In 1998, April Wilkens was arrested for shooting and killing her abusive ex-fiancé. At trial, April testified that she was acting in self-defense, but she was convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to life in prison.
The local news painted a picture of a woman who was abused but acted out of revenge. The assistant district attorney was quoted in the paper saying that April “didn’t act in self-defense,” and that she “wasn’t in a relationship where she was a battered woman. She was in a relationship where there was violence perpetuated by both offenders, and she was the worst offender.”
Now, decades later, thanks to increased awareness around domestic violence, as well as the work of advocates and policymakers, April’s case is getting a second look under the Oklahoma Survivors’ Act. This new law is intended to offer “sentencing relief for incarcerated survivors of domestic violence who committed offenses stemming from their victimization.” April’s story was integral to the bill’s passage, and her case will be a test of the law’s ability to offer justice to survivors of domestic violence.
On Aug. 29, April’s attorneys filed a request to apply for resentencing, the first under this law. If the judge grants the request, the court will then consider evidence of domestic violence April suffered for years leading up to the shooting and reevaluate her case for resentencing and potential release.
Until the Oklahoma Survivors’ Act passed, April had exhausted her appeals. This new law may be her last hope for freedom.
April spent most of her childhood in Kellyville, Oklahoma, a town of about 1,000 people just off historic Route 66, a town April describes as “a speck on the map.” She grew up in a house with a cattle guard at the end of the driveway to keep out the neighbors’ livestock, a creek at the edge of the property, and a small collie named Princess. She had dreams for her future. She wanted to pursue an ambitious career, either as a physician or a prosthetist, like her father who had a prosthetic leg and owned a prosthetics business. Most of all, she wanted to be a mother to a son and daughter. Throughout her childhood, April experienced and witnessed abuse. Her father whipped her and punched her in the face. One of her oldest friends, Michelle, has memories of repeatedly going with her parents—who were best friends with April’s parents—to move April and her mother out of their house in the aftermath of April’s father’s abuse.
In college at Oklahoma State University, April met Eric, the man who would become her husband, and in 1991, at age 20, she gave birth to the little boy she’d always wanted, Hunter. After graduation, April moved to Chicago to attend an accelerated graduate prosthetics program at Northwestern. Her marriage to Eric ended in divorce, and she and Hunter moved to Florida for a job transfer, opening a satellite branch of the prosthetics company she worked for.
In 1994, April and Hunter moved to Tulsa, where April purchased her parents’ prosthetics business and worked with patients, fitting them with prosthetic limbs. She was eventually able to buy a home.
Though April and Hunter’s father had joint custody of Hunter, the boy spent most of his time at his mom’s house. April was an energetic young mother who loved to move, and she and Hunter would bike near the river, rollerblade, and ice skate together. April and Hunter were close, often sporting matching jean jackets with Winnie-the-Pooh embroidered on the back, a nod to the charmed time they had spent in Florida, when they had frequented Disney World.
As a parent, it was important to April that she did things differently than her own father, and although spanking was commonplace in the 1990s, April never laid a hand on Hunter.
In 1995, April—then a 25-year-old single mom—walked into the Don Carlton Acura dealership to shop for a car. On one of her visits to the dealership, she met Don Carlton’s son, Terry, a man 12 years her senior. April found him handsome and thought he had a beautiful smile. Soon after, he began calling her and courting her. One of their first dates involved a first-class flight to Dallas, and in no time, he was taking her on lavish trips to Jamaica and the Bahamas.
Terry was sweet at first, following the playbook of what is now referred to as “love bombing.” He was even sweet to Hunter, often showing up with gifts for the then-4-year-old. After a few months, on Christmas Eve of 1995, Terry proposed to April, and they planned to marry in the following spring. Within a few months, their relationship deteriorated, and they called off the wedding. Over the next two years, their relationship was on again and off again.
As April has testified, it was on April’s 26th birthday, in April of 1996, that Terry became physically violent with her for the first time, grabbing her throat. Unbeknownst to April, two of Terry’s exes had filed protective orders against him. A few months later, April recalls Terry raping her for the first time, but she did not report it to the authorities.
Over the next two years, April filed multiple protective orders against Terry, yet they did not protect her. She started wearing a panic button around her neck so she could trigger a call to the police as soon as Terry arrived at her house. Yet on two occasions, when April called the authorities, they transported her to psychiatric facilities where she was asked questions suggesting her fears of Terry were paranoid or delusions, questions like, “Do you think people are trying to harm you?” On other occasions, she was refused help.
April recalls feeling pressured by Terry to try illegal substances. She tried cocaine for the first time with Terry, and later methamphetamine. April tells me that Terry hid his drug use at first, but that over the years, Terry abused cocaine, methamphetamine, and other hard drugs like heroin. As April would later explain, with Terry, she used drugs “for a number of complex reasons—mostly to cope. … You see, when I was on drugs, I was far more compliant and tolerated much more abuse than I would have had I been sober. As the violence got worse, so did my drug abuse.”
“I used it to stay awake so that I could be on the lookout for Terry,” she continued. “It’s like when nations at war dope their soldiers with amphetamines so they’ll stay awake and alert: if your enemy is awake, you damn well better be awake and alert yourself.”
Sometime in late 1997 or early 1998, April remembers insisting that her ex-husband keep Hunter at his house for longer than usual because she was worried for her son’s safety. As Terry’s violence worsened, April’s life unraveled. She began to miss work, her business suffered, and she became financially dependent on Terry. April became estranged from friends and family.
As April testified, in February of 1998, Terry broke into April’s home with multiple weapons including a gun, stun gun, billy club, and pepper spray. Surprising her in her bedroom, Terry told April that she “owed him a fuck” before attempting to rape her. During one of these attacks, April grabbed a gun that she had gotten from a friend for protection, and she pointed it at Terry. He tried to grab the gun. April pulled the trigger, but the gun did not fire.
Later that month, Terry showed up at April’s house with a loaded gun, and he was arrested. He failed to appear in court on a gun charge from the night of the arrest, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. Over the next two months, April tells me, Terry’s abuse was nearly constant.
According to April’s repeated accounts, by 1998, Terry’s repertoire of coercive control and torture expanded into beating her, kidnapping her, stalking her, breaking into her home, tapping her phone, cutting off her phone lines, blackmailing her with nude photos, threatening to kill himself, raping her, raping her at gunpoint, and threatening to kill Hunter. It was this last form of abuse that scared April most.
According to Dr. David McLeod, professor and interim director at the University of Oklahoma’s School of Social Work, research shows that a threat of being separated from a child can function as a stronger motivator for behavioral control than hitting: “Women would rather die, literally, than be separated from their children.”
In a 2019 study of incarcerated women in Oklahoma, McLeod and his co-authors found what he describes as “the most significant finding that I’ve ever come across in all of my years of investigation and research.” The finding was a correlation of .94, or a near-perfect 100 percent correlation, between a participant reporting that her partner had made a threat of committing physical and/or sexual violence and his enacting that violence.
April believed that Terry was going to eventually kill her.
As April has recounted numerous times over the years, on April 28, 1998, she went to Terry’s house to plead with him to leave her alone once and for all. Instead, Terry raped her at gunpoint and tried to break her neck.
After the rape, as April has testified, she got ahold of Terry’s .22-caliber pistol, which was fully loaded with a bullet in the chamber. She hid it in her back pocket. April tried to plan an escape from Terry’s house, but when he caught on, he handcuffed her in front of her body and threatened to rape her “up the ass” and kill her. Terry began pulling her toward a couch.
When he let go of her for a moment, April managed to reach the gun in her back pocket. He lunged toward her. April shot. She fired until she emptied the magazine. As April remembers it, Terry died quickly, and April placed a blanket over his body, held his hand through the blanket, and cried.
After April shot Terry, the phone rang, and April picked up. It was a friend. April told her what had happened and that she planned to call the police but wanted to see Hunter first. April remembers feeling a mixture of relief—knowing that Terry could never hurt her son—and sadness. The friend called the police, and officers soon arrived. As reported in a news segment, Tulsa police refused April a rape kit until after an interrogation.
The following day, April was charged with first-degree murder, a charge that suggests intent, deliberation, premeditation, and a disregard for human life. She was taken into custody.
Prior to this, April had never stepped foot inside a jail, and her experience in the county jail felt similar to the constant threat of violence she had experienced at Terry’s hands.
Though April and I didn’t connect until recently, one of my earliest childhood memories is of reading the news of April’s arrest in the local paper. Her photograph took up half the front page. I immediately recognized the woman in the picture as my classmate Hunter’s mom. In the photo, April stood with a police officer. The headline read: “Tulsan Shot to Death at Midtown Residence; Former Girlfriend Jailed.”
I was in the second grade and had only been reading for two years, but I could read this. I didn’t understand. As it would turn out, even a jury wouldn’t understand.
Hunter also learned about the shooting from the Tulsa World. His dad put the newspaper in front of him at the dining table and told him that he should know what everyone else was seeing in the paper. April was in jail for a year awaiting trial. She called Hunter from jail and told him that she would be coming home soon. She believed that she’d been defending herself and protecting her son, and in Oklahoma, deadly force is legal if a person reasonably believes that they are in mortal danger.
April’s parents hired an attorney, and as her family awaited trial, they were hopeful that April would be released. During jury selection, however, the prosecution struck any potential juror who reported experiencing domestic violence, and domestic violence would be a key element of April’s defense.
At trial, April testified about Terry’s abuse. A police officer testified that in 1997 Terry had admitted to drugging April with valium. A sexual assault nurse testified that during her exam on April, she found vaginal tearing, bruising, and redness. April’s neighbor testified about witnessing Terry’s abuse. Terry’s neighbor testified about witnessing Terry’s abuse. April’s defense attorney presented the idea of “Battered Woman Syndrome,” but it was a relatively untested defense.
During the trial, then-District Attorney Tim Harris accused April of “crying rape.” The prosecution told a narrative about a mutually combative couple. There was also a key piece of evidence excluded from trial after the prosecution requested a motion in limine: a recorded phone call in which Terry admitted to abusing April.
Just before April’s 29th birthday, she was convicted of premeditated murder. April was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.
For years after the shooting, April had nightmares that Terry was chasing her, yet she also had dreams of the beginning of their relationship, when he’d seemed like a perfect gentleman.
Many of the details in April’s story are tragically common. “I believe relationship violence is the most significant epidemic in Oklahoma,” McLeod told me.
Oklahoma has the highest rate of violence against women in the nation. Domestic violence homicides in the state are among the nation’s highest as well. Tulsa was, and still is, politically a relatively red city in an even redder red state. Oklahoma ranks low in gun-law strength and high in firearm mortality. In 2014, McLeod and his colleagues published a report that found that Oklahoma has the highest rate of female incarceration in the U.S. (a finding still held in a more recent report). McLeod’s report included a survey of incarcerated women in Oklahoma and found that nearly half were raped after the age of 18, nearly half had violent fathers in their childhood, 43 percent reported PTSD symptoms, two-thirds reported that in their last relationship in the year leading up to their incarceration, their partner had physically abused them, and many reported substance abuse (predominantly methamphetamine). And a majority of these incarcerated women were “first-time offenders.” All of this was true for April.
Until this year, the maximum sentence for strangulation in Oklahoma was three years.
Until 1993, spousal rape was still legal in Oklahoma, as well as in most states.
In prison, despite years of healing from Terry’s abuse, waves of sadness still wash over April. After reading news articles about her case, April sometimes experiences the emotional equivalent of what her father felt after his leg was amputated, a phantom pain for something no longer there.
Around 10 years ago, April’s niece, Amanda, began to help her aunt by scanning files for her parole packet at her graduate school library. Amanda and a friend launched a #FreeAprilWilkens campaign. They reached out to the media, hoping to find anyone who would take an interest in April’s case, and they connected with two local attorneys, Leslie Briggs and Colleen McCarty, who would be instrumental in fighting for April’s freedom. Once the attorneys were on board, Amanda felt validated.
“Oh, I’m not crazy for thinking this isn’t fair,” Amanda remembers thinking at the time.
Briggs and McCarty began making a podcast about April’s case, and they collaborated with a coalition of nonprofits across the country to pass a law in Oklahoma to help survivors, including April. Finally, there was momentum.
In the 2022–2023 legislative session, Oklahoma lawmakers considered a version of this law, but advocates pulled support after prosecutors pressured lawmakers into removing language that would make the bill apply retroactively to cases like April’s. Days later, advocates showed up to the Oklahoma Capitol in all black, mourning the bill and honoring the victims and survivors—including April—who were still incarcerated.
In the 2023–2024 session, a version of the bill with retroactivity passed with nearly unanimous support, giving Oklahoma the opportunity to become the second state after New York to enact such a law. It was a bipartisan effort , endorsed by the Conservative Political Action Coalition and Right on Crime. April’s advocates, and the advocates of other criminalized survivors across the state, were hopeful.
But the bill was quashed with a veto from Gov. Kevin Stitt. Within minutes, the Oklahoma District Attorneys Association put out a statement praising the governor for his veto.
Within weeks, through the persistence of advocates and the threat of a veto override, lawmakers were able to get an only slightly altered version of the bill onto the governor’s desk, which he signed into law.
Amanda, April’s niece, felt immense relief when the governor finally signed the bill. “It has felt like since the bill passed, that I’ve been able to breathe,” she said.
When I first message April over the prison telecom app, she tells me that she remembers Hunter, who was in my second grade class, coming home from school one day and announcing that he had a wife at school named Rachel. Given that I was the only Rachel in our class, April and I think Hunter must have been referring to me.
April’s memories of Hunter’s early childhood are sepia-toned, so sweet that they seem to have been dipped in honey. Reading Winnie-the-Pooh to her little boy, going to the skating rink, watching The Little Mermaid, Hunter’s favorite movie.
April’s incarceration put a tremendous strain on their relationship, and April has only seen Hunter three times since going to prison. Hunter’s father did not take Hunter to visit April in prison for seven years. By the time they visited, Hunter was 14.
For years, April had daydreamed about seeing Hunter again, imagining that he would still be the little boy she remembered. She’d always thought he’d visit while he was still small enough to be picked up and spun around, something he had loved as a child, but at the first visit, the person April saw with her ex-husband was a young man who was bigger than she was.
“Still, I managed to pick him up and spin him around once anyway, as soon as he walked in,” April tells me. They spent the visit laughing, hugging, and crying.
April cherished every single letter, card, and picture Hunter sent her. He sent her books by one of his favorite authors, and April diligently read every single one as if she could get closer to her son by knowing his mind. They spoke on the phone, April wrote to Hunter often, and he replied less often, eventually telling her, “Mom, no one writes letters anymore.”
In 2009, Hunter—then 18—wrote a letter in support of his mother to the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole board. By then, April had been incarcerated for 10 years. In the letter, he wrote that his communication with his mom was limited to phone calls and letters, “around the caliber of a distant relative. It hurt, and it never went away.” This request for commutation—April’s first—was denied.
As April later learned, Hunter harbored anger about what he believed she had done that led to their separation, and he would sometimes stop responding for years at a time during his 20s.
In 2021, they reconnected, and Hunter wrote another letter to the parole board in 2022. By then, Hunter was a 31-year-old man. “From my point of view, I see a woman that the justice system failed in every single way,” he said. He wrote about how having a daughter led him to reconnect with April so his daughter could know her grandma. Though April recalls Hunter always referring to her as “Mom” in phone calls and cards, throughout this letter to the board, Hunter refers to his mother as “April,” like one adult talking about another—around the caliber of a distant relative.
Despite Hunter’s second letter to the board, April was denied a parole hearing. In Oklahoma, the chances of receiving a favorable parole recommendation are low: 2023 data shows odds of around 24 percent. To date, April has been denied parole four times and been denied commutation twice. Two of her appeals were denied by Judge Charles A. Johnson, who wrote the opinion in the state’s first Battered Woman Syndrome defense (Bechtel v. State) overturning a murder charge, in a case that offered a similar argument to April’s a few years before April’s trial. It was later revealed that in 1996, Johnson had officiated the marriage of Terry’s father, Don Carlton, and Carlton’s third wife.
On Aug. 29, 2024, April’s attorneys filed a request to apply for resentencing pursuant to the Oklahoma Survivors’ Act, which went into effect that day. April’s is the first request to be filed. The next steps in this process involve the court reviewing the request and deciding whether to grant April’s attorneys the right to submit the full application and request a hearing. If the court moves forward, April will appear in court, at the same courthouse where she was initially tried. The hearing itself will function like a mini trial, at which the prosecution can only enter facts that are relevant to the question of sentencing.
Neither the DA nor the judge will be the same as those present at April’s original trial. After April’s trial, Terry’s father, Don Carlton, donated to District Attorney Tim Harris’ reelection campaign and the two became personal friends. Harris was in office until 2014, when he did not seek reelection, and he was succeeded by current District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler.
When I ask April’s attorney, Colleen McCarty, about April’s original trial, she tells me that she believed the prosecution used Terry’s abuse to establish motive, as if April was angry and wanted to retaliate. After recently interviewing one of the jurors, McCarty has come to believe that “it was not effectively communicated to [the jury], that if [April] was in fear of her life, in the moment, without the opportunity to retreat, that she can take lethal action.”
McCarty also believes that the trial’s focus on methamphetamines also affected the outcome. Methamphetamine use grew significantly in the ’90s, a time when addiction wasn’t well understood. She describes the prosecution using pervasive fears about methamphetamines to frighten members of the jury.
If a hearing is granted under the Oklahoma Survivors’ Act, it will offer a fresh start for April’s legal team to share her story and the evidence of Terry’s abuse and argue for April’s release.
Just weeks after the law’s passage, the Tulsa County District Attorney’s Office drafted a waiver asking defendants accepting plea bargains to sign away the right to have this law used.
While this waiver will not apply to retroactive cases like April’s, it is troubling, as the domestic violence epidemic in the U.S. is still raging, and there will likely be more women like April for years to come, given that a variety of factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic, have led to a troubling resurgence of domestic violence in recent years.
Last week, a judge in Oklahoma’s Seminole County granted the first hearing under the Oklahoma Survivors’ Act to Lisa Rae Moss. April has not yet heard from the court in Tulsa County about her request.
While she and her attorneys await news about her request, April stays busy. She is currently organizing a 5K run inside Mabel Bassett Correctional Facility that will benefit Project: SAFE, a local nonprofit for survivors of domestic violence. She also leads a program she created that involves nutrition, health and wellness education, running, and high-intensity interval training.
If April is released from prison, she hopes to do prosthetics for people who have lost limbs, potentially in Ukraine. She knows that with a felony record, it will likely be difficult to practice in the U.S.
April also hopes to spend time with her granddaughter, who is now 6 years old, almost the age Hunter was at the time of the shooting. She dreams of taking the little girl rollerblading, though she knows she needs to be careful: “I’m not as young as I used to be.”
During a phone call, April’s granddaughter—who April has not yet met in person—told her that she wants to play tag with her grandma, before asking April if she’s old.
“I said, ‘I’m old, but I can still outrun you,’ ” April tells me, laughing.
When I ask her about her experience of recounting Terry’s abuse, April tells me about working as a prosthetist with people who have experienced amputations.
“One of the things that we teach them to do is to massage that over repeatedly throughout the day, to desensitize it,” April says. “Reliving [the trauma] does that, in a way. And I don’t know that that’s always necessarily a bad thing.”
“I don’t know that it’s a good thing to push things down and never talk about them,” she says. After a moment, April adds: “Silence also perpetuates abuse. And it perpetuates injustice.”