Someone Knows Something - Introducing: Hell and Gone Murder Line from iHeart Podcasts | Doug Janis Part 1

Episode Date: December 21, 2024

From iHeart Podcasts and School of Humans comes Hell and Gone Murder Line. On December 13, 2020, in Hemphill, Texas, police in Sabine County got a call about a houseboat on fire. The houseboat was docked behind 322 Echo Ridge, off of Cedar Grove Road on Highway 21 in the Pendleton area of Toledo Bend. And the scene very quickly descended into total chaos. The firefighters had trouble getting out to the remote location, and by the time they got there the boat was engulfed in flames. Firefighters and paramedics rushed to the boat but it was too late. By the time they got there the walls had caved in. And then, when they dug through the remains of the boat, they found the body of 64-year-old Doug Janis. At first, they thought that the fire had been some kind of accident and that Doug had died as a result of a propane leak. But then, they took Doug's body in for an autopsy, and they found two bullets in his head. Doug Janis had been murdered. And his much younger wife April Mae Janis was nowhere to be found. But Doug’s death was just the beginning of a story that goes back twenty years and involves sex, allegations of corruption, and multiple murders.More episodes of Hell and Gone Murder Line are available at: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hell-and-gone/id1437808691

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Suddenly listeners didn't mind sitting in traffic or even missing their flight. Amazon Music Unlimited now includes Audible. Download the Amazon Music app now to start listening. Terms apply. This is a CBC podcast. Hell and Gone is a true crime podcast from iHeart Podcasts and School of Humans that follows journalist and private investigator Catherine Townsend as she investigates unsolved deaths. Over the past five years of making Hell and Gone, host Catherine has received hundreds of messages from people all around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities.

In past seasons, she's only been able to focus on one case. But now she's hosting a new weekly podcast called Hell and Gone Murder Line. Every Thursday, Katherine features a new case, adds updates to old ones, and helps as much as she can to get the word out about unsolved murders. Now here's an episode of Hell and Gone Murder Line. So he was murdered on this side? Yes, he was killed in Texas. And she lived on the other side?

She lived in Louisiana. We're driving across the Pendleton Bridge, the one that runs over the Sabine River and separates Texas and Louisiana. We're headed to a remote spot on Toledo Bend Lake right across the Texas border in Hemple. It's the spot where, on December 13, 2020, at 5.28 p.m., right before the sun disappeared behind the horizon, police in Sabine County got a call about a houseboat

on fire. The houseboat was docked behind 322 Echo Ridge off of Cedar Grove Road on Highway 21 in the Pendleton area of Toledo Bend, and that scene very quickly descended into total chaos. The firefighters had trouble getting out to the remote location, so it took a while. And by the time they did get there, the boat was completely engulfed in flames. One person who commented on Facebook and claimed to have been one of the first responders on the scene wrote, quote, When we arrived, we noticed a pickup truck and a four wheeler on site.

So we had a feeling someone may have been in there. Houseboat was fully engulfed along with other multiple boats and docks, heavy fire and fuel oil burning on top of water. Once fire was knocked down, I had members sweep and notice the remains." End quote. Firefighters and paramedics rushed to the scene, but it was too late.

By the time they got there, the walls had caved in, and the boat had very quickly been completely eviscerated by the flames. And then, when they did dig through the remains, they found the body of 64-year-old Doug Janis. His charred remains were found in the bedroom of the boat. At first, they thought the house fire had been some kind of accident, that Doug had died as a result of a propane leak. But then they took Doug's body in for an autopsy. At the forensic exam, they saw the two bullets in his head.

Doug Janis had been murdered, and his much younger estranged wife, April May Janis, was nowhere to be found. But Doug's death was just the beginning of a story that goes back 20 years and involves sex, allegations of corruption, and multiple murders. I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past five years of making my True Crime podcast Hell and Gone, I have learned that there is no such thing as a small town where murder never happens.

I have received hundreds of messages from people all around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone murder line at 678-744-6145. That's 678-744-6145.

Or you can send us a message on Instagram at hellandgonepod. This is Hell and Gone Murder Line. Hello. Hey, this is Amy from Hell and Gone. Oh, hi. How are you? Doing good. Can you talk? Yes.

Yes, I am fixing to get into a place away from my grandbaby. We have currently have no power because of the hurricane, the weather comes through. And so, if I lose you, that's probably, that's what's gonna happen is our service is just, I mean, we live out in the country, so. Okay. I heard about this case when a podcast listener reached out. She was a friend of Doug's who said that Doug's death

was all over the news in that rural region of East Texas. But then all of a sudden it wasn't. No one ever heard anymore about the death investigation. Her name is April. Not to be confused with Doug's wife April. Doug's friend April said that she knew Doug through church. She said that he was always friendly and kind and that she believed he was a religious man. She said that in the final years of his life Doug became very involved with a local Pentecostal church. That's where she knew him from.

Doug just meant a whole lot to our family and we went to church together. There wasn't much information out there about Doug Janis' murder. Local news stations quoted an affidavit, but it was brief and just said the cause of death was due to Doug Janis being shot in the head. The houseboat, as we said before, had gone up in flames. At first, the police and paramedics thought it was some kind of a propane leak or freak accident. Doug was a very well-known commercial cat fisherman

in the area. He had not only built a houseboat over the years He had also acquired several smaller houseboats. He kept them all together So he had a lot of property down there. He also had a fireplace on that houseboat and propane tanks But once they took Doug's body to Beaumont, Texas and did the autopsy they saw the cause of death had been the fatal shots to his head, not the house fire. And right away, people were asking questions about his wife, April Mae Janis, and where

she was at the time of the murder. Because according to Doug's friend April, Doug and his wife April were estranged at the time of his death. They were not living together, and they hadn't been living together for a long time. April first moved into a mobile home that was just up the hill from Doug's houseboat while he stayed on the water. But later, she moved into her own place in Minnie, Louisiana,

right across the bridge. Exactly when April relocated and what the story was there is something we're gonna be diving into in future episodes. At the same time, there were rumors that witnesses had seen a vehicle rapidly speeding away from the houseboat, basically right before it blew up. We talked to Doug's friend April about some of the irregularities at the crime scene. He lived on the boat and she lived in a mobile home up the hill from him. She did not even, at that point, she was not even living in the same place with him.

And he had, he didn't even sleep in his own bed ever. He slept in a recliner because he had a bad hernia. I guess from, since he was a commercial fisherman, you know, he had to bend over the boat and lift heavy fish, you know, out of the water and stuff. And when they, when they put the fire out and they found his body, it was in the bed with, and he had two bullet holes in the back of the head. This has been a difficult case. We have done multiple FOIA requests, but the case file is not public information since this is still an active investigation.

But that answered one important question for me. I knew Doug was shot in the head. Now we found out he was shot in the back of the head. This was definitely a murder case. Doug had been shot execution style. But who would have wanted to kill Doug Janis? A man who everyone seemed to love in that neighborhood. We need to find more information about what Doug was doing on that houseboat and also about his wife, about his relationship with his wife April. We also need to find these witnesses who said they saw a car speeding away from the blazing houseboat.

But even without the case file, we did get a few facts. The pathologists found two bullets lodged in Doug's brain and ruled the manner of death a homicide. So as we wait for more official police and forensic information to come, we need to ask, who was Doug Janis? Everyone has secret parts of themselves they don't want others to see. And in a murder case, often those hidden dark sides become public.

When it comes to Doug Janis's murder, I can't remember a case I've ever investigated where it seems like the victim is so loved and so hated at the same time. Most of the news articles about Doug are really positive, but at the same time, I noticed they're pretty vague. For example, the local news station kjas.com had an article that read, quote, Doug Janis was living the dream and doing what he loved along the banks of Toledo Bend Lake, fishing.

He was known by the fishing community as the catfish man and well loved by all who met him." End quote. So they painted a picture of Doug Janis as being this nice guy who was living out his golden years on a houseboat that he built himself. In all of the photos I can find of Doug he has a huge smile on his face. Doug was fit. He spent a lot of time fishing. He also got a scuba diving certification and was a pretty avid diver for years in the Texas Gulf Coast area. Doug was always on the water. He was obsessed with the houseboat that he

had designed and built himself. He loved showing his boat off to friends and family. I'm gonna take a step back for a minute because you can't unravel what happened to Doug Janis without talking about the area where it happened. This infamous houseboat that sat on the Toledo Bend Reservoir. This reservoir is on the Sabine River. It sits on the border between Texas and Louisiana. It is a super rural area and the people who live there are kind of an eclectic combination. You've got families who've lived there for generations, also a lot of retired people,

and people who come there to fish on weekends. This area, the Toledo Bend Reservoir, by the way, is huge. It has an area of 185,000 acres. It's about 80 miles long. It's the largest manmade body of water in the South and the fifth largest in the entire United States. The lake is well known as being amazing for fishing, man-made body of water in the South and the fifth largest in the entire United States. The lake is well known as being amazing for fishing, especially for catfish, Doug's favorite. But the water is murky.

Some people claim that although there is swimming there, it's not necessarily recommended in some areas due to alligators. When I see the trees that are sticking out of the water, it does look like a beautiful nature spot. I also can't help thinking about what could be floating in that lake, like alligators or dead bodies. And according to some Facebook postings by residents, the area is very remote. The nearest hospital is 15 miles away and takes 25 minutes to drive to.

Even the fire department is several miles away across the bridge. The area looks a lot like the Ozarks, especially on the Texas side. The road is getting skinnier. I can't believe a fire truck made it. There are multiple fire trucks. According to the obituary for Douglas Michael Janis, he was born August 8, 1956 in Lake Jackson. He grew up with his mother, Wanda, and his stepfather, Bill, who adopted him.

Doug was the oldest of four siblings. His obituary read, quote, Doug will be remembered as one who never minded a hard day's work and never shied away from a challenge. There was not a lazy bone in his body, and he was not afraid of hard work. He was energetic, always hustling, and never looked for a handout. Those who knew him best and loved him most never knew him not to be working." Doug lived most of his life in Sillsby.

He worked as an insurance sales representative for Farm Bureau. He had apparently won awards for his work. Doug was busy. He did a lot of different jobs during his lifetime, most involving manual labor, including offshore drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. At one point, he installed satellite dishes in Austin, Texas.

Doug was an entrepreneur. He ran several small businesses himself, including a fish market. As we said, he always had a fascination with the Toledo Bend Lake area because of the lake. He was obsessed with fishing and eventually he moved there and worked as a commercial fisherman supplying local restaurants.

Doug apparently made a lot of money at his craft. He was super industrious. And even though he lived on the Texas side of the border, there was a 75 fish limit per day there. So Doug liked to fish on the Louisiana side where he could catch an unlimited amount of fish. Doug apparently made a lot of money and kept a lot of money on his boat. We'll get back to that later. Back to the obituary.

The obituary continued, quote, his friends and acquaintances knew him to be a man's man who was creative, independent, and could do anything he set his mind to do. He's never met a stranger and was known for his gregarious, outgoing personality, end quote. Because Doug was obsessed with fishing, especially cat fishing, he loved cooking for friends, hanging out and throwing barbecues for friends and family. And according to his obituary, he became kind of a local celebrity because of this self-made houseboat.

The obituary closes with, In his final moments, he was at home in the place he loved and enjoyed most. I think it's important to quote these things exactly because this was crafted by Doug's family, the people closest to him. They obviously loved him a lot and this was the side of him that they saw. But, like everyone, Doug Janis had another side to him. After Doug was cremated, his remains were given back to his family. The obituary states Doug's ashes were scattered in the same water where he used to feed alligators marshmallows.

Meanwhile, police were trying to piece together Doug's personal life. And we tried to do the same because it turned out it was complicated. Doug Janis' obituary leaves out a few pretty crucial things. And there were also things about the crime scene that even on first impression do not seem to make sense. First of all, Doug had recently had a hernia operation.

Because of that, he would normally sleep in his recliner in the living room. And yet, he was found with two gunshots in the head on his bed. And the fire trucks came at 5.28 p.m. So why was he in the bedroom in the middle of the afternoon? Especially since he wasn't sleeping there apparently in general. We also need to find out the layout of that boat. Something else I noticed because I'm always looking not just for the information obituaries provide but for the information they leave out. As we know, everyone has their own version of the victim. The obituary mentions who Doug is survived by.

It mentions his daughter, who we have spoken to, but she's a private person and obviously this has been traumatic for her, so I'm not mentioning her name here. As well as his son-in-law and grandchildren, his brother and sister and other family members. The obituary even mentions the many grateful fish who eluded his capture, etc. But the obituary does not mention Doug's estranged wife, April. In fact, Doug's obituary doesn't mention any of Doug's former wives.

For me, the omission of the wife and the obituary was a potential clue. I wanted to understand their romantic history and how April and Doug got together was a little bit of a mystery. It was not solved either, as we said, by reading Doug's obituary or by the YouTube tribute memorial video that was made by the funeral home. I watched that video several times. We learned from Doug's daughter that he was married a total of five times, twice to the same woman.

So he had four wives in total. I noticed there were several shots in the memorial video of Doug's former wives and of him with his children when they were young. But there was only one quick flash near the end, one single shot of April. And in that photo, Doug is wearing a Hawaiian shirt. He's very tanned, he's got silver hair, he's older, but still obviously a very fit man with a huge smile on his face.

April is standing next to him with what I can best describe a completely blank expression. As I looked at April, I couldn't get any sense of her and Doug's relationship. I wanted to know more. Since April was nowhere to be seen in the obituary, it seemed that Doug's family was suspicious of April. But they were not the only ones.

Police were suspicious of April too, and on January 14, 2021, April Mae Janis was arrested and charged with Doug's murder. On January 14, 2021, almost exactly a month after Doug Janis was fatally shot on his houseboat, his estranged wife, April Mae Janis, was charged with his murder. We learned from friends of Doug's that at the time of his death, April and Doug were not living together.

Doug was living on his houseboat while April had been staying on a mobile trailer elsewhere on the property. This is a big property that spans quite a few acres. Doug owned more than one piece of property. He also owned a second residence in Louisiana on the other side of the border. We learned that April had been living there. She relocated to that property a while back. My research assistant Amy and I talked about this case a lot.

This is the bridge that divides Texas and Louisiana across the water, divides the lake. And if you believe that April committed this crime, she would have had to cross this bridge. And the fire department would have had to cross this bridge as well. And it's a long bridge. Yeah. We were trying to figure out what exactly went down. Since this murder happened right on the Texas-Louisiana border, we knew that this case might have involved multiple counties.

So according to the affidavit, police became suspicious of April for several reasons. First of all, when they interviewed her, they did not believe she appeared to be grieving at all. They believed she was showing signs of deception during that interview, and when they asked her if she killed her husband, she would quote, nod yes, but say no, end quote. Police also noted that April did not show any shock or grief when she was told that the boat burning down was to cover up a homicide, not an accident. The officer who scored the affidavit wrote,

he discovered that April had a boyfriend in Louisiana, who she was in love with and intimate with. Police also discovered a potential motive. Doug kept a lot of cash on his houseboat. Police also found out that there was apparently an insurance policy on Doug. In the affidavit, they said that there was a $100,000 policy that paid out in the event of Doug's death, and April was the sole beneficiary. Police

talked to witnesses and found one who told authorities that on Sunday, December 13, 2020, the night of the murder, they saw April leaving Doug's boat, sometime between 430 to 530 p.m. They said that it was dusk, but that they could still clearly see that it was April. They said that April left home and passed by the witness's house 15 to 20 minutes before the first fire truck arrived on scene. The witness said they were sure it was April. They had known April for a long time since she was a little girl. They definitely recognized her. They saw her driving her blue Dodge truck. The affidavit read, quote, The information collected in the eyewitness statement

places the defendant at the crime scene while the houseboat was on fire and just before the fire truck arrived, end quote, which would have been in the minutes leading up to when the fire was called in at 528 p.m. After April Janis was arrested and charged with murder on January 14th, things seemed to be moving toward trial. Prosecutors seemed confident in their case. A $10 million bond was set on April. But then, all of a sudden, everything changed.

First, quietly, the judge lowered the bail amount in April's case from $10 million to $200,000, which meant that she would only need to come up with about $20,000 to bond out. And that's what happened. April was released on bail. And then there was nothing. No more news stories about the case, no updates. We were able to get a list of April's bond conditions and we learned that pretty much

all of the restrictions were removed. All she had to do was surrender her passport and basically agree to not leave the country. She didn't have to report to anyone. She was free. The prosecutors apparently thought they just didn't have enough evidence to pursue the case. That's the official story, and we know that sometimes this happens in these cases. The bar to take someone to trial and to convict someone of murder is very high, and that's

a good thing. But I couldn't figure this case out. I know it's circumstantial, but there appear to be a lot of facts that could have led toward April being taken to trial. You have a witness who apparently saw her at the crime scene around the time of the murder. You have the fact that there's a life insurance policy, of which, according to police, she's the sole beneficiary. $100,000. There was marital infidelity. She had a boyfriend in Louisiana. And according to the source we talked to, April and Doug were not living in the home together.

She was living somewhere else. So you have a separation. And then we found out something else. It turned out that Doug was not the first person close to April who died violently under mysterious circumstances. Years earlier, April's mother, Anna Thompson, was also fatally shot.

We're gonna get a lot more into April Janis' family history next week. But for now, we can say April grew up in the Hemp Hill, Texas area with her mom, Anna, and her father, Bob Thompson, who, by the way, was a character in his own right. Bob was an Army veteran who later ran a trucking company. Bob was known around town as the one-armed biker.

This was said with affection because he had had an arm amputated after an injury. But he loved to constantly ride his motorcycle around. Like Doug, Bob was into hunting and fishing and going out on the lake. So we're gonna go down to the area where Doug Janis was murdered and see what we can find out.

We've been warned this could be dangerous. This is a part of the world where things burned to the ground, suspicious fires, flying bullets, violent weather and alligators are not rare occurrences. But we found out several things that in my opinion are completely groundbreaking and could change everything in this case. Several things that make me question how and why this case is apparently going cold rather

than being actively investigated. One was that April Janis was not just much younger than her husband. We've heard April was a teenager when she started dating Doug. Doug's friend April actually addressed this. She said she noticed how young April looked next to Doug when she first met them. This is hilarious because I got they started calling me Big April and her little April to keep the two of us separate. But I thought that she was his daughter

or granddaughter by chance or something. Because the first time he came to church with her, she was a kid, she was just a child. And I went and I told him, I said, good to see you, Doug. And so he was like, it's okay, we get this all the time. And I'm like, okay. And that he was a good man. Some of his friends seemed to kind of gloss over the fact that April was so young, but

they may be unaware of just how young April was when she started becoming involved with Doug. According to people who knew April and Doug well, April and Doug started dating when she was very young. She was just 13 years old. At that time, Doug would have been in his 40s. Obviously, we're not here to blame victims, but I do think it's important to develop

a complete picture of Doug Janis in order to understand why someone would have wanted to murder him execution style. And a big piece of that puzzle is understanding what his exact relationship was with April. Bob Thompson, April's father, wrote an entire book about April's life and the night her mother, Anna, was killed. Bob passed away. We're going to be reading excerpts from his book and we're going to try to piece this story together.

We're going to talk to someone very close to April and we're going to track down the witness who saw Doug's boat burn to the ground. We're going to try to find the person who allegedly saw April leaving the scene and we're going to try to figure out what happened in that remote lakeside area way back in the woods. We will also get into Anna Thompson's death a lot more next week but a lot of the records in this case are sealed. From what we've been able to figure out, it turns out that 21 years ago, Anna Thompson was shot in the back of the head. Just like Doug Janis.

I'm Katherine Townsend. This is Hell and Gone Murder Line. Hell and Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me, Kathryn Townsend, and produced by Gabby Watts. Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research assistance. This episode was sound designed and mixed by Noah Kammerer. Our theme song is by Ben Salih. Executive producers of Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and L.C. Crowley.

Listen to Hell and Gone ad free by subscribing to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you are interested in seeing documents and materials from the case, you can follow the show on Instagram at hellandgonepod. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. That's 678-744-6145. That was Helen Gone Murder Line. You can listen to more episodes wherever you get your podcasts.

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