My experience: I bought a '73 911T from a guy in Utah with a bill of sale and an expired Arizona title. He said, "It's fine!"
Virginia DMV said, "No it's not--we won't title this car."
While rules vary from state to state, on the advice of a friend with experience in these matters, I filed an abandoned vehicle claim with the Va DMV. That puts the VIN "out there" for a six- to eight-week period and allows anyone with a claim or lien to file paperwork disputing ownership. After that period passed, Virginia issued a clean title to me.
Now, previous to that, I had done a title search to make sure there wasn't a more recent title than the one I had been sent, so I felt pretty confident that the abandoned vehicle thing would come up clean.
Good luck; dealing with this type of thing is nerve-racking.