About April

Survivor. Storyteller. Truth-seeker.​

 

I write about true crime, but not the kind that gets glamorized. I tell the stories people try to forget—victims who were overlooked, cases buried in time, and truths society refuses to see. My work is personal. I come from a family shaped by violence, silence, and loss.

 

The trauma I carry didn’t begin with me. It was inherited, passed down through generations—stitched into our family story like thread through a wound. My grandfather was murdered and buried in a mass grave before my family could even claim him. On the other side, a relative of mine was the first white man in U.S. history to be hanged alongside a Black man for a crime they committed together—killing two U.S. Marshals. More than 10,000 people came to watch him die.

 

Violence hasn't just touched my family's past— it shapes our present and looms over our future. It's woven into everything. For years, I believed my violent father with a drug addiction killed my grandfather because of me. My stepfather was shot twice—once in the back and once in the throat. I didn’t witness the shootings, but I grew up hearing the stories, seeing the physical aftermath, and living in the shadow they left behind. These aren’t ghost stories. They were my lullabies. 

 

I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, sex trafficking, domestic violence, drug addiction, multiple suicide attempts, and even a hit on my life. Researching for my books sometimes broke me open. There were days I had to walk away, to sit in a cemetery and remember how to feel; to remember my humanity. Some days, the writing wasn’t just emotionally painful—it was physically painful. I live with fibromyalgia, a condition likely rooted in the trauma my body has carried for decades. There were times I couldn’t sit at a keyboard without hurting. But I pushed through, because the stories needed to be told. And because silence was never an option for me—not anymore. 

 

I was written off early—placed in special education and left in a room to watch movies instead of being taught because of my early trauma. I fought my way into college and graduated in the top 10% out of over 100,000 students. I earned degrees in criminal justice and psychology because I needed to understand the minds behind the violence—theirs, and mine. My writing isn’t just about those who committed terrible acts. It’s about the thin line between trauma and destruction, survival and harm. It’s about choosing, every day, not to become the worst parts of what you’ve seen. It’s about asking why—and refusing to become the monster.

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