John Miller
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| “ | Hi honey, I been watching you. I am the same person that kidnapped, raped, and killed April Tinsley. You are my next victim. If you don't report this to police and if I don't see this in the paper tomorrow or on the local news, I will blow up your house. | „ |
| ~ One of Miller's letters in 2004. |
John D. Miller (born July 7, 1959) is an American man responsible for the 1988 abduction, rape and murder of eight-year-old April Tinsley in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The case was unsolved for 30 years until DNA evidence pointed to Miller in 2018.
Biography edit
Miller was born in Grabill, Indiana, in 1959 and worked at a Walmart. He lived in a trailer at the Grabill Motor Home Park. Neighbours knew him as an angry, secluded man.
On April 1, 1988, eight-year-old April Tinsley did not return home after school and was reported missing. A witness later reported seeing a white man force Tinsley into his truck. Her body was eventually found by a jogger on April 4 in a ditch west of Spencerville, Indiana. She had been raped and strangled to death. One of Tinsley's shoes and a sex toy were found nearby. A truck matching the description of the one Tinsley was forced into was seen in the area. The killer's semen was in Tinsley's underpants, but DNA testing was inconclusive.
There were no significant developments in the case until May 21, 1990, when a message was found scrawled in a barn in St. Joseph Township professing to be from the killer and vowing to kill again. 14 years later in 2004, four young girls in the Fort Wayne area were send notes by someone claiming to be the killer threatening to rape and kill them. Attached to the notes were used condoms and pictures of a man's penis. Semen from the condoms was tested and confirmed to belong to the same DNA profile as the killer.
In May 2018, DNA samples from the April Tinsley case were sent to forensics company Parabon NanoLabs in Reston, Virginia. Parabon tested the samples against DNA from the genealogy website GEDmatch, narrowing it down to two men. One of these men was John Miller, who lived in a trailer park very close to the barn where the killer's first message was scrawled. Used condoms were removed from Miller's trash and DNA testing was performed on the semen, confirming that Miller was the killer.
Miller was arrested on July 15, 2018, and immediately confessed to the murder of April Tinsley. Miller claimed he had been driving round with the intent of raping a prepubescent girl when he came across Tinsley and made her get in his truck and raped her before strangling her to stop her from telling anyone. Miller pled guilty to murder and child molestation and was sentenced to 80 years in prison. He will not be eligible for release until 2058, when he will be 99 years old.