The Murder of April Tinsley: How DNA Identified Her Killer 30 Years Later

On April 1, 1988, eight-year-old April Marie Tinsley was spending Good Friday playing with friends in her Fort Wayne, Indiana, neighborhood.

When it began to drizzle, April decided to walk back to a friend’s house to retrieve the umbrella she had left behind. It should have been a short and familiar walk. But April never arrived.

A witness later reported seeing a young girl matching April’s description walking along Hoagland Avenue. According to the witness, a man pulled up beside her in a blue vehicle and briefly spoke with her. When the vehicle drove away, the girl was gone.

At the time, nothing about the interaction had seemed alarming. There were no screams or obvious signs of a struggle. But when the witness described the distinctive hearts running down one leg of the girl’s light blue pants, police were confident they had seen April being abducted.

The Search for April

Police officers and volunteers immediately began searching the neighborhood. April had disappeared on April Fool’s Day, and because one of her favorite games was hide-and-seek, her family initially hoped she was hiding somewhere nearby.

Those hopes ended on April 4, when a jogger discovered April’s body in a rural ditch approximately twenty miles from her home.

The medical examiner determined that April had been sexually assaulted and died from asphyxiation. Testing of her underwear also revealed semen from an unknown man.

But this was 1988, when forensic DNA testing was still in its infancy. Investigators generally needed much larger and cleaner samples than they do today, and there were few databases available for comparison. Although police had biological evidence from April’s killer, the technology needed to identify him did not yet exist.

A Message From the Killer

For the next two years, April’s killer remained unidentified.

Then, in May 1990, a teenage boy discovered disturbing messages written in crayon across his family’s barn. The writer claimed responsibility for killing April, asked whether investigators had found her other shoe, and threatened to kill again.

The reference to April’s missing shoe immediately caught investigators’ attention because it was a detail police had reportedly kept from the public.

Just weeks later, seven-year-old Sarah Bowker disappeared from her Fort Wayne apartment complex and was later found murdered. Given Sarah’s age, the timing, and the similarities between the cases, investigators initially feared April’s killer had followed through on his threat.

The FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit later concluded that the two girls had most likely been killed by different people. Years later, evidence reportedly connected another man to Sarah’s murder, while April’s case remained unsolved.

The Threatening Letters

In 2004, April’s killer resurfaced again.

Several young girls around Fort Wayne discovered plastic bags containing handwritten letters, disturbing photographs, and DNA evidence. The writer claimed he had been watching the girls, threatened to hurt them, and identified himself as the person who had kidnapped and murdered April sixteen years earlier.

Testing confirmed that the DNA from the packages matched the male profile recovered after April’s murder.

This was not a copycat. April’s killer was still alive, still living in or visiting the Fort Wayne area, and now targeting other children.

Investigators finally had a reliable DNA profile, but searches through state and national law-enforcement databases produced no match. The killer had apparently never been required to submit his DNA.

Building a Face From DNA

In 2015, investigators turned to Parabon NanoLabs for DNA phenotyping.

Unlike traditional DNA profiling, phenotyping uses genetic markers to estimate visible characteristics such as ancestry, skin tone, hair color, eye color, and the likelihood of freckles.

The results suggested April’s killer was a fair-skinned man of European ancestry with brown or black hair and hazel or green eyes. Parabon created a computer-generated image showing what he may have looked like in 1988, followed by an age-progressed version.

But despite the renewed publicity, no one recognized him.

Investigators knew more about the killer than ever before—yet they still did not know his name.

The Genetic Genealogy Breakthrough

Everything changed in 2018, shortly after investigators used forensic genetic genealogy to identify the Golden State Killer.

Fort Wayne detectives asked Parabon NanoLabs to apply the same technique to April’s case. Genetic genealogist CeCe Moore uploaded a compatible profile from the killer’s DNA to GEDmatch, where it produced several distant family matches.

Those matches did not immediately identify the killer. Instead, Moore used obituaries, census records, marriage licenses, birth announcements, newspapers, and other public records to build extensive family trees.

Eventually, the research narrowed the possibilities to two brothers with connections to the Fort Wayne area. One of them was 59-year-old John D. Miller, who lived alone in a trailer in nearby Grabill.

Police began watching Miller and collected discarded items from his trash. DNA recovered from those items matched the evidence from April’s underwear and the threatening packages left in 2004.

After thirty years, investigators finally had their answer.

John Miller’s Confession

On July 15, 2018, detectives approached Miller and asked him to come to the police station.

During the interview, they told him his name had come up in an old case and asked if he knew what they wanted to discuss.

Without being told April’s name, Miller said he believed it was the Tinsley case.

When detectives asked why, Miller replied, “DNA.”

Miller eventually admitted that he had driven into Fort Wayne on April 1, 1988, looking for a child to abduct. He saw April walking alone, forced her into his vehicle, and took her to the same trailer where he was still living three decades later.

He confessed to sexually assaulting and killing April before leaving her body along County Road 68. He also admitted writing the message on the barn and leaving the threatening letters in 2004.

Miller pleaded guilty to murder and child molestation and received a combined sentence of 80 years in prison. He died in custody in September 2025.

The Evidence Was Always There

April’s case was not solved because investigators suddenly discovered new crime-scene evidence. The biological evidence had been there since 1988.

Over the next thirty years, forensic science transformed what investigators could learn from it. Early testing confirmed the presence of semen. Later profiling created a reliable male DNA profile. CODIS searched for known offenders. Phenotyping estimated the killer’s appearance. Finally, forensic genetic genealogy connected that unknown profile to a family—and discarded DNA identified one specific man.

John Miller spent decades telling investigators that he had killed April, apparently believing his DNA could never reveal his name.

But while Miller remained the same, forensic science did not.

Today, April is remembered throughout Fort Wayne. April’s Garden was created in the neighborhood where she once lived and played, while a pink magnolia tree and memorial bench were dedicated to her at Fairfield Elementary School.

They ensure April Marie Tinsley is remembered not simply as the victim at the center of a famous cold case, but as the cheerful, shy eight-year-old girl whose name ultimately proved far more enduring than the man who took her life.

Listen to Episode 348 of Forensic Tales to hear the complete story of April Tinsley’s murder, the killer who taunted investigators, and the forensic breakthrough that finally exposed him.