A mother’s persistence uncovered the truth about her Tennessee daughter’s death, leading to her husband’s murder confession after it was initially ruled a suicide.
FOX News Digital reports that April Holt, a mother of two and wife of 33-year-old Donovan Holt, was found unresponsive in their Antioch apartment in July 2023, with a plastic bag taped around her neck, according to the Metro Nashville Police Department.
Her mother, Jamie Dickerson, said she hosted a lock-in with kids from her church on July 28, 2023. Her daughter had planned to help chaperone but canceled to take her son to a football game.
When she returned an hour later, she found her daughter deceased. However, April Holt’s actions prior to death led her to believe that foul play may have been involved.
“There were things that led me to believe… I just knew it wasn’t suicide, it was like she just had plans for a future. People, you know, don’t usually say, ‘I’ll meet you at church the next morning.’ I was putting all these pieces together, and I’m like, It’s just none of it made sense,” Jamie Dickerson, mother to 29-year-old April Holt, told Fox News Digital.
“So I did the lockout and got up. The next morning, I cleaned, I jumped in the shower and I just laid down, and I saw that she had texted me, and it just said, ‘How did the lockup go? I can’t make it to the Barbie movie today because Donovan had to work’ and so she was just telling me that she would meet me at church the next day. And so I laid down, and I didn’t reply to her. “It was the last text I ever got from her.”
Dickerson said that while at the hospital, she noticed her son-in-law acting strange.
“From that second on, when I got into the room at the hospital, he was just like rocking, like pacing. And I’m curled up in a ball on a bench next to him, just hysterically crying and just calling out to God to save my child. Even though I knew in my gut that she was gone,” Dickerson said.
“So he’s sitting there and he’s holding his head, and he just acts real weird, and he’s like, ‘Her throat was hurting this morning. She wasn’t acting like herself.’ He was doing the weirdest things. And I was like, ‘Why are you even saying this right now?’ And then he hands me her phone and was like, ‘Well, you can make all medical decisions for her and here’s her phone.”
@jamiedickerson22https://gofund.me/9f5d8273 Hey, what’s up? I started a GoFundMe to honor April’s memory by opening a grief center for our community; your donation could make a huge difference in helping people heal together. If you could click the link below to donate or share it around, that would be amazing. Thanks so much!♬ original sound – Jamie Dickerson April Holt mom
KBTX reports that Dickerson spent hours each day seeking answers about April’s death. She filed complaints, prompting the Metro Nashville Police Department to reopen the case, resulting in a “47-page report.”
The report indicated that police found “two hits” on the duct roll tape used to wrap the bag around April Holt’s head. Dickerson confronted Donovan about the fingerprints, and that’s when he reportedly admitted he killed his wife.
“I’m not shocked,” she told KBTX. “I’ve been doing this for a year knowing what happened; I already knew.”
Police subsequently charged Donovan Holt with reckless homicide, false reporting, and evidence tampering. Dickerson is pushing for a first-degree murder charge and child endangerment.
Meanwhile, Holt, who was arrested in San Antonio, was extradited back to Texas, where he remains behind bars in $75,000 bond, online court records stated.
His arraignment is scheduled for October 23. Check back for updates.
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[Featured image: April Holt/Handout]
