Oakland County, Michigan, prosecutor Richard Thompson said, “The Jenny Jones show ambushed this defendant with humiliation.”

Schmitz had been drawn to the taping with the promise that a secret admirer would be revealed — not knowing it was another man — and the case became an indictment of the perceived excesses and manipulations of talk shows and tabloid TV.

“He spent 22 years, so that sounds like he’s completed virtually his entire sentence,” Geoffrey Finger, an attorney who represented the Amedure family, tells PEOPLE. “I’m not absolving Schmitz of his crime. I’m just saying that the Jenny Jones show and the people that were behind the show were equally responsible.”

A civil jury agreed, and in a subsequent civil case brought against the show and its owners, including Warner Bros., the Amedure family was awarded $25 million in damages. That verdict and award were later overturned.

Frank Amedure Jr., 58, who is Scott’s older brother, says he and his family were not aware that Schmitz had met with a parole board member in April, leading to his recommended release, until after the meeting happened.

Schmitz is due to be set free next week from the Parnall Correctional Facility in Jackson, Michigan.

“I guess it’s like any other person who’s lost a family member to murder — they wouldn’t feel comfortable about the murderer being released,” Frank tells PEOPLE. “It might be easier if he was old, an old gray-haired man. But he’s still pretty young at 47 — he’s still got a lot to go, and my brother doesn’t.”

“But there’s a side of, at least me and maybe some of my family members, that we do feel he was victimized in all of this, and so we can empathize with all of that,” Frank says of Schmitz.

Echoing his family’s former attorney, Frank says: “I do, and some of my family members do, feel that Jonathan Schmitz was only as much to blame as the Jenny Jones show. Their people are criminals for what they did. Jonathan Schmitz was sort of like a fall guy in their conspiracy.”

But Jones, whose show ran from 1991 to 2003 and who now operates a cooking website and philanthropic organization, Jenny’s Heroes, told PEOPLE in 1999 that one person was ultimately to blame.

“It was not the ‘Jenny Jones murder,’ ” she said then. “It was the Jonathan Schmitz murder.”

Jones also addressed her show’s role in her 1997 memoir, Jenny Jones: My Story, writing that Schmitz “truly, truly was not ambushed. We are definitely not to blame for the murder.”

She could not immediately be located for comment on Friday and did not respond to an email sent to her website.

Frank Amedure says he wishes he’d been able to question Schmitz prior to his parole.

“What’s it going to be like, if I’m out somewhere and I bump into him?” he says. “I don’t know how he feels about a lot of the issues that he was being scrutinized for, like civil rights. How does he feel about homosexuality now? How does he feel about what he did?”

“We don’t know about any of that,” Frank continues, “so of course we can’t feel good unless we have some peace of mind knowing that he deserves to be out.”

He recalled that Schmitz said at trial that he was sorry for killing Scott, but Frank says he was not moved by those words or the timing. “You’re getting ready to go to prison,” he says. “This is your last shot to make people think that you might deserve to get out some day, you know what I mean?”

No attorney for Schmitz is identified on the Michigan DOC website.

“Our family was traumatized by what happened over those 10 years of the trials and things being up in the air,” Frank says now. But his memory of his younger brother remains clear.

“He was a good guy,” Frank says of Scott. “He was flamboyant, fun-loving. He was compassionate. And he knew about honor and good. He served in the Army, and he led a simple life.

“And he didn’t deserve to be killed, that’s for sure.”

Maybe The Lizzie McGuire Movie plot wasn’t so far-fetched after all.

These everyday people are nearly identical to some very famous faces, and are proving that looking like a celebrity might just be the next best thing to actually being one.

Selena Gomez and Sofia Solares

The 22-year-old Mexican’s Instagram comments are flooded with comparisons to the “Fetish” singer.

“I love Selena Gomez and I declare myself a fan of her and of course it would be a dream to know that she knows of my existence and will devote a few seconds to write me something!” Solares told E! News about the possibility of Gomez responding to the frenzy. “I would cry with happiness.”

“I always try to be myself. I say it’s okay to look like her, but I do not want to lose myself for trying to be someone I’m not,” she added.

Jennifer Lopez and Janice Garay

The 28-year-old Texan bodybuilder has earned a storm of social media attention for her resemblance to J.Lo. “So what you guys are telling me is that everybody has a twin and @jlo happens to be mine??? I’ll take it,” Garay, who goes by “Jay From Houston” on Instagram, captioned one photo.

Garay never made the Lopez connection before all of the online observations. “It never really crossed my mind…. the whole world says I look like J.Lo,” she told KHOU.

Gigi Hadid and Iza IJzerman

Dutch model Iza IJzerman shares dewy, enchanting features with one of the most famous faces in her business.

“The first time someone mentioned was on Instagram,” IJzerman told Refinery29. “When I signed with MiLK, they posted a picture with the caption ‘The new curvy Gigi Hadid,’ so that’s the moment I realized it might be true!”

Despite the Internet’s Gigi-centric reaction to IJzerman, the Netherlands-based beauty sees more of herself in a different member of the Hadid crew. “I think I look more like Bella,” she said.

Ryan Gosling and Johannes Laschet

The internet burst out in declarations of joy when it discovered Laschet, a menswear blogger and law student who reminds everyone of their dream boyfriend.

FROM PEN: Naomi Watts Talks 26-Year Friendship with Nicole Kidman

Although one might expect looking like Gosling to be a dream come true, Laschet told Time that the comparisons get “a little exhausting and sometimes it’s just too much.”

The fashion connoisseur also appreciates that his famous counterpart knows his way around a closet: “Mr. Gosling knows how to dress well and you can learn something from him. Especially when he wears a smoking suit.”

Taylor Swift and April Gloria

There are many Swift lookalikes out and about in the world, but this cosplayer from Kansas is probably the most dead-on of them all.

Gloria seems to fully embrace her resemblance to the singer, and shares both her love of cats and her expert ability to rock bold lip colors.

Angelina Jolie and Chelsea Marr

The lucky Scottish beauty could easily be the actress’s long-lost little sister.

After her resemblance to Jolie caused internet buzz in 2015, Marr responded to commenters who wondered whether she had gotten plastic surgery to look like the star.

“Anyone who knows me knows I am extremely open and really don’t mind discussing it. I have had lip fillers yes, not to look like anyone else but just because I wanted them a bit fuller just like all the other women that have also had theirs done,” she wrote in a Facebook post, adding that she also had surgery on her nose to fix problems related to a childhood accident and had a breast augmentation.

While the similarities seem obvious to us, on Facebook Marr said, “I don’t really see the resemblance myself to be honest.”

Emma Watson and Meghan Flockhart

The Glasgow, U.K., cosplayer could easily be mistaken for Hogwarts’ smartest student.

Flockhart seized the opportunity to dress up as Watson’s famous Harry Potter character on multiple occasions, and recently channeled her new Beauty and the Beast role.

“As much as I’d love to believe I am her doppelganger, as she’s gorgeous and an idol of mine, I am myself at the end of the day. But I have similar traits to my idol and that’s awesome,” Flockhart told the Mirror in 2016.

Katy Perry and Francesca Brown

The actress and Perry impersonator can fool even the most zealous of fans.

“I would just get mistaken everywhere,” the Brit told Elle.com about when the pop star first shot to fame. “I’d have people running after me; I went shopping, and I had children running after me. I went to a music festival here in London, and there were cameras and crowds of people turned up wanting their picture . Everyone would think I was her!”

Brown says that at first her resemblance to Perry caused issues in her acting career, but she’s since decided to accept lookalike jobs to pay the bills and continues to pursue other acting gigs. “I was working quite a lot as an actress. I was going up for auditions, and I kept getting the comparison to Katy Perry. For some reason — I don’t know why — it was costing me jobs.”

“Although made the acting harder for me, it hasn’t stopped me. I do believe in myself as an actress and I know I have what it takes. I mean there’s Zooey Deschanel as well, and they get mistaken, and I think that people can take both of them. So there can be Zooey Deschanel, Katy Perry, and me,” she told Elle.com.

Ed Sheeran and Ty Jones

Jones, who calls himself “Ed’s evil twin” in his Instagram bio, is constantly mistaken for the famous musician. “When Ed became really famous I had people always coming up to me and talking to me and wanting my picture — it was crazy,” he told the Mirror. “He’s such a big artist and I’m a massive fan of his but now it’s like I can’t escape it, people go mad when they think they’re meeting Ed Sheeran.”

“I’ve had a few photos of me go viral because people thought they were Ed Sheeran which is mad because I don’t expect it and my friends and family tag me in these pictures all the time,” he added.

Jones actually got the chance to meet his dead-ringer, and told the Mirror that Sheeran was in disbelief over their similarities.

Ariana Grande and Jacky Vasquez

Vasquez frequently rocks a high ponytail on Instagram to accentuate her resemblance to the Dangerous Woman, and even poked fun at Grande’s doughnut licking incident.

“I have been mistaken as Ariana a couple times. I remember I got mistaken in Washington D.C. because she was at the Verizon Center that day and I dressed up like her since she was in town. People asked me to take pictures with them that day, it was so fun!” she told Sweetly High.

Princess Kate and Heidi Agan

Agan quit her job as a waitress to become a full-time royal lookalike once Princess Kate joined the most famous family in England.

Happy Valentine's Day all! Xx pic.twitter.com/uhBrLRyrxp

— Kate Lookalike (@HeidiAgan) February 14, 2016

“She’s a gorgeous, gorgeous lady and she carries herself extremely well, so for somebody to say that you look like her is just incredible,” she told Katie Couric in an interview.

Agan has teamed up with other lookalikes for (fake) royal family photos.

Kim Kardashian West and Kamilla Osman

Osman’s uncanny resemblance to the selfie queen has earned her lots of attention on Instagram.

Kardashian West actually met her lookalike in 2016 and, of course, shared a photo of the big moment.

LOOK WHO I MET… https://t.co/lM9yD7FaVI pic.twitter.com/03h7uYbzjg

— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) March 21, 2016

“I’m embracing the fact that people think we look alike and I appreciate it because I think she’s beautiful. But I want to be me,” Osman told ET.

The good-natured beauty even seems to share Kardashian West’s ability to brush off the haters. “They called me a Walmart version of Kim Kardashian. That was so funny!!” she shared with ET. “I actually commented back and was like, ‘That’s a brilliant comment.’ So yes guys, I’m a Walmart version of Kim Kardashian.”