Catherine Townsend
speaker
64 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Catherine Townsend’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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We're driving across the Pendleton Bridge, the one that runs over the Sabine River and separates Texas and Louisiana. We're headed to a remote spot on Toledo Bend Lake, right across the Texas border in Hempel. It's the spot where, on December 13th, 2020, at 528 p.m., right before the sun disappeared behind the horizon, police in Sabine County got a call about a houseboat on fire.
The houseboat was docked behind 322 Echo Ridge off of Cedar Grove Road on Highway 21 in the Pendleton area of Toledo Bend. And that scene very quickly descended into total chaos. The firefighters had trouble getting out to the remote location, so it took a while. And by the time they did get there, the boat was completely engulfed in flames.
One person who commented on Facebook and claimed to have been one of the first responders on the scene wrote, quote, Once fire was knocked down, I had members sweep and notice the remains, end quote. Firefighters and paramedics rushed to the scene, but it was too late. By the time they got there, the walls had caved in, and the boat had very quickly been completely eviscerated by the flames.
And then, when they did dig through the remains, they found the body of 64-year-old Doug Janis. His charred remains were found in the bedroom of the boat. At first, they thought the house fire had been some kind of accident, that Doug had died as a result of a propane leak. But then they took Doug's body in for an autopsy. At the forensic exam, they saw the two bullets in his head.
Doug Janis had been murdered, and his much younger estranged wife, April Mae Janis, was nowhere to be found. But Doug's death was just the beginning of a story that goes back 20 years and involves sex, allegations of corruption, and multiple murders. I'm Katherine Townsend.
Over the past five years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I have learned that there is no such thing as a small town where murder never happens. I have received hundreds of messages from people all around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities.
I heard about this case when a podcast listener reached out. She was a friend of Doug's who said that Doug's death was all over the news in that rural region of East Texas. But then all of a sudden, it wasn't. No one ever heard any more about the death investigation. Her name is April, not to be confused with Doug's wife, April. Doug's friend, April, said that she knew Doug through church.
She said that he was always friendly and kind and that she believed he was a religious man. She said that in the final years of his life, Doug became very involved with a local Pentecostal church. That's where she knew him from. There wasn't much information out there about Doug Janis' murder.
Local news stations quoted an affidavit, but it was brief and just said the cause of death was due to Doug Janis being shot in the head. The houseboat, as we said before, had gone up in flames. At first, the police and paramedics thought it was some kind of a propane leak or freak accident. Doug was a very well-known commercial cat fisherman in the area.
He had not only built a houseboat over the years, he had also acquired several smaller houseboats. He kept them all together. So he had a lot of property down there. He also had a fireplace on that houseboat and propane tanks. But once they took Doug's body to Beaumont, Texas and did the autopsy, they saw the cause of death had been the fatal shots to his head, not the house fire.
And right away, people were asking questions about his wife, April Mae Janice, and where she was at the time of the murder. Because according to Doug's friend April, Doug and his wife April were estranged at the time of his death. They were not living together and they hadn't been living together for a long time.
April first moved into a mobile home that was just up the hill from Doug's houseboat while he stayed on the water. But later, she moved into her own place in mini Louisiana, right across the bridge. Exactly when April relocated and what the story was there is something we're going to be diving into in future episodes.
At the same time, there were rumors that witnesses had seen a vehicle rapidly speeding away from the houseboat, basically right before it blew up. We talked to Doug's friend April about some of the irregularities at the crime scene.
This has been a difficult case. We have done multiple FOIA requests, but the case file is not public information since this is still an active investigation. But that answered one important question for me. I knew Doug was shot in the head. Now we found out he was shot in the back of the head. This was definitely a murder case. Doug had been shot execution style.
But who would have wanted to kill Doug Janis, a man who everyone seemed to love in that neighborhood? We need to find more information about what Doug was doing on that houseboat and also about his wife, about his relationship with his wife, April. We also need to find these witnesses who said they saw a car speeding away from the blazing houseboat.
But even without the case file, we did get a few facts. the pathologist found two bullets lodged in Doug's brain and ruled the manner of death a homicide. So as we wait for more official police and forensic information to come, we need to ask, who was Doug Janus? Everyone has secret parts of themselves they don't want others to see.
And in a murder case, often those hidden dark sides become public. When it comes to Doug Janis' murder, I can't remember a case I've ever investigated where it seems like the victim is so loved and so hated at the same time. Most of the news articles about Doug are really positive. But at the same time, I notice they're pretty vague.
For example, the local news station KJAS.com had an article that read, quote, So they painted a picture of Doug Janus as being this nice guy who was living out his golden years on a houseboat that he built himself. In all of the photos I can find of Doug, he has a huge smile on his face. Doug was fit. He spent a lot of time fishing.
He also got a scuba diving certification and was a pretty avid diver for years in the Texas Gulf Coast area. Doug was always on the water. He was obsessed with the houseboat that he had designed and built himself. He loved showing his boat off to friends and family.
I'm going to take a step back for a minute because you can't unravel what happened to Doug Janus without talking about the area where it happened. this infamous houseboat that sat on the Toledo Bend Reservoir. This reservoir is on the Sabine River. It sits on the border between Texas and Louisiana. It is a super rural area, and the people who live there are kind of an eclectic combination.
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