Going West: True Crime - April Tinsley // 392

Episode Date: March 27, 2024

In April of 1988, an Indiana girl was abducted off the streets of her neighborhood while walking alone after hanging out with friends. After her body was found, the investigation into her murder intensified, but hundreds of suspects surfacing in the case. With the killer taunting the police and public via a scribbled message on a nearby barn about the murder, and threatening letters left for other girls in the area, detectives created a task force to hunt this monster down. And one day, a crucial movement in the investigation uncovered the person responsible. This is the story of April Tinsley. BONUS EPISODES Apple Subscriptions: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/going-west-true-crime/id1448151398 Patreon: patreon.com/goingwestpodcast CASE SOURCES https://theburr.com/3058/blogs/season-of-justice/season-of-justice-april-tinsley/ https://www.wane.com/news/local-news/tinsley-detectives-reveal-new-details-about-case-suspect/ https://www.wane.com/news/local-news/tinsley-detectives-reveal-new-details-about-case-suspect/ https://www.journalgazette.net/local/neighbors-in-grabill-confront-grim-news/article_f0938507-8d51-591c-8024-9a8b3c52c3bb.html https://www.insidehook.com/culture/police-capture-alleged-april-tinsley-killer http://wpta.images.worldnow.com/library/7581442b-5128-48ef-8eb0-d581e70fb146.pdf https://www.wane.com/news/local-news/tinsley-detectives-reveal-new-details-about-case-suspect/ https://www.wane.com/news/local-news/who-is-john-miller/ https://www.indystar.com/story/news/crime/2018/07/22/april-tinsley-murder-arrest-puts-end-decades-long-suspense-fort-wayne/805023002/ https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2009/april/tinsley_040309 https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2009/april/amw_041409-part-2 https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/16/us/cold-case-april-tinsley-dna-trnd/index.html https://www.newspapers.com/article/logansport-pharos-tribune-everett-shull/21559908/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on true crime fans? I'm your host Heath and I'm your host Daphne and you're listening to going west Hello everybody today's case was recommended by Destiny and Laura. So thank you both so much. And it's one that Heath and I have been aware of for a long time. It's a case from 1988 with some seriously unsettling elements and it has finally been solved. I mean, people were speculating and theorizing for decades on this case and it always felt so solvable, but it wasn't until police made one very crucial decision. Yeah, so we can basically scrape away all the speculation because there are real answers in this case, which we know that you guys absolutely love.

Oh yes, but before we jump in, we just released a brand new bonus episode on the case of Mateusz Kowetzki out of Poland. And this is such a mystifying story with some truly chilling details. I think that it's one of my favorite bonus episodes we have ever covered. It only happened a few years ago and it's about a young, soon-to-be father who went on a road trip to visit his fiance who was about to give birth and he went missing. And it is crazy.

Yeah, there is a huge twist in that episode. So go check it out. You can subscribe on patreon.com slash going west podcast or you can subscribe on Apple subscriptions and on Apple you can get a seven day free trial to Listen to a ton of our episodes. Yeah, we have over a hundred and they're ad free Alright guys without further delay, this is episode 392 of Going West, so let's get into it. In April of 1988, an Indiana girl was abducted off the streets of her neighborhood while walking alone after hanging out with friends. Once her body was found, the investigation into her murder intensified, with hundreds of suspects surfacing in the case. With the killer taunting the police and public via a scribbled message on a nearby barn

about the murder and threatening letters left for other girls in the area, detectives created a task force to hunt this monster down. And one day, they did. This is the story of April Tinsley was born on March 18, 1980 to parents Janet and Michael in Fort Wayne, Indiana, which is a city that at the time had a population of around 200,000 people, so fairly large. 200,000 people! I think I thought I was going to say 20. Yeah, 200,000. I know fairly large. 200,000 people. I think I thought I was gonna say 20.

Yeah, 200,000. I know how many people up there. I researched this damn story. So the motto for Fort Wayne is, the grass is green and the water is clean. So specifically, April and her family lived in the neighborhood of Fairfield, just south of downtown, which is known as a charming neighborhood known for its historic architecture and welcoming atmosphere, according to the

description on Nextdoor and it hosts under 2,000 people. There, April sang in the children's choir at the Faith United Methodist Church and at the time this story takes place in 1988, she attended Fairfield Elementary School where she was in second grade. On April 1, 1988, April was eight years old doing something that she absolutely loved, playing with her friends outside, despite the cold weather on that gloomy early spring day. By around 3 p.m. on that day, two days before Easter, it was 45 degrees Fahrenheit or 7 degrees Celsius, but April and her two friends continued to play for a short while, but wanted to head to one of the friend's houses.

Since they all lived so close to each other, they walked between each other's houses, but because it had been drizzling sporadically throughout the day, April wanted to get her umbrella, which she realized she had left behind. So she headed up the street a ways to get it while her two friends carried on ahead. But April never made it back to her friend's house that day. Not realizing that something bad could have happened, the girls didn't alert April's mom Janet that she hadn't come back after grabbing her umbrella, not until later. But April wasn't home because as her mom waited for her and dinner time came and went,

Janet just decided to go ahead and call the police to report her 8-year-old daughter April Tinsley missing. Especially considering April was as young as she was, a search began for her immediately, with 250 police officers from Fort Wayne and 50 volunteers scouring the neighborhood and area for her through the night and the following day mostly looking within a 20 block radius. But during this initial search someone came forward with a very crucial tip that gave insight into what could have happened to April Tinsley.

This witness stated that they saw a white man, who appeared to be in his 30s, Caucasian with light brown hair and facial stubble, snatch a young girl that matched April's description from the neighborhood and force her into his truck, which the witness noted as a blue pickup truck. This happened in broad daylight, four whole hours before the sun went down, in a neighborhood that is dotted with houses, so in a place where such an abduction could be seen, luckily it was, but just by one person. So before forcing her into his truck, the witness told police that the man yelled

at her before getting out and grabbing her. A composite sketch was created of a man with swooping hair that reached just under his ears, which we are going to post on our socials with a side by side of the real killer, because this case did get solved. But without getting ahead of ourselves, all police had to go on was this sketch for the time being, and they just hoped for the best. Hours and days continued to pass, as did the Easter holiday, with no sign of April and no other leads as to where she could have been. after she disappeared on the afternoon of Monday April 4th 1988 when a jogger noticed the body of a young girl laying in a ditch in Spencerville, Indiana Now Spencerville is an unincorporated city in a rural area just northeast of Fort Wayne about a 30 minute drive from where April lived and was taken from and

Police hadn't searched this area yet as they were keeping their investigation in Fort Wayne until they exhausted that, but when police were called to this scene on the side of a rural road, they found 8-year-old April Tinsley deceased. A Polaroid photo was taken of her body to show her parents,

and just a couple hours later at 5pm, Janet and Michael confirmed that the body that police discovered was their daughter. An autopsy confirmed that she had been strangled to death and that she had also been sexually assaulted. In the autopsy report, it claimed that April had been dead for at least 24 to 48 hours.

Remember, she had been missing for three days, and that she had been lying in the ditch for around four hours Before she was found by the jogger Meaning her killer had only disposed of her body at around 11 a.m. Or later on Monday Despite being kidnapped on Friday So this just made detectives wonder if she had been held hostage and held alive for multiple days But we are gonna come back to that detail later in this episode detectives wonder if she had been held hostage and held alive for multiple days. But we are going to come back to that detail later in this episode.

Yeah, this is just what they're able to kind of glean at this point, or at least what they think is the most probable situation. Exactly. But back to the crime scene. Well, nearby the crime scene, investigators found a plastic Sears shopping bag containing two items, a sex toy and one of the shoes that April was wearing when she went missing. Now regarding this sex toy, Indiana State Police Detective John Heffelfinger later stated, quote,

we never knew if it was related or not, meaning they didn't know if it was relevant to the case at all or if it had nothing to do with April. So let's talk about it a little bit more because police wanted to push the description of it, just hoping that somebody would recognize it, like potentially an ex-partner of the killer, because it appeared likely that it at least belonged to the killer. So it was found to be a mass-produced but vintage dildo that looked like a penis and was made from wood with a crank at the bottom. So it was definitely a more specific item and that's why police wanted people to know its description in case it could connect them to the person responsible

for the murder. And in question to why this bag was near her body, police theorized that the killer had dumped her body and then realized that they still had her shoe, so they just threw this bag out the window so it didn't stay in their possession to be found later. Yeah, and I get why they made this move because this is a very unique item. I mean, it's wooden, it has a crank on the bottom, it's a vintage item, so they're hoping that maybe it's so obscure that maybe somebody could recognize it. And that's going to happen a few times in this case, actually, because there is more weirdness to come.

So despite having some clues as well as April's body, and all the persons of interest and suspects that came up in this case because there were a lot, the investigation halted pretty quickly. Other than getting the composite sketch out there, about three weeks after April's body was found, DNA samples taken from her body and the scene were sent off to a private lab in Maryland along with the DNA of five suspects in this case. But unfortunately, the results came back as inconclusive, unable to concretely determine if these five men were involved.

Now remember, this is 1988, so although, starting in the 1980s, there were some scientific advances that gave the ability for certain DNA comparisons to be made, and actually, the year before this in 1987, the first person ever to be convicted for a crime based on DNA evidence happened in the UK, and then again the same year in a US rape case. So it was happening, it just wasn't happening very well yet, and not nearly what it would become. Although hundreds of people were questioned and interviewed for their potential involvement over the years, only one suspect had been named. And this happened in the beginning.

An influx of tips came into the police department regarding one particular person, someone who looked like the composite sketch that was all over town. A 34-year-old man named Everett Scholl Jr. who went by Moose. He was one of the five that I just mentioned, but has been the only one named for whatever reason. Now, his blood and hair was collected to test against the DNA found at April's crime scene, and he was interrogated for 8 hours. And this guy was already an apparent predator because he was charged with molesting his girlfriend's

11-year-old daughter, though he was later acquitted. On April 12, 1988, Master Sergeant Steve Butz said about Everett and the other four suspects, quote, we have not eliminated anyone as a suspect. We have not cut off anyone with information. The DeKalb County prosecutor whose name was Paul Cherry added quote, there were several pieces of information received that led us to believe Everett is an important person to talk to. We believe that investigators have made good progress over the last days. We're on the right track to hopefully solving this case. Everett was identified by multiple different people who compared him to the composite sketch,

and the eyewitness who saw April's abduction even picked Everett out in a lineup as the man they saw in the blue truck that day. Some people who came forward with him by name said that he would occasionally stand in the park watching children play, and that he was a part of a gang or possibly a satanic cult. So then of course, you know, the satanic panic of it all, which was rampant in the 1980s, started kind of filling people's minds. But it didn't appear at all that April was murdered in any kind of ceremonial or sacrificial way. So it seemed like this was just fear talking. But with no physical evidence connecting Everett, he couldn't be linked to her murder.

Thus, weeks went by, then months went by, and suddenly over two years, until a strange message was found on a barn in St. Joseph Township, about 25 minutes away, 17 miles or 27 kilometers from where April was abducted. On Monday, May 21st, 1990, police found written on a barn door in what was determined to be crayon, which just makes it so much creepier somehow. It absolutely does. The scribbled message said quote, I kill eight-year-old April Marie Tinsley. I will kill again. It looks like there are faded letters underneath like maybe as if the person wiped away a message before this and then rewrote it just from what I can see. Yeah I think so it definitely looks like they

deleted that message or wiped it away and then yeah rewrote it. Yeah you can you can see like a faint one behind it but it's written very messily and there is a photo on our socials and you can't really see it in the photo but it also says quote, did you find the other shoe? Ha ha, I will kill again. So this is a very taunting message, and this person knows that only one of April's shoes was found, which again, was in that Sears bag with the sex toy. And it's really interesting to me that this was written on a barn, like in a rural area, you know, it's not like in the Zodiac case

where they're sending letters to the newspaper, you know, like, this is, it's just written on a barn, like, this could have taken a really long time to find, you know? Yeah, absolutely, and I think that's kind of the point, is they want people to know. It's like, they don't want to lose the notoriety of having killed this child, so they want somebody to know, and somebody to eventually find out Whether it be ten years later or ten days later, you know what I mean? Yeah, they they want the attention and they want people to remain afraid of them So police fully believed that this message was written by the killer

But still could not figure out who this person was and this wasn't one of those cases where they investigated it for a few months and, you know, leads dried up and it went cold. Like, the police kept interviewing people and searching for justice, and actually, a homicide task force was formed the year after the barn message was found, so three years after April was murdered in April of 1991. So even three years in, they're hitting the ground running. But then, get this. It happens again.

They keep questioning people and nothing is coming of anything. Then 13 years after the task force was formed, in May of 2004, four separate notes were discovered left on little girls' bicycles, three on bicycles, and one was left in a mailbox around Fort Wayne, Indiana. Now all the notes had common bonds. They were written on lined yellow paper, they were placed into plastic bags, and they were accompanied by used condoms and strange Polaroid photos of the lower half of a man's body. God, that's so gross.

It is so creepy. They also all had the same scribbled jumbled handwriting that looked quite similar to the note found on the barn in St. Joseph Township about 14 years earlier. And you know, when you go look at these photos of these writings, it looks like a seven-year-old wrote them. Yeah, they are scribbly. Yeah, and here's what one of the notes read. So it said, quote, Hi, honey, I've been watching you. I am the same person that kidnapped and rape and kill April Tinsley. You are my next victim. If you don't report this to police and I don't see this in the paper tomorrow or the local news or I will blow up your house." And I

just gotta say there are so many grammatical errors and punctuation errors in this note like he spells April's name APR OIL and he also says victim VITEM yeah it's just a total mess yeah and all the letters were almost identical to this one yeah so they're all him creeping on little girls saying and but this just shows that he wants attention more he's saying you're my next victim and if you don't report this to Police and I don't see it in the paper. I'm gonna blow your house up like he wants people talking about him Yeah, exactly. He's completely unhinged and just wants notoriety in some way But get this the DNA found from the used condoms

matched the DNA profile that the Fort Wayne police had in April's case, so it really did seem like this guy was April's killer. And because this doofus included photos of his body and his bedspread, the FBI was able to further the profile that they had on April's killer, which then became this. A circumcised white male that in 2004 was around 40s to 50s and lived or worked in the northeast section of Fort Wayne slash Allen County. They believe that he frequented places where children were

and focused on little girls, that he had low to medium income, that he owned or borrowed a Polaroid camera in 2004, that he had hair on his lower legs, and that in 2004 he potentially owned or borrowed a forest green pickup truck with a matching camper shell with dark tinted windows. And the last one was based on witness sightings where the notes were found. And even though at the time police didn't know for sure if this person was the same person who wrote on the barn and Also the same person who abducted and murdered April and it was a serious discussion and speculation for about 30 years

It has been confirmed that it is the same person which we are gonna get into So this guy is still out there, 16 years after killing April, still harassing, stalking, preying on little girls, and police are fighting tooth and nail to find him. And they just cannot pin down his identity. And it's crazy that with photos of the man in question, I mean even though they are just of his lower half, but still it's a little something. Um, it's still unclear who he is, but even little things like this paisley pattern bedspread that you can see in one of the Polaroids, which is pretty specific bedding, no one came forward and said, yeah, I know that bedspread

and it belongs to my ex or whatever. Like it must've been so taunting to police and April's poor family that he's just dangling his identity in front of them saying, here I am and I'm looking for another victim by the way, using phrases like ha ha and leaving multiple notes for little girls in the area and there's just nothing. So this was terrifying for a community that was still afraid because they never stopped worrying that there was a predator on their streets that was willing to act on their urges. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy to think that this little girl was murdered in 1988.

A few years later, they find a message on a barn taunting police. And then literally in 2004, almost two decades later, they find these notes on little girls bicycles. It's like this guy is harassing people through generations. I mean, he is a horrible, horrible person. Well, and it's like you said earlier, Heath, that there were so many persons of interest and suspects that were interviewed

and so many people constantly calling in with tips. Like someone called the police after seeing this note, the high honey note in the media saying that their own father drove a blue pickup truck in 1988 and often said high honey to women and girls. And that this guy was even a registered sex offender with charges of sexually assaulting a child. So this young man also stated that his father lived just blocks away from April and took sexually suggestive photos

with his Polaroid camera sometimes. So this seemed to totally match up. And when they talked to this guy, he even provided police with a fake alibi for the day of April's disappearance, quickly saying that he was working that day. So not only did police find it strange that he knew what he was doing on a random day 16 whole years earlier, but then they found out that he was not in fact working on that day. So everything was lining up perfectly for this guy to be the guy.

Police collected his DNA and sent it in to see if it matched what they had from both the crime scene and from the four notes from that same year. But crazily, it was no match. So there was just another really weird creep in that area. Yeah, another one. And then also another lull in the investigation after police looked so deeply into these Polaroids and notes, but they did process them for DNA and were able to collect some as we mentioned. So now they have this in their back pocket, as well as more examples of this person's handwriting for the future of the investigation.

And little did they know at the time, in one crucial movement, it would solve this case. In April of 2009, so 21 years after April's murder, America's Most Wanted covered April's case, pleading the public for tips, and releasing a bunch of information on the sex toy and some other information that hadn't previously been uncovered, just hoping for some new leads. Now for this special, April's task force was hard at work, with 20 hotline operators taking live tips on the case. And about 50 tips were called in that night from the area in which April disappeared. Some claiming to recognize the paisley bedspread, some giving names of men that they believed to be involved.

Special Agent Robert E. King with the FBI's Crimes Against Children Unit stated, quote, We are very pleased to get national publicity about this cold case. Cases are solved through strong partnerships, and we are happy to be working with America's Most Wanted. And there was a lot of hope, because America's Most Wanted has done a great deal of good, finding fugitives and predators, and to date, as of April's episode airing, the show helped catch more than 1,000 criminals all across the world.

But yet again, nothing concrete came of this. A few years went by again, and DNA technology was rapidly advancing. In 2015, what is called a snapshot, or a parabond snapshot, was created using the DNA that they had of the killer. It's a more in-depth composite sketch that's created using the person's DNA, and the process is called phenotyping via parabon nanolabs. So this snapshot helped create a more in-depth idea of the exact person that they were looking for, and this is what it says.

They were looking for a male with very fair or fair skin, likely with some freckles, hazel or green eyes, and brown or black hair approximately between the ages of 45 and 55 in 2015, making them between 18 and 28-ish years old when the crime took place. And here's their ancestry by region, about 70% Central East Europe, 29% Northwest Europe, and.42% East Europe. And although the height and weight was unknown, this confirmed the general identity given by the original eyewitness and created a new computer generated composite sketch for police to use. So it's really cool that they're using this new technology to kind of try and update the composite sketch that

they already had. Yeah because honestly for all the police knew the person who gave that eyewitness account completely clocked this person wrong and and they've been looking for the wrong person the whole time you know so this just kind of clarifies that yeah the general descriptors were correct but three years later this same lab would help even further to solve this case detective Brian Martin with the Fort Wayne police watched as the Golden State killer was arrested via genetic DNA testing in April of 2018, which was 30 years to the month after April went missing. So this was a major breakthrough and inspiration for a lot of cold cases out there. And it

will be to agree Heath, like the case that will forever be a standout, like as a pioneering example of using such resources to solve crimes? Yeah, it feels like that was like like the biggest like hit It was like the one that basically people knew like hey They were gonna solve a lot of cases in the future using this genetic genealogy Yeah, I mean it wasn't the first one to do it But yeah, it was the biggest breakthrough of this particular testing because that case was so huge. And despite its cost and concerns of privacy, even though all DNA is collected voluntarily

via sites like Ancestry and 23andMe, Detective Brian Martin wondered if utilizing GEDmatch would help crack April's case because he's seeing this happen and he's thinking Hey, could could this help us? Yeah, and a lot of other cases were looking at the same thing They're like wow this new technology is incredible and we're taking down these Geriatric bastards who committed crimes like 30 fucking years ago. Yeah, exactly So he reached out and learned that this could absolutely be done and that it would actually be quite simple to submit the DNA, have an expert genealogist look it over, and see if any familial matches came up, which could help narrow down the suspects, giving Detective

Brian Martin and the other detectives the ability to look at the other evidence that they had and hopefully compare it to a few people. And that is exactly what happened. Due to the work of genealogist C.C. Moore, the DNA comparison was able to come down to three brothers living in Indiana, but one died before 2004 when those Polaroids and notes were left, so the police decided to investigate the other two brothers to the best of their ability. The way that they would do this would be to collect both of their DNA by collecting trash items from their garbage bins and

see if they could get a direct hit. And after looking into both brothers, one of them seemed like a more likely suspect. 59 year old John D. Miller. So John lived in Grebel, Indiana, which is where two of those creepy notes and polaroids were left for little girls. And the two others weren't very far away, but in other parts of the Fort Wayne area, so this seemed like a strange coincidence. Especially since the notes had mentioned that he was watching these girls, and for John Miller to live just blocks away from two of them was incredibly strange. Also, his house was just a 10 minute drive from where April's body was dumped, and also

a 10 minute drive in the opposite direction from where the barn message was found. So he was basically like smack dab in the middle of it all. So detectives started asking co-workers and neighbors about John to get a better idea of what he was like. Most people described him as a loner, some said that he always appeared to be angry or in a bad mood, and that he never said hi to anybody and just kept to himself One neighbor named dawn said quote. He always had a mean look on his face

He would use swear words a lot when he would get mad Another said that they had seen him angrily throwing his lawnmower once and one other thing that neighbors knew he did Was watch kids play at the softball diamond just a few blocks away from his house. So there was basically this softball diamond where kids and people alike would gather to play together, and neighbors knew him to walk over there and just sit there and watch. For his co-workers, they didn't have anything good to say about him. He didn't have a lot of friends, he had bad hygiene, and like the neighbors said, he had a bad attitude and a very bad temper.

From the 1970s to the 1990s, John worked for a fiberglass factory in the town that he lived in, again, Grable. But in recent years, just before his arrest, he worked the overnight shifts in the electronics department at the Walmart in nearby Kendallville. And because he worked the overnight shifts, most of his coworkers didn't even know him, but the ones who did describe that he had a speech impediment and walked with a hunch, and that they knew him to be angry, which is clearly a running theme here. One anonymous coworker later stated, quote,

I've heard him beating on equipment because it wasn't working right and when somebody needed help, he would complain about them needing help. So yeah, that is John for you. But regarding the composite sketches, because I think it's kind of interesting to go back and look at where the investigation was regarding composite sketches and other little details and compare them to the real person, the real actual perpetrator. So I think the original composite looks a little more like him than the snapshot, which I don't think looks anything like him, but he has a pretty specific look.

The composite sketch shows a man with a narrow nose, whereas John Miller has a larger nose. That original composite also doesn't showcase any teeth, like the the guy's mouth is closed, but from photos and videos of John in recent years and in photos of him from childhood, his crooked teeth that kind of, they kind of like lay for, how do you describe this motion that I'm doing here? They kind of stick out. They kind of stick like, like they're protruding out of his mouth forward.

They're like splayed out. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. On the top and on the bottom. So it seemed like when he was a kid, they were more apparent on the top and now the bottom ones can be seen cause he kind of just like, oh, he says his mouth hanging open.

Yeah, he's basically a mouth breather. Yeah, but the composite sketch didn't show that and it seems like that's a very specific part of his look. But obviously the eyewitness did their very best to capture who they saw in a fleeting moment when they weren't even sure that something bad was happening. So composite sketches are rarely to a T, but head over to our socials if you want to see these comparisons.

After over 1,000 tips and hundreds of persons of interest and suspects across this 30-year investigation, detectives felt like John D. Miller could really be their guy. So they waited outside his single wide trailer where he lived alone, and on July 6th, 2018, covertly pulled various items of trash from his garbage bin, which included three used condoms. And this is a completely legal process, by the way, because once you throw something away and it hits the curb of your home,

or it's discarded in a public trash can, it essentially no longer belongs to you. And the used condoms were a great source of DNA, especially since they could directly compare them to DNA collected from those used condoms that were alongside the 2004 notes. Like, a lot of condoms here. And that's what they did, but they also cross-compared the DNA found on April. And just three days after it was all sent in to the Indiana State Police Lab, they all came back as a match. Meaning 59-year-old John D. Miller had assaulted and murdered 8-year-old April Tinsley in 1988, when John was 29 years old. And he left the taunting and threatening notes to four little girls across the

Fort Wayne area in 2004. So detectives now had to work very quickly to gather all their evidence and prepare an arrest warrant for John, which took about six days. Because on July 15th, 2018, Detective Clint Hetrick with the Indiana State Police and Detective Brian Martin headed back to John Miller's single wide trailer in Grable, Indiana and confronted him outside his home. It was a pretty calm situation where the detectives asked John if he would accompany

them down to the Fort Wayne Police Department and he agreed. After reading him his rights, detectives asked John if he knew why they were talking to him and John simply said, April Tinsley. Detectives asked John why he did it, and to explain what happened that day. And although John initially said, I can't, he did give them the details that they were looking for. John Miller explained that on Friday, April 1st, 1988, he was driving around the area of Fairfield-Ft. Wayne, specifically looking to abduct a young girl in his truck, when he noticed April walking alone on Hoagland Avenue.

Brian Martin later surmised, quote, He was trolling down the street and he told us he saw April walking down the street and he pulled up the block and waited outside his vehicle for her to walk by. He told her to get in the car and she did. He then took her to his trailer in Grable, the same trailer that he was living in when he was caught. John went on to tell detectives that in his home he assaulted April before killing her or as he stated choked her for 10 minutes until she died. The next morning early on Saturday April 2, while it was still dark outside, John

said that he drove around for a spot to dump her body, and that he did so that morning in the spot that she was later found. Now, as we discussed earlier, Forensics didn't really believe that she had been there for more than a few hours when she was found on Monday, but apparently she had been there for two days. John said that he even drove by on Easter Sunday, so the day after he dumped her body there and the day before it was found, to see that it was still there when he didn't see the story on the news.

It was at this time that he noticed one of April's shoes was still in his car, so he threw it out near her body. Which is what police thought happened. Exactly. And just a day later, that jogger discovered her. John Miller didn't know April, but she fit this idea in his head. And when he saw her walking alone, he took the opportunity to take her. Detective Clint Hedrick stated, quote, It's scary to think that there are people in our society capable of doing this.

Had she been five minutes earlier or five minutes later, we probably wouldn't be sitting here today. It could have been anybody, any little kid in the area that day, and that was probably not the first time he had gone looking. John even told the detectives that after taking April, he had considered taking another child and even went looking through neighborhoods over the years, hence the stalking letters that he left in 2004, but that he never found a good opportunity again. Wondering if he wasn't telling the full truth and that he was involved in other cases,

because obviously other little girls are going missing over the years just in general, because unfortunately that happens everywhere, detectives grilled him about other missing girls in the area. On this, Detective Brian Martin stated, To think he could do something so heinous as what he did to April in 1988 and then just stop. I think everyone was very skeptical of that and I think we tried to answer those questions. We were very direct with John about other cases.

We kept going over other cases. We knew there was no DNA match but we were persistent with John to tell us and help other families if there are other families and he was very insistent there was not. It's incredible that he went looking and fortunately no one was there. And they couldn't find any evidence that he was connected to other cases so it seemed like he was telling the truth. I mean at that point he really had nothing to lose, and detectives stated that he was very forthcoming and open about what he had done.

He knew one day he would get caught, which is why he wrote on the barn and sent those letters and condoms and Polaroids. He was putting his handwriting out there, which was a match to the letters and the barn message by the way, and he was putting his lower body in photos out there, his DNA, just trying to get attention, as he said. Even if it meant that it would lead police right to him. But the fact that he was a loner and kept to himself are likely the reasons that he wasn't caught sooner.

You know, they're the reasons why no one recognized his bedspread or his handwriting because he didn't have a close circle. He just kept his head down, went to work and back to his trailer. And that was his life. And speaking of his trailer, I'm trying to figure this out because so we're going to post photos on our socials of the outside of it. Unfortunately, there is no street view, so I can't look at what the entire street looks like or the houses nearby, but there's one photo from an article where you can see the house next to him or the single wide trailer next to his and

He doesn't have a carport or a garage or anything like that So he would have needed to park his car out front and walk up this short staircase up to his front door So I'm just trying to imagine like how he would have done this with April who obviously does not want to be in his presence has no idea what's going on. They've been in the car for 30 minutes driving together and by that point I mean assuming he went directly home it still would have been light for at least a couple more hours. So it's just crazy to think that with all of these other homes surrounding his that he was able to get April into his single wide trailer Without anybody seeing it happen

Yeah And I think one of the things that kind of helped him do this was the fact that he was a loner So if you didn't really know his neighbors all that well Would they know if he had like a niece or maybe this is somebody else's kid that he's watching or whatever? They may not think anything of it because they don't really know John. Yeah, I mean we have no idea like no neighbors ever came forward and said that they remembered seeing her and obviously no nobody reported anything suspicious at the time, but it's just crazy that so many people were around when this happened. His neighbors were there and just nobody saw it and and he got away with it for so long.

Yeah, it is truly incredible that this guy, this illiterate, Igor looking bastard got away with this horrible crime for 30 years. Well, after John D. Miller confessed all of this to detectives, they immediately escorted him to the Allen County Jail in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and proceeded forth with the charges of murder and child molestation. And he actually never saw a jury because he fully admitted guilt and accepted a deal during a hearing in Allen Superior Court. Later in 2018, he was sentenced to 80 years in prison, 50 years for murder and 30 years for child molestation, with no chance for appeal.

His earliest possible parole date will be July 15, 2058, which is just after his 99th birthday. So this is essentially a death sentence. Detective Brian Martin stated, quote, There are a lot of questions answered in trial, but it would have been difficult for the family to hear some of the things Mr. Miller talked about and he'll do for the rest of his life in prison. The family expressed concerns about justice and to me, prison is where we wanted him and I'm okay with that.

April's family initially wanted to pursue the death penalty, but her mom Janet later agreed with the plea deal, just happy to finally have some answers regarding what happened to her daughter, knowing the person behind it all was discovered. After the trial, donning a shirt with April's photo on it that said, never forgotten, always remembered, April Marie Tinsley, she said, quote, "'We're glad the case is solved "'and has come to a closure a little bit, "'but in a way, April really didn't get

"'the justice she deserves. "'But right now, it's a start. We're never going to forget her. Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this heartbreaking episode of Going West. Please make sure you share this episode if you like the show. Also, go check out the photos from this episode on our socials. We're on Instagram and we're also on Facebook.

Yeah, this case has a lot of photos associated with it. Some cases don't have that many and obviously if you want to see photos of the victim, that's always important to look at as well. But this one has a bunch. We have a map, we have the letter, we have one of the letters, we have the, you know, side of the barn with the message on it, we have all the composites and the photos of John and photos of course of April. So go check that out. Thank you guys for tuning in. We are so freaking happy that this case got justice because it was a long time coming Yeah, absolutely and don't forget to go check out that new patreon episode that we just dropped

You can subscribe on patreon at patreon.com slash going west podcast or you can subscribe through Apple subscriptions Alright guys, so for everybody out there in the world don't be a stranger Thanks for watching!