Teenager SOLVED HER OWN MURDER With Fitness App

so today's video is going to be another solved true crime kiss finally i think this is the first one in like a month that's not a two-parter i don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing but you know i don't know what to say after that this case really interested me when i first came across it because the main kind of characteristic feature of this case is that it was solved using the victim's own fitness tracker app which i think is such a mad concept that like crime solving and detective work goes to such like normal things does that sound stupid but i think i thought it was so interesting but this victim unknowingly helped to solve her own murder just by having a fitness tracker app running when she was out i'm not entirely sure what i've titled this video but i think it will be along those lines so i'm excited to tell you this one but before we get into it i just want to thank our sponsors for making this video possible gymshark i don't know if you can tell but i'm so buzzing to be working with gymshark because all of my activewear all of my gym wear is exclusively gymshark i don't own anything else the reasons that i love them well the main reason for me is that the comfort of their clothing is second to none i haven't found leggings like workout leggings that fit me as well as gymshark ones do they don't roll down they don't shift out of place when i'm moving like godsend this top that i'm wearing right now is my newest obsession from gymshark this is the breeze lightweight long sleeve crop top i think it's called and i just love it because it's breathable i don't love my workout clothes skin tight because i am a little bit insecure about certain things but this isn't skin type but it's also not like flapping and getting in my way i love it it's breathable it's lovely but as part of this collaboration jim shark have asked me to give you guys some running safety tips because i know that a lot of my audience my main demographic is young females like teenage females and it's hard out here for young girls or just females in general trying to exercise in public they get a lot of unwanted attention and things like that so i'm here to give you some safety tips for when you're out running of course there's all the obvious ones like don't go out in the dark don't go out by yourself try and go out with friends plan your route well beforehand make sure you know where you're going don't go out to any isolated areas like don't go out running by yourself in a field try and go like where there's houses or where there's shops or where you know there's going to be people like a park route that there's always people running on but there are a couple of safety tips that you might not have even thought of yourself now this first one i see it all the time on instagram and it honestly scares me is that you know when people go of running and then they post their route and their time and they're really proud of themselves it's an achievement but they post that on their instagram story and there's street names everywhere you can literally work out where that person lives from that screenshot of their route so if you're gonna post your achievements like that obviously you know be proud of your achievements but make sure you're scribbling out any identifying information about where you go running where you live everything like that make sure you're getting rid of all of that also try not to do the exact same route at the exact same time every time you go running try and mix things up of course you don't know who's noticed you running the same place at the same time every day you don't know who's watching you so if you kind of go at different times go different places you throw in a curveball no one's going to be able to anticipate where you're going to be at a certain time please tell someone that you trust your exact route that you're going to be taking you can even share your route with people using apps like strava but make sure it is someone that you really really trust like your mum or your boyfriend or your best friend don't just share it with everyone like that you're friends with on a certain app and if you do start to feel unsafe at any point make sure you share your exact location with that trusted person one more thing and then i promise i'll stop lecturing you don't have your music too loud or try and just have like one ear bud in because if you can't hear what's going on around you then anything can be happening from like traffic you could walk into traffic or someone could be coming up behind you things like that you want to stay alert at all times you need to be able to hear your surroundings so now you are all set for your next run and that's where gymshark comes back in because right now they are currently running a campaign called gymshark 66. scientifically it takes 66 days to form a new habit and that's exactly what this campaign is about finding a way forming a new habit to better yourself and this week is jim shark's 5k a day challenge so if you want to partake in that what a good way to kick off the new year with some good vibes thanks again to jim shark for sponsoring this video an absolute sponsorship come true i will put their link down below in the description if you want to shop their clothes highly highly recommend and now let's get into this case but before we do i just want to give my usual disclaimer that i mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone that i talk about in this video this video is for educational purposes and everything that i'm about to say is just information that i have found on the internet and i'm compiling into one video so today's case takes place in michigan in a very small village named armada and now this is a very small village it has a population of about two thousand it's a tiny tiny farming community where everyone knows each other everyone just feels entirely happy and safe to be there everyone's friendly it's one of those towns that i talk about a lot in my videos the last murder to happen in armada was back in the 1970s so no one ever expected any kind of high-level crime here at all everyone was just so happy true crime daily actually did a segment on this case where they went and spoke with the police in armada and as of 2016 there were only two full-time police officers in that village two two and there were a further like ten that worked part-time so they weren't even there all the time imagine your town being so crime-free and so small that you only have two full-time police officers and as of 2009 armada was officially named the nicest place to live in michigan which is actually after this case took place but i think that says a lot about the place regardless but for this video we're going to be going back to the summer of 2014 so there were longer nights the sun's out it's warm everyone's happy everyone's going out and that includes 14 year old april dawn millsap she was born on january 2nd 2000 and she lived with her mother jennifer and her stepfather david lichtenfeldt april was a pretty quiet girl she was quite shy quite introverted but she was so sweet and caring and generous with everyone she knew her mother said that if anyone needed april she'd be right there she really had a heart of gold she was so selfless april was a normal teenage girl by all accounts she had a nice group of friends she had a boyfriend she was getting decent grades in school she was well behaved stayed out of trouble she went to church her boyfriend was named austin they'd been together like almost a year and a half i think so quite a long time considering her age she's just 14 years old april liked to play on her computer a lot her mom said that if she wasn't out or if she wasn't at school you could find her playing on her computer playing games talking to friends things like that april played in the school band she was particularly talented at writing when she was a little bit younger she'd written a bunch of short stories she really enjoyed it however her dream future her dream career was to be a vet or just at least work with animals in in some form she was such an animal lover her favorite colour was pink and her main passions in life were the people that she loved friends family boyfriend she was also well into like health and fitness and making sure to get her steps in making sure to eat clean but she also absolutely adored her pets particularly her old dog penny penny was like april's little best mate she never left april alone she was always by her side april's mother said that as soon as april woke up in the morning penny would literally be outside of her door waiting for her to come out every day they'd go on walks together every single day and this also kind of incorporated into april's passion for like health and fitness she would take penny all over to all these different hiking trails all to get her steps in they'd go to so many different places for hours and that is exactly what april's plans consisted of on july 24th 2014. the sun was shining it was a nice warm summer's day and so she decided that she was going to take penny for a walk like i said april was a very well behaved girl a very good girl her mother said and she knew not to be out when it dropped dark as it was getting dark she would always have to make her way home she never went out for too long however on this particular day it started dropping dark outside and april still wasn't home her mother jennifer started to get a little bit worried so she decided to text april to see how she was where she was if she was planning on coming home i mean it wasn't uncommon for april to lose track of time and just be out for hours on end with penny like i said this was a very small village so if you bumped into someone that you knew which was so likely then you would just have a conversation with them her mother thought well maybe something like that's happened maybe that's why she's not home yet but as time went on there was still no response to this text which was also kind of weird because april was pretty good at answering a phone so jennifer decided to try calling april and when she did it just went straight to voicemail so now jennifer is in panic mode she calls again straightaway gets the voicemail again she calls again and again and again but april's not picking up any of them and so jennifer just sensed that something was wrong and so she decided to call the police by 9pm that night in total i think it had been about three or four hours since she'd actually seen april but she just knew you know mother's intuition so the police came around to speak to jennifer and you know get all this information about this missing person's case but she just couldn't speak she was crying she was hyperventilating and this was actually so bad that one of the police officers actually had to take the phone off her when she called april's stepfather to inform him what was going on he was actually at work at the time the officer had to take the phone off her and speak for her because she just wasn't getting her words out this call to her stepfather was made at 9 30 and april had left the house that day around 5 30. so like i said about a four hour time frame here so her stepfather packed all his things up at work told his boss that his stepdaughter was missing and he just had to leave he had to go home and be with his wife in the meantime police are trying to get all this valuable information from jennifer like what april was wearing that day what her plans were where she normally went on walks with penny as well as just other general things about april's life to kind of give them any hints as to where she might possibly be so her mother told the police about her boyfriend austin and the officers urged her to get in touch with austin to see if he'd seen her or heard from her or anything like that and when she did austin said that he hadn't heard from april in a few hours but the last thing that he did hear from her was kind of concerning april had text her boyfriend saying i think i almost got kidnapped this text was actually sent a few hours ago at this point it was sent at almost seven o'clock so two and a half hours ago and of course this kicked up the investigation a whole other level this was no longer just a missing person's case because this missing person that they were dealing with felt that they were in danger the last time that they were heard from and still at this point no one could get hold of april every time someone would text or call they just wouldn't go through they went straight to the voicemail it was either as if her phone had run out of battery or maybe it was switched off so some officers stayed at the home with jennifer to keep talking to her and support her while other officers went back to the police station to get to work on this case and when they did they got a 9-1-1 call along the 911 mountain bike trail the man that made this call had been riding his bike with his wife along one of april's favorite hiking trails when a big black dog had approached him and this dog still had the lead on and no earner and this dog seemed panicked it seemed as though it was coming over to him and then trying to lead him into the wooded area at the side of the trail and so this man followed the dog through until the dog ran right up to a dead body laying on the ground in a drainage ditch and this dog just laid next to the body and began whimpering and it turned out that this dog was penny and penny led this man to the dead body of 14 year old april milsat her body was actually identified at the crime scene due to the clothes that she was wearing now they weren't properly found on her body we'll talk about that in a second but the clothes that were found at the scene matched the clothing that her mother said that she'd left the house in that day april was actually found partially undressed so her shorts and her underwear had been pulled down to her ankles and her blouse seemed to have been like ripped open and pulled down to her waist so it was exposing all of her body in april's autopsy it was found that although her body was found partially naked she wasn't actually found to have been sexually assaulted in any way perhaps this had been the killer's intent maybe they were disturbed or maybe they just i don't know maybe something happened that meant that that didn't go ahead but there was no physical proof of the sexual assault or any form of like penetration being successful that doesn't mean that wasn't the intent and it doesn't mean that the killer didn't get some kind of sexual gratification from this alone but that's basically what was found in her autopsy she was laying her head covered in blood in a drainage ditch about 20 feet away from the path so 20 feet into this woods not very far although this woods of course it was hidden by loads of trees and loads of foliage so no one had seen her up until penny had literally taken someone in there there were no gunshot or stab wounds to her whole body however it did seem as though she was probably beaten to death there was blood all over her head and her mother has been quoted saying that her head was black and blue her body also had footprints on her chest and on her neck suggesting that her killer had stomped on her body when she was already dead there was a lot of anger in this killing clearly just from looking at her body she'd sustained over 48 separate injuries her official cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head causing a bleed in her brain along with asphyxia by compression of the neck so she had been beaten and strangled although this cause of death wasn't actually released to the public for for quite a while after the body was actually found so news spread that a teenage girl's body was found in the woods but no one knew how she was killed this was a strategic move from the police because they were trying to hold as much information pertaining to this case as they possibly could because they didn't want it to affect anyone's statements witness statements or even suspects statements so now not only were the people of armada terrified and shocked to hear that a teenage girl's body was found in a woods but they didn't know what even happened to her so i guess that fuels the fear even more that you don't even know what you're scared of now teenage girls and just people in general were too scared to leave their homes knowing that whoever did this whoever was capable of such violence and brutality against a 14 year old girl who was innocently walking her dog that person was still at large in their village now due to the severity of this case and also the tiny armada police force of two full-time officers they were gonna need some help and so the fbi was brought in to help on this case along with some big high up police people in detroit which is about two hours from armada basically people were drafted in from everywhere because this was such a huge case that was going to take a lot to solve and this tiny little armada police force could barely cope with you know everyday crimes so police tried to track down and speak to as many people as they possibly could that were on that walking trail on the day that april was murdered so they brought all these people in asked them if they'd seen anything weird seen anyone maybe if they'd seen april and one of them said that they'd seen something suspicious that person mentioned that they'd seen two older white males and when i say older i mean older than april probably in their 20s or 30s jumping into a beaten up white van and i mean this isn't the most promising lead in the whole world two white males jumping into a white van i bet you could see that anywhere but still this was a start this was the first lead that they had so police campaigned everywhere to try to track down these two white males that were jumping in the van they went on the news you know they did everything that they possibly could eventually they tracked them down and they ruled them out as suspects they weren't suspicious in this case i think a lot of the initial leads actually fell through somehow they could be explained they had over a thousand tips in this case so it was a lot to go through and of course naturally when you have that many tips a lot of them are gonna be dead ends however at this point in the case police had actually sat down and come up with a theorized version of events so this isn't confirmed as to what happened that day but this is what they thought could have happened based on crime scene evidence and things like that and of course the text that she sent to her boyfriend so they believed that april had just been walking along this track with penny when an older man had spotted her and approached her to try and pursue her try and flirt with her in some way and they believed that april did not reciprocate she just tried to walk away now they don't know exactly how forceful this man was with his pursuit of april because it was actually after this initial meeting that police believe april kind of walked off in front a little bit and texted her boyfriend that oh my god i think i almost just got kidnapped text which makes you think that maybe this man was quite forceful with his pursuit maybe he was telling her to come with him or something like that or maybe she just sensed this man's sinister intentions so anyway april sent this text to her boyfriend they believe that she carried on walking for a little while until this man approached her once again but this time he was angry because she'd denied his advances they believed that april ignored him once again and that was when he snapped and he hit her over the head and then dragged her into the wooded area at the side of the track where he continued to beat her and eventually murdered her and with this theory so police now think they know at what point during this incident april sent that text and they obviously know the exact time that she sent that text as well so that can give them a bit of a time frame of this they believe she was attacked between like 6 30 6 45 kind of time and they also have the gps information of this text after getting in touch with her mobile phone network they were able to place her on that track exactly where she was on that track when she was first approached by this man so now that meant that police could get a little bit more specific when they were talking to potential witnesses you know other people that were walking or cycling on this track they can say if you were in this chunk of the track at this particular time did you see april did you see a man who did you see and that was when one person came forward with their most promising lead yet he said that he'd seen april he'd seen well a young girl that he believed was april and he'd seen a much older man on a blue motorbike so now as police had done with those two white men that were getting into the white van they decided to put this new blue motorbike man description all over the news they were asking everyone if they'd seen a man with a blue motorbike on that day around the time of the murder nothing was really coming up for a while so they decided to you know just focus on other parts of the case that was until after a few weeks finally searches for april's fun had worked they'd found it around a mile or two away from where she was murdered clearly her killer had taken this with them and discarded it somewhere else so imagine police had been searching from the crime scene outwards in a radius for this whole time they were looking in bodies of water they were rummaging through all the bushes and the trees and the different paths they were looking everywhere for this phone they finally found it and when they switched it on they actually found that april had a fitness tracker running at the time of her murder now this kind of fitness tracker it logs your exact route that you're like walking or running it logs your pace the time everything like that so police now had an exact time frame an exact movements of april and her phone so with this detectives now paired it with their timeline so when she sent that text and they were able to see on her fitness tracker that the minute she sent that text to her boyfriend that she almost got kidnapped she sped up her peers got faster and she moved in the opposite direction it seemed as though she was heading home so it's clear that april is now trained to get away from this man and it seems that he's just following her until eventually her route kind of freezes she doesn't go any further however for a good few minutes the fun is kind of moving around in that same spot so this is where police believe a struggle started so april is fighting for her life for a good few minutes until eventually the funds tracker picks up movement again the phone begins leaving the scene where april milsap's body was found however this time at a rate of 20 miles per hour so this is not walking speed this is definitely some kind of motorized vehicle and this trail was way too small for a car to be on so what else a motorbike so this now confirms that they were looking for this blue motorbike man as a suspect so their next step was to station themselves a different police officer or fbi agent officer at every single entry or exit point of the whole village of armada so no one could get in or get out without talking to police first and every single person they ask the same thing do you know anyone that owns a blue and white motorbike and eventually one woman says actually yeah i do know someone that has a blue and white motorbike it's my neighbour and it had actually only just clicked in her mind when this police officer asked her that she hadn't actually seen that blue motorbike in a couple of weeks she said that her neighbour normally used that blue motorbike to get everywhere but ever since around the time of the murder she hadn't actually seen him with it so this was a huge red flag to police and they asked her who her neighbours were it turned out that it was a father and son that lived in this house and they were both named james van callis so i guess for the sake of this case i'm going to be calling them james van gaalis jr and james van gaalis senior i don't think james senior really had much going on in his life he was 66 years old i don't think he had a wife i don't really know however his son james jr was a father of a three-year-old boy and his girlfriend crystal lived with them so it was both james's and crystal and a three-year-old boy so police looked into both of these men both james van callises they looked at their you know criminal history things like that anything on their records and they found that both men had a criminal record one of them much more concerning than the other so 32 year old james vancalis jr the son had a couple of different records for like breaking and entering general misconduct drugs things like that but 66 year old james van gaalisenia the father was actually a registered sex offender he was a repeat offender of criminal sexual misconduct with children a lot of them under the age of 13. so as soon as police heard this this was very very concerning because april was 14 herself and so they went straight to the vancalis home and they raided the whole thing they searched the whole home and right off the bat they actually found large amounts of marijuana in the home and so they arrested both men on those drugs charges nothing to do with april's murder just yet because they didn't want the men to know that that was why police were sniffing around them all of a sudden they didn't want them to freak out and maybe like get rid of any evidence potentially you know so police didn't let it slip that that was the reason that they were there it was kind of a good thing that they found all those drugs because then they could just blame the arrests on that and now they have these men in custody these men can't go anywhere so now both men are at the station and in the meantime other officers go down and they speak to the neighbors to see kind of what was going on at that house on the day today and they found that it was james jr the son that owned the blue motorbike and none of the neighbors had seen it in a good few weeks it seems as though he'd been using it up until the murder and then all of a sudden he'd gotten rid of it police looked all over the home the garage the garden everywhere they couldn't find any sign of this blue motorbike but they did find a helmet they did find like other biking gear but just not the bike police took dna samples from both of the men while they were in custody and they were tested against the crime scene and against april's body however no matches were actually found with these men but police weren't giving up there they were kind of convinced at this point that their killer was the younger one of the james van gaalis around this time jim senior was released on bond he was still you know being charged with these drugs charges but he was out on bond and they still had james jr who was blue motorbike guy in their eyes it made so much sense because he was pretty much the only person in that whole village that people knew to have a blue motorbike and then what all of a sudden this murder happens someone was spotted with a blue motorbike and now he no longer has one it just seems so suspicious and so police searched the home once again to try and find anything that they could find pertaining to april's murder but they couldn't find anything there was nothing in the house that said that james jr did this they were looking for a few things in particular with this search of course the motorbike but that was now gone they were also looking for a very particular pair of shoes going back to the crime scene evidence i did say that april had been stomped on her chest and her neck and these footprints were very clearly from nike jordan trainers so that's exactly what police were looking for in his home however they didn't find any nike jordans although i suppose it's not hard to get rid of shoes you can literally just burn them throw them in the bin i know police didn't find the actual shoes but they did find a potential link to the shoes on james van gaalis jr's full-on of course they seized it as part of this investigation and they were looking through his camera roll and they found a video that he'd taken on his phone where he briefly pointed it down at his feet and he was wearing nike jordans so this is proof that he either owned some at some point or had access to some i mean now they were nowhere to be seen but there's proof that he's worn them in the past obviously this isn't again concrete evidence but this case has a lot of little circumstantial evidence pieces that just mount up and up and up which i mean a lot of circumstantial evidence is often just as strong as one piece of physical evidence they also now that they'd seized his phone and his laptop and everything like that they decided to go through his history his search history and they found a lot of searches about younger women like how to attract younger women why doesn't this younger woman want me even though she flirts with me just a lot of things along those lines about wanting younger women so this shows that he is interested in picking up someone like the victim like april milsap who was a younger woman to him she was a child but this only confirms the police theory that whoever killed april was trying to pursue her trying to flirt with her if it was james van gaalis this confirms that he has an attraction to young girls like april just like our victim right now in this case police were running out of time to arrest him and charge him with things relating to april's murder and while the case wasn't the most solid like i said a lot of small circumstantial things were mounting up but there was nothing concrete but their thought if they arrest him now then they can bring a case together while he's in custody so that's exactly what they did james van gaalis jr was charged with first-degree murder murdered during another felony and assault with intent to rape now his defense in court claimed that this whole case hadn't been fair against james van gaalis jr right from the very beginning they said that when police searched his home not only did they leave it completely ransacked for him and his elderly father to then return to her and have to clean up themselves but they also found nothing relating to april milsap in that home at all whatsoever however somehow james jr was also arrested on his father's drug charge that day you know like i said they came in and they found all this marijuana it was actually found to belong to his father but both of them were arrested i don't know his defense used that as is it's barely a defense but i think they were just trying to show that the police had it out for james jr in a way that they were just trying to frame him maybe not frame him but that they didn't like him and they wanted to put him down for the murder maybe his defense team's more powerful arguments included the fact that none of his dna was actually found at the crime scene or on april's body which it would be very hard to commit a crime like this and not get any dna on your victim especially if there was a struggle like we believe there was of course with april's tracker app it looked as though the phone was moving backwards and forwards quite a lot in that same place so it seemed as though there was a struggle and in a struggle it's very hard not to exchange dna there was not a single piece on her no fingerprints no hair no fibers no skin cells absolutely nothing however some people believe that they have found an answer as to why this might have been and maybe that was because james van gaalis jr was wearing biking clothes when he was you know riding his motorcycle along this track viking clothes generally long-sleeved long pants gloves a lot of them wear leather gloves so if he was wearing all of this plus like face protection my dad rides motorbikes and he wears like a like a thing over this part of his face kind of like a scarf kind of like a bandana kind of like a mimi list basically if he was wearing this motorbiking gear he would have been very covered up and if there was any kind of struggle and there was any dna exchange then it would likely have been april's dna on his biking clothes and if he was to get rid of those biking clothes or wash them really well then that would explain there not being any of his dna on her because there was no skin on skin contact of course this is just a theory this is just a thought as to why that might not have been dna exchange no one knows what the exact truth is no one really knows exactly what james was wearing that day we'll get onto one piece of clothing that we're pretty sure he was wearing that day but we don't know if he had the full about gear on we don't it's just a theory police actually believe that the murder weapon that was used to beat april so many times around the head was actually a biking helmet so that would explain a lot and that would link so well back to james van gaalis defense team also argued that if james was on his motorbike that day and that's how he approached april then why were there no motorbike tire tracks found on that walking trail and his defense team also used the whole police never found the night jordans in his house so how could he have made those footprints on april if he doesn't earn those shoes but then the prosecution so the people fighting against james brought up his girlfriend crystal as a witness the mother of his child is now giving statements to put her boyfriend in jail and she tells the court about how on the night of april's murder she walked downstairs and saw james van callis jr cleaning his shoes and his helmet his motorbike helmet with hand sanitizer and this was at like three in the morning so there's a lot of weird things about this first of all who cleans their things at three in the morning cleans their shoes and their helmet and stuff at three in the morning two who cleans those kind of things with hand sanitizer bear in mind this was 2014 the world then was not like the world is now and i don't know if people even do that right now but back then why with hand sanitizer would you need to clean your shoes with hand sanitizer unless you're trying to get rid of everything on those shoes you know she said that his timeline of events was that he left on his motorbike from their home around 4 30 5 o'clock that day and he was home again by like 9 00 pm so this fits perfectly with the timeline that april was murdered it's believed she was murdered around 6 30 6 45 so he came back home at 9pm and she said that everything was fine the two of them went to bed and then she woke up again at three in the morning and he'd gone out again and then when he came back in that was when she found him cleaning his things with hand sanitizer we don't know exactly what he was doing in the early hours of the morning because he's never said and his girlfriend crystal doesn't know but my own personal theory is potentially that he was trying to get rid of evidence maybe he was burning something discarding something you know maybe his bike or you know something there were also a bunch of supporting witnesses that claimed to have seen april and james on the track that day so people on bikes and people walking by there were two witnesses that said they rode their bikes past james vancalis and april so this was when he'd already kind of pretty much approached her they said that he was walking a few feet behind her he was looking angry and she was a few feet in front looking nervous now at the time the this couple on their bikes just kind of thought that maybe it was a girl and her boyfriend and maybe they just had an argument or maybe it was a girl and her stepdad or her brother and maybe they'd had an argument and maybe that was why they both looked kind of uncomfortable which in retrospect it's easy to say a young girl looking nervous and an older man behind her looking angry that screams a dangerous situation however at the time you think oh that's that couple's personal business i don't want to get involved how would these witnesses to know that they weren't boyfriend and girlfriend or they weren't father and daughter there were also other witnesses that said that they'd seen james van callis alone coming out of the woods looking nervous so like as he was putting his helmet back on and stuff he was looking around there were other people that had seen james van callis walking literally just two feet behind april which is very very close and his girlfriend crystal actually mentioned some other pretty interesting things in court like the first time that police came to speak with him they came to just talk with him and his father at their home and when police had left he pulled his girlfriend to the side and said i've messed up really bad and i'm gonna need you to stick with me on this you're gonna need to stick by me so she was really confused he didn't explain this at all but she sensed that it was something really serious of course the police had just been around at their house and now he's telling her that he's messed up and he needs her to stick with him he also told her that if anyone asks or if you ever have to tell anyone say that i was wearing k-swiss trainers on that night although crystal vividly remembers him wearing nike jordans now all of this worried crystal of course her boyfriend is being really weird and the police are around and she wants to know what's happened but he's not giving it up so she goes searching for answers herself she goes into his backpack that he takes everywhere with him and she pulls out a hoodie that had like grass and mud all over it and clumps of long hair like girl's hair that was not hers the colour of this hair if anything matched april milsat at the end of his trial in 2016 so two years after the murder the jury took very little time to deliberate and eventually found james van callis jr guilty of all of his charges he was sentenced to life in prison and at the end of his court hearing as he was leaving the courtroom unbelievably his mother shouts from the gallery james we love you when her son has just been found guilty of the murder and attempted rape of a child of a 14 year old innocent little girl that had the rest of her life ahead of her now of course james and all of his family maintain his innocence to this day they say that he was actually framed and that someone else had done this but police just needed someone to pin it on and that was james benkalis jr and there are actually a few arguments for this that he uses of course the first one being there was no evidence found at the crime scene or on april's body that belonged to him no hairs fingerprints skin cells fibers nothing he also argues that he doesn't own nike jordans he never has so those footprints on her body can't be his also the thing about bike trails there were no tire marks in the trail so how could he have been there on his motorbike things like that but also one thing that i haven't actually included in this video just yet is that right in the beginning of this case when this was still unsolved police were trying to figure it out they got all the witnesses together and they created a composite sketch this is who they believed they saw on that trail that night this guy has a fresh shaven face he has curly hair he looks pretty young and james van gaalis uses this as proof to say that they've got the wrong guy he is not the guy that all these witnesses saw chasing after april and looking angry behind april they saw some guy with curly hair clean shaving and that's just not him he has straight hair he has a mustache and a little beard of course it is possible to change your appearance very quickly men can grow a beard in a mustache within you know a month and that's exactly what he'd done or at least that's exactly what a lot of people believe he did if he did look like that composite sketch if that is accurate you know he could have cut his hair and grown a mustache anyway despite all of these reasons as to why he thinks he's innocent no one else believes them and he's still in jail to this day you know all of the other evidence that was used in court outweighs these few little things that you know maybe do look questionable they do kind of make him look innocent but then you've got a look at all the other evidence that we've talked about in this video to know that he's you know probably not just two years after his conviction in 2018 james van gaalis jr tried to appeal his sentence and you know said he was innocent again his appeal was rejected and so he appealed it again a couple of months later again rejected and again in 2019 he appealed it was rejected this man just can't accept the fact that he you don't need physical evidence to say that someone is guilty you can have a mountain of circumstantial evidence which is exactly what police had in this case you know he's gonna be staying in prison for the rest of his life but that is all i have on this case thank you so so much for watching i hope you took something from this kiss you know i tried to do a lot of cases that i feel like you guys probably need to hear i was speaking to someone the other day and i was saying i kind of wish i had a channel like mine when i was growing up because i was stupid man i used to walk home and learn in the dark as a young girl and i just look back and i think i'm so lucky that nothing ever happened to me you know and i'm glad that i can kind of give you guys these stories to help you make the right decisions in maybe call in a taxi if it's late and you've got to walk home by yourself or sharing your location with a friend or getting someone to pick you up you know so that you're not in dangerous situations um don't know why i went off on a tangent like that but that's why i like doing these kinds of kisses thanks again to jim shark for sponsoring this video if you want to treat yourself to some comfy new gym clothes in 2021 go ahead the link is down below in the description highly highly recommend and if you do take part in the gymshark 66 5k a day challenge this week good luck you're gonna smash it i believe in you and if you do post it on your social media cross out all the streets on your route please god listen to my safety tips huge thank you to all of my channel members for helping me decide the cases that i cover especially my tier 2 members whose names are all on screen right now if you want to become a channel member you can just click the join button on a desktop or there'll be a link in the description of this video but yeah thank you so so much for watching this video if you enjoyed it please leave a thumbs up down below because that really helps me out if you want to see some more from me you can click this link right here to subscribe if you want to see another side of me then go watch my second channel this link in the circle subscribe and if you wanna watch another video from me there'll be a playlist on screen right now with a bunch of other true crime videos in okay bye

Channel: Eleanor Neale

Views: 1,626,004

Rating: 4.9433303 out of 5

Keywords: eleanor, neale, eleanor neale, eleanor neale true crime, eleanor neale makeup, mystery, unsolved, unsolved mystery, true crime, solved, documentary, killer, murder, serial killer, buzzfeed, buzzfeed unsolved, podcast, true crime podcast, netflix, forensic files, news, creepypasta, horror, april millsap, millsap, april, fitness tracker, strava, myfitnesspal, gymshark, gym, fitness, app, solved own murder, true crime daily, james vancallis, 2021, america, usa, kidnapped

Id: moiPMGU5Wko

Length: 44min 23sec (2663 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 18 2021