He Left Notes on Girls' Bicycles Taunting Police for 16 Years | INDIANA 1988 Cold Case SOLVED

On Good Friday, 1988, eight-year-old April Tinsley walked home from a friend's house in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and never made it. Three days later she was found in a country ditch twenty miles away. Police had the killer's DNA from the very beginning and for thirty years, it matched no one. But this killer didn't disappear. He wrote back. In 1990, a message scrawled on a barn near where April was found bragged about the murder and promised there would be more. Then in 2004, notes began turning up in the yards of Fort Wayne left on the bicycles of little girls, sealed in bags with evidence that carried his DNA. "I've been watching you," one read. "You are my next victim." He was taunting an entire city. Then he went silent. He thought the science would never catch him. It did. Two weeks after the Golden State Killer fell to genetic genealogy in 2018, the same method was turned on April's case and it walked investigators straight to a quiet man in the town of Grabill who had been hiding in plain sight the whole time. This is the full story of April Tinsley: the little girl who loved shopping and sleepovers at her grandparents' house, the detectives who carried her photo in their pockets for thirty years, and the family tree that finally answered a killer's notes. Every case on Decades Cold is real and carefully researched from public records and reporting, told with respect for the victims and families involved. Tell us where you're watching from and subscribe so the next case finds you. #truecrime #coldcase #DNA #geneticgenealogy #coldcasesolved #forensics #indiana #fortwayne #unsolved