Part 1: A Dark Beach, A Bloody Boardwalk, and A Brutal Murder - One of Florida's Most Debated Homicide Cases

Picture it. It's a warm August night on the Florida coast, and the only sound is the ocean. No street lights, no crowds, no noise from the road. Just the tide coming in and going out, the way it always does. Completely indifferent to everything happening on the shore. A couple is walking down the beach together. Shoes left at the bottom of the boardwalk, holding hands in the dark, the kind of moment that's supposed to belong to a love story. And in a way, this place already did belong to theirs. They had been there before. On birthdays, on previous anniversary nights, when it was just the two of them, in the water, and nothing else. So they came back to this place, and it probably felt familiar. It probably felt safe. And that's the thing about places that hold good memories. You stop questioning them. But sometime between the moment that 26-year-old April Barbara took her shoes off at the end of that boardwalk, and the moment law enforcement found her body at the base of it, something happened on that beach that no one could explain. It's almost 11 o'clock a night, on a dark stretch of Florida coastline. When a driver spots something in the road that doesn't make sense, it's a man. He's stumbling. He's waving his arms in the middle of the highway, and he's bleeding. He's screaming, and he's motioning towards the beach. The driver stops, and the man says, "Please help me. My wife has been shot. Police have to find her." Her name was April Barbara. She was only 26 years old, and she was lying on her back in the sand. Still wet from the waves. And just like that, what was supposed to be a romantic anniversary night became one of the most debated murder cases in Florida history. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to my channel. I am Kimberlya, and if you have never been here before, it's nice to finally meet you. This is another episode in my Florida series, which will have a name coming soon, so I want to take you back to that Florida highway. Because when that driver pulled over and found that husband, his name was Justin, by the way, stumbling in the middle of the road, bleeding. The clock started moving very fast. 911 was called, and within minutes, emergency responders were on their way to a stretch of Florida A1A, near Ponta Vigilite Boulevard, a quiet coastal part of North Florida, that most people just passed through without even giving it a second thought. But some people like me made that place their home. I lived there for about two years, and that is what got me interested in the story. Don't worry. For those of you who commented, you hate. When I add personal or relatable parts of these stories, I won't do much, but I'm human. I'm the person sifting through all this research. And sometimes unlike AI, I like to humanly share what makes the case stick out to me. I know this area well. I lived in Jacksonville for almost a decade. And like I told you, I have an entire Florida murder playlist in case you want to binge the series. You'll learn more about Ponta Vigilite soon, but Justin was found slumped behind the wheel of his SUV by the time the paramedics arrived. His four-way flasters were still going. His body was giving out. After everything, he said he just been through. He was conscious. He was talking. And the first thing he made sure that everyone understood was that his wife was still out there on the beach. He said, "Go back. She needs your help." And while paramedics worked on Justin, law enforcement was already moving towards Guana State Park. A remote wooded stretch of coastline that sits between Ponta Vigilite and St. Augustine. It's the kind of place that feels completely cut off from the rest of the world once the sun goes down. The park was technically closed after dark. There were no lights, no other people, no sound except the Atlantic rolling in and out. Officers pushed through the dark on foot. They were following the path down to the shore. And when they reached the base of the boardwalk, that's where they found her. April was lying on her back in the sand. She was still wet from the ocean. Her body positioned at the foot of the stairs. There were no signs of life. And at that point, paramedics pronounced her dead at the scene. And just like that, a warm August night on this Florida coast became a crime scene. She was only 26 years old. She had driven to Jacksonville that weekend to celebrate her third wedding anniversary with her husband. And now she was gone. And her husband was currently being loaded into an ambulance with four bullet wounds to his body. Investigators would spend the next two years trying to figure out who did this. But before we get into any of that, we need to talk about who April actually was. April Stacey Lott was born on April 21st of 1975 in Oklahoma to her father Donald and her mother, Nancy Jo Lott. And right away, I think you noticed, she was born in April. Her name was April. And she was born in the spring in a small Oklahoma town to a family that clearly already had a sense of poetry about them. She grew up in Hennessy, which is about as quintessentially Oklahoma as it can get. A town of roughly 2000 people, century old storefronts lining the main street, modest home, sitting in the middle of an open stretch of prairie that goes on in every direction for what feels like forever. Small, tight knit, safe, rooted in culture and community. April grew up alongside her two younger siblings, her sister Julie and her baby brother Kendyn. And from when everyone who knew her said, she was just one of those people who stood out from the very beginning. She wasn't allowed. She wasn't the kind of person that wanted all the attention and said, look at me. But in a quiet and more magnetic way, where you just find yourself gravitating towards someone without being able to explain exactly why. Her aunt Patti Parish, who would later become a civil court judge, and was one of the most important voices in April's story, described her as a beautiful little girl who had a natural way of drawing people in. Someone who could steal your heart without even trying. And I believe that completely. Because everything I learned about April aligns perfectly with that description of her. Her relationship with her mother Nancy was something really special. And one of the ways that that showed up early in her life was through beauty pageants, which her aunt Patti encouraged April to get involved in when she was just a little girl. April's mom threw herself into these beauty pageants into every single detail of it. She would spend hours choosing elaborate dresses, styling April's hair just right, making sure everything was perfect. And I know some of you are not okay with that world. And that's all right. But it was a fun way for them to connect, meet other little girls and other moms, and possibly win a prize. And if you're thinking of a Jean-Benaire Ramsey right away, April was very similar. The dress is the dancing the big hair and the even bigger personality on stage. Patti would laugh as she would remember it later. How April's hair was one of her greatest qualities. She said her hair did exactly what it was supposed to do. And looking at photos of April as an adult with the corn silk blonde hair and those cheekbones and that smile and her hazel green eyes. That was the same little girl that could step into a patent dress, let her mom fuss over her hair. And she was the exact same little girl who would turn around, go out into the country with her dad and come home and eat whatever Donald had hunted, including squirrel. Yes, it's true. Patti said it was always amazing that this same kid dressed up one minute polished and perfect and completely at home the next in the woods without any hesitation or any complaints. That was April. She moved between those two worlds completely naturally because she was comfortable in herself. And that's something that people will spend their whole lives trying to find. Her dad Donald was an avid hunter and outdoorsman and April soaked up every moment on those trips with him. She wasn't just tagging along and keeping him company. She participated. She liked learning and that curiosity and interest and knowledge followed her from when she was small to when she became an adult. April has what probably sounds like a genuinely happy, warm, grounded childhood, the kind where you feel safe and loved and the world makes sense to you. And for a while, that was exactly what it was like, but everything shifted when April was a teenager. And it shifted hard and fast in a way that would have broken a lot of people, speaking of her childhood, looking a lot like John Bennays. During April, senior year of high school, her mother Nancy was diagnosed with lung cancer. And if you didn't know, John Bennays' mother also died from cancer. Nancy was only 34 years old and she fought for six months. Six months of watching someone you love go through something so brutal and relentless and I know many of you can unfortunately relate. And on January 4th of 1993, Nancy passed away. April was only 17. It's easy to move past this part really quickly when you're going through the facts of a case like this. But I wanted to pause and think about it. April, only 17 years old. She lost her mother and not just any mother, this woman who was her closest person in her life. That's not something you just absorb and then move on. It changes you, especially at that age, especially when the structure that's supposed to hold everything together starts to come apart at the same time. Because here's what was also happening. Donald, April's dad, he was working out in the oil fields. And he was away from home, even before Nancy died. He was gone all the time. And after she passed away, he was struggling. It made it hard for him to fully step up as a dad, as a dad that his kids needed. He was grieving too. He lost his wife. And over time, the grief became harder to manage. And he began coping with substances. And it made it even more unstable at home. So at 17, with her mom gone. And her dad not able to fully be there. April was the one that cared for her younger siblings, nine-year-old Julie, and one-year-old Kenden. And she made that decision. She stepped up. And she made sure that Julie got up and went to school every morning. She cooked their meals. She kept the household going. And she did the things that needed to get done without anyone telling her to and without complaining, without making it anyone else's problem. Her sister, Julie, said that April was one of the most caring people you would ever meet. Someone who just naturally put herself before everyone else's needs, who showed up every single day. And I think that quality that instinct to take care of the people around her was already in her before all of this, before losing her mom at 17, and holding her family together, but it solidified into something permanent. It actually became the foundation of everything she did from that point forward, including her career, which we will get into, but somehow, in the middle of all of that, April graduated from Hennessey High School, but has sell you to Torian of her class, second, and her entire graduating class. While she was also the primary caregiver of her siblings, and also processing her mother's death, it was truly remarkable. Her classmates voted her most likely to succeed, and honestly, looking at everything April went on to do. They weren't wrong. After graduation, April chose her career path based on what she had endured. Her aunt Patti said that after losing her mother, April started thinking differently about everything, her entire future, and she started thinking about what she wanted to do with her life, and what she wanted it to mean. She saw her mother go through cancer. She saw what that experience did to families. She had experienced it firsthand. How much people were working in the medical spaces mattered, and she decided that's what she wanted to be. She wanted to work with people facing serious illnesses. She wanted to be one of the people who showed up for them, so she went to medical school. First, she enrolled at Oklahoma State University, where she spent three and a half years before transferring to the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center to finish her degree. And in 1999, she graduated with a degree in radiology, completely following through on her goal that she set in the middle of her grief. She was an academic all-stater. She was a member of Capadelta Sorority. She was the kind of student who took it seriously because she understood exactly why she was doing it and what she was working towards. April eventually landed a position at an oncology center in Thomasville, Georgia. She was working in a part of the radiation department that provides therapy and focuses on calculating and planning the precise doses of radiation used to treat cancer. It's detailed, oriented, it's high stakes, and it's deeply important work. And that was exactly what April had been moving towards since she was a teenager standing in a hospital, watching her own mother fight for her life. She truly turned her pain into a purpose. She was helping people. She was living out her dreams, and she was doing it with the same energy she always had and warmth and openness. And that ability to make people feel like they mattered because to her they did. Her best friend Amber Mitchell, who had been close to April since their Hennessy days and stayed close through college and beyond, described April as someone who put more value on relationships than most people do. Someone who didn't take anything in life for granted. And you can see why. Sometimes I feel like we have unlimited time with the people we love, but we know that's not true. But sometimes we don't sit and think about it. After her mom died, she became more intentional and more present. So I hope that I've painted a very thorough picture of who April Barber was. I also think that locations are very important. And I told you I was going to talk about Plano-Vita, Florida. But before that, there was Hennessy, Oklahoma. And to understand who April was at her core, it is important to take just a moment to understand exactly where she came from. It's about an hour northwest of Oklahoma City, right in the middle of what is genuinely wide open prairie in every direction. It's flat, wide, golden in the summer, the kind of landscape that makes the sky look enormous. But more importantly, I told you there were only 2,000 people in Hennessy at the time. This wasn't a place that people were rushing to move to. It's a place people were from. And they usually move far away from it. Now, because it's a bad place at all, but many times people want more when they come from a small town. It's an agricultural community. The economy runs on farming on the land. And it's the kind of place where the work involves being outdoors and requires you to be up before the sun is up. Football is a big deal. Church is a big deal. Family dinners are a big deal. And for April, it's all that she knew. Even when she eventually left Oklahoma for Georgia and then for Florida, Hennessy stayed with her. It was in how she carried herself, how she shaped her values, her work ethic, her sense of loyalty, and her understanding of how you treat other people. And speaking of other people, there was definitely not a lack of men who were interested in April. But when it came to her actually being interested in the right guy, it happened in 1998. April's best friend that I told you about, Amber, decided to introduce her to someone, Justin Marber. He was just a few years older than April, and from what Amber could tell, he seemed like exactly the kind of person April deserved to meet. And in case you're not watching and you need a visual, the first person that came to my mind was Justin Timberlake. But the young one, not the one from the newly released DIY bodycam footage, the one with the tiny curls, the boyish good looks, the sparkly blue eyes. I think you get the picture, both of them were named Justin as well. But that is what Justin Barber kind of reminded me of. Amber paid close attention when she brought them together. The way you do when you're the one person making this introduction and you actually care how it's going to go. And what you notice right away is that Justin talked about Christian values, about family, about the kind of future he wanted to build. And to Amber, who had grown up with April, with her values both being rooted in faith, growing up going to first Baptist Church of Hennessey, she knew how central those things were to April's life as well. It felt like alignment, it felt like all of the right ingredients. Justin had grown up about three hours south east of Hennessey, in a tiny town called Dustin in Oklahoma. So both of them were bound to click as far as Amber could tell. Justin was molded in the same place that barely registers on the map. His family owned 120 acre property there. And the land was basically the center of his entire childhood. He and his older brother Charlie grew up writing horses, mowing hay, stalking shelves at a local grocery store, doing the kind of physical work that comes with maintaining that much land. And they were so far out of town that they didn't really have any neighbors. Their world was each other and their family. Charlie's big brother described it as a loving household, close in the way that happens when the outside world seems really far away. Justin was raised Pentecostal Christian, and that faith shaped everything about how family operated and how Justin understood himself and his place in the world. He had values, and April did too. And academically, Justin was exceptional. He graduated as the valedictorian of his high school class. He went on to the University of Oklahoma, where he earned a degree in business administration in 1994. And he spent time working as a financial analyst. And eventually he came back to complete his MBA. He was polite, reserved, someone with a clear sense of direction and carefully maintained image of exactly who he wanted to be and what he stood for. Justin Barber looked like exactly the kind of person you would want for your best friend. And as Amber predicted, her best friend April was drawn to all of that. And to Justin right away, she was 23 when they met, already established in her own sense of direction, already someone who knew what she wanted from life and from the people in it. What she saw in Justin was stability, intelligence, a shared foundation of faith and family values, and a long-term plan in his life. And Justin was immediately drawn to April. And I'm sure it started with her looks. But that only takes someone so far. According to him, it was actually her personality, her warmth, the way she carried herself. And that smile that everyone who met her ended up talking about. It felt natural between them from the beginning. The kind of connection that doesn't require a lot of effort because it just clicks. When he introduced April to his parents, his mother Linda liked her right away. First of all, she thought that April was beautiful, but she said she could just tell that April was a genuinely good person and she fit really well into their family. Within just 10 months of them meeting, they decided to get married. They knew how they felt and they didn't see a reason to wait. They didn't even want to wait to plan. Instead, on August 4th, of 1999, April and Justin eloped in the Bahamas and it was beautiful. It was a small intimate wedding for just the two of them, and of course Amber, who stood right beside April as her maid of honor. After all, she was the one that brought them together. Patti remembered cramming April's gorgeous white dress into a suitcase and spending the entire morning of the wedding just trying to get the wrinkles out of it. It was simple and beautiful and exactly the kind of moment that April always envisioned. And when they came home, they started building their life together right away. First, they relocated to Douglas, Georgia, where Justin was working in a financial planning and April found a position in radiology and eventually she started working where he told you at the oncology center in Thomasville doing exactly the type of work she always wanted to do. Everything was falling into place. But then April got a phone call. It was her sister, Julie. Only 15 years old at the time, and Kenden was only about six. They were still really young and they still needed her. They didn't have stability and the answer was clear to April right away. They would come live with her and Justin. They were her family and honestly more like her own children. I mean, she had raised them and she wasn't done raising them. And sure, having kids there added an extra layer of complexity to a brand new marriage, the way it would for any young couple, still figuring out how to build this life together. But it wasn't forever. And by late 2000, Julie and Kenden had gone back to Oklahoma to live with other relatives. And not long after that, Justin's career just took off. Justin was working with a company called Ray and Ear. They produced wood products. He was a business analyst and management trainee. This is a Fortune 500 company. And they had just transferred him from Georgia to Jacksonville, Florida in January of 2001. This was not temporary. This is going to be a permanent move. So we decided to buy a condo in the San Marco area, which is just a very beautiful historic location in Jacksonville. It's right on the water, overlooking the St. John's River at the Alexandria complex. And just so you know, this is a very sought after area. I think farmers markets, art walk, it's full of old Victorian homes, mixed with modern structures, lots of trees, it's walkable. And there's a ton of nice restaurants around. And their particular condo unit looks right out to the water in the grassy courtyard. It was three stories, hardwood floors, a community pool, and a balcony to take all of it in. This was an exciting time for the couple, but soon they had to make a really difficult decision. One that was financially the best for them at that point, rather than April leaving her job at the oncology center of a position where she was earning upward of $70,000. The two of them decided she would stay in Georgia during the week and make the drive to Jacksonville on the weekends. Now, it wasn't ideal, but sometimes you do have to make a compromise in the present so that you can prepare for your future. And they were going to make it work and they were making it work. Now, this is right before we left off in the beginning. So now you know where April and Justin were in their lives. April was making that familiar drive from Douglas, Georgia to Jacksonville, Florida, the way she'd been doing for over a year, three hours through the flat stretch of North Florida highway. It connected her weekday life to her weekend life. And this wasn't just any weekend though, her third wedding anniversary with Justin. And there was something special about that particular milestone that probably made the drive feel a lot different, a little more intentional. When you've been living apart for over a year, by that point, running their marriage in these short windows of shared time and anniversary was exactly the kind of occasion that you want to slow down for and actually be present for with the person that you would build something with. April was so excited to get there. But in less than 24 hours, she would be dead. Now, I'm dropping you right back to approximately 11 p.m. on Saturday, August 17th to the chaos of that driver witnessing what he did on that road near Plano-Vedra Lake Boulevard, the kind of situation that made a motorist on that road stop and want to help there in front of the driver was a Toyota forerunner with his hazard lights on and a bloodied, disheveled looking man in the middle of the road trying to flag somebody down. Finally, somebody stopped. Here was this man frantic telling him, "Please call 911." And I told you that man was Justin Barber. He was yelling at the driver that his wife was hurt that she had been shot and she needed help. The driver called 911 and he explained to dispatch that he thought Justin had been shot as well. Did dispatcher ask the caller if the man was conscious and he said, "Yes, and I'm trying to keep him that way." And then he asked if he sees a gunshot wound. He said, "A gunshot wound or a stab? I can't actually tell." An ambulance was sent out there to the caller's location. And once EMTs were on scene, they quickly got Justin on a stretcher and got him ready for transport. But Justin, he was yelling the entire time. He was telling them about his wife begging them to help April that she had been shot too. He was conscious. He was able to explain to the first responders that him and his wife were walking along the beach. When a man came out of nowhere, he started threatening them with a gun and don't worry, we're going to get into plenty of the details about exactly what Justin remembered. But the point of this was to get help for his wife as fast as possible. So from what they gathered, April was somewhere near the northern entrance of Gwana State Park, close to a wooden boardwalk that crosses over the dunes down to the beach right along A1A. They radioed for another ambulance and for the police to come down to that area. It was 10 miles south of where Justin had flagged down the motorist. This is a very isolated area, especially a night. There's a parking lot on one side of A1A and a boardwalk to take down to the ocean. It can truly be very romantic. And once around a bother you, a beautiful view of the water, but that's during the day. A night, the only light is from the moon. There's no homes nearby, no streetlights, but somehow Lt. Ben Tanner found April. The landscape that offered almost nothing in terms of visibility, but his flashlight, and he was able to see her lying on her back in the sand. Her head facing north towards the ocean, her body still wet from the water. Lt. Tanner checked for a pulse. There wasn't one. Paramedics followed right behind. And sadly, after a quick assessment, April was pronounced dead right there on the beach in front of that boardwalk. In the exact same spot that she and Justin had left their shoes just hours before. When they first reached April, there was no obvious blood visible on her face, no dramatic wound that was immediately apparent. She looked to the untrained eye in the dark, like she was just lying still. It wasn't until a more thorough examination under better lighting that a full picture became clear. A single 22 caliber gunshot wound to her left cheek, blood dripping down. The kind of injury that in the chaos of a dark beach with limited visibility could easily be missed at first glance. But I need to go back to Justin for a moment who had been found slumped over his steering wheel of his forerunner, bleeding from multiple wounds. He was airlifted by helicopter to Shan's Jacksonville trauma center that night, where he was immediately traded for all four of his gunshot wounds. He was shot in the left shoulder, his right shoulder, the right side of his chest, and in his left hand, the shot to his left shoulder fractured his bone so it had to be set in a sling. And the one through his hand actually went through the center and exited out the back. It's the type of defensive wound you would get when you raise your hand to block your face. Detective Skip Cole have been directed to the hospital to get an initial statement from the surviving victim. And when he arrived, Justin asked right away, where is April? How was my wife doing? And that's when the detective had to give him the news that April had not survived. Justin was in a state of shock, but he had to regain his composure. He had to be asked a number of questions. He went through a number of interviews. And as you can imagine, in a case like this, there would be a lot they needed to figure out. I do have some of the recorded interviews, and I will show them if I can, where he's explaining what happened that night. Justin's in pain, he is in a state of shock. However, he is awake, he's alert, and he's able to speak. They knew he had been through a lot that night, but they needed to talk to him right away. You can forget information if you wait too long. So let's start from the beginning. This is what Justin explained. Saturday, August 17th, April and Justin spent the day together, and then that evening they went out for dinner at Caraba's Italian Grill in Jacksonville Beach, which is about a 30-minute drive from their condo. It's all the way in front of an ocean side pier on the Atlantic coast. It was the kind of night that feels easy once it gets going. It's good food, reasons to celebrate, time that was just for the two of them without interruptions. They didn't have to think about work, or their schedules, or separate cities pulling them apart. And after dinner, they were not ready to go back home. So they went to another establishment. Down to Jacksonville Beach, there are a ton of restaurants and bars all within walking distance. So they made their way to a bar called the Ritz, where they played some pool and had some more drinks. They had already been drinking together before walking over to this next establishment, where they stayed a little longer. The way that people usually do when you're out just enjoying yourself and there's nowhere you need to be, Justin said they had some beers and mixed drinks. And by the time they decided to head out, it was getting pretty late. And at some point during their drive back home, they decided they wanted to go to their special spot and walk down the beach. But it wasn't just any beach. It's the one at Guana State Park. As Justin put it, it was their spot. He said they'd been there a few times before once in April's last birthday and their anniversary the year before. It was a place they would go to be alone. It also held meaning for them. So on this anniversary, they just wanted to go back to reminisce and for some privacy. I think you catch my drift. It's quiet. It's secluded. It's far enough away from everybody else that it felt like you had the entire coast to yourself. And there is a tree called sex on the beach. So you can kind of imagine what they had in mind. As I told you, the park is technically closed after dark. But some people make their way down to the beach at night anyway. They park along the road. They walk the path down to the water. And that is what April and Justin did. They parked. They got out of their car. They walked across the street. They went down the boardwalk. They took off their shoes right at the foot of the stairs. And they stepped into the sand. Something Justin said they always did. And they went down to the shoreline together hand and hand. Justin said it was calm. All they could hear was the sound of the ocean. But then everything changed. And it happened in an instant. A man appeared out of nowhere in front of them. And he was really close. And suddenly without warning, he just jumped in front of them from the darkness. And it was terrifying. And everything happened so fast. Justin said this man gave off an immediate threatening presence. And the situation escalated before anyone could fully understand what was going on. All he knew was that this man had a gun. Justin said his reaction was instinctual. He jumped towards the guy. He tried to stop whatever was happening. Whatever was going to unfold before it got worse. And almost immediately shots rang out across the beach. After that, Justin said everything blurred. He couldn't piece together what happened in what order. But at some point, everything went black. And he believed he lost consciousness. When he came to, the beach was silent. The man was gone. And April wasn't by his side. He didn't know exactly where she was or where he was. He was trying to get his bearing straight in the darkness where this entire shoreline looked exactly the same. And he started to call her name. He was moving along the water's edge, yelling April over and over again, trying to find any sign of where his wife was. And then he saw her floating face down in the water. He went in and he pulled her back to shore. He turned her over and he saw that she had been shot right beneath her eye. He said he tried to do CPR, but his body wasn't cooperating. It wasn't responding the way that he needed it to. And he tried to move her and grab her by the waistband and drag her across the sand towards the boardwalk. Hundreds of feet through the dark across the wet sand, trying to get her closer to help. And when he reached the base of the stairs, he tried to lift her. He attempted to get her over his shoulder, but he said his body completely gave out. And he dropped her. It was in that moment that he realized he was hurt too, that he had been shot. He could have been operating on pure adrenaline, not where he was in pain until that moment. And with April on the ground at the base of the boardwalk and his own body failing him. Justin said he made a decision that he will regret for the rest of his life. All he could think to do in that moment was to leave her there. He said he had no other choice. He couldn't move her any further. And that the only way to get help was to go find help himself. So he ran toward the road. He said he tried to find cars to flag down, but three passed him in the dark without stopping. And then he went to reach for his cell phone and he realized it wasn't on him. And that is when he went into a panic. He ran to his vehicle. He put on his fashers and he started to drive north on A1A, moving fast, trying to make himself visible, driving erratically, trying to get somebody to stop. He kept going. He drove nearly 10 miles from where he had left April on the beach until he reached Pontavitor Lake Boulevard, where he was finally able to flag down a passing car. That was the driver that called 911. It definitely makes sense when you look at this area. He wouldn't have found a lot of cars passing until he reached a more populated space. Because the park that runs right next to A1A, there's nothing there. No homes, just trees, swamp, and marshy areas. When he started to get close to the seaside and Mickler landing, more cars were passing him. And then Justin described the attacker. He was a white male, taller than him. Solid, built, heavier than Justin, maybe around 200 pounds. He was wearing what looked like a dark colored baggy t-shirt and a dark baseball cap with some kind of logo on it. This was not much of a description. And Justin knew that. He said it himself. But he explained that the darkness made it almost impossible to see the man's face clearly. But what stuck out to him specifically was that the man looked like he had a tanned face, but pale hands. Justin couldn't make out what the man was yelling either. But he assumed he wanted their money. Meanwhile, law enforcement had immediately launched a large scale search of this entire area where April was found. Canine units swept the beach and the brush. Helicopters were deployed, including units equipped with infrared technology. They were scanning from the air for any sign of anyone, a weapon, anything that could confirm or deny the presence of this attacker and who they were and where they went. Ground units covered the park on foot and by vehicle, pushing through a wooded area that flanked the beach. A1A was the only road in and out of that stretch of coastline, which meant that if someone had been there that night, they left the same way they came and no one had been stopped or flagged. The search turned up nothing. No weapon, no shell casings, no physical trace of anyone. But let's talk about what they did find. Drag marks in the sand. Presumably from when Justin was dragging her to the boardwalk and footprints from where he had gotten April out of the water and moved her up the shore. This is a beach. It's sandy. It's windy. The tide comes in, which makes everything there on the sand disappear into the water with every wave. They had limited time to preserve what they could, so they took a video of this area. April's body was then transported to the office of Dr. Terence Steiner. He was the district 23 medical examiner and she had a full autopsy conducted. And with Dr. Steiner found during the examination, produced a forensic picture that was more complicated than a single gunshot wound on a dark beach. The cause of death was determined to be from a 22 caliber gunshot wound to her left cheek. But the findings did not stop right there. The trajectory of that bullet snapped the base of her skull and caused hemorrhaging to her sinus area. Dr. Steiner also documented a presence of white foam around April's mouth and nose. In forensic pathology, that kind of foam is associated with the inhalation of water. It forms when the fluid mixes with the air in the airway during the process of breathing in liquid. It's due to damage inside the airway. And Dr. Steiner's conclusion was that April had experienced a near drowning episode, meaning she had inhaled salt water into her lungs and they were affected before she died. Her official cause of death though remained the gunshot wound. But what the near drowning meant was that April had been in that water and been alive. Whether it was before or after she was shot was another question. But Dr. Steiner also documented a series of abrasions on April's body on her head, her shoulder, and behind her ear. They were what's called "punctate abrasions" to kind of result from something rough and sharp pressing into the skin rather than a smooth surface. No other shoreline on this beach were shells. And those shells leave a very specific kind of mark, consistent with shells scraping her skin. That's what it looked like on April's body. This was possibly from when Justin had pulled her from the water and across the sand. But what was noted and why I'm mentioning it was because the abrasions bled. That reaction meant that she was still alive when that occurred. She was still alive when Justin was pulling her from the water to the boardwalk. But she wouldn't have been alive for very long afterward, given the severity of her injury. The blood from her gunshot wound her cheek had traveled in a single line, in a downward direction along the left side of her face on top of the foam that I told you about. And then her toxicology. Her blood alcohol level was a point zero at the time of her autopsy. Now it was conducted a couple days after she was found deceased. But the doctor did take note of it. And he took note of other things as well. April's expensive wedding ring, her dye mandering, her earrings, and an expensive watch, were all still on her body. The robber must have ran before he had time to steal anything, and back in Georgia and her hometown of Oklahoma, the people in April's life were getting the kind of phone calls that you can never be prepared for. Her family and friends in workplace were all notified. Her aunt Patty, her sister Julie, the people who loved her her entire life. They were now being asked to absorb the fact that she was gone. We described that moment as something that she will never be able to fully put into words. Their mother had been taken from them way too early, and now April have been taken to. Julie had just spoken to April on the phone hours before her death that same night. April told her she loved her and that she was going to call her later that evening, and that was the last time they ever spoke. It was devastating. In the days that followed, April's body was brought back to Oklahoma, and the people of Hennessey came together the way that small towns do when one of their own is gone. It was the kind of send off that reflected exactly who April was. People showed up, they stayed, they made sure that she was honored the right way. The funeral was held at first Baptist Church of Hennessey, which was April's church, the place that had been the center for community life for her entire childhood. And 300 people showed up. It overflowed with people who knew her since she was a little girl in pageant dresses, and they stood alongside people that had worked with her at the oncology center, colleagues who watched her show up every single day and pour her heart into helping other people in the hardest seasons of their lives. It was a kind of turnout that tells you everything about who someone was and how they moved through the world and impacted others. April mattered to so many people, and every single one of them was there. Justin of course was there as well he flew back to Oklahoma to lay his wife to rest. Her loved ones wanted to make this moment a tribute to just how amazing she was. And Justin, he was overcome with grief, he could hardly speak. His brother Charlie was deeply concerned about Justin's state of mind, especially after everything he had just been through. He stayed by his side the entire time and even flew back to Florida with him afterward. He didn't want to leave him alone. To Charlie, Justin was a man who had just survived something violent and traumatic, who was physically injured, and was now burying his wife. It was a lot to go through. He described his brother as broken, more broken than he had ever seen him before, devastated in a way that was unlike anything their family had ever faced. Even in his own words, Justin said that he was deeply ashamed for leaving his wife all alone on that beach that night after she had been shot. She died alone and that was haunting him. He had nightmares. He would wake up sweating and screaming and he felt like he was going crazy. He had to get back to Florida though, because he needed to help investigators catch April's killer. In the aftermath of April's death, there was a working theory. It was exactly what Justin had described, a robbery gone terribly wrong on a dark beach, a couple caught off guard by a stranger with a gun, one dead, one airlifted to a hospital, so that's where they started. A lone attacker who wanted their money, and possibly more, but was caught off guard when Justin reacted and the gunman retreated and disappeared into the night. Detective Cole had been assigned to lead the investigation. He'd been doing this a very long time, long enough to know this entire area. Pontavitor Beach and St. John's County are some of the safest areas in the entire state of Florida, and honestly, one of the safest places in the country. The violent crime rate there is just 0.35 per 1,000 people. Your chance of becoming a victim to a violent crime in Pontavitor Beach is about 1 in about 1700 compared to the rest of Florida where your average chance is 1 in about 300. So it's pretty low. This is an affluent, quiet, golf course community, gated neighborhoods, world class resorts, the PGA tour headquarters. It's not a place where people get robbed at gunpoint on the beaches. It's not a place where armed strangers lurk in closed state parks after dark, waiting for an unsuspecting couple to arrive. And critically, nothing like this had ever happened at Guana State Park before, so was this couple targeted. But someone possibly seen them out and about in Jacksonville Beach and followed them there. I mean, they both had good jobs, financial stability, but they didn't drive a flashy car or where really expensive clothing. So the investigator wondered what would have made them stand out if someone had chosen them, Justin hadn't given up his wallet. So whatever this person allegedly came for to take away, they left without it. They were shooting one person dead and putting four bullets into another. So was there another motive? Well, there are definitely cases where a predator will try to incapacitate the man that a woman is with so that he can have his way with her. April was undeniably striking, and perhaps someone saw her out that night, and they had this idea that they would overpower Justin and take her, but then things went awry. Justin told investigators that there were men that were interested in his wife. As a matter of fact, in a period leading up to her death, April's tires had been slashed, her car was broken into and even their home had been burglarized back in Georgia. The car incident happened on January 16th. Someone had broken into her great GMC Jimmy and they took her radio. The night before that, someone had ripped out her dome light and even slashed her tires. And looked like it had been done with the screwdriver, and April had been carrying around mace because of the situations. These were potential relevant leads, and Detective Cole reached out to local Georgia police to inquire about the incidents, but ultimately he couldn't find a connection. I just did a case where a killer followed a woman 60 miles. So could a man drive from Georgia to Florida and been waiting for this moment? Yeah, possibly, possibly wanting to kill Justin, but April got in the way. Anything was possible. There just weren't any clues. Nothing that they could logically follow at this point, but despite all that, Detective Cole was being very methodical. He wasn't closing any avenue off. He was exhausting every resource because his job wasn't to prove a theory. It was to find out exactly what happened. So he started with the one thing he had, Justin's description of the attacker, and he worked from there. A composite sketch was created based on what Justin had told investigators, and it wasn't much, but it was something. The sketch was circulated publicly and tips started coming in. One name came back more than once, and it was a name that immediately got the investigators attention. A 30 year old man named David Allen Shoey. Now on paper, Shoey looked like a serious lead. He'd already had a document in history of violent offenses, including attacks and violations on women. And one was a college student up in Gainesville. The other one had taken place that year on the exact same stretch of beach at Guana State Park. Yep. So even though it wasn't usually a place for murders and other crimes, one had occurred there, and that's mostly because of its isolation. So David Shoey had approached a woman while she was all alone, and he confronted her using a firearm during this attack. The victim later identified him. So when you line that up against what Justin had described, the isolated location, the sudden confrontation, the presence of a gun, it felt like more than just a coincidence. And you couldn't deny the physical similarities to the composite sketch, the sort of deep-set eyes, the nose, the thin lips. He looked like the sketch, and then a deep dive into his past revealed charges stacked up across multiple states, Florida, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, a pattern of similar violent crimes that stretched back years. David Shoey looked like he could be the answer that everyone had been looking for, but when detectives checked his alibi for the night of August 17th, 2002, it held up. Medical records actually placed him all the way in Connecticut with his fiance on the night that April was killed. He couldn't have been in Florida at the same time. He couldn't have been on that beach. Just like that, their most promising lead dissolved, and they were back where they started. Now, around the same time, another detail had served us that couldn't be ignored. A Tennessee couple named Jason and Kimberly Pryor had been in that area the night of the murder. After driving north on A1A after a day of sightseeing in St. Augustine, and as they pass in northern most beach access point at Guana Park, they noticed something. It was Justin's dark color forerunner. It was parked on the west side of the road, but on the opposite side, on the ocean side, there was another vehicle parked there, a smaller boxy looking older model, and they described it as a Chrysler K-Car. I'm going to show you an example on the screen. They passed the scene around 11 PM, and they noted just how isolated it really was. Just these two cars, and nothing else around them. And then the priors came back through about 20 minutes later, and they saw Justin's car pulled in a median further north on A1A, and they were returning to the beach access point on the way back, and they were looking at what was going on, because by that point police presence were there. But that other vehicle, the K-Car? It wasn't. The problem is they had no clear make or model, no license plate to track. So this vehicle just remained unknown. This just ran them car on a dark road and nobody could explain or even investigate it further. To Justin, though, that was potentially someone who got away with his wife's murder and his attempted murder. He had spent over 10 hours in total with investigators offering up any information he could. And now he was going one step further. Justin had agreed to do a videotaped reenactment on the exact same stretch of beach where this traumatic event had occurred just weeks earlier. He walked through everything again, physically retracing his steps from the parking lot down to the shoreline, showing Detective Cole exactly where they had been standing when the gunmen appeared, exactly where he found April and the water. Exactly how he tried to move her. His account was identical to what he said in his hospital bed and his wounds weren't even healed yet. Not a single detail had changed. Detective Cole listened carefully. He watched carefully and he said very little. He was just taking it all in and Justin. He was overcome with emotion. There he was in the exact place where he almost lost his life, where he lost his wife. But he held it together to give them as much as he could. I do have a clip where he's speaking so you can hear what he said and watch him explain what the man looked like. He was taller than the heavier, but he wasn't. He wasn't overweight, drawn, right. His shirt was dark, he was baggy, he sure. Right. He had a dark hat on like a baseball cat. Like I said, nothing about his recollection changed. The weeks turned into months and the case moved very slowly. Detective Cole was committed to solving it. He was building something, but he knew he wasn't there yet. What he had were questions and a feeling that only got stronger as more time passed. Detectives that had been working murder cases for as long as he had, they have an intuitive sense. It's not just based on feelings alone. Cole recognized the pattern that alone wasn't going to solve the case. Cole was going to need something more, but he felt like he knew who the killer was. He just had to prove it. And that's why he needed to understand who April and Justin Barbara were. To really know who Justin was, especially when no one was looking, when the cameras weren't rolling. And it looks like he could be crying at the reenactment, except there were no tears coming down his cheeks. So who was he? Because since day one, Cole thought he was a killer. Yeah, Justin was his number one suspect all along. Justin Barbara himself. And it sounds too far off from any investigation. They all start with those closest to the victim and work outward. You either roll someone out or they move up your list. Cole had noticed things that he couldn't unsee. Things that pointed right in Justin's direction all along. And I think it's important to dig into them because there were certainly a running list and it only got longer. Now, if you've been kind of drifting off, whether to sleep or maybe doing some chores, half listening, this is the time. I really want you to pay attention because I want your thoughts on what detective Cole's thoughts were. His first one was about the location itself. I already mentioned this, but from the moment that Cole heard where this supposed attempted robbery, a gunpoint and subsequent murder occurred, he was already skeptical. Now, guess it's true. There was that other offender that I told you about, the targeted women, a sunbathing. But Cole felt like that wasn't anomaly and outlier. And to truly be one, there can't be other cases like it, especially not so close in time.