The Abduction and Murder of April Tinsley
April Tinsley was an 8-year-old girl from Indiana and first-grade student. She liked singing and was a member of the children's choir at a local church.
On 1st April 1988, April was playing with two of her friends, the children were moving between each other's houses. April went back to get her umbrella and then disappeared at around 3 pm. Her mother reported her missing when she did not arrive home for dinner that night.
A witness reported seeing a white man in his 30s forcing a young girl, believed to be April, into his blue pickup truck.
April's body was found on 4th April 1988 in a ditch. One of her shoes and a sex toy were found in a shopping back nearby and a motorist reported seeing a blue pickup truck near the site. The autopsy report showed that April had been raped and strangled to death. The report also indicated she had been dead for 1-2 days before her body was found and that she had been dumped in the ditch 4 hours before this discovery.
On 21st May 1990, police found a message on a barn reading "I kill 8 year old April M Tinsley," and "did you find the other shoe haha I will kill again." The message had been written in crayon and the crayons were found close to the barn. During Memorial Day weekend, in 2004, four notes were found, three left on girls' bicycles and one in a mailbox. Three of the notes were in plastic bags with used condoms and Polaroid pictures of a man's lower body. One of the notes read: "Hi honey... I been watching you....I am the same person that kidnapped an rape an kill april tinsley, ... You are my next victim....if you don't report this to police an if I don't see this in the paper tomorrow or on the local news...I will blow up your house." The DNA from the condoms matched the profile of April's murderer which proved the incidents were connected.
The FBI created a profile of the suspect in 2009 describing him as a 'Preferential Child Sex Offender,' white male, low-medium income and living or working in the Fort Wayne area.
In May 2018, the DNA was narrowed down to one of two brothers one of who was 59-year-old John D Miller, the police found used condoms in Miller's trash and matched the DNA to the suspect's DNA. Detectives approached Miller and asked him to go with them to the police station when police asked Miller if he knew what they wanted to talk to him about he replied 'April Tinsley.' During an interview at the station, he confessed to the murder, saying he abducted April, raped her, choked her to death, sodomised her body, and dumped it. Miller later stated he had premeditated abducting a child but has not seen April before.
Miller was charged with murder, child molestation and confinement. He was sentenced to 80 years in prison, 50 for murder and 30 for child molestation. His early possible release date is 15th July 2058, when he will be 99.