- My mom always preached stranger danger.
- April millsap was last seen walking her family dog.
- April's missing.
Something's gone wrong.
- State police and the fbi are scouring
The entire village for evidence.
- And I was just texting all of my friends in armada.
- And everybody responded back to me except April.
- Police are searching for a dented white painter's van.
- My first thought was serial killer.
- I just wanted to hear April's voice
Or see a text from her.
- That was such a odd text
And yet he never responded.
- When you watch that video, it's bone-chilling.
- That's why it's so scary,
'cause you never know who it is.
- Young girls should know, don't be afraid to speak up.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- A young woman is missing tonight
After leaving a bar with a stranger,
Then texting "help" to a friend.
♪ ♪
- You are watching her terrifying abduction.
♪ ♪
- A missing woman's nude body was discovered in this ravine.
- Miraculously, the young woman survived.
♪ ♪
[camera shutter clicking]
- There is an alarming crisis of violence,
Kidnapping, and murder against innocent women.
- The senseless murder has struck a chord
With thousands of women.
- This has sparked a global movement online
Of women sharing their own fears.
They're united under a hashtag #textmewhenyougethome,
A phrase that women are all too familiar with.
♪ ♪
[light music]
♪ ♪
- It's one of those towns.
You don't lock your doors usually at night,
And you don't think anything bad's gonna ever happen there.
♪ ♪
All the orchard trails in armada were wonderful
Because you could walk your dog, you could jog,
You could hike, you could ride a bike.
Pretty much everybody out there is just out there
Enjoying the weather and enjoying life.
- I saw the community as, like, the safe, tight-knit community
Where everybody knew each other.
- Yeah, I thought it would be the perfect environment
To raise a family, be with jennifer and April.
♪ ♪
I raised April with jennifer since she was six years old.
- April's parents-- they had
A very goofy personality with April.
They were always messing around with each other.
She would be screaming jokes at them from across the house.
And we would all just laugh.
♪ ♪
- Me and April had a lot of fun.
April used to love just spending time with me.
We once flew a kite, and while you have to run
To get a kite up, she goes, "wow, you jiggle when you run."
♪ ♪
- I'm April's best friend.
We were friends since the sixth grade,
So we didn't have the same class,
But we were both the loners
That got left out of everything.
And then magically, we just became friends.
She was, like, the sweetest, angelic human on the planet.
April was absolutely gorgeous.
I think everybody wanted to be her.
She was kind of also an awkward soul, much like me.
So she liked her private time.
She was also really creative.
She liked to draw.
She liked to do her makeup,
And she liked fashion a lot.
She would always be shopping.
- We would message each other frequently,
Mainly trying to correspond our outfits
Or makeup for the next day.
If we had a spirit week, we'd be like,
"who's dressing good? Who's dressing silly?"
She was definitely the creative one,
The loud one, the crazy one.
One thing I mainly remember from her texting all the time,
She had a big teddy bear phone case,
And she would just hold it around,
Looks like she's carrying a stuffed animal
Through the hallways, but just her phone.
[laughs]
♪ ♪
- I would actually invite austin over
To help me work on cars
So I could get to know him a little better.
You know, you're always a little uneasy
If you don't understand or know a person.
- I actually got into a fight with her
On the last day of school,
So we had not talked.
I can't even remember what it was about.
It was really dumb middle school stuff.
But I went on vacation, got back.
I texted her, "hey, April.
"I'm so sorry about what happened.
Can we hang out soon? I miss you."
And she said, "yeah, let's plan something soon."
♪ ♪
- We would message each other.
"hey, wanna make plans?
We can go to the mall, go shopping?"
The last thing I said to her was,
"I'll text you. We'll make plans."
♪ ♪
- April was eating a salad.
I made a silly remark about eating rabbit food
And pretty much told her I loved her, went to work.
♪ ♪
April and penny grew up a little bit together.
That was pretty much her dog.
She used to take penny on walks.
Pretty much wherever April was, the dog would be
Following her wherever she went.
♪ ♪
- Lots of people would walk their dogs on the trail.
That was a common thing.
I was never concerned about her going out.
As a small community, if I wasn't watching her,
One of the other neighbors would be watching.
- My mom always preached stranger danger.
Don't talk to strangers.
But in that community, everyone knew each other.
Nobody was really a stranger.
So you kinda just talked to everybody.
♪ ♪
And then, "come home."
- April was always responding right away
To people whenever they texted.
♪ ♪
[line ringing]
- Your call has been forwarded...
♪ ♪
[doorbell rings]
♪ ♪
- And jennifer calls me up and said, "April's missing."
So told work, "I gotta leave. Something's gone wrong.
I don't know what it is, but it's something with April."
♪ ♪
[line ringing]
- 911.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- It was an obvious murder.
It was a young girl.
We weren't sure of her age.
She looked like a teenager.
♪ ♪
The armada police department is a very small town.
There's maybe one officer on duty at a time.
And so it wasn't unusual to get a call from them for help.
But in this case, it was all hands on deck.
The area where her body was found
Was wooded enough that you couldn't see it.
- You have to go down about six feet into a ditch,
Across the ditch, up on the other side,
And through some very, very heavy bushes and trees.
- We would've probably not even found her there
If it wasn't for the dog.
And that dog literally led them down into the ravine
Where her body was.
- She was found with her shirt up,
Her pants down, and clear bruises about her body.
- Well, the trauma to her head was obvious.
You could see that there were actually
Shoe prints in her face.
- The brutality upon which she died
By being stomped to death,
This was as brutal as it gets and as senseless as it gets.
- It was so physically violent.
It was really, you know,
I couldn't really comprehend it.
♪ ♪
- They tell me that I need to stay outside.
It's a small police department.
And...
They were doing interviews with jennifer,
And there's not much room in there.
- I'm listening to the radio on the news,
And they're talking about a young girl's body
Found on the--on the trails,
And I'm starting to put pieces together
In my own head
That this is the only reason we could possibly be here.
- Once jennifer described the clothes
April was wearing that evening
And described the dog she was with,
We knew it was April.
[emotional piano melody]
♪ ♪
I mean, I know she was in shock,
But I remember the wailing that night.
- ♪ I knew the day would come ♪
- This is a mother of a daughter
Who's brutally murdered.
And what can you do, I mean,
Except let her, you know, let her cry?
♪ ♪
Okay.
♪ ♪
- I lost everything right there.
♪ ♪
- It was just really, really tough to--
At the time to just not get caught up in that
And then just try and focus on what the job was
And try and keep the emotions aside.
♪ ♪
[tense music]
♪ ♪
Well, certainly, in any investigation,
We always look at the people closest to the victim.
Being I'm her stepfather,
I'm a person of interest, obviously.
Everybody directly in April's life
Were the first ones questioned.
It was a very long, long night.
- It's a process of elimination.
Once we had eliminated the mother and father,
Then we look at other close friends,
Boyfriend, girlfriend.
♪ ♪
- Just for the mere fact of him being
The closest person to her, him being her boyfriend,
Of course, we're gonna take a good look at him.
And so we interviewed him at length.
The first thing we always do is ask for phones.
So we of course took his phone
And started looking through his phone
To try and determine, what was the status
Of their relationship, if they had any problems.
We find this text message he got from April
Around 6:24 that evening
That said, "I think I almost got kidnapped, omfg."
That was such a odd text message to read,
And yet he never responded to that text.
- When April was found, her phone was not with her.
We don't know where it was.
One theory is that he somehow sent this message to himself
To get himself off the hook
And make him seem like he was innocent somehow.
♪ ♪
- They're 15 and 14 years old. It's not unusual.
But because there had been
That sort of anger in the relationship,
That's the first thing that you zero in on.
- We thought, well, we better take a good look at austin
And figure out where he was that evening,
Why he didn't respond to this text message.
- Boyfriends have every reason to lie,
Especially in a murder investigation.
There has to be corroborating evidence for us to believe you.
♪ ♪
- I picked up my ipod,
And I was just texting all of my friends in armada.
♪ ♪
- I had heard from my mom that night that it happened
That there was a body that was found on the trail.
I also texted my friends,
And everybody responded
Back to me except April.
I didn't find out the truth
Until the next morning.
- The village of armada stunned as the girl found
Murdered along the macomb orchard trail
Is identified as one of their own,
14-year-old April millsap.
- When I heard the words, "it's April,"
I didn't want to believe it was true.
- There were definitely a handful of people
Who didn't like April.
It was simply because she was happy living her life,
And other people just didn't wanna see that.
Anyone that was close to April was a suspect,
And that's why it's so scary,
'cause you never know who it is.
[dramatic music]
- A killer was on the loose,
And we couldn't afford to rule anyone out.
- Police are searching for a dented white painter's van.
- Now you've got this white van,
Which plays into everybody's worst fears.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- We brought in an additional 20 officers in the morning
And another 40 by the afternoon.
When the phone is missing, you think,
"well, there's something on that phone
That would implicate someone."
And so we had to find that phone.
♪ ♪
We took April's phone to the michigan state police
Computer crimes unit.
We had hoped on her phone that we would find
Text messages, calls,
Just to indicate somebody that she had met,
Somebody she was supposed to meet that evening,
Or some indication of who she was having a relationship with.
[sinister music]
♪ ♪
Roger mace, we learned,
Attended the same school as April.
The officer listens to roger talk,
And the officer's gut feeling is something's not right,
That maybe this teen was in love with April.
- We did learn about other young men
That may have been interested in her.
- What we needed to find out, was he obsessed with her?
And, of course, what was he doing
During the time of the murder?
We looked at him as far as
If he had any relationship with April
Or anything to do with her.
♪ ♪
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- In a city about 15 miles away,
We were able to go to that fast-food restaurant
And actually pull the video of them in the drive-through lane.
♪ ♪
- And sure enough,
You could see austin and his friend
Pass through that drive-through,
Right at the time that he said he was there,
The coroner couldn't give us a time of death exactly.
But the murder occurred sometime between
6:00 p.M. And 8:00 p.M.
And austin was at mcdonald's,
Confirmed by video,
At 6:30 p.M.,
Which would've cleared him
From that time frame,
Because there's no way that he could have murdered her
And made it to that mcdonald's.
- Once we'd eliminated the boyfriend,
It was the first step in us recognizing
That it may not actually be anybody that she knows.
♪ ♪
- He was friendly with April,
But it didn't go beyond that.
And he claimed to be at work during the time of the murder.
He was--actually had nothing at all
Or any contact with her.
And he was cleared also with an alibi.
- If it had been a friend, if it had been a relative,
Then we would not have had that text,
Because those texts had the generalized information
Saying that she thought she was being followed,
And she was afraid.
- It became really tough.
We were starting to look at it and say,
"is this possibly a stranger?"
♪ ♪
- The next few days after that,
I was keeping up on my social medias,
Making sure everyone else was still safe too.
I didn't want another friend of mine getting hurt.
- Nobody wanted to go outside. Nobody wanted to do anything.
You have to assume that you're always potentially in danger.
♪ ♪
The official cause of death was blunt-force head trauma
And asphyxiation.
And that asphyxiation came from
The stomping on her head and on her neck.
The key piece of evidence that was on April's body
Was actually the footprint that was left on her face.
It gave us a clear pattern of the shoe tread,
And it's what our lab people called a herringbone pattern.
Getting those shoes were a priority.
♪ ♪
- The next step was to do a door-to-door canvass.
- Knocking on every door, asking neighbors,
People in the area if they heard, saw anything.
So we received information from one of the neighbors.
She was a young girl, and she had seen a van,
A white van driving slowly down her block.
The driver and the passenger
Were looking at her, pointing at her,
And she felt really creeped out about it,
Enough to the fact that she videotaped the van.
♪ ♪
- Now you've got this white van,
Which plays into
Everybody's worst fears.
It was a very strong lead.
- And we wanted to know who was in this van
And what they were doing in that neighborhood.
We put it on the news.
- Police are searching for a dented white painter's van.
Investigators say the van was seen near where millsap's body
Was discovered.
- Right after I saw that on the news,
My first thought was "serial killer."
- We had to find the murderer or murderers,
Because we were afraid they might be out
Stalking other victims.
[gentle music]
- After April passed, I didn't want to believe it.
I would go to our messages, reread them,
And pretend like we were texting in that moment
Just to make it feel like it wasn't real.
♪ ♪
- Authorities have fielded over 600 tips so far
With more coming in.
- And unfortunately,
Though we had received hundreds of tips about white vans
Not just in the area, but in the whole county.
- And then a gentleman came forward and indicates,
"that is actually my van. I'm a contractor.
I was at this address."
- And was showing his coworker the houses that he had done.
And so that was confirmed with the coworker,
And their stories matched together.
And so they were cleared of any wrongdoing.
♪ ♪
- It was about the time that we were eliminating the white van
That we were beginning to receive the calls
From the individuals that were actually on the trail.
- A father and his two daughters
Report they had seen April
Right around 6:30 p.M. On the orchard lake path.
They said that she was talking to a man on a motorcycle.
This was completely new to us.
She was looking at her phone.
The man had his helmet on,
And he was kind of walking his motorcycle next to her.
They assumed they were together,
Because they were walking together.
But the reaction between April and him was neutral.
It was not friendly at all.
It wasn't scared,
But it wasn't friendly either.
- The witness, he is a dirt bike guy
And was able to describe very clearly
The type, the make, the model.
♪ ♪
Once we had that description, we were also then able
To interview others who were on the trail
And again consistently describe the same motorcycle,
The same individual,
And the same modifications made to that motorcycle.
- Now our investigation changed completely from a white van
Or to someone she knew to a man on a motorcycle.
♪ ♪
[tense music]
♪ ♪
Well, we had flooded the whole area
With every police officer on duty
To look for this motorcycle.
And fortunately, one of our officers
Who was familiar with the area
Was driving through the neighborhood
And saw a motorcycle.
Of course, he was by himself.
So he stopped to take a picture.
- He was going home for lunch.
He came back, and he said, "I got these photographs.
Take a look at this. I think it matches the bike."
And in fact, they matched what the individuals
Thought they saw on the trail.
♪ ♪
- We knew nothing about james vancallis
Except that he didn't have any kind of record.
And he was cooperative when talking to police.
Showed 'em the motorcycle,
And showed 'em the helmet he had on,
And described his clothing.
He told us that he was wearing a white shoe,
But even a layman could tell by looking at the shoes
That they didn't have the same herringbone pattern.
♪ ♪
And I said, "well, it's his brother."
So obviously, a brother can lie for somebody.
So why don't we just ask for his phone.
And his phone actually put him in the village of armada
During the time of our murder.
- Police and fbi agents are raiding a home
In wells township in connection
To the April millsap murder.
Motivation for the search may be a motorcycle
Seen near the trail at the time.
- During the search warrant in the backyard
There was marijuana plants.
Both james vancallis and his father
Were arrested for the grow operation.
♪ ♪
We were hoping to find dna evidence on his motorcycle,
On his clothes, or on the helmet,
And, of course, looking at shoes.
So we took a lot of other shoes out of the house,
But none of those shoes matched
The prints on her face.
And, of course, they analyzed those clothing items.
It actually became obvious just looking at the helmet
That it had been wiped down.
I mean, it was spotless, clean,
And we never did find dna on anything out of his home.
And so it was kind of up in the air with him.
- I actually thought james vancallis might be innocent.
He was at the wrong place at the wrong time.
♪ ♪
[gentle piano music]
- The whole town came.
It was just sadness overloaded everywhere.
- All I can really remember
Was seeing April's mom just sobbing.
And that's what broke my heart the most.
♪ ♪
Just knowing that April, her only daughter,
Wasn't there anymore for her was really heartbreaking.
♪ ♪
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- An unknown mourner at a victim's funeral
Will always raise a red flag.
- I think a lot of us just wanted the truth.
We were scared about who was out there.
Like, why haven't we caught anybody yet?
[tense music]
- He's a stranger attending a funeral
Of someone he didn't know,
So obviously they targeted him.
It's some sort of narcissistic kind of situation
That a murderer would want to go to the funeral.
But he turned out to be another police officer
From another area just paying his respects.
♪ ♪
- It's the worst feeling you can imagine.
You're always going through anxiety
Waiting for the police.
- It was the next day after the search warrant
That we received a call from james vancallis' girlfriend
At the time, crystal.
She was crying and upset.
- Crystal told us that something unusual had happened
The night of April's murder.
- He had been out on his motorcycle, came back,
And she saw him in his room wiping down his helmet
And wiping down these
Black and white basketball shoes,
Which were the shoes he actually wore that day,
Not white shoes.
- And after that night, she never saw those shoes again.
♪ ♪
- We took all the computers out of james vancallis' home,
Looked at his internet browsing history,
And there was very odd searches in google.
- It was, like, "older men speaking to younger girls."
"what do younger girls see in older men?"
"why do younger girls become interested in older men?"
- Also on his phone, we found--
I call them stalker videos.
He was videotaping younger girls,
You know, teenagers, without them knowing.
And so this opened up a whole new view
Of who james vancallis was.
♪ ♪
Instead of an initial scan, I'm looking for text messages
And--and phone calls.
They wanted to look at every last bit of information
On that phone.
In the interim, one of our officers
Went on to james' facebook page.
And scrolling through all the pictures,
She actually saw a picture of james
Wearing black and white basketball shoes.
- We asked crystal, "are these the shoes?"
And she said, "yes."
♪ ♪
- I remember looking at the picture of April's face,
And right on her cheek,
You could see this little emblem,
And it turned out to be the air jordan logo.
- We went online, and we actually ordered
A pair of those shoes.
- And we sent those to the lab for comparison.
And it was the exact same pattern.
♪ ♪
- I mean, I recall, to this moment,
Getting the phone call from becky to say,
"we're all meeting at the sheriff's department,
Because the fbi has something fantastic."
- The fbi computer crimes unit
Found that a sports tracker app was on that phone.
And it actually had been in use during the time of the murder.
♪ ♪
- We know that on that app,
She was walking at 2.2 miles per hour.
♪ ♪
- Right around the time that April sent that text message,
You can see that her speed is starting to increase,
Like something's scaring her to--to increase her pace.
♪ ♪
- The app tells us she's walking at 4.4 miles per hour,
So now she's doubled her pace,
Which clearly shows panic and fear.
- The phone's movements got really jerky.
You could see the path going in and out of the woods,
And it went on for ten minutes.
When you watch that video,
You see the last 15 minutes of April's life,
And you see her murder electronically,
And it's bone-chilling.
And then when the phone leaves the murder site,
It's going between 17 and 19 miles per hour
Up the path.
That's all the confirmation we need
That it was in fact that motorcycle.
I mean, that singularly was what convinced us
We had the right person.
It was, like, bingo.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- The track went right past
A house that we knew had surveillance video.
- When they asked for the video from that time period,
Guess what we saw.
We saw that motorcycle.
- The surveillance video and the phone taken together
Shows absolutely, 100%, there was a motorcycle
Driving April's phone escaping from the murder.
We knew because we had it on gps.
And that video was good enough
That you could see the details enough to match
James vancallis' bike to a t.
- It was real clear where April's phone
Was the key witness in this case,
Vancallis' phone was his judas.
- Everything came together like puzzle pieces
Making a huge picture that it was james vancallis
Who murdered April millsap.
[eerie music]
♪ ♪
- They didn't know each other. They'd never met before.
This was a random meeting on a trail on a day
That she just happened to be walking her dog.
He attempted to pursue her and she resisted.
♪ ♪
- It was at that moment,
This anger and rage of being rejected,
That he decided that he was going to attack her.
Once he was attacking her
I think that's when he decided he was going to kill her.
- He snapped.
♪ ♪
It was a small, 14-year-old girl
Who was up against a guy who was approximately 6'0, 6'2.
She never had a chance.
♪ ♪
- The judge in this case was a woman.
We know that vancallis has trouble with women.
♪ ♪
Vancallis was given an order by the judge.
- He's bringing the helmet down on his body.
- It fits my head. I bought it--
- Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. - Don't say anything!
- And he turned around, and he screamed at her.
- Just flipped a switch again in the middle of trial,
A murder trial.
- What chance do you think April millsap had
When she refused his advances?
- February 8th of 2016.
As to the charge of first-degree murder,
It is the sentence of the court that you serve life in prison.
♪ ♪
- We do not have the death penalty in michigan.
If we did, this would be one of those cases
That it would have been used.
- I think it was meant to be that he got caught
For the sake of April,
For the sake of all the other young girls out there
That there was justice for her,
'cause she deserved justice.
- It was just such a release of emotion and stress
That we had been going through for so long.
♪ ♪
It was enough to bring me to tears.
- April represented a whole generation of girls her age.
And so hopefully, for other young girls out there,
Knowing that your phone is your safety net.
Girls are taught to be polite to strangers or whoever,
But also they should know, don't be afraid to speak up.
♪ ♪
- Yeah. I really do wonder every day
How April would've turned out.
She would've turned 21 earlier this year.
I wish she was living her fullest life right now,
But that was cut too short.
- After April passed,
I sent, um,
A couple random messages that year saying, like,
"I know you're not gonna read this.
I know you'll never see this, but I miss you,"
Just hoping for a response one day.
♪ ♪
- [voice breaking] I wish she would've had
A long life, but all I can say is,
I hope she's in a better place.
- There you go. You got it. You got it.
- Go, April, go
♪ ♪