Hell and GoneAfter Doug Janis was murdered in 2020, police were focused on one suspect: his wife, 31-year-old April Mae Janis.
Was April a loving wife who adored Doug or a master manipulator who orchestrated his murder? In Hemphill, Texas, it depends on who you ask. Half the town thinks that April was this vixen who has murdered multiple people, while the other half see her as a victim of sexual abuse.
This week, we finally got in touch with April Janis. And we learned about an alternative suspect...someone the police apparently never considered.
If you have a case you'd like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.
School of Humans.
After Doug Janis was murdered in twenty twenty, police were focused on one suspect, his wife, April May Janis. Was April a loving wife who adored Doug or was she a master manipulator who had orchestrated his murder in Himple, Texas. That depends on who you ask, because the town is divided. We talked to several people who were close to April. They said they felt sorry for April, but at the same time, some of them seemed to be afraid of her. Ever since her mother, Anna Thompson, was killed in two thousand and four in what was either a freak accident or a murder. April was charged with her mother's murder, but she was found not guilty after a two day trial. And after that, some people felt sorry for April because she was preyed on by older men, including Doug. Janiss were afraid of April. They believe she had something to do with her mother's death and that she had gotten away clean with murder. This week, we finally got in touch with April Janis and we learned about an alternative suspect, someone who the police have apparently never considered I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past five years of making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've learned that there's no such thing as a small town where murder never happens. I have received hundreds of messages from people all around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five that's six seven eight seven four four six one four or five, Or you can send us a message on Instagram at Helen Gone pod. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. If you ask people in Doug Janis's neighborhood, the only suspect the police ever considered was April, but there were other people around near the time when Doug Janis was murdered. It turns out that there was someone else living on Doug's property. Remember we said that April had moved out of the mobile home there and was living in Louisiana. But after April moved out, someone else moved in, a man named Ken, and because of the fact that Doug Janis was murdered just a couple of months after Ken was moving in, A lot of people were questioning Ken. They wondered if it was a coincidence that someone showed up, moved in, and then shortly after that that Doug was dead, which would be a natural question.
But we got in.
Touch with Ken and he admits that he believes he was considered a suspect. We asked him about the day when the police showed up at his house. Ken opened up about his relationship with Doug Janis, someone he said he considered a close.
Friend, and that was about around twenty ten. I'm an avid hunter and I've been hunting up here since about then, and I've known Doug good by acquaintance, and I met him on feveral occasions. My house got torn up by Hurricane Harvey, and Doug heard about it.
Ken knew Doug casually for several years, and Ken said that after his house was wrecked by the hurricane, he was looking for a place to live, so he reconnected with Doug and found out that April had recently moved out of the mobile home on Doug's property, leaving a vacancy.
I knew April and that he had moved out. I'd only met her on a couple occasions prior to me moving here. But I got to know April very well and Doug even better. And he offered me this place to rent until my house got fixed or until you know, I found another place to live. But it was in pretty bad shape. Anyway, I got to pick up, and Doug offered me to haul captis to market, and I told him, you know, I've got a commercial driver's line of CLD, and he he would want me to haul fish for him, and I live here in the trailer, and anyway, I've got to pick up and we got it able to be live livapool.
Ken remembers the last time that he talked to doub.
If it was in December of the year he passed and twenty twenty, I believe it was. And I leader the review hault unload everything that was in my house and bring it up here, and he said that he'd help me. And I got here Saturday night about midnight, and there was a sheriff department and a fire department employee at the front entrance of how you get down here where you know the trailer is and I'm in my U haul and it's muddy, wet, nasty, and I pull up and they got it, who are you a jo? Well, you know, he all. I got my information on my driver's life, ale everything. Then after if I knew Doug, I said, yeah, my landlord, he's my neighbor, he's my my friend, my future employer. And they said, well he's but you didn't know about the have fire. You know, I don't know want half fire And they said that he'd passed in a fire. I was unimpressionated with an accident, that he had died from a gas leak or something that you know that it was the further thing from my mind that he was preyed upon by somebody. But the that week, whether it was a week later, they showed up here. They wanted a search warrant here. And I mean I walked out of home Front from pot Port and there like seven different police cars lined up with a sheriff car and uh this investigator shroud and uh. They started asking by questions about what's comings goings.
Ken said that from what he observed, Doug in April seemed to have a great relationship. Ken said the police ruled him out after they realized that he wasn't in the area when Doug was shot, and that he had no issues with Doug. Ken said that Doug was charming.
I'm still stunned. I still can't believe it. The man was a very generous man. He was the kind of guy that would give him a shirt off his back, and he pretty much did. He allowed me to live here pre of charge up until January was going to be my first rent payment. Yeah, and that year. And that was a decent man, like a lot.
Of people did. He said. Most people love Doug.
But Ken said that Doug had employed people in the past who Doug did have issues with.
He's never from the time that I knew him, I never knew of him, you know, having affiliation with anyone of although his employees there, he didn't employ, he did employee some characters.
Ken talked about Doug's employees, and he mentioned one person in particular who Doug had recent dealings with, someone who allegedly used Doug's credit card without Doug's permission.
I happen to meet a couple of them men they've actually been here, but there are old guys. They were I mean, this guy was already too old to climb up to hill from the boat dog down there. Anyway, I met a couple of employees are people that helped him haul fish the market. But uh, I never knew of this one person of interest that we think of. His nickname is Heckory Nuts. I never met the man, but it was a parent that Doug had problems with him and got some kind of altercation in the day before that Saturday before he was brutally executed. But anyway, that's pretty much all I know. Doug allowed me to unhear and picked up the trailer, and you know, he's a good guy man. I mean, I had nothing from the time I met him time he passed. I've never had ever seen a bad side of Doug. I mean, you know, some people have an attitude anger problem, but he wasn't that kind of a guy as far as I knew. And April was just a sweetheart.
Ken's impression of April is the opposite of other people we've talked to, people who described April as manipulative. Ken describes her as a kind, fun loving person and a complete sweetheart. He said that even though Doug had recently had a hernia operation. Doug was very fit for his age. He talked about how Doug had no fear of the wilderness around him. Doug even had an alligator out there who he fed marshmallows to. We already knew about Ken, because again, even though we had no access to the police case file. One of the first things that got me interested in Doug's death after a listener called to tell us about it, was when I started looking into land transfers that took place after Doug's death. I find that when you're trying to follow the money, the devil is always in the very boring details. April had actually sold the land to Ken, the guy who was staying on the property after April left. Since police had mentioned a potential life insurance policy and the probab will cause affidavit, that would mean money was potentially a motive. So I was trying to figure out if there was a life insurance policy and also what April's financial situation was around the time when Doug was murdered. We've got conflicting information on this because in the police report, after the police interviewed April Well, they said Doug kept around ten thousand dollars on the boat and that there was a life insurance policy for one hundred thousand dollars. So we reached out to April. Honestly, I didn't expect a response from April, because remember, she had the charges against her dropped, and from everything that we're hearing, police are not pursuing April, nor are they pursuing any alternative suspects. We didn't expect a response, but we wanted to hear her side of the story. I was a little shocked when she got back to us A couple of days later. She sent us a series of text messages. April said that her attorney had advised her not to talk to us, but she did say she wants to help get justice for Doug. She provided us with a list of phone numbers of Doug's close friends, people she believed could give us more information about the case, and we are reaching out to every single one of them.
In one of her texts.
April had said that it was ridiculous for police to be focused on her and that basically the Sheriff's department had lied in the arrest Affidavid. April said there was no million dollar life insurance policy when we asked her if there was a policy at all. She said yes, but she said that she was unaware of it until her aunt told her that the policy existed. From the land records that we found, it does seem like April had a lot of cash after Doug's death. We found that shortly after Doug passed away, April purchased a house for ninety five thousand dollars in cash. So we wondered, could there have been even more money on that boat and if so, what happened? Did it burn up in the fire or was it already gone. Here's Sarah April's friend.
Yeah, I didn't believe in banks today.
He was just repair annoid by that right for money he had accumulated in his lifetime or whatever was on that boat.
Yeah, I would imagine too, and a fisherman probably trying to hide income from the irs.
Also, if you read.
The affidavit of probable cause, it seems like police focused on April's suspect for three reasons. One the fact that she allegedly had a boyfriend at the time when Doug was murdered. Two, Doug's money and potential life insurance policy. And there was also a third big reason the witness. Remember, police interviewed a neighbor, someone who said that they saw April driving away from the scene of the crime just a few minutes before the fire truck showed up. We also looked more into the witness who saw April on the day the boat blew up. We went to where this witness lives, a short distance from Doug's boat. Now, there are only two ways to get to where Doug lives. There's one long dirt road that passes right by the witness's house. There's also a second backway, though going that way would be longer and a lot more complicated. But we did have to consider every possibility. Maybe the killer drove out the other way. Maybe that's why the witness only saw April. Maybe the witness didn't see that person. We quickly found out that this would have been impossible because on the day that Doug Janis was murdered, there was a trail ride happening, one that was organized by some of the neighbors living that subdivision. There were a ton of horses out there and a lot of people. They had the road blocked off that day, and it was the road that could have been the killer's other escape route. In other words, there was only one way in and one way out to Doug Janis's boat on that day. If the killer drove to Doug's houseboat, they would have had to pass by the trail ride area on their way out, And to our knowledge, the only person that the witness mentioned seeing in.
That area was April.
We talked to one of the people on April's lists, a guy named now has another theory about what happened on the day died. This is something I considered as well, and I was surprised the police never seemed to bring up He wondered, could the killer have come to Doug's property by boat.
I'm all for looking into this case because it was a travesty. Yeah, how it was handled Stroud, All of this, every bit of it, the mess that it is comes from Stroud. And the original case against April where they tried to convict her of her mother's murder, that was Stroud.
Oh so it was the same investigator, same investigator.
Wow, I didn't know that.
And they basically I think April was like thirteen, and April believes her father killed her.
Mother, and it's talking about an investigator Stroud, who investigated the murder of April's mother Anna Thompson in two thousand and four, said that an April's version of the story, she has been persecuted by this same investigator, and that when Doug died, the investigator seemed like he was basically out to get her. What if April has been an innocent victim this whole time.
A drugger and questioner. Her father was questioning in her in front with the sheriffs. One of her neighbors, a woman was in on the question and they over on eight ten hours beat her down, say yeah.
I did it.
Yeah, Well, I can't believe she was allowed to be questioned at that young age with no Well.
Her father allowed it because he was trying to put it on her.
Right And and.
April grew up her her father was a drug dealer, right. And I've known April since she was a teenager. My mother known her since before she was born. My mother made her first baby blanket for her. And I know that April has done nothing to nobody. She is. I trusted her with the care of my mother. My mother passed away about a year ago, and she was old in her nineties and April came and helped to take care of her and stuff like that, and I would not allow her to come in where it's near my mother if I thought she had anything to do with that. Doug was a good friend of mine. He was a friend of mine before he married April.
So believes that Bob, not April, killed Anna, and that April has been wrongly accused, not once, but twice mentioned the same guy that Ken talked about. The man they knew is Hickory Nut And.
I think I know who killed him, and I don't have proof. I just have suspicion, but they're well founded suspicious.
I want to back up a minute, because we talked a lot about April's childhood. We devoted almost an entire episode to April's childhood through the perspective of her father, Bob Thompson, and I've talked a lot about how I believe April was a victim and Bob was blaming everything that happened on other people rather than taking responsibility for protecting his daughter. After April moved out of the house and Mary Doug. Even though Doug and April continued to live in the same neighborhood as her father, Bob. April rarely saw her father after that. We passed by the house where April grew up. You can still see a lot of Bob's workshop stuff back there. Bob Thompson wrote in his book that he started to distance himself from the hemp Hill area after his wife died and April moved out of the house. Eventually, he moved to Gatesville, Texas, where he lived alone. On September tenth, twenty seventeen, just after noon, Bob called one of his neighbors, a woman named Ruth, and asked her to pick him up from Hillside Nursing Home, where he had been going back and forth to have rehabilitation for his right shoulder.
Ruth picked Bob up and.
Drove him home. On the way home, Bob was complaining about the doctors. He said he just didn't feel like he was getting the help he needed. Ruth dropped him off at his place at twelve thirty. She lived across the street. The plan was for her to pick him up again at three thirty and take him back to rehab. She came back over a little before that. She yelled at Bob through the screen door, but he didn't respond. So Ruth went inside and that's when she saw Bob lying on the bed. There was a pool of blood beside his head. Ruth called nine one one, and when police got there, they saw Bob lying there. His feet were hanging off the bed and there was black residue on his index finger that seemed to the police to be gunpowder residue.
They saw the.
Small Darringer pistol on the floor by his feet. It was a twenty two caliber revolver, the same caliber that killed Anna, his wife, and Doug Janis. Police found that only one round had been discharged from the weapon. The gun had fallen to a spot directly below Bob's right hand. So they took a look at the blood spatter patterns and everything in the room, and investigators.
Believed that it was a suicide.
They believe Bob sat down on the left side of the bed, put the gun to his right temple, fired the fatal shot, and then the gun slipped out of his hand and he fell back on the bed. Investigators concluded that Bob died by suicide, though some of his neighbors didn't seem to believe that he would have taken his own life.
The truth was.
Bob was depressed. He had clogged arteries and pneumonia and some other physical problems. He thought physical therapy wasn't helping, and he was very worried that he would lose the use of his one remaining arm. This scared him. His nurse said he had been showing signs of depression. He was put on prozac. There was something else, one tiny little detail that really stuck with me. Apparently Bob had a big bag of bird seed, and on that same day, shortly before he took his own life, he went to a neighbor's house, told her he didn't feel good and gave her the bird seed. He said for her to share it with other neighbors, saying it would just get moldy in his place, and he wanted to feed the birds. It reminded me of the story about his late wife Anna feeding hummingbirds. I wonder if he was thinking about her and about those birds. One other strange thing about Bob's suicide was that neighbors mentioned that Bob had a daughter who lived in Pennsylvania. No one who knew him at this apartment, Compla knew anything about April. April sent us a handwritten note that she said was written by her father, Bob. There are several questions written on the paper about why there were no fingerprints or residue test done after Anna was murdered, and other unanswered questions that the letter writer had about.
The crime scene.
From those notes, it seems like Bob went to his grave thinking that April and possibly Doug Janis killed Anna, and that he died with these questions still haunting him. When we talked to April over text, she completely denied having anything to do with Doug's murder. We told her we considered her a victim and that what happened to her at such a young age should never have happened. She said she appreciated that we saw it that way. April said she does want justice for Doug. She gave give us some phone numbers of people who knew Doug well who she believed may be able to help. Another man, Nathan said something similar to what Ken said. He said that a guy named John, who went by the nickname Hickory Nut, had recently gotten into an altercation with Doug.
I asked about Hickory Nut. Here's what he said.
I was doing some construction out here at my place, and I hired Hickory Nutt to do some digging and stuff for me, and I didn't know him from pat Oh. I asked Doug if he knew anybody that needed some more. He said, well, yeah, this guy. And so he came out and he worked pretty good. But I had known him for ten minutes. And he's bragging about how he was in prison for stabbing somebody in the bar. And you know, he talked like he was John Wayne looked more like he's Party five. Yeah, it's not a very big guy. And so somebody bragging about that kind of stuff to somebody they don't know that kind of lets you know what kind of person they are. So they're proud of that kind of shit. And so Hickory nut was a violent felon out on pro. Doug hired him to haul fish for him to market. They would have to use Dug's truck to haul the fish. He give them a credit card to fill up the truck with gas. One of Doug's customers, a fish market, called Doug. They said, don't send this guy anymore because they caught him snooping behind the counter like he's looking for something to steal. So Doug fired him. This was a few weeks before Doug got killed, and.
We found out something else when we looked into Hickory Nut's criminal history. Hickory Nut had pleaded guilty in the past to arson and serve prison time. Considering the fact that Doug's boat was burned down, I would have thought this would have been of interest to investigators. So we have found people who were telling us that there was someone who got into a recent altercation with Doug over money, someone who was out on parole and who could have potentially gone back to prison if Doug turned him into police. In my opinion, these leads should absolutely have been investigated. So if April was involved with Doug's murder, did she act alone or could someone have been helping her. She told the police she had a boyfriend in Louisiana who she was in love with, but according to Sarah, April was seeing someone else like Doug.
This man was much older than April.
He's now apparently in his late seventies, and this man was all so married. Several people have told us the older married man showed up with cash to pay April's bills and that they were hanging out in the days after Doug's murder. Now specifically said that this man was actually April's boss, that he got kind of creepy with her, and that there was no sexual relationship between them, But Sarah said that they absolutely were involved in a sexual relationship. But she said April's relationship with the married man was on the rocks after Doug's death. Sarah said April had discussed her frustrations with her relationship, and when she did, Sarah said she saw a different side to her friend.
And I know text messages are just hearsay, but in one of them, at the very end of their relationship or our relationship, she said she was so angry with She said, I would slip something in his drink to off him if I knew I wouldn't get caught. Yeah, And so.
I don't know, and I don't know that you know, like details.
Because I mean they were tight.
Sarah knew about Anna's death. She talked to us about the moment when she found out that April had been arrested in connection with Doug's murder. All these years later, another death potentially connected to April. Another person with two bullets in the back of their head.
Oh I know. I went into the daily News and more posts, and then I went into who I mean That post has been shared one hundred and sixty something times, So I looked into who all had shared the posts, and there were many, many comments among some of the people that shared it. Most of all, most comments that you hear from people who went to school with her, you know, grade school. Are you know that they always knew that she had something to do with the mom And then a lot of the comments were snarky, like how many does this make because she's gotten away with you know, yeah? And then another one said, as she keeps changing her name.
April was isolated after her mother's death, and she has written poetry over the years to help deal with her emotions. She sent us some of it, written in cursive on notebook paper. One reads quote, I don't pay attention to the world ending. It's ended for me several times already and began again the next morning. Chances are if they accuse, then they are the ones doing it. If they talk about them, they'll talk about you. Means well means nothing until well is done. You are guilty until proven innocent end quote. And then further down she writes, lies travel at the speed of sound, truth the speed of smell.
This line, to me.
Is descriptive and kind of cryptic because smell is a powerful memory trigger and one that's often tied to emotions. I can't help wondering what does April mean by this line? So is April just an innocent victim of police persecution or is she a cold blooded killer? Like I said at the beginning, this case has been challenging for me because, as you all know, this podcast is focused on victims of crime. But what about in cases like Doug Janis's when the victims may also be the perpetrators. People have described Doug as a loving, kind, church going man who was shot twice in the back of the head and his houseboat was torched.
But he's also.
Someone who groomed a twelve or thirteen year old girl into a relationship with him. Maybe April is equally complicated. Could she be a perpetrator who is also a victim? If April didn't do it, then who killed Doug Janie. We will be continuing our investigation because it seems as though police and prosecutors were focused on one suspect, April. After the charges against her were dropped. They don't seem to be looking for any alternative suspect. So if April killed her husband, they need to gather more evidence. They need to build a case, and if it wasn't her, they need to find out who it was. Either way, this is not an acceptable stopping point. Some people believe that people in power are afraid to pursue April because men in power in Sabine County were either sexually involved with her or new men who were when she was under age. They may have dark secrets that they want to see stay buried. But for Doug Jansi's family and for the people in Sabine County, it's time to dig them up. I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts and Miranda Hawkins. Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research assistance. This episode was sound designed and mixed by Noah Kamer. Our theme song is by Ben Salid. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Else Crowley. Listen to Helen Gone ad free by subscribing to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel.
On Apple Podcasts.
If you are interested in seeing documents and materials from the case, you can follow the show on Instagram at Helen Gone Pod. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five.
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