Speaker 1: School of Humans.
Speaker 2: After Doug Janis was murdered in twenty twenty, police were
Speaker 2: focused on one suspect, his wife, April May Janis. Was
Speaker 2: April a loving wife who adored Doug or was she
Speaker 2: a master manipulator who had orchestrated his murder in Himple, Texas.
Speaker 2: That depends on who you ask, because the town is divided.
Speaker 2: We talked to several people who were close to April.
Speaker 2: They said they felt sorry for April, but at the
Speaker 2: same time, some of them seemed to be afraid of her.
Speaker 2: Ever since her mother, Anna Thompson, was killed in two
Speaker 2: thousand and four in what was either a freak accident
Speaker 2: or a murder. April was charged with her mother's murder,
Speaker 2: but she was found not guilty after a two day trial.
Speaker 2: And after that, some people felt sorry for April because
Speaker 2: she was preyed on by older men, including Doug. Janiss
Speaker 2: were afraid of April. They believe she had something to
Speaker 2: do with her mother's death and that she had gotten
Speaker 2: away clean with murder. This week, we finally got in
Speaker 2: touch with April Janis and we learned about an alternative suspect,
Speaker 2: someone who the police have apparently never considered I'm Catherine Townsend.
Speaker 2: Over the past five years of making my true crime podcast,
Speaker 2: Helen Gone, I've learned that there's no such thing as
Speaker 2: a small town where murder never happens. I have received
Speaker 2: hundreds of messages from people all around the country asking
Speaker 2: for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families,
Speaker 2: and their communities. If you have a case you'd like
Speaker 2: me and my team to look into, you can reach
Speaker 2: out to us at our Helen Gone Murder line at
Speaker 2: six seven eight seven four four six one four five
Speaker 2: that's six seven eight seven four four six one four
Speaker 2: or five, Or you can send us a message on
Speaker 2: Instagram at Helen Gone pod. This is Helen Gone Murder Line.
Speaker 2: If you ask people in Doug Janis's neighborhood, the only
Speaker 2: suspect the police ever considered was April, but there were
Speaker 2: other people around near the time when Doug Janis was murdered.
Speaker 2: It turns out that there was someone else living on
Speaker 2: Doug's property. Remember we said that April had moved out
Speaker 2: of the mobile home there and was living in Louisiana.
Speaker 2: But after April moved out, someone else moved in, a
Speaker 2: man named Ken, and because of the fact that Doug
Speaker 2: Janis was murdered just a couple of months after Ken
Speaker 2: was moving in, A lot of people were questioning Ken.
Speaker 2: They wondered if it was a coincidence that someone showed up,
Speaker 2: moved in, and then shortly after that that Doug was dead,
Speaker 2: which would be a natural question.
Speaker 1: But we got in.
Speaker 2: Touch with Ken and he admits that he believes he
Speaker 2: was considered a suspect. We asked him about the day
Speaker 2: when the police showed up at his house. Ken opened
Speaker 2: up about his relationship with Doug Janis, someone he said
Speaker 2: he considered a close.
Speaker 3: Friend, and that was about around twenty ten. I'm an
Speaker 3: avid hunter and I've been hunting up here since about then,
Speaker 3: and I've known Doug good by acquaintance, and I met
Speaker 3: him on feveral occasions. My house got torn up by
Speaker 3: Hurricane Harvey, and Doug heard about it.
Speaker 2: Ken knew Doug casually for several years, and Ken said
Speaker 2: that after his house was wrecked by the hurricane, he
Speaker 2: was looking for a place to live, so he reconnected
Speaker 2: with Doug and found out that April had recently moved
Speaker 2: out of the mobile home on Doug's property, leaving a vacancy.
Speaker 3: I knew April and that he had moved out. I'd
Speaker 3: only met her on a couple occasions prior to me
Speaker 3: moving here. But I got to know April very well
Speaker 3: and Doug even better. And he offered me this place
Speaker 3: to rent until my house got fixed or until you know,
Speaker 3: I found another place to live. But it was in
Speaker 3: pretty bad shape. Anyway, I got to pick up, and
Speaker 3: Doug offered me to haul captis to market, and I
Speaker 3: told him, you know, I've got a commercial driver's line
Speaker 3: of CLD, and he he would want me to haul
Speaker 3: fish for him, and I live here in the trailer,
Speaker 3: and anyway, I've got to pick up and we got
Speaker 3: it able to be live livapool.
Speaker 1: Ken remembers the last time that he talked to doub.
Speaker 3: If it was in December of the year he passed
Speaker 3: and twenty twenty, I believe it was. And I leader
Speaker 3: the review hault unload everything that was in my house
Speaker 3: and bring it up here, and he said that he'd
Speaker 3: help me. And I got here Saturday night about midnight,
Speaker 3: and there was a sheriff department and a fire department
Speaker 3: employee at the front entrance of how you get down
Speaker 3: here where you know the trailer is and I'm in
Speaker 3: my U haul and it's muddy, wet, nasty, and I
Speaker 3: pull up and they got it, who are you a jo? Well,
Speaker 3: you know, he all. I got my information on my
Speaker 3: driver's life, ale everything. Then after if I knew Doug,
Speaker 3: I said, yeah, my landlord, he's my neighbor, he's my
Speaker 3: my friend, my future employer. And they said, well he's
Speaker 3: but you didn't know about the have fire. You know,
Speaker 3: I don't know want half fire And they said that
Speaker 3: he'd passed in a fire. I was unimpressionated with an accident,
Speaker 3: that he had died from a gas leak or something
Speaker 3: that you know that it was the further thing from
Speaker 3: my mind that he was preyed upon by somebody. But
Speaker 3: the that week, whether it was a week later, they
Speaker 3: showed up here. They wanted a search warrant here. And
Speaker 3: I mean I walked out of home Front from pot
Speaker 3: Port and there like seven different police cars lined up
Speaker 3: with a sheriff car and uh this investigator shroud and uh.
Speaker 3: They started asking by questions about what's comings goings.
Speaker 2: Ken said that from what he observed, Doug in April
Speaker 2: seemed to have a great relationship. Ken said the police
Speaker 2: ruled him out after they realized that he wasn't in
Speaker 2: the area when Doug was shot, and that he had
Speaker 2: no issues with Doug. Ken said that Doug was charming.
Speaker 3: I'm still stunned. I still can't believe it. The man
Speaker 3: was a very generous man. He was the kind of
Speaker 3: guy that would give him a shirt off his back,
Speaker 3: and he pretty much did. He allowed me to live
Speaker 3: here pre of charge up until January was going to
Speaker 3: be my first rent payment. Yeah, and that year. And
Speaker 3: that was a decent man, like a lot.
Speaker 1: Of people did. He said. Most people love Doug.
Speaker 2: But Ken said that Doug had employed people in the
Speaker 2: past who Doug did have issues with.
Speaker 3: He's never from the time that I knew him, I
Speaker 3: never knew of him, you know, having affiliation with anyone
Speaker 3: of although his employees there, he didn't employ, he did
Speaker 3: employee some characters.
Speaker 2: Ken talked about Doug's employees, and he mentioned one person
Speaker 2: in particular who Doug had recent dealings with, someone who
Speaker 2: allegedly used Doug's credit card without Doug's permission.
Speaker 3: I happen to meet a couple of them men they've
Speaker 3: actually been here, but there are old guys. They were
Speaker 3: I mean, this guy was already too old to climb
Speaker 3: up to hill from the boat dog down there. Anyway,
Speaker 3: I met a couple of employees are people that helped
Speaker 3: him haul fish the market. But uh, I never knew
Speaker 3: of this one person of interest that we think of.
Speaker 3: His nickname is Heckory Nuts. I never met the man,
Speaker 3: but it was a parent that Doug had problems with
Speaker 3: him and got some kind of altercation in the day
Speaker 3: before that Saturday before he was brutally executed. But anyway,
Speaker 3: that's pretty much all I know. Doug allowed me to
Speaker 3: unhear and picked up the trailer, and you know, he's
Speaker 3: a good guy man. I mean, I had nothing from
Speaker 3: the time I met him time he passed. I've never
Speaker 3: had ever seen a bad side of Doug. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, some people have an attitude anger problem, but
Speaker 3: he wasn't that kind of a guy as far as
Speaker 3: I knew. And April was just a sweetheart.
Speaker 2: Ken's impression of April is the opposite of other people
Speaker 2: we've talked to, people who described April as manipulative. Ken
Speaker 2: describes her as a kind, fun loving person and a
Speaker 2: complete sweetheart. He said that even though Doug had recently
Speaker 2: had a hernia operation. Doug was very fit for his age.
Speaker 2: He talked about how Doug had no fear of the
Speaker 2: wilderness around him. Doug even had an alligator out there
Speaker 2: who he fed marshmallows to. We already knew about Ken,
Speaker 2: because again, even though we had no access to the
Speaker 2: police case file. One of the first things that got
Speaker 2: me interested in Doug's death after a listener called to
Speaker 2: tell us about it, was when I started looking into
Speaker 2: land transfers that took place after Doug's death. I find
Speaker 2: that when you're trying to follow the money, the devil
Speaker 2: is always in the very boring details. April had actually
Speaker 2: sold the land to Ken, the guy who was staying
Speaker 2: on the property after April left. Since police had mentioned
Speaker 2: a potential life insurance policy and the probab will cause affidavit,
Speaker 2: that would mean money was potentially a motive. So I
Speaker 2: was trying to figure out if there was a life
Speaker 2: insurance policy and also what April's financial situation was around
Speaker 2: the time when Doug was murdered. We've got conflicting information
Speaker 2: on this because in the police report, after the police
Speaker 2: interviewed April Well, they said Doug kept around ten thousand
Speaker 2: dollars on the boat and that there was a life
Speaker 2: insurance policy for one hundred thousand dollars. So we reached
Speaker 2: out to April. Honestly, I didn't expect a response from April,
Speaker 2: because remember, she had the charges against her dropped, and
Speaker 2: from everything that we're hearing, police are not pursuing April,
Speaker 2: nor are they pursuing any alternative suspects. We didn't expect
Speaker 2: a response, but we wanted to hear her side of
Speaker 2: the story. I was a little shocked when she got
Speaker 2: back to us A couple of days later. She sent
Speaker 2: us a series of text messages. April said that her
Speaker 2: attorney had advised her not to talk to us, but
Speaker 2: she did say she wants to help get justice for Doug.
Speaker 2: She provided us with a list of phone numbers of
Speaker 2: Doug's close friends, people she believed could give us more
Speaker 2: information about the case, and we are reaching out to
Speaker 2: every single one of them.
Speaker 1: In one of her texts.
Speaker 2: April had said that it was ridiculous for police to
Speaker 2: be focused on her and that basically the Sheriff's department
Speaker 2: had lied in the arrest Affidavid. April said there was
Speaker 2: no million dollar life insurance policy when we asked her
Speaker 2: if there was a policy at all. She said yes,
Speaker 2: but she said that she was unaware of it until
Speaker 2: her aunt told her that the policy existed. From the
Speaker 2: land records that we found, it does seem like April
Speaker 2: had a lot of cash after Doug's death. We found
Speaker 2: that shortly after Doug passed away, April purchased a house
Speaker 2: for ninety five thousand dollars in cash. So we wondered,
Speaker 2: could there have been even more money on that boat
Speaker 2: and if so, what happened? Did it burn up in
Speaker 2: the fire or was it already gone. Here's Sarah April's friend.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I didn't believe in banks today.
Speaker 5: He was just repair annoid by that right for money
Speaker 5: he had accumulated in his lifetime or whatever was on
Speaker 5: that boat.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would imagine too, and a fisherman probably trying
Speaker 4: to hide income from the irs.
Speaker 6: Also, if you read.
Speaker 2: The affidavit of probable cause, it seems like police focused
Speaker 2: on April's suspect for three reasons. One the fact that
Speaker 2: she allegedly had a boyfriend at the time when Doug
Speaker 2: was murdered. Two, Doug's money and potential life insurance policy.
Speaker 2: And there was also a third big reason the witness. Remember,
Speaker 2: police interviewed a neighbor, someone who said that they saw
Speaker 2: April driving away from the scene of the crime just
Speaker 2: a few minutes before the fire truck showed up. We
Speaker 2: also looked more into the witness who saw April on
Speaker 2: the day the boat blew up. We went to where
Speaker 2: this witness lives, a short distance from Doug's boat. Now,
Speaker 2: there are only two ways to get to where Doug lives.
Speaker 2: There's one long dirt road that passes right by the
Speaker 2: witness's house. There's also a second backway, though going that
Speaker 2: way would be longer and a lot more complicated. But
Speaker 2: we did have to consider every possibility. Maybe the killer
Speaker 2: drove out the other way. Maybe that's why the witness
Speaker 2: only saw April. Maybe the witness didn't see that person.
Speaker 2: We quickly found out that this would have been impossible
Speaker 2: because on the day that Doug Janis was murdered, there
Speaker 2: was a trail ride happening, one that was organized by
Speaker 2: some of the neighbors living that subdivision. There were a
Speaker 2: ton of horses out there and a lot of people.
Speaker 2: They had the road blocked off that day, and it
Speaker 2: was the road that could have been the killer's other
Speaker 2: escape route. In other words, there was only one way
Speaker 2: in and one way out to Doug Janis's boat on
Speaker 2: that day. If the killer drove to Doug's houseboat, they
Speaker 2: would have had to pass by the trail ride area
Speaker 2: on their way out, And to our knowledge, the only
Speaker 2: person that the witness mentioned seeing in.
Speaker 1: That area was April.
Speaker 2: We talked to one of the people on April's lists,
Speaker 2: a guy named now has another theory about what happened
Speaker 2: on the day died. This is something I considered as well,
Speaker 2: and I was surprised the police never seemed to bring
Speaker 2: up He wondered, could the killer have come to Doug's
Speaker 2: property by boat.
Speaker 6: I'm all for looking into this case because it was
Speaker 6: a travesty. Yeah, how it was handled Stroud, All of this,
Speaker 6: every bit of it, the mess that it is comes
Speaker 6: from Stroud. And the original case against April where they
Speaker 6: tried to convict her of her mother's murder, that was Stroud.
Speaker 2: Oh so it was the same investigator, same investigator.
Speaker 1: Wow, I didn't know that.
Speaker 6: And they basically I think April was like thirteen, and
Speaker 6: April believes her father killed her.
Speaker 2: Mother, and it's talking about an investigator Stroud, who investigated
Speaker 2: the murder of April's mother Anna Thompson in two thousand
Speaker 2: and four, said that an April's version of the story,
Speaker 2: she has been persecuted by this same investigator, and that
Speaker 2: when Doug died, the investigator seemed like he was basically
Speaker 2: out to get her. What if April has been an
Speaker 2: innocent victim this whole time.
Speaker 6: A drugger and questioner. Her father was questioning in her
Speaker 6: in front with the sheriffs. One of her neighbors, a
Speaker 6: woman was in on the question and they over on
Speaker 6: eight ten hours beat her down, say yeah.
Speaker 4: I did it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, I can't believe she was allowed to be
Speaker 2: questioned at that young age with no Well.
Speaker 6: Her father allowed it because he was trying to put
Speaker 6: it on her.
Speaker 3: Right And and.
Speaker 6: April grew up her her father was a drug dealer, right.
Speaker 6: And I've known April since she was a teenager. My
Speaker 6: mother known her since before she was born. My mother
Speaker 6: made her first baby blanket for her. And I know
Speaker 6: that April has done nothing to nobody. She is. I
Speaker 6: trusted her with the care of my mother. My mother
Speaker 6: passed away about a year ago, and she was old
Speaker 6: in her nineties and April came and helped to take
Speaker 6: care of her and stuff like that, and I would
Speaker 6: not allow her to come in where it's near my
Speaker 6: mother if I thought she had anything to do with that.
Speaker 6: Doug was a good friend of mine. He was a
Speaker 6: friend of mine before he married April.
Speaker 2: So believes that Bob, not April, killed Anna, and that
Speaker 2: April has been wrongly accused, not once, but twice mentioned
Speaker 2: the same guy that Ken talked about. The man they
Speaker 2: knew is Hickory Nut And.
Speaker 6: I think I know who killed him, and I don't
Speaker 6: have proof. I just have suspicion, but they're well founded suspicious.
Speaker 2: I want to back up a minute, because we talked
Speaker 2: a lot about April's childhood. We devoted almost an entire
Speaker 2: episode to April's childhood through the perspective of her father,
Speaker 2: Bob Thompson, and I've talked a lot about how I
Speaker 2: believe April was a victim and Bob was blaming everything
Speaker 2: that happened on other people rather than taking responsibility for
Speaker 2: protecting his daughter. After April moved out of the house
Speaker 2: and Mary Doug. Even though Doug and April continued to
Speaker 2: live in the same neighborhood as her father, Bob. April
Speaker 2: rarely saw her father after that. We passed by the
Speaker 2: house where April grew up. You can still see a
Speaker 2: lot of Bob's workshop stuff back there. Bob Thompson wrote
Speaker 2: in his book that he started to distance himself from
Speaker 2: the hemp Hill area after his wife died and April
Speaker 2: moved out of the house. Eventually, he moved to Gatesville, Texas,
Speaker 2: where he lived alone. On September tenth, twenty seventeen, just
Speaker 2: after noon, Bob called one of his neighbors, a woman
Speaker 2: named Ruth, and asked her to pick him up from
Speaker 2: Hillside Nursing Home, where he had been going back and
Speaker 2: forth to have rehabilitation for his right shoulder.
Speaker 1: Ruth picked Bob up and.
Speaker 2: Drove him home. On the way home, Bob was complaining
Speaker 2: about the doctors. He said he just didn't feel like
Speaker 2: he was getting the help he needed. Ruth dropped him
Speaker 2: off at his place at twelve thirty. She lived across
Speaker 2: the street. The plan was for her to pick him
Speaker 2: up again at three thirty and take him back to rehab.
Speaker 2: She came back over a little before that. She yelled
Speaker 2: at Bob through the screen door, but he didn't respond.
Speaker 2: So Ruth went inside and that's when she saw Bob
Speaker 2: lying on the bed. There was a pool of blood
Speaker 2: beside his head. Ruth called nine one one, and when
Speaker 2: police got there, they saw Bob lying there. His feet
Speaker 2: were hanging off the bed and there was black residue
Speaker 2: on his index finger that seemed to the police to
Speaker 2: be gunpowder residue.
Speaker 1: They saw the.
Speaker 2: Small Darringer pistol on the floor by his feet. It
Speaker 2: was a twenty two caliber revolver, the same caliber that
Speaker 2: killed Anna, his wife, and Doug Janis. Police found that
Speaker 2: only one round had been discharged from the weapon. The
Speaker 2: gun had fallen to a spot directly below Bob's right hand.
Speaker 2: So they took a look at the blood spatter patterns
Speaker 2: and everything in the room, and investigators.
Speaker 1: Believed that it was a suicide.
Speaker 2: They believe Bob sat down on the left side of
Speaker 2: the bed, put the gun to his right temple, fired
Speaker 2: the fatal shot, and then the gun slipped out of
Speaker 2: his hand and he fell back on the bed. Investigators
Speaker 2: concluded that Bob died by suicide, though some of his
Speaker 2: neighbors didn't seem to believe that he would have taken
Speaker 2: his own life.
Speaker 1: The truth was.
Speaker 2: Bob was depressed. He had clogged arteries and pneumonia and
Speaker 2: some other physical problems. He thought physical therapy wasn't helping,
Speaker 2: and he was very worried that he would lose the
Speaker 2: use of his one remaining arm. This scared him. His
Speaker 2: nurse said he had been showing signs of depression. He
Speaker 2: was put on prozac. There was something else, one tiny
Speaker 2: little detail that really stuck with me. Apparently Bob had
Speaker 2: a big bag of bird seed, and on that same day,
Speaker 2: shortly before he took his own life, he went to
Speaker 2: a neighbor's house, told her he didn't feel good and
Speaker 2: gave her the bird seed. He said for her to
Speaker 2: share it with other neighbors, saying it would just get
Speaker 2: moldy in his place, and he wanted to feed the birds.
Speaker 2: It reminded me of the story about his late wife
Speaker 2: Anna feeding hummingbirds. I wonder if he was thinking about
Speaker 2: her and about those birds. One other strange thing about
Speaker 2: Bob's suicide was that neighbors mentioned that Bob had a
Speaker 2: daughter who lived in Pennsylvania. No one who knew him
Speaker 2: at this apartment, Compla knew anything about April. April sent
Speaker 2: us a handwritten note that she said was written by
Speaker 2: her father, Bob. There are several questions written on the
Speaker 2: paper about why there were no fingerprints or residue test
Speaker 2: done after Anna was murdered, and other unanswered questions that
Speaker 2: the letter writer had about.
Speaker 1: The crime scene.
Speaker 2: From those notes, it seems like Bob went to his
Speaker 2: grave thinking that April and possibly Doug Janis killed Anna,
Speaker 2: and that he died with these questions still haunting him.
Speaker 2: When we talked to April over text, she completely denied
Speaker 2: having anything to do with Doug's murder. We told her
Speaker 2: we considered her a victim and that what happened to
Speaker 2: her at such a young age should never have happened.
Speaker 2: She said she appreciated that we saw it that way.
Speaker 2: April said she does want justice for Doug. She gave
Speaker 2: give us some phone numbers of people who knew Doug
Speaker 2: well who she believed may be able to help. Another man,
Speaker 2: Nathan said something similar to what Ken said. He said
Speaker 2: that a guy named John, who went by the nickname
Speaker 2: Hickory Nut, had recently gotten into an altercation with Doug.
Speaker 1: I asked about Hickory Nut. Here's what he said.
Speaker 6: I was doing some construction out here at my place,
Speaker 6: and I hired Hickory Nutt to do some digging and
Speaker 6: stuff for me, and I didn't know him from pat Oh.
Speaker 6: I asked Doug if he knew anybody that needed some more.
Speaker 6: He said, well, yeah, this guy. And so he came
Speaker 6: out and he worked pretty good. But I had known
Speaker 6: him for ten minutes. And he's bragging about how he
Speaker 6: was in prison for stabbing somebody in the bar. And
Speaker 6: you know, he talked like he was John Wayne looked
Speaker 6: more like he's Party five. Yeah, it's not a very
Speaker 6: big guy. And so somebody bragging about that kind of
Speaker 6: stuff to somebody they don't know that kind of lets
Speaker 6: you know what kind of person they are. So they're
Speaker 6: proud of that kind of shit. And so Hickory nut
Speaker 6: was a violent felon out on pro. Doug hired him
Speaker 6: to haul fish for him to market. They would have
Speaker 6: to use Dug's truck to haul the fish. He give
Speaker 6: them a credit card to fill up the truck with gas.
Speaker 6: One of Doug's customers, a fish market, called Doug. They said,
Speaker 6: don't send this guy anymore because they caught him snooping
Speaker 6: behind the counter like he's looking for something to steal.
Speaker 6: So Doug fired him. This was a few weeks before
Speaker 6: Doug got killed, and.
Speaker 2: We found out something else when we looked into Hickory
Speaker 2: Nut's criminal history. Hickory Nut had pleaded guilty in the
Speaker 2: past to arson and serve prison time. Considering the fact
Speaker 2: that Doug's boat was burned down, I would have thought
Speaker 2: this would have been of interest to investigators. So we
Speaker 2: have found people who were telling us that there was
Speaker 2: someone who got into a recent altercation with Doug over money,
Speaker 2: someone who was out on parole and who could have
Speaker 2: potentially gone back to prison if Doug turned him into police.
Speaker 2: In my opinion, these leads should absolutely have been investigated.
Speaker 2: So if April was involved with Doug's murder, did she
Speaker 2: act alone or could someone have been helping her. She
Speaker 2: told the police she had a boyfriend in Louisiana who
Speaker 2: she was in love with, but according to Sarah, April
Speaker 2: was seeing someone else like Doug.
Speaker 1: This man was much older than April.
Speaker 2: He's now apparently in his late seventies, and this man
Speaker 2: was all so married. Several people have told us the
Speaker 2: older married man showed up with cash to pay April's
Speaker 2: bills and that they were hanging out in the days
Speaker 2: after Doug's murder. Now specifically said that this man was
Speaker 2: actually April's boss, that he got kind of creepy with her,
Speaker 2: and that there was no sexual relationship between them, But
Speaker 2: Sarah said that they absolutely were involved in a sexual relationship.
Speaker 2: But she said April's relationship with the married man was
Speaker 2: on the rocks after Doug's death. Sarah said April had
Speaker 2: discussed her frustrations with her relationship, and when she did,
Speaker 2: Sarah said she saw a different side to her friend.
Speaker 4: And I know text messages are just hearsay, but in
Speaker 4: one of them, at the very end of their relationship
Speaker 4: or our relationship, she said she was so angry with
Speaker 4: She said, I would slip something in his drink to
Speaker 4: off him if I knew I wouldn't get caught. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And so.
Speaker 5: I don't know, and I don't know that you know,
Speaker 5: like details.
Speaker 4: Because I mean they were tight.
Speaker 2: Sarah knew about Anna's death. She talked to us about
Speaker 2: the moment when she found out that April had been
Speaker 2: arrested in connection with Doug's murder. All these years later,
Speaker 2: another death potentially connected to April. Another person with two
Speaker 2: bullets in the back of their head.
Speaker 4: Oh I know. I went into the daily News and
Speaker 4: more posts, and then I went into who I mean
Speaker 4: That post has been shared one hundred and sixty something times,
Speaker 4: So I looked into who all had shared the posts,
Speaker 4: and there were many, many comments among some of the
Speaker 4: people that shared it. Most of all, most comments that
Speaker 4: you hear from people who went to school with her,
Speaker 4: you know, grade school. Are you know that they always
Speaker 4: knew that she had something to do with the mom
Speaker 4: And then a lot of the comments were snarky, like
Speaker 4: how many does this make because she's gotten away with
Speaker 4: you know, yeah? And then another one said, as she
Speaker 4: keeps changing her name.
Speaker 2: April was isolated after her mother's death, and she has
Speaker 2: written poetry over the years to help deal with her emotions.
Speaker 2: She sent us some of it, written in cursive on
Speaker 2: notebook paper. One reads quote, I don't pay attention to
Speaker 2: the world ending. It's ended for me several times already
Speaker 2: and began again the next morning. Chances are if they accuse,
Speaker 2: then they are the ones doing it. If they talk
Speaker 2: about them, they'll talk about you. Means well means nothing
Speaker 2: until well is done. You are guilty until proven innocent
Speaker 2: end quote. And then further down she writes, lies travel
Speaker 2: at the speed of sound, truth the speed of smell.
Speaker 1: This line, to me.
Speaker 2: Is descriptive and kind of cryptic because smell is a
Speaker 2: powerful memory trigger and one that's often tied to emotions.
Speaker 2: I can't help wondering what does April mean by this line?
Speaker 2: So is April just an innocent victim of police persecution
Speaker 2: or is she a cold blooded killer? Like I said
Speaker 2: at the beginning, this case has been challenging for me because,
Speaker 2: as you all know, this podcast is focused on victims
Speaker 2: of crime. But what about in cases like Doug Janis's
Speaker 2: when the victims may also be the perpetrators. People have
Speaker 2: described Doug as a loving, kind, church going man who
Speaker 2: was shot twice in the back of the head and
Speaker 2: his houseboat was torched.
Speaker 1: But he's also.
Speaker 2: Someone who groomed a twelve or thirteen year old girl
Speaker 2: into a relationship with him. Maybe April is equally complicated.
Speaker 2: Could she be a perpetrator who is also a victim?
Speaker 2: If April didn't do it, then who killed Doug Janie.
Speaker 2: We will be continuing our investigation because it seems as
Speaker 2: though police and prosecutors were focused on one suspect, April.
Speaker 2: After the charges against her were dropped. They don't seem
Speaker 2: to be looking for any alternative suspect. So if April
Speaker 2: killed her husband, they need to gather more evidence. They
Speaker 2: need to build a case, and if it wasn't her,
Speaker 2: they need to find out who it was. Either way,
Speaker 2: this is not an acceptable stopping point. Some people believe
Speaker 2: that people in power are afraid to pursue April because
Speaker 2: men in power in Sabine County were either sexually involved
Speaker 2: with her or new men who were when she was
Speaker 2: under age. They may have dark secrets that they want
Speaker 2: to see stay buried. But for Doug Jansi's family and
Speaker 2: for the people in Sabine County, it's time to dig
Speaker 2: them up. I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone Murder Line.
Speaker 2: Helen Gone Murder Line is a production of School of
Speaker 2: Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me
Speaker 2: Catherine Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts and Miranda Hawkins.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research assistance. This
Speaker 2: episode was sound designed and mixed by Noah Kamer. Our
Speaker 2: theme song is by Ben Salid. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott,
Speaker 2: Brandon Barr, and Else Crowley. Listen to Helen Gone ad
Speaker 2: free by subscribing to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel.
Speaker 1: On Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 2: If you are interested in seeing documents and materials from
Speaker 2: the case, you can follow the show on Instagram at
Speaker 2: Helen Gone Pod. If you have a case you'd like
Speaker 2: me and my team to look into, you can reach
Speaker 2: out to us at our Helen Gone Murder line at
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Speaker 1: School of Humans