Tennessee mother skeptical of daughter’s ‘suicide’ confirmed by husband’s confession

A mother’s fight for answers about her daughter’s death paid off as her resilience led her daughter’s husband to confess to his murder, which was initially ruled a suicide.

“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, ‘This just doesn’t make any sense,'” said Jamie Dickerson, April’s mother. Holt, 29, at Fox News Digital.

April Holt was a young mother of two and the wife of 33-year-old Donovan Holt. The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD) said April was found nearly lifeless in their Antioch apartment with a plastic bag tied tightly around her neck in July 2023.

Dickerson said she had a lockout with kids from her church on July 28, 2023, and her daughter was supposed to come help chaperone, but had to cancel and take her son to his soccer game.

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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 out and got up. The next morning I cleaned up, jumped in the shower and laid down, and saw that she had sent me a text, and he would just say, ‘How was the lockout?’ I can’t come see the Barbie movie today because Donovan had to work and she was just telling me she’d meet me at church the next day so I laid down and didn’t answer her, Dickerson said. “That’s the last text I got from her.”

Dickerson said she went back to sleep and an hour later Donovan Holt called and said he found April unconscious in the shower and was on his way with her to the hospital because she was not breathing. not.

“So I jumped in my car, but as soon as I got the first phone call, I was like, ‘Something’s wrong. April is in perfect health. “About an hour and a half ago she texted me so something is wrong. I thought maybe she hit her head because she passed out. why don’t you Was she just not breathing? I didn’t know,” Dickerson said.

When she arrived at the hospital, Dickerson said she looked into her daughter’s eyes and when she knew she wasn’t there anymore, she knew she was gone.

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Jamie Dickerson said she knew her daughter April Holt didn’t kill herself after making plans and receiving a text message from her the night she died. (Jamie Dickerson)

Dickerson said she immediately noticed that April’s husband, Donovan Holt, was acting strangely.

“From that moment on, when I walked into the hospital room, he was rocking, pacing. And I’m curled up in a ball on a bench next to him, crying hysterically and I call on God to save my child, even though I knew deep down that she was gone,” Dickerson said.

“So he’s sitting there and he’s holding his head, and he’s acting really weird, and he says, ‘Her throat hurt this morning. She wasn’t acting like herself.’ He was doing the strangest things and I was like, “Why are you saying that now?” And then he handed me his phone and said, “Well, you can make all the medical decisions for her.” here’s his phone,’” Dickerson continued.

Dickerson said she didn’t find out until later that April had a bag over her head. She said Donovan claimed he told doctors, who said they didn’t know about it.

The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD) told Fox News Digital that the April case was an unclassified death that had been under investigation for months.

Police said no evidence had been developed to counter the explanation given by Donovan Holt in interviews during that time, and that the police department was in consultation with the medical examiner’s office and the office of the district attorney, who initially ruled his death a suicide.

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Jamie Dickerson says her daughter April Holt didn’t kill herself and her mother’s intuition proved right. (Jamie Dickerson Facebook)

Dickerson said that although her daughter’s death was initially ruled a suicide, she found an additional 47-page report containing evidence proving her daughter did not kill herself, and she was determined to make confess to his son-in-law that he killed her.

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, Dickerson said.

“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 shocked. And I know it seems very strange, especially when he confessed to me, because I already knew it for years. I dealt with those emotions. The hardest part was “It’s that I haven’t allowed myself to really grieve or heal yet, so I’m just entering this season,” Dickerson said.

Detectives reopened the case once Dickerson reported Donovan Holt’s confession.

“A fresh look was even taken at the investigative file. After the victim’s mother reported a conversation she had with Mr. Holt, the investigation into the death was immediately reopened and detectives from the MNPD traveled to Texas for further questioning, during which he implicated himself in “The Death of April Holt,” police told Fox News Digital in a statement.

Donovan Holt was arrested in San Antonio, Texas, and returned to Nashville Friday afternoon. He was charged with reckless homicide, false reporting and tampering with evidence after a grand jury indictment.

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Jamie Dickerson’s instincts led him to confess to murder in a cold case in Nashville that Nashville police had initially ruled was a suicide. (Jamie Dickerson Facebook)

When asked if she ever thought her son-in-law could do that, Dickerson said she wasn’t surprised at all.

“He was obsessed with April. The weird thing is, it’s like you see these movies, and they love someone so much that they’re willing to do literally anything. I think it “It was him because she had already left him, and he slept outside her apartment, he slept in her car if it was unlocked,” Dickerson recalled.

“And it’s heartbreaking. It’s absolutely heartbreaking. And so I’m not shocked. I think when she said that, this time, she was very serious. She said, I’m getting a divorce and two weeks later , she was dead,” Dickerson continued.

Dickerson added that she is so relieved to know that Donovan is behind bars and that her grandson is safe with her after the trauma he suffered that day.

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“You killed the person you were supposed to love, then you put a trash bag over her head and had lunch? Like she wasn’t dead in the other room? And then you sent your son there “He’s going to be traumatized for the rest of his life, it’s just weird,” Dickerson said.

Although she is angry at Donovan for taking April away from him, Dickerson said she doesn’t want to hurt him and hopes he finds peace because April wouldn’t want her to harbor hatred .

“As a Christian woman, I pray that his heart will be healed. That’s what I would want for him. I know that’s what April would want. And even after he killed my daughter, that’s what I would for him. And I would. I want everyone to be able to have eternal life,” Dickerson said.