FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WOWO): The family of April Tinsley is not pleased with a plea deal made between prosecutors and the slain 8-year-old’s confessed killer.
Janet Tinsley tells Fort Wayne’s NBC that Friday’s plea deal, which would see 59-year-old John Miller sentenced to a maximum of 80 years in prison, wasn’t good enough.
“He killed her, I want his head,” Tinsley says her husband said to Allen County Prosecutor Karen Richards.
Richards reportedly told the family she wanted to skip a trial for the family’s sake. But the deal took the death penalty off the table, and Tinsley says after the past 30 years of not knowing who raped and murdered her daughter, that wasn’t good enough.
“Us getting the closure as a whole complete family would have been if we got the death penalty.”
Miller was arrested last July after DNA evidence led police to him. His sentencing date has been moved up to Dec. 21 from New Year’s Eve due to the retirement of Judge John Surbeck at the end of the year.
1 comment
If anyone is shocked Richards offered a plea deal they need to get out of their cave more often. Fort Wayne residents must be pleased with Richards “plea deal” mentality too. She keeps getting re-elected.