The Assassination of April Kauffmann

apropos of nothing

It's a rare day when a radio DJ gets assassinated. Sure AM talk radio gets heated sometimes but the AM radio audience is aging. 80 year olds just are typically not able to engage in much more than tough talk. Even the median age of an AM listener by TSL is over 50. [SOURCE]  (Not to belabor the point but studies that show the majority of radio listening is at home or Gen Z are radio fans are not really plausible when the opposite is shown to be true in studies about boomers.) [SOURCE] But in researching this I found a shocking number of murdered DJs. I would not have rated it a dangerous vocation but apparently that is the case.

Anyway back to DJ assassinations. The most famous one was Alan Berg, people seem to know that name. He was killed by Neo-Nazis in 1984. [LINK] But maybe we need to define our terms a bit. It's all too easy to find DJs who are bumped off by their domestic partners, even in a premeditated fashion. In 1989 Alberto Martino a DJ at WIBF was killed by his girlfriend Lydia Alvarez. So was Mike Webb in 2007 by his partner Scott White. The murder of Stephon “Juan Gatti” Edgerton of WGOV remains unsolved. John O'Leary of WWWW and WCSX in 2021 also by his partner. More recently in 2022 Tasheka 'TySheeks' Young at WJGL was allegedly killed by the father of 2 of her kids Bursey Armstrong. In 2023 Gaby Ramos of 1550 KMRI-AM was killed by her ex-boyfriend...the list goes on. So lets limit this to premeditated murders which display at intent to achieve political or financial gain. We are excluding so-called crimes of passion, crimes of opportunity and by extension this also excludes murders with no motive at all, as in the bizarre case of the murder of WEAA's Tyra Womack in 2020.   

Not this WIBG.

Motive is difficult to parse. In other words "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!" Despite all that complexity I have found one more case in the U.S. of a radio DJ who was clearly assassinated in that very sense of the word. The story is so riveting it's made it to the murder podcasts. [LINK]

Radio talk show host April Kauffmann of WIBG was murdered in 2012 insider her home in Linwood, NJ. The circumstances are strange to say the least. First let's establish that we're talking about 94.3 WIBG-FM in Avalon, NJ. They acquired those calls in 2009, having spent the prior decade as WILW and WWZK respectively. They've not held a single brand or call sign for even a 10 years stretch to it doesn't really merit digging into. However, they have been using the "Wibbage" branding and a vaguely echoic classic hits format since 2009 in an homage to the original "Wibbage."  Let's get back to that murder story.

 

In the original story, April's husband Jim, a 68-year-olddoctor, left for work at 5:30 AM, before the murder. But pathologist Dr. Michael Baden put the timing earlier, around 2:00 AM which would implicate the husband. Strangely the Prosecutor’s Office never acknowledged that Baden’s opinion was sought, nor that the pathologist put Kauffman’s time of death in conflict with her husbands version of events. Instead of a simple, the-husband-did-it tale, the prosecutor Damon Tyner, put forth the states version of events with assistance from the FBI for which they indicted 7 people. More here.

• Ferdinand Augello, 61, Petersburg, NJ - Charged with 1st degree Leader of a Drug Trafficking Network, 1st degree Racketeering, Murder (April Kauffman), Attempted Murder (James Kauffman), Distribution of a Controlled Dangerous Substance, Conspiracy to Distribute a Controlled Dangerous Substance
• Joseph Mulholland, 52, Villas, NJ - Charged with 1st degree Racketeering, Distribution of a Controlled Dangerous Substance, Conspiracy to Distribute a Controlled Dangerous Substance
• Beverly Augello, 47, Summerland Keys, FL - Charged with 1st degree Racketeering, Distribution of a Controlled Dangerous Substance, Conspiracy to Distribute a Controlled Dangerous Substance
• Glenn Seeler, 37, Sanford, NC - Charged with 1st degree Racketeering, Distribution of a Controlled Dangerous Substance, Conspiracy to Distribute a Controlled Dangerous Substance
• Paul Pagano, 61, Egg Harbor Township, NJ - Charged with 1st degree Racketeering, Distribution of a Controlled Dangerous Substance, Conspiracy to Distribute a Controlled Dangerous Substance
• Tabitha Chapman, 35, Absecon, NJ - Charged with 1st degree Racketeering, Distribution of a Controlled Dangerous Substance, Conspiracy to Distribute a Controlled Dangerous Substance
• Cheryl Pizza, 36, Murrells Inlet, SC - Charged with 1st degree Racketeering, Distribution of a Controlled Dangerous Substance, Conspiracy to Distribute a Controlled Dangerous Substance

According to Tyner, Kauffman planned his wife's demise after she threatened to divorce him and expose his illegal drug operation which involved the Pagan Outlaw Motorcycle Gang. We are short on first person information as the supposed trigger-man, Ferdinand Augello, died of a somewhat suspicious drug overdose a year after the killing. Then Dr. James Kauffman committed suicide while in jail in 2018. But according to their version of events James paid the Pagan's over $20,000 to do the job.  A grand jury indicted the seven and after the The remaining six defendants face racketeering, conspiracy and drug distribution charges. [SOURCE]

But years later, without those two key figures, the judicial process ground to a halt. Anecdotally, we learn that Kauffman was a volatile character, lied about his military service, in that he had none; that he made hundreds of calls to a "burner phone" in the months preceding the murder; that he tried to collect on April's $600,000 life insurance policy while in jail,  It is also theorized that what may have driven Kauffman's suicide was a brewing civil case he was even more likely to lose. [SOURCE] It has been reported that when his office was raided he brandished a Ruger 9mm handgun and engaged in a 45-minute standoff with authorities threatened to shoot himself and police.  Inexplicably Tyner described the the raids as unrelated to the slaying of April Kauffman. Even his own step-daughter thought he was guilty.

As for her radio career it's hard to find much. April Kauffman hosted "The King Arthur Show" on radio station WIBG for "several months" according to news sources. She took over the Saturday Morning program from Frank Pileggi who was the Manager of a local Pub. Even a book about the murder, Doctor Dealer by George Anastasia failed to add any color to April's professional career. At 47 years old I presume she had worked in broadcasting elsewhere.