A mother’s fight for answers about death of his daughter Her resilience resulted in her daughter’s husband confessing to her murder, which was initially ruled a suicide.
“There were things that made me believe… I just knew it wasn’t suicide, it was like he had made plans for the future. People, you know, don’t usually say, ‘I ‘See you at church the next morning.’ “I was putting all these pieces together, and I thought it didn’t make any sense,” Jamie Dickerson, mother of 29-year-old April Holt, told Fox News Digital.
April Holt was a young mother of two and wife of 33-year-old Donovan Holt. The Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) said April was found nearly lifeless at their Apartment in Antioch A plastic bag was stuck tightly around his neck in July 2023.
Dickerson said she hosted a lockout with her church’s kids on July 28, 2023, and her daughter was supposed to come and help chaperone, but she had to cancel and take her son to his football game.
April Holt’s death was ruled a suicide until her mother and police obtained a confession from her husband, Donovan Holt. (Jamie Dickerson Facebook)
“So I locked up and got up. The next morning, I cleaned up, I jumped in the shower and I just laid down, and I saw that he had sent me a message, and he just said, ‘How did the lockup go?’ I couldn’t come to the Barbie movie today because Donovan had to work and so she told me she’d meet me at church the next day and so I laid down, and I didn’t answer her.” Dickerson said. “That was the last message I got from him.”
Dickerson said she went back to sleep and an hour later, Donovan Holt called and said he found April unresponsive in the shower and that he was going with her to the hospital because she Wasn’t breathing.
“So I got in my car, but when I got the first call, I said, ‘Something’s not right. April is in perfect health.’ About an hour and a half ago, she messaged me that she was fine, because I didn’t know why she was breathing. ,” Dickerson said.
Upon arriving at the hospital, Dickerson said she looked into her daughter’s eyes and knew she was no longer there, she knew she was gone.
Jamie Dickerson said she knew her daughter April Holt did not kill herself after planning and receiving a message from her the night of her death. (Jamie Dickerson)
Dickerson said she immediately noticed April’s husband, Donovan Holt, was acting strange.
“From the moment I walked into the hospital room, he was just shaking, like pacing. And I was curled up in a ball on a bench next to him, just crying like crazy and just God. To save my baby, even though I knew inside she was gone,” Dickerson said.
“So he’s sitting there and he’s holding his head, and he’s acting really weird, and he’s like, ‘Her throat was hurting this morning.’ She wasn’t behaving like herself. ‘ He was doing weird things and I said, ‘Why are you saying that now?’ And then she gave me her phone and said, ‘Okay, you can make all the medical decisions for her and this is her phone,'” Dickerson continued.
Dickerson said she didn’t realize April had a bag over her head until later. He said Donovan claimed to tell the doctors, who said they were not aware of it.
Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) told Fox News Digital that the April case was an unclassified death case that had been under investigation for months.
Police stated that no evidence had been developed to refute the explanations Donovan Holt gave during interviews in that time period, and the Police Department was consulting with the Medical Examiner’s Office and the District Attorney’s Office, who initially investigated his case. The death was considered suicide.
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Jamie Dickerson says her daughter April Holt did not commit suicide and her mother’s intuition proved correct. (Jamie Dickerson Facebook)
Dickerson said that even though her daughter’s death was initially ruled a suicide, she received a 47-page cold case supplement report that contained evidence that her daughter did not kill herself, and she was determined to get her son-in-law to confess. She was determined. He killed him.
Dickerson said the key piece of evidence in the police investigative report was that only Donovan Holt’s fingerprints were found on the bag and tape, not April’s.
“That’s when I confronted him (Donovan) and he confessed to me and that’s when I went to the police,” Dickerson said. “I wasn’t surprised. And I know it feels very strange, especially when he confessed to me, because I already knew for years. I’ve been processing these emotions. The hard thing is that I myself To really grieve or heal has yet to happen, so I’m just entering that season,” Dickerson said.
Detectives reopen the case after Dickerson is informed of Donovan Holt’s confession.
“New eyes also turned to the investigation file. After the victim’s mother reported her conversation with Mr. Holt, the death investigation was immediately reopened, and MNPD detectives went to Texas to re-interrogate him, during which He implicated himself in April Holt’s death,” police told Fox News Digital in a statement.
Donovan Holt was arrested in San Antonio, Texas and returned to Nashville on Friday afternoon. he was accused With reckless murder, Following indictment by a grand jury for false reporting and tampering with evidence.
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Jamie Dickerson’s tendencies led to a murder confession in a Nashville cold case that Nashville police initially ruled a suicide. (Jamie Dickerson Facebook)
Asked if he ever thought his son-in-law could do such a thing, Dickerson said he was not surprised at all.
“He was obsessed with April. So the weird thing is you watch these movies, and they love someone so much that they’re willing to do literally anything. I think he was that because he loved her first. She had just left, and he would sleep outside her apartment if it was unlocked,” Dickerson recalled.
“And it’s heartbreaking. It’s absolutely heartbreaking. And so I’m just, I’m not surprised. I think she was very serious when she said it this time. She said, I’m getting a divorce. And two weeks later he was dead,” Dickerson continued.
Dickerson said he was relieved to learn of Donovan is behind bars And that their grandson is safe with them after the trauma he went through that day.
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“You killed the person you were supposed to love, and then you put a garbage bag over her head and ate lunch? Like she wasn’t dead in the other room? And then you shocked your son.” Sent there to live out the rest of his life is absolutely bizarre,” Dickerson said.
Despite being angry at Donovan for taking April away from her, Dickerson said that she does not want to harm her and hopes that she will find peace because April would not want her to hold a grudge against him.
“As a Christian woman, I pray that her heart gets right. That’s what I want for her. I know that’s what April would want, too. And even after killing my daughter, I would want that for her. And I would like anyone to be able to have eternal life,” Dickerson said.
