Original subtitles

♪♪

Moore: When I first started as a genealogist,

I never could've imagined

it would lead me to a place like this.

In April 1988, this was a crime scene,

part of a truly horrific murder that went unsolved for decades.

Though the kinds of questions that I answer have changed,

my work has always been about family,

and I wanted to bring answers to the family of April Tinsley.

They'd waited long enough.

I'm CeCe Moore.

For years, genealogy was my hobby,

and then it became my career.

Soon, I realized

that the techniques I developed to reunite families

could also be used to identify killers.

Now my team and I

help the police hunt violent criminals.

I'm a new kind of detective.

‐‐ Captions by VITAC ‐‐

Man: CeCe sit‐down, scene 1, take 1.

Marker.

[ Clack ]

I made my living as an actress/singer/host

until I was 35.

[ Laughter ]

May I get you a drink, sir?

The types of parts that I was often getting

were not very fulfilling.

[ Laughs ]

[ Camera shutter clicks ]

I did some great roles, too...

[ Singing indistinctly ]

...but I was very torn between academics and performing,

and there was definitely part of me

who felt like I hadn't been using my brain.

Okay. Stolen evidence.

And so, when the crime happened in April 1988,

I was not yet doing genealogy.

30 years.

It was the highest‐profile cold case in Indiana history.

Reporter: The first grader at Fairfield Elementary School

was reported missing Friday.

Police spent four days looking for the young girl

in a 20‐square‐block area in South Central Fort Wayne.

A jogger happened onto the young girl's body

late this afternoon in a ditch along this state highway.

Authorities won't say much about the condition of the body,

only that it had probably been dumped there

sometime over the weekend.

Meihls: April Tinsley was found

about 18 miles north of Fort Wayne.

[ Camera shutter clicking ]

She was fully clothed

except for her pants were on backwards

and a missing shoe

that they found on the opposite side of the road.

April had been raped and suffocated

and possibly strangled.

[ Camera shutter clicks ]

Jackson: I was assigned to homicide

approximately seven years,

but I didn't have any homicides involving little children.

It leaves an indentation that you can never get rid of.

[ Camera shutter clicks ]

Moore: For the family to find out

that she was just kind of thrown away,

it's a horrible thing.

Reporter: A couple of hours after the body was discovered,

police arrived at the home of April Marie's parents

to deliver the bad news.

♪♪

Janet: When I was 16 years old, I told everybody, I said,

when I got married,

my first child was gonna be a little girl.

"She's gonna have blond, curly hair,

and she's gonna have blue eyes."

Her name was gonna be April Marie.

Snyder: April Tinsley is my cousin.

She was my best friend.

She always had a smile on her face,

always a smile,

and she always wanted to make you laugh.

Moore: April's mother, Janet ‐‐

this has taken a huge toll on her.

I don't know how a parent even goes on

after something like this.

♪♪

By 1988, we had heard about the DNA.

We didn't understand how it worked or what it was,

but that very week, we took a workshop,

and it couldn't have happened at a better time,

because they had performed a sexual‐assault kit,

a rape kit, on April,

and they found some semen.

If the evidence wasn't collected correctly

and then if it wasn't stored well

for all of these decades,

it would be impossible to apply genetic genealogy to it,

and that's certainly true in this case.

And all that evidence was sent to an outside lab.

At that time,

our department didn't have facilities

to check any of the DNA.

McDonald: The rudimentary procedure of the time

demanded that you have a large sample.

So in 1988,

they were unable to obtain a DNA profile from the suspect.

Moore: The technology didn't exist,

but there was a lot of terrific work done by the investigators

from Day 1.

Wow! Look at that.

They thought they had a break.

♪♪

Reporter: This is the face

Fort Wayne police

are trying to track down.

The information for the composite

came from two witnesses who saw Tinsley

as she was walking through the South Central neighborhood

and was forced into a dark‐blue pickup truck.

[ Siren wails, police radio chatter ]

Jackson: We ran every blue truck in Allen County,

and there were just thousands of them.

But nothing shown up.

[ Police radio chatter ]

Duffy: Over the next couple of years,

they followed every lead, the police.

Anybody that had any kind of sex crime,

they were checked out.

[ Siren wails ] Nothing was thrown aside.

It was just completely frustrating

when we couldn't come up with a prime suspect.

♪♪

[ Microfilm machine clicking ]

Moore: What made this case, I think, even more high‐profile

was because the perpetrator

had started taunting

the law enforcement and the public.

Jackson: May of 1990,

two years after April was killed,

there was a message written on a side of a barn.

Duffy: "I kill 8 yea olb April Marie Tisley.

Did you find her other shoe?

Ha ha! I will kill again."

The police had never reported

that the other shoe was found near April's body.

Jackson: We knew that it was the killer of April Marie Tinsley.

Everybody went out.

They canvassed that complete area.

Duffy: He's taunting the police.

He's taunting the community.

Snyder: Everybody was scared.

I had dreams about her being inside the barn

and some shadowy figure being in there with her.

Every time you go outside, you're thinking...

"Are you him?"

♪♪

Then, as a couple years went by

and then a couple more years went by,

you get the feeling like it's not gonna be solved,

and you start losing hope.

I prayed every night, because we couldn't catch him.

We couldn't even come close to catching him.

It would take a miracle for him to get caught.

♪♪

♪♪

Moore: When I got the Tinsley case,

it was May 2018.

I was working with this company named Parabon.

We were using crime‐scene DNA

to create this genetic‐genealogy unit

and offering those services to law enforcement,

and I was the genetic genealogist.

Moore: How were the call rates on these?

Most of them, we were able to get good call rates,

about 90%.

Most of the time, I'm working from home,

which is usually very far

from where the crime even happened.

♪♪

And I still have my family

and my life that I have to deal with.

We should ‐‐ We should put the treadmill in the garage.

I understand why it could be hard to believe

that I'm sitting on my couch at home,

trying to help crack cold cases,

but I really care about what happened,

and I knew I had to help find the answer in this case.

♪♪

Man: CeCe sit‐down, scene 1, take 2. Marker.

[ Clack ]

Woman: So how did you go from acting/modeling/hosting...

Yeah. ...to helping the police catch killers?

So, around the year 2000,

my oldest niece was getting married,

and I was trying to think of

what would be a good wedding present.

And I thought, "I know ‐‐

I'll put together a family tree."

Well, she never got that family tree

[Chuckling] because I've never finished it.

I got the bug,

and I realized then that's what I loved to do.

I was just doing traditional paper‐trail research,

and it had nothing to do with DNA at that point,

but at the very end of 2009,

a company called 23andMe introduced Relative Finder.

You could compare your autosomal DNA to other people,

and if you share DNA, you're cousins.

And I realized then that that changed everything.

♪♪

Genetic genealogy is so powerful for building family trees.

This was what I wanted to do.

I just jumped in with both feet.

♪♪

Poor Lennart had to completely take over

pretty much everything else I was doing.

Hmm. How should I describe you, Lennart?

He's my husband. [ Laughs ]

And Nicky is my son.

I was helping people all day long,

and they were really supportive of it.

I knew that I was doing something unique,

but I never realized how big it would become.

The most brilliant genetic genealogist in the world.

Give it up for CeCe Moore.

[ Cheers and applause ]

Moore: It was this wide‐open field.

There were no experts.

So it didn't matter

that I didn't have a science degree.

Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. offered me a job

with PBS' "Finding Your Roots."

And now, more recently,

I've become a consultant and contributor for ABC News.

Genealogy traditionally is to identify distant ancestors,

but then adoptees started coming to me saying,

"Do you think you could use

these genetic‐genealogy techniques

that you've been developing to help us?"

find their recent ancestors,

meaning their biological parents.

It was such an interesting question.

Oh, my God! I love you!

Oh. It's so good to see you.

By taking genetic genealogy

and applying it to something new,

they get those answers to their lifelong mysteries.

And here's how it works.

If you share DNA with someone,

it means you have to share a common ancestor.

As you go back in your family tree

each generation,

the amount of DNA that you inherit

is approximately cut in half.

So, based on how much DNA any two people share,

I can estimate how many generations back

I have to build

to try to identify those common ancestors.

So, when an adoptee would submit their DNA,

they would get back a list of matches.

We might get two groups of distant cousins

from two different branches of their family tree.

These separate groups of matches I call "genetic networks."

Once I've identified the common ancestors,

now I'm coming forward in time

until those family trees finally triangulate

with a child being born.

And when this convergence of that ancestral DNA

occurs in the right time and the right place

to be the parent of the adoptee,

I know I have found the right person.

I was receiving e‐mails

from forward‐thinking law‐enforcement professionals

who read about the work I was doing

and wondered if it could be applied

to helping them identify unknown suspects.

The question was could we,

instead of submitting the DNA of an adoptee

looking for their unknown birth parent,

submit the DNA of an unknown suspect

in a cold case

and use the genetic‐genealogy techniques

to determine their identity?

And I knew the answer to that question was yes.

And then I heard about this company named Parabon.

I didn't have any experience working with law enforcement,

and Parabon did.

Armentrout: Parabon NanoLabs is a DNA‐technology company.

Generally speaking,

we're contacted by a law‐enforcement agency.

So, if they get DNA at a crime scene,

they send it to us.

If it's a good enough sample, we'll have that genotype.

Greytak: Traditional law‐enforcement forensic DNA analysis

is looking at 20 or fewer markers.

Parabon is looking at close to a million.

DNA phenotyping means

predicting a person's appearance from their DNA.

We can predict their eye color,

their hair color, their skin color,

how many freckles they have on their face.

This is not absolute.

What's coming out is the probability.

What we do is we look at

all of the people in our database

with known eye color,

and when we make that same prediction,

we can say what percentage of the time

were those eyes, in fact, blue.

So, we might be able to say this person has blue eyes

with, say, 85% confidence.

They were using microarray genotyping,

which is exactly what we're doing in genetic genealogy.

And it wasn't long before someone suggested,

"You really need to talk to CeCe Moore."

Parabon and I decided to join forces

to create this genetic‐genealogy unit.

[ Jet engine roars ]

And shortly after that,

Parabon asked me if I would work on the April Tinsley case.

I'm really glad that I came to Fort Wayne.

It takes me out of what I'm used to.

But I felt a lot of pressure on this case

because, 14 years after the writing on the barn,

in 2004, the killer resurfaced

and made everyone wonder, "Is he going to do it again?"

♪♪

♪♪

Moore: I've arrived in Fort Wayne,

and I'm going to meet with the people

who worked on the April Tinsley case.

Moore: When did you first start working on it?

I began in November of 2005.

At that time, was it considered cold?

Yes, it was.

Meihls: But we had some new information

given to us at the time,

where some letters had been deposited

throughout the city.

♪♪

Duffy: 14 years go by

since that note was scrawled on the barn.

[ Eerie music plays ]

And then, in 2004, starting in March,

notes are found on a little girl's bicycle

and flower pots in various locations.

♪♪

Meihls: In total, we found four notes

that we felt came from our suspect.

These letters all had some of the same verbiage

that you saw on the barn‐door writings.

And all four notes were targeting a young girl.

"Hi, honey. I've been watching you."

"Hi, honey. I've been watching you."

"I've been watching you.

I am the same person

that kidnapped and rape and kill April Tinsley."

"...April Tinsley.

You are my next victim."

"Here's a present for you.

You are my next victim."

"You are next. Ha ha." "Ha ha."

"If you don't report this to police

or I don't see this in the paper tomorrow..."

"I will blow up your house,

killing everyone but you.

You will be mine."

"You will be mine."

♪♪

Martin: The notes were concealed within a ziplock bag.

In three out of those four bags, there's a used condom.

We're talking about semen.

But in the fourth one,

there was a Polaroid of a man from the waist down

sitting on a bed,

and he was naked.

It left a lot of questions, and, quite frankly,

it scared the hell out of people with children.

♪♪

Snyder: I have major trust issues.

I did not like guys around my kids.

I even had a hard time

even leaving my kids with their own father.

♪♪

When I got involved,

they wanted me to organize all the evidence.

There was a lot of evidence in three different locations ‐‐

state police,

the Allen County Police Department,

and the Fort Wayne Police Department,

and they needed it organized.

Do you hold all the evidence here,

or is it spread out?

Meihls: The state police,

they chose to hang on to their evidence.

Mm‐hmm. But what I chose to do, then,

was start binders for each year.

So, like, this here is a 2005,

and this is all the e‐mails that were sent in this case

just for one year. Wow.

Where had he been since, you know, 1990 to 2004?

Was it a big surprise when he re‐emerged?

Meihls: We thought it was a gold mine,

because anybody could've created those letters,

but then he left his DNA to prove to us

that he's the same person from 1988.

Duffy: There are now more semen samples

that probably could be connected to the killer

if they had the technology to do it.

♪♪

Meihls: And when we tested the three condoms,

we got a full DNA profile.

We truly believe that it's the same person.

So, at that point, we needed to prove

that the semen in each one of those condoms

matched April Tinsley's sexual assault kit,

and I then started talking with Linda McDonald.

[ Camera shutter clicks ]

McDonald: What we were trying to do

is convince the Indiana State Police

that it was worth our time to reanalyze the items,

that we can now get a complete profile.

But the state police

did not want to give me their evidence.

It was a matter of turning it over to Fort Wayne

so that we could work the case together.

And that was difficult for everyone involved

because we took this case so personally.

Meihls: My role was simply me antagonizing people.

Chris Meihls was very passionate about this case.

You know as an individual

what this little girl must've felt

and had to go through.

She's probably wanting her mom, you know?

She's probably scared to death.

It's emotional, and it's personal.

We never dropped this case.

Sometimes you can't.

And, finally, in December of 2009,

Linda took it upon herself

to retrieve the evidence

that they had at the Indiana State Police

and do the examinations.

She stuck her neck out to do something

that maybe she wasn't supposed to do,

but she went ahead and did it.

McDonald: The alternative is

all that evidence sat up in a storage facility,

and it wasn't going anywhere.

Degrading. Mm‐hmm. Yes, degrading.

And the longer you wait, the more it degraded.

So, it was a long shot.

I knew it was a long shot,

but we used to say

we needed a stain the size of a quarter. Mm‐hmm.

Now we say it can fit on the head of a pin.

And, ultimately,

I obtain a complete profile from the rape‐kit sample.

♪♪

Meihls: And it was a match to the condoms.

In 2004, this guy is still out there.

Convicted offenders,

their DNA profile is uploaded into a database,

and that database is called CODIS.

By uploading it,

we can compare our profile

to convicted offenders from 50 states.

The CODIS system usually worked in making matches,

but it still didn't hit on anyone.

Could it be that he only committed this crime

and stopped?

We got a match if we can just find him,

so how do you find a needle in a haystack?

♪♪

In Indiana, there's a child‐killer running free.

♪♪

Meihls: In 2009, we did our media blitz.

Media was a great tool for us to generate leads and tips.

Meihls: In order to collect somebody's DNA,

you have to have probable cause.

In this investigation, any suspect they develop,

no matter how simple or stupid the tip is,

you work it, you collect their DNA.

And that full profile was used

to compare to all of our suspects

that we collected DNA from.

♪♪

From 2009 up to 2014,

every spare moment that I had

when I wasn't working on my regular case load,

I'm working on April Tinsley's case.

McDonald: It became an obsession almost.

"Darn it. I have good stuff on this.

Why isn't this hitting?"

Meihls: We were reaching the number of about 700‐some suspects.

With every analysis,

we are hopeful that, "This is our guy."

Meihls: And then get the DNA testing done,

and it's not him.

It's like, "Yeah, it's just another false alarm, right?"

McDonald: [ Sighs ] "Why?

Why is this not happening?"

Meihls: You lay in bed at night, and you think about the case.

We've been working for how many years,

we've got the DNA,

and we can't find him since 2004.

Is he alive?

This needle in a haystack that we're looking for,

does it even exist?

♪♪

April's Garden was dedicated to the memory of April Tinsley

by people in the community.

And in April of 2018,

it was not uncommon to see Mrs. Tinsley

sitting at April's memorial site.

Janet: I had to do something to keep her memory going.

When April was little, my husband, Mike,

come home from work and lay down to relax,

and you'd be hearing some giggles in the background.

There comes April holding her brother's hand,

and they both jump.

She jumps on his back.

He gets the legs and the butt.

Then they would get off, and they'll start laughing.

We used to have everything,

and it's like the bottom of the floor just fell out.

Snyder: I always, you know, wonder

what kind of mother would April have been

and [Sniffles]

would our kids have the same relationship

that me and her had.

Janet: 30 years, I'm sitting here thinking,

"It's never gonna be solved."

Martin: At that moment,

I don't think any of us could've fathomed

what was getting ready to happen...

♪♪

...and how everybody's life was gonna change.

♪♪

♪♪

Martin: I am from Fort Wayne ‐‐ I was born and raised.

In 1988, I would've been 14 years old.

So, I've known about the April Tinsley case

since I was in high school.

I work cold‐case homicide for the City of Fort Wayne,

and I became involved in the April Tinsley case

approximately 2016.

It was overwhelming ‐‐

over 900 pages of report that I had to go through,

and I remember thinking to myself, "Where do I begin?"

And then, on May the 11th of 2018,

I got an e‐mail from Parabon.

They had a new service.

It was genetic genealogy.

I was somewhat skeptical.

I didn't fully understand what genetic genealogy was

and how they would use it to identify our killer exactly,

but yet I did not ask the department

because I didn't want to run into red tape and a roadblock.

McDonald: The evidence we got in 1988

was a mixture of April Tinsley and the suspect...

where the evidence that we got from the condoms was pure.

So, we utilized swabs from the condoms,

and that was sent to Parabon.

[ Camera shutter clicks ]

The sample had plenty of quantity.

There was no measured degradation in the analysis.

CODIS is a criminal database, whereas we're using GEDmatch,

which is a publicly available database,

where people have voluntarily put their DNA in there.

Greytak: And what GEDmatch gives us is a list

of people who share the most DNA with our unknown person.

Greytak: Believe it or not, this has actually been

the most cases that we've ever had in a month.

How are they looking?

So, at least one had a 300‐plus centimorgan match...

Oh, good. ...so second‐cousin level maybe?

It's just more exciting.

I hate giving them 5s, as you know.

I do an assessment,

meaning I rank it between 1 and 5.

This is my personal rating scale

of how likely it is that genetic genealogy

will help lead to the suspect's identity.

1 is extremely promising, and 5 is pretty much impossible,

so I gave this case a 4‐plus.

Martin: They believed that they would be able to identify

a great‐grandparent or a great‐great‐grandparent.

But it's not likely to lead directly to the suspect.

♪♪

And that's when CeCe gets to work.

[ Up‐tempo music plays ]

♪♪

Moore: Now, when I identified the matches in GEDmatch,

it looked like we had quite a number

of third, fourth, maybe fifth cousins and beyond.

Remember, they share DNA with each other.

Therefore, they must have a common ancestor.

I know that that common ancestor or ancestral couple

should also belong in the tree of our unknown subject.

The first match and the third match are full siblings ‐‐

108 centimorgans and 131.6.

So, they're gonna be the basis of my first genetic network.

They don't share DNA with the second match,

so that would be a different genetic network.

127 centimorgans.

Maybe second cousins once removed, maybe third cousins.

Genetic network number 2.

When I go to the fourth match,

that match is not sharing any DNA

with the first, second, or third match.

97 centimorgans.

So, you know what that is?

That's my third genetic network.

So, we've got three. Let's see if there's any more.

1, 2, 3, 4.

These two match each other,

but they don't match anyone else so far.

Genetic network number 4. Everyone has four grandparents.

If they are third cousins with the subject,

then they would share second great‐grandparents.

If they're second cousins, they'd share great‐grandparents.

I might have to build back to third great‐grandparents.

I'm out of breath.

[ Breathing heavily ] Woman: [ Laughs ]

It doesn't make any sense yet.

[ Laughs ] Yeah.

It doesn't make sense yet, but we'll do some erasing.

Bye‐bye.

So, now that we have identified

our four different genetic networks,

it's just lots of tree building.

I'm using obituaries, birth announcements.

Often, you don't start hooking into genealogical records

until you get to the 1940 census.

For genetic network number 1,

a man named John Green was our common ancestor.

John.

John Green was born about 1836 in Rockbridge, Virginia.

Our genetic network number 2, the ancestral couple

that I identified was James Miller and Nancy Barnett.

We actually have a couple this time.

They were born in the mid‐1800s.

Genetic network number 3,

ancestral couple is Henley McIntosh and Rachel Mays.

Remember, we've got four, so I've got one more.

Now, this is Wright Dillion and Elizabeth Dillion.

Same surname, so probably cousins,

but they are born in the early 1800s.

Then that means our suspect has to descend

from each of these four couples.

Let me say that again. [ Doorbell rings ]

[ Sighs ]

So, at that point ‐‐

[ Doorbell rings ]

[ Laughs ]

This one's my fault.

I was actually on a...

I was on a roll there. [ Claps ] Okay.

So, the next step now is flipping those trees upside down

and now coming forward in time, trying to find our suspect.

Any one of these couples or ancestors

have many, many, many descendants.

I had to follow all of those lines forward

to find where these trees converge,

and these were huge families ‐‐ 11 children.

11 children.

Oh, my God.

[ Laughs ]

That was a lot of work.

I'm trying to find commonalities, patterns.

Do I see a surname that I just saw in the other tree?

We've got a Green and a Miller.

Green and Miller are extremely common.

I found lots of Greens and lots of Millers

that were just coincidental.

I don't know that I ever felt as determined on a case

as I did on this one, but I just wasn't gonna give up.

♪♪

And then I found a marriage license in Ohio.

It was between a Green and a Dillion.

A descendant of genetic network number 1

married a descendant of genetic network number 4.

They were married in 1926 in Madison County, Ohio.

It was a farming area at the time ‐‐ still is.

Their marriage license shows

that he was a truck driver and she was a domestic,

which means she probably worked as a house maid.

So, this is the first convergence,

the first triangulation that I found.

The suspect should be a descendant of this marriage.

Then I also found the marriage bond

from Breathitt County, Kentucky, in 1889.

I'm not even sure if I said that right.

How about Breathitt County, Kentucky?

It showed me that a Miller was marrying a McIntosh,

so I knew I was going in the right direction.

John worked as a coal miner,

and his wife, Jane, had six children,

so I'm sure she was very busy.

On John's death certificate, the cause of death was listed as

"first got mashed up in the mines, then took the fever."

He was only 59 years old.

We've got genetic network number 1 and 4 on one side

and genetic network number 2 and 3 on the other side.

And somehow, we have to get this side

and this side to converge.

I just had to keep pushing and pushing and pushing ‐‐

many hours of what I termed "brute‐force genetic genealogy."

It really was ‐‐ I felt like I'd been through a battle.

Finally, I find a marriage between a Green and a Miller.

This was huge.

They're the ones that bring

all these four genetic networks together.

Where were they living?

Both of them were born in Ohio,

actually about 60 miles away from each other.

But then, at some point, they each moved south,

and in 1956, they were married in Florida.

By 1961, they had three children.

Guess what happened?

They moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana.

That family

where all the pieces fit

moved to the location

of the crime.

I found an obituary

from the year 2015.

They had three sons.

All three are living at the time of the crime in 1988,

but by 2004, one has passed away.

Since the investigators had determined

that the same person that committed the crime

was the one who left the notes, one brother is ruled out.

And so I knew that one of those two brothers

had to be April's killer.

But which one?

♪♪

[ Jazz music plays ]

♪♪

[ Pan sizzling ]

Moore: It's such a strange feeling

when I'm the only person in the world

who knows the possible identity of the suspect,

so I've got to get ahold of the detective

as quickly as possible.

Martin: CeCe Moore requested that we do a conference call.

Moore: They didn't know what to expect.

They were just waiting with bated breath.

Martin: CeCe got on the phone and said,

"I felt that we'd be able to get a great‐great grandparent,

but I was not able to do that."

Well, I told them there was good news and bad news.

I teased them a little bit.

Here we go on the roller coaster again.

We're expecting great things only to have it dashed.

But within a matter of moments,

CeCe said, "I was able to get you, um, two brothers.

One of the two brothers

is the individual who killed April Tinsley."

♪♪

We all looked at each other in complete shock.

It was one of those "oh [bleep]" moments.

I couldn't believe it, that she can nail down ‐‐

How many people are in the world?

[ Chuckles ] And she pins it down to two people?

And not just that I had narrowed it down to these two brothers,

but that they were both alive.

Martin: We typed in our computer

both of those gentlemen's names, and...

very quickly, we focused on John D. Miller.

♪♪

Duffy: They find out

that there are two incidences in 2002 and 2003

when he was reported as exhibiting lewd behavior

toward women and girls.

We needed a DNA sample.

♪♪

John Miller worked at Walmart and lived in Grabill, Indiana,

by himself in a small trailer.

♪♪

We were watching him for hours upon hours,

waiting for a blind to move.

John's trash can was placed out at the curb.

Indiana law provides that we legally could take that trash

as long as we had the probable cause to do so.

We approached on foot.

You're trying to be quiet.

You're hoping that a porch light doesn't come on.

[ Rustling, glass clinks softly ]

We began to dig through John Miller's trash...

and learned that John Miller ate Banquet Salisbury Steak dinners,

he drank generic cola,

and the very next piece of trash that was moved...

was a used condom.

They were looking for DNA evidence,

and I would say that they hit the jackpot.

♪♪

And in no time at all, they had a match.

[ Camera shutter clicks ] McDonald: Heart‐stopping?

[ Laughs ]

I‐I'm not very calm,

so I'm sure I jumped all over this lab and told everybody.

I yelled and said, "I cannot believe this is happening."

She solved our case for us.

We worked on it for 30 years and couldn't do it.

Martin: On July 15th, we brought John up to an interview room.

John, your middle initial?

And last name is Miller ‐‐ M‐I‐L‐L‐E‐R? Yeah.

And your date of birth?

7/7/59.

Meihls: John Miller is an average fella.

You wonder how intelligent he is.

John, we want to talk to you a little bit

about a case that we've been working on for awhile,

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?

Yeah. Yeah, you're right.

You want to talk about that with us a little bit here

and kind of ‐‐ what ‐‐

First of all, what would make you say "the Tinsley case"?

Martin: What would make you say the Tinsley case?

That kind of rang a bell with ya a little bit, did it?

[ Laughs ] Yeah. Okay.

Well, what do you think

we want to discuss with you about Tinsley?

[ Chuckles nervously ]

What evidence do you know that we have?

Yeah.

When we did that DNA,

we were able to narrow it down to you.

It came back.

Can you talk to me a little bit

about what happened back in '88?

I said, "John, it's time to get this out.

You had to have known this day was coming."

How did you end up picking up April, John?

He had a letter opener that was sharp.

He said he approached April, told her to get in the car,

showed her the letter opener, and she got in the car with him.

Did she know you?

Duffy: John Miller was the stranger.

He had no connection to the family.

He had no connection to the neighborhood.

What'd she say to you when she was in the car, John?

Martin: John never owned a blue pickup truck.

He used a blue Mercury Lynx to abduct April Tinsley,

which he drove directly back to his trailer.

Duffy: He raped her.

Meihls: He told us how she wanted to go home with her mom

and then how he chokes the life out of her.

Duffy: And then he took her and dumped her in the ditch.

♪♪

After she was at your trailer,

you couldn't have just taken her someplace

and let her go, John?

But she didn't even know you.

♪♪

[ Handcuffs click ] Martin: John was arrested

and taken to the Allen County jail.

When I talked to the younger brother by three years

of John Miller,

he told me that his brother was always slow.

So, John had been teased and bullied in school.

He was angry all the time.

He lived in a little trailer all by himself

since he was 19 years old.

He did not mix with the people that he worked with.

But nobody suspected him.

♪♪

Snyder: To me, it was very important

to be at all the court hearings.

I felt like I had to see him.

When he came in, oh, wow.

"This is that guy.

This is ‐‐ This is who done this.

This is who ripped my family apart."

♪♪

Janet: I'm in the front row.

I wanted him to see me.

♪♪

I wanted him to see what he destroyed.

Snyder: And I kept staring at him.

I wanted so bad to hurt him.

Yeah, I feel like I have to...

[ Sniffles ]

[ Sniffles ] I felt like because she's not here

and I am,

I need to stand up for her.

♪♪

Jackson: He didn't show remorse.

He didn't say he was sorry.

The only good thing about it is he's behind bars now

and he'll be there the rest of his life.

My main closure will probably be the day that he dies.

But my peace is usually when I go over to her garden

and I sit there for a couple hours.

♪♪

Moore: My work has always been about providing answers

and trying to help a family move beyond something,

something that's painful

or something that's been burdening them.

♪♪

Together: 1, 2, 3.

I certainly never imagined in my wildest dreams

that my genealogy hobby would lead to working as a detective.

Parabon and CeCe Moore were the break that we needed

to bring this case to an end.

Jackson: CeCe Moore, just an ordinary citizen

that's not connected with law enforcement,

and I'm just flabbergasted.

And I tell you real truthfully,

if I was a criminal and it's a cold case,

I'd be seriously thinking about turning myself in

or leaving the country.

♪♪

♪♪