April Tinsley 8 Murdered in 1988
Posted on Tue, Sep. 19, 2006 Killing shattered innocence of city, and we’ll never forget By Frank Gray The Journal Gazette Dekalb County authorities announce that April Tinsley’s body was found by a jogger on April 4, 1988. It was Good Friday of 1988, and Fort Wayne was still living in a sort of age of innocence. Life, if it wasn’t always good, was at least secure in most places. On streets such as West Williams Street, where residents were quick to acknowledge they were lower-middle income, kids were allowed to be kids, to be on the streets, to play in the vacant lots, to be happy. Life remained as it was in the 1950s and ’60s. It was nothing for children to walk blocks to school or friends’ homes. Ten years before, in another part of the city, there had been a series of disappearances of children over the course of a couple of years, but those events seemed to have been forgotten. Fort Wayne, in the eyes of most who lived here, was still a city where you didn’t have to walk in fear, not even if you were a child. Until the afternoon of that Good Friday in 1988. April Tinsley disappeared from the streets during one of her routine walks from a friend’s house. Word spread through the neighborhood. Neighbors asked whether they could help. They gathered outside the family’s home, awaiting word. But it wasn’t until Monday that the 8-year-old’s disappearance made the newspaper and the first really ugly truths began to emerge before the entire community. Someone had seen a man in a beat-up blue pickup truck yell at April Tinsley and pull her into his truck. The girl had been abducted by a man on the street. That same day, the worst fears everyone had became real. April Tinsley had been found dead. She had been sexually assaulted and suffocated and her body dumped in DeKalb County, far from her home. The news alarmed and struck fear into virtually everyone with children, whether they were in a poor neighborhood like the Tinsleys or in a more affluent area. The abduction had happened in broad daylight. There apparently had even been witnesses. Was the abductor someone just passing through, or was he from Fort Wayne? It didn’t matter. The April Tinsley case shocked everyone into the realization that life had changed forever. Children were now targets, and it was nearly impossible to know the predators. The man who took April Tinsley could be someone roaming from city to city abducting children, or the killer could still be in Fort Wayne, biding his time until he would strike again. It was never the subject of news articles, but you could see it, sense it, smell it. Parents stopped letting their children walk the streets. Many wouldn’t let their children out of their line of sight when they were outside. They wouldn’t let them wander more than a couple of houses away, much less travel blocks to visit friends or go to a store. Any stranger suddenly had the potential to become a subject of suspicion. Children who were late coming home from school were more likely to be reported as missing. Students became more likely to report people acting suspiciously toward them. Residents began to organize. Within months, citizens established a group called APRIL, designed to prevent abductions. The group had fundraisers. People gave money. The group accumulated a van, flashlights, rescue equipment and even land. Hundreds of people signed up with the organization to help search in the event another child went missing. People who ran the organization visited PTA meetings and child-care centers, speaking about how to avoid abductions and showing videotapes on how to prevent abductions. Scarcely a year later, it happened again, this time on the north side of the city. A girl who played in the parking lot of an apartment complex was abducted and later found dead nearby. The fear that the April Tinsley case had stirred was reaffirmed. It remains today. The names of homicide victims are usually quickly forgotten by the public, but the name April Tinsley is one that, because of the change it brought to the way we view the city, its streets, our lives and those around us, we have not forgotten. Now, police are seeking more information on messages left on walls 16 years ago and startlingly similar messages delivered in the past two years to people in Allen County. They suggest that whoever killed April Tinsley 18 years ago might still be on the street. Once again, our fears are resurrected. And once again, we remember the name of April Tinsley. http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/fortwayne/news/local/15554366.htm