All language subtitles for The Genetic Detective - 1x04_track3_eng

♪♪

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.

♪♪

♪♪