Cold Case Files - The Evil Among Us

Episode Date: August 19, 2025

When 8-year-old April Tinsley is found dead in a Fort Wayne, Indiana ditch the community is shaken. Disturbing letters then appear, penned by her killer, targeting other young girls. Police scramble to catch April's murderer before he strikes again.Progressive: Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.Thrive Market: Go to ThriveMarket.com/coldcase for 30% off your first order, PLUS a free $60 gift!ZocDoc: Check out Zocdoc.com/CCF and download the Zocdoc app for free!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Listen to Rich Girl Summer, now on Audible. Go to audible.com slash rich girl summer. Hi, cold case listeners. I'm Marissa Pinson. And if you're enjoying this show, I just want to remind you that a episodes of Cold Case Files, as well as the A&E Classic Podcasts, I Survived, American Justice, and City Confidential are all available ad-free on the new A&E Crime and Investigation channel on Apple Podcasts and Apple Plus for just $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year. And now on to the show. The following episode contains disturbing accounts of physical and sexual

violence involving children. Listener discretion is advised. April was just a Ordinary little girl. You got the little kids' picture on the milk cartons. And you always keep telling yourself that that's never going to happen to you. It was very unusual for a child to disappear in broad daylight. You're out there screaming and hollering, yelling April. This guy raped and murdered a child. It rocked the whole city.

Then another young girl goes missing. and her case ends up being a homicide also. This monster was still on our streets. They were stalking young girls, bragging, saying that they were going to take more children. I kept saying, we will find the person that did this, but I wasn't expected to go 30 years. There are over 100,000 cold cases in America.

Only about 1% are ever solved. This is one of those rare stories. It's April 1st, 1998 in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Eight-year-old April Tinsley is excited to play with her friend down the street. Nicole was April's best friend. She always wanted to play with Nicole. I walked her to the alley where I could see her cross and she turned around and waved at me. April's mother Janet tells her to be home by supper time.

She yelled okay and she goes, I love you, and then she went on to Nicole's house. April's supposed to come home between 3.30 and 4 o'clock. She didn't come home. So I called up there. Nicole's mom asked Nicole, if April's still playing and she goes, no, she was supposed to go home. It was strange. It was never like her at all. You're out there yelling April, and all of a sudden it was like panic mode.

April Tinsley vanishes. When I was 16 years old, I told everybody, if my first child was a little girl, she's going to have blind, curly hair, and blue eyes. And her name was going to be April Marie Tinsley, and that's what I got. Me and Michael, we got married in 1979. April was born March 18th, 1980. Everybody says she was like me because she was shy and bashful. She loved Christmas. She always loved help decorate.

You would tell her, get the ornaments out, and she'll help put them on the tree. The tree will be full on the bottom, but it'd be naked on the top. I would have to help her with the rest of it. April is six when her little brother Paul is born. She was excited to have the brother. She was a good helper. She was always overprotective of him. And then all of a sudden they're giggling and rolling all over the floor.

She always be climbing trees. She was more of a tomboy. Doug Nona Makker is a family friend. I pulled up in front of the house one day and she was jumping off the porch. I'm like, you're going to break your leg, kid. But that's what kids do. Neighborhood was great. We had a small park that Janet, and Mike would take April two.

People knew each other on the street. Yeah, it was a nice enough neighborhood right up until 1988, and things changed. I called the police department, and I had a file a police report, and the first thing they did was had her as a runaway. an eight-year-old. I said she had no reason to run. I have a police scanner, and I had taken my wife out, but we got home after dinner and turned on the police scanner,

and I heard missing girl, and they gave the address. I told my wife, that is Mike's address. That first night, we went there. Janet was kind of frantic. She was, you know, a mother. You don't mess with the mother. You don't mess with the mother's child. Mike, I don't want to say he was calm,

but he also was hoping that April was at a friend's house and just didn't call. My wife stayed with Janet while Mike and I were out until probably 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning, just walking up in the alleys and the railroad tracks. It was a long, hard day. There was a huge law enforcement presence the next day. Brian Martin is a detective with the Fort Wayne Police Department.

This was kind of a gloomy, rainy day. Fort Wayne Police Department began doing a canvas and a search. They were assisted by the K-9 Division, the Mounted Patrol. We still had a horseback division in 1988. We don't have the Internet. We don't have cell phones. Amber alerts aren't going out. It was significantly different.

It was newspaper, radio, and television. One of the detectics down there, and it helped us with a flyer that had her picture as seen. Please call this number, putting them up. April's case soon makes local headlines. The search started out small. Then all of a sudden, it was close to 300 people. Janet stays close to home waiting for any news. She's caught between hoping for the best and fearing the worst.

It might have been like two days that I didn't eat very much. If April ain't eaten, I don't eat. As the day grew longer, I didn't want to say it. That's what I was thinking. It was not going to end well. Angelica Robinson is a former reporter for local station Wayne 15. It rattled a lot of people in a sense of they were scared to have their kids walk home from school. Three days after April's disappearance, police received.

a tip. A tip came in from two younger girls. They saw somebody matching April's description being pulled into a blue later model pickup truck by what they described as a male white. The witnesses say the young blonde girl was crying. They thought it was a family argument until they heard about April's disappearance. Law enforcement began looking for the blue truck, making traffic stops and interviewing the individuals who owned or drove those blue trucks to see if they had any information. Investigating every blue truck will take months. Meanwhile, police run down all of their leads. Law enforcement's worst fear was that April was taken or abducted, and we knew that time was of

the essence. Law enforcement was working around the clock to ascertain any information as to April's whereabouts. Later that same day, another call comes in. Clint Hedrick is a detective with the Indiana State Police. A jogger in DeKalb County, which is the county directly north of Allen County where Fort Wayne is located. Jogging down County Road 68, he happens to look over into a ditch near the roadway. And he sees a young girl deceased playing in the ditch. The jogger ran to a nearby house, called 911.

Police responded to the scene of the ditch on. County Road 68 and immediately began processing the crime scene, looking for clues, trying to figure out who the young girl is. The body was not far off of the roadway. It didn't appear that the killer was trying to hide her body. Law enforcement immediately ruled it was a homicide. Mark Heffelfinger is a retired detective from the Indiana State Police. There was not much evidence on the body that was visible to the naked eye.

She was discovered wearing the same clothes that April hadn't reported missing in. And it's identified as April Tensley. So at that point, it goes from a missing person's case to a homicide investigation. Investigators discover the killer had to taken off April's clothes and put them back on. She only had one shoe on. Law enforcement decided that this was a key piece of evidence and kept it very guarded. A few hundred yards down the road, on the opposite side of the road from where she was found, was her other shoe.

Investigators suspect the shoe was tossed there. There was not much there for police to go on other than the body and the shoe that had been located down the road. No tire tracks were located in the area, no footprints. The same afternoon, Janet Tinsley meets with reporters trying to keep her daughter's case in the public eye. Police hadn't yet told her about their grisly discovery. And then all of a sudden, here comes this big plane car.

The one detective goes, we need to speak to you privately. And the other one looked at the news and said the interview is over. We think you might want to sit down. There you go. We got a picture we want to show you. I knew it was her. I was really upset, crying. My husband and his nephew came in.

I told him, I go, well, you and Tom can go and take the flyer. back down. They found her. April's body was removed from the scene and taken to the forensic center where an autopsy was conducted. She had been sexually assaulted and that the cause of death was suffocation by strangulation. Her clothing was taken into evidence. In 1988, DNA technology was very new to law enforcement. There was a DNA sample taken from her underwear that was preserved. Monday, when I got home from work, my wife was sitting on the steps crying and informed me that they had found her and that she had died.

We went straight over Mike and Janet's to be with him. There was still a large police presence. Very little was said. It was just silence and shock. Anytime police investigate a murder, it's not easy. It's not easy for the family of the victim. It's not easy for the police to deal with. And when you add the death of a child, it makes it more difficult.

It sent a lot of people on edge. The thought that a little girl could just be walking home from school and then just gets snatched off the street and then raped and killed was huge. Police have one possible lead. The girls who saw April getting into a blue truck also got a look at the driver. They tell police he's a white man between 20 and 40 years old, with light-colored hair and stubble. Police released a composite sketch

of what the suspect could possibly look like. It's released in the local media. Several hundred tips came in. And at that point, we started to follow up on those leads. They were everything from, I got a neighbor who's kind of odd, to I got a neighbor's got a blue truck, to I have a neighbor that I think is a pedophile.

You can't dismiss any one of them because any one of them could be the right one. Of all the hundreds of tips that came in, somebody believed they saw April Tinsley looking out the back window of this blue truck. Law enforcement began a very focused and thorough investigation into the blue pickup truck. The Bureau Motor Vehicles, logs, and records were pulled for all blue pickup trucks within Fort Wayne and surrounding counties. And ultimately, most of northern Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan, we tracked down if the pickup truck was sold. who it was sold to, or if it had been crushed or sold to a scrapyard. Despite an exhaustive search, police can't find the elusive blue truck.

Then, four days after April's death, while investigators continue to search, April is laid to rest. It was a beautiful funeral. It was just horrible. Lots of people showed up. Lots of people. Mike and Janet were in the front row. I just can't imagine how hard it was for them. The day that we buried her was rough. Everybody goes up to the casket and says their goodbyes. I went up there, and I put my head down on her head and told her that Mama loves you. You can rest now.

I wouldn't let go. So they had to drag me out. In the beginning, there's lots of leads to follow up on lots of people to interview. After a year, things slowed down. Less and less leads come in. The leads come to a dead end. A telephone call came into the Fort Wayne Police Department with a new tip. Police get a report of writing on a barn.

This barn is located in northeast Fort Wayne on Schwartz Road. On the barn, they discovered a message that mentioned April Tensley. This was a big deal because it's the first lead they had in a while. Law enforcement immediately drove to the scene. Dritten and Cran right on the front door of the barn. the message read, I killed 8-year-old April Marie Tensley. I will kill again. You know what my social feed looks like lately?

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and they'll help you find options within your budget. Try today at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates, price and coverage match limited by state law, not available in all states. It's now May 21st, 1990, two years after April is murdered. Part of the message on the barn was, did you find the shoe? The police did not tell anybody that there was a blue shoe missing. The message written on the barn is written almost as if a child had written it.

Police weren't sure if that's how they write. Are we looking at somebody with a possible mental disability? Or are they purposely disguising their handwriting by misspelling words? It was actually sent to the FBI for analysis. The FBI felt that the individual who authored this note was possibly trying to disguise their handwriting or mislead law enforcement. Those notes on the barn really sent the community on edge. You have somebody who is taunting the community and saying,

ha, ha, ha, I killed, and I'll do it again. People were scared. Shortly after the barn door writing, another young girl was reported missing. The missing girl is seven-year-old Sarah Balker. She lives just a few miles from where April's body was found. I actually lived probably two miles from her apartment complex. Sarah's body is found in a creek bed close to an apartment complex on the north side of Fort Wayne. Both girls were approximately the same age.

They both had been abducted, sexually assaulted, and then murdered, and then left in a remote location. There was one difference. April was found clothed. Sarah wasn't. Given that they were so similar, police looked into it if they were connected. Possibly, we have the same person that committed both crimes. The FBI was brought in. brought in, they created a profile of what they believed the killer could be.

The FBI began pouring over the evidence and quickly realized that the manner in which April's body was discovered and that of Sarah Belker's did not appear to have the same trademarks. And eventually it was determined through DNA, actually, that person that killed April was not the same person that killed Sarah Belker. It was just a very, very horrible time in for example. in Fort Wayne, especially for these two young girls who were ultimately killed. With no new leads, the case of April Tinsley goes cold, but the people of Fort Wayne hadn't forgotten April.

You can't leave the house without somebody pointing at you, taking pictures of you. They were being harassed. If they went somewhere, people would point. There's that little girl's mom. It was a hard time for them. Mike, he kind of had like a nervous breakdown. He was 34 years old when he had his first heart attack. And I kept saying, we're never going to know who killed her.

You know, is it ever going to be sobbed? It's now March 25, 2004, 16 years after April is murdered. A young girl in the Fort Wayne area was out playing. She was at her bicycle and discovered a no in the basketball. good of her bicycle. Law enforcement was called by the family member of this young girl, and the note was provided to the police department. Very shocking. Investigators had a mix of emotions. Is this really our killer that's leaving us another message, or is it somebody that's just messing with them? One of the biggest questions is, why now, why 16 years after April's

murder? Fifteen days later, a second note was found on a bicycle, belonging to a young girl, also very similar in age and look to April Tensley. The baskets contained more than just notes. There were Polaroid pictures and used condom. They were very vulgar and graphic and sexual content. Each note that's left, there were four found in total. Each note's addressed to the little girl. There's high honey that they've been watching this little girl.

One of the notes even says that if they don't see this on the news that they will blow up the little girl's house. At first, I thought with all the clues and that he was leaving, I said, I hope they catch him for another child comes up missing and gets hurt. The Polaroid photos depicted a gentleman from approximately the belly or waist down with his penis exposed sitting on a bed spread. This bed spread appeared to be that of a a paisley pattern, maybe some blues and greens.

Investigators think the bedspread resembles those from a cheap hotel. Detectives canvass all hotels and motels within about a hundred mile radius of Fort Wayne. It scared law enforcement to think that this killer was still moving around. Who is this guy? No hotels were able to say that that was a familiar bedspread.

Not much was gained from the bedspread. He's basically taunting the police, saying, you can't catch me. I can do whatever I want. I will kill again. For 16 years, April's killer has gotten away with murder. Yet he may have just handed detectives the biggest clue of all. In one of his letters, he left a quote-unquote present. And that present, the killer referred to, was a used condom. By leaving this condom, they were providing us a very large DNA sample. Please try to compare any DNA from the condom. to the evidence that was found on the clothing of April Tensi at the time of her death.

The DNA came back indicating that this could possibly be the suspect, but it was not 100% because at the time, DNA was still in a growing process. The question was, whose DNA is this? Analysts run the sample through the FBI's DNA database of felons, but there's no match. He thinks he's smarter than the police, and he thinks he's not going to be caught. Two decades pass, and police are no. closer to finding April's killer. Still, her mother never gives up hope.

We kept asking the police department, keep it in the media, keep it fresh. And they kept telling us that, no, they can solve their own murder cases. They don't need no outside help. Desperate for answers, Janet Tansley reaches out for help of a different kind. It's been a few years since the police department put anything out. I was sitting there, let me stir the pot. So I sent a email to John Walsh. We need like America's Most Wanted, the other crime shows that was on to get the story out there. We were hoping that it would trigger something.

The segment leads to 50 new tips. I drew a lot of national attention. detectives go from having no suspects to having too many. In 2015, two new Fort Wayne detectives, Clint Hedrick and Brian Martin, take over the case. With the advances in technology and the advances in science, our list of suspects had been whittled down to approximately 12 to 15 that would not provide a DNA sample to law enforcement. Detectives hoped to use new technology to rule their possible suspects in or out. Early 2018, we began seeing media attention in a reference to how genetic genealogy was used to identify the killer in the Golden State killer case. Detective Martin wonders if a genetic lab called Parabon might be able to use the same technique to find April's killer.

I decided to just pick up the phone and call. What do I have to do to give you a sample to try to figure out who killed April Tensley? Detective Martin gives Parabon a DNA sample collected from the condom. Seven weeks after we submit our sample, I receive a telephone call. They said we got you two possible brothers that are your killer, and they're still alive. Both of them were relatively close to the area, so we pulled their driver's license signatures. And one of the things we noticed was that one of the brother's signature was very similar to the notes left on the girl's bikes. One brother had some activity that we felt was very suspicious and fit within a profile of somebody who would conduct a crime, an abduction, rape, and murder.

The suspect's name is John Miller. To tell you that we're excited doesn't even begin to touch the feeling that we had. We were working a 30-year-old homicide, and we now had a very strong suspect. I was almost able to relax and think, okay, this is finally over. And now it's going to be closed for April's family. They can move on. It's now July 2018, 30 years after April is murdered. John Miller's residence was a trailer home in Grable, Indiana.

We wanted to learn who John Miller was, what he did, where did he work at. Within a couple hours of beginning surveillance, I got eyes on him for the first time. He came out of his trailer, and he was actually cleaning the windows on his car. I was very surprised by his appearance. He was hunched over. I actually had to remind myself that this crime happened 30 years prior. We learned that most of the time he went to work and came home, and if he went anywhere, it would be to a store or to his brother's house.

He worked at Walmart, which is approximately 20 miles away from where he lived. Myself and another detective went in and playing clothes in Walmart, and we found him working in the children's store. toy area. I found it very disturbing that he was near kids almost all day during his shift. Detectives need a sample of Miller's DNA to compare to the DNA found on April's body. We decided in order to obtain his DNA, we were going to wait for trash day and for him to put his trash out to the curb. That night, after his trash was placed out by the curb, we actually pulled John Miller's trash from the bin and drove to a garage at the Fort Wayne Police.

department. They brought it to me. We laid it out on the floor. I went through the bags of trash looking for anything that would possibly have is or more likely have DNA on it. Going through the bags, I found a used condom. It was just amazing. As I continued to dig, I found two more. I found a total of three used condoms in the trash. This was at 4 o'clock in the morning, and I immediately drove to Indianapolis to deliver them to our DNA Alice to determine whether it was a match or was not. match to our suspect. Two days later we got results back. It's a match of John Miller's DNA to our murder's DNA from 1988. John Miller was the person we had been looking for for all these years. We decided that Detective Brian Martin and I were going to approach

him when he got home from work on a Sunday morning outside of his trailer. As John Miller pulled up to his trailer, Detective Martin and I approached John Miller. We introduced ourselves and just told him that his name had come up in an investigation and asked him to come down to the Fort Wayne Police Department with us. And he was more than happy to do so. So, John, we want to talk to you a little bit about a case that we've been working on for a while. And somebody brought your name up into this. And we wanted to kind of talk to you and see what you had to say about that.

Do you have any idea what we need to talk to you about? Well, I think Friday is a Tinley case, and that's the only one I can say any community. I kind of sat back in my seat, and I was surprised that he had said her name. What would make you say the Tennessee case? He didn't want to come right out and tell us what happened. We had to talk to him for a while, ask him questions. What year did that happen? Do you remember? April 98. 88.

April 88? Yeah. Okay. So you know that the police have evidence in the case? Just to see just how much you know about it, so I know kind of what not to bore you with. DNA. Yeah, yeah. We have DNA. When we did that DNA, we were able to narrow it down. I just can't help to think that you probably had an idea maybe at some point something like this can happen.

Can you talk to me a little bit about how this accident happened and how this, what happened back in 88? Are you sure that with me? I can't. Why can't you? You know what's more stressful than a packed calendar? Realizing you're out of coffee right before a meeting. It always seems to happen right when you need it most. That's why I stocked up during Thrive Market's back-to-school sale.

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and delivered right to my door. Less time in the store, more time for anything else. So if you're ready for a little reset of your own, check out Thrive Markets back to school sale and get stocked up before your shelves and your coffee stash run out. Now's the best time to try Thrive Market. You'll get up to 25% off select items

and new members get 30% off their first order plus a free gift. Go to Thrivemarket.com slash cold case to start saving. The sale ends August 31st. Don't miss it. Hi, I'm Julia Cowley, a retired FBI profile and host of the true crime podcast, The Consult, Real FBI Profilers. If you're fascinated with true crime and criminal profiling, then join us as we discuss real cases and examine the behavior exhibited before,

during, and after the commission of the crime. You can listen to the consult wherever you get your podcasts. It's as close as it gets to being in the room with the FBI's behavioral analysis unit. I really didn't know what to expect it going into the interview. We were hopeful for a full confession. I think that this was probably an accident, John, and I'd like to, can you just tell me how? I like it, you can't. His demeanor changed a little bit in the interview.

You could tell he became very nervous. He was having a hard time telling us what happened. You've already admitted to this by the letters and the condoms that you left for us. You wrote the letters. You left the condoms, and you were like, gosh, dang it, why can't these police figure out what the heck I'm trying to tell them here, right? I just, there was nothing in the paper for a long, for years. You wanted to be like, hey, guys, get on the ball here. She was walking down the sidewalk by herself and then by whatever around.

So you were driving around, you were looking for a little girl to pick up, weren't you, John? Yeah. Yeah. Did you get out grab her? Did you say some to her? I was already out, standing by the car, but she walked by. So you knew you were going to try and grab her. What did she say when you grabbed her?

She said, don't hurt me. I'll do whatever you say. Okay. John, before she died, how did that happen? Choked her. You choked her? Why'd you choke her? That's the only thing you came up at the time.

Were you afraid she'd tell on you? Yeah. It surprised me that somebody could do this and live with themselves for 30 years and not tell anybody or not get it leaked to anybody of what they did. Sunday afternoon, we were standing in my kitchen. I was talking to Mike and I was looking out the window and I seen three SUVs come in, a police cruiser and two black ones. It was the prosecutor attorney.

First thing I looked out, Mike looked out, and they said, we got some news for you. They showed us a picture. Have you seen him around the neighborhood at any time? No. And they go, he worked at Walmart. That's all I can't say is, okay, okay. It's like I was lost for words. Police tell Janet, this is the man who killed April.

Prosecutor Karen Richards notified Janet that an arrest had been made in April's murder. Okay, you got you a suspect. They said, how do you feel about it being solved? And I was sitting there. I went through 30 years, not knowing who killed her, and all of a sudden you come to the house and tell me you got him. I said, it might take me a while for this to actually sink in after they left. They left, then you sit down and you have your crying spell.

You're happy and you're crying. Finally, it's over. News of the arrest travels fast, and many in Fort Wayne call for the death penalty. All he took was one kid to walk home one night without adult supervision, and that could have been victim number two. Janet also wants Miller put to death. He took her life. I want his life. He don't deserve to be alive.

On December 7th, 2018, John goes to court for the murder of April Tinsley. Despite the DNA match and the confession, Miller pleads not guilty. They ended up reaching a plea deal. I covered a pre-trial hearing. And when I saw John Miller walk in, it was chilling. They kept telling me that it's the best deal. I said, no. I want a trial.

They didn't want to go to trial. because they didn't want us to live through all the stuff that went on through the case. Miller avoids the death penalty, but he's sentenced to 80 years. At age 59, he'll spend the rest of his life in prison. When we all was in the courtroom, he would never look at us. He would only look at the judge. Most of the time, he looked at the table. At sentencing, Janet finally confirmed.

confronts the man who killed her daughter. I was the last person that got up there and spoke. I read my statement. I said, I want one question answered from you, but I know I will never get it. I want to know why. Why her? And the first words came out of his mouth was he was bored.

In 2015, the community of Fort Wayne builds a memorial to April Tinsley. When I come to April's Garden, Three to four times a week. I'll sit for two, sometimes maybe three hours. There's usually a white butterfly comes and flies around. Everybody kept saying it was April flying around. It makes me happy to see the butterfly. When I feel down or I have a bad week,

I'll come and sit on the bench and just sit here and talk to her. I'll say, April, mama misses you more and wishes you was here. In a way, you know she's around somewhere. Sarah Boucher's case remains unsolved. Investigators continue to search for her killer.