Dr. April Gould provides expert analysis, consultation, and testimony in criminal and civil cases involving domestic violence/intimate partner violence, hate crimes, gang violence, and homicide. She is a Criminology Expert at Park Dietz & Associates and has been retained as an expert witness or consulting expert in more than 20 criminal and civil matters involving homicides, domestic violence, gang violence, bias-motivated violence, and death penalty cases.

Dr. Gould specializes in helping attorneys and juries understand the behavioral dynamics underlying violent crime. Her areas of expert opinion include the dynamics of domestic violence and coercive control, risk and lethality assessment in intimate partner violence, hate crime and terrorism motivation and radicalization pathways, gang violence, and child abuse and neglect. She has developed and presented continuing legal education programs for the National District Attorneys' Association on topics including lethality risk assessment and effective communication with vulnerable populations, and she has served as an NDAA Subject Matter Expert.

Dr. Gould's academic research directly informs her casework. Her doctoral dissertation analyzed 280 women involved in terrorism who collectively killed 975 victims and attempted to kill over 3,700 others — research that redefined the understanding of grievances in radicalization and overturned widely held misconceptions in the field. She has published in peer-reviewed journals including Behavioral Sciences and the Law, the Journal of Threat Assessment and Management, and the Journal of Qualitative Criminal Justice and Criminology, and her work appears in the German Handbook of Terrorism. Her research on the Moral-Situational Action Model of Extremist Violence was conducted in collaboration with the Federal Bureau of Investigation through the University of Virginia's Institute of Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy.

Dr. Gould's applied experience spans forensic interviewing, qualitative and quantitative research, and case analysis involving over 9,500 of cases in criminal and civil litigation. She has conducted interviews with current and former terrorists, gang members, law enforcement officers, and victims of child abuse, sexual assault, and domestic violence. She has also appeared as an expert in the Paramount+ true crime documentary My Nightmare Stalker: The Eva LaRue Story (2025).

Dr. Gould holds a Ph.D. in Sociology with concentrations in Criminology and Medical Sociology from the University of California, Riverside, where she was a Chancellor's Distinguished Fellow. She also holds an M.P.H. in Health Policy, Law, and Ethics from the University of Virginia and a B.A. in Public Health Policy from the University of California, Irvine (Cum Laude). She is a Certified Research Professional through the International Institute for Procurement and Market Research.

Representative case types include: murder, domestic violence homicide, gang violence, hate crimes at places of worship, child abuse and neglect, stalking, assault, and battery, and premises liability involving gun violence.