A mother’s fight for answers about the death of her daughter paid off as her resilience led to a confession from her daughter’s husband about her murder that 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, It’s just none of it made sense,” Jamie Dickerson, mother to 29-year-old April Holt, told Fox News Digital.
April Holt was a young mother of two and the wife of 33-year-old Donovan Holt. The Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) said April was found almost lifeless at their apartment in Antioch with a plastic bag taped tightly around her neck in July 2023.
Dickerson said she hosted a lockout with kids from her church on July 28, 2023, and her daughter was supposed to come over and help chaperone, but had to cancel and take her son to his football game.
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April Holt’s death was ruled a suicide, until her mother and police gained a confession from her husband, Donovan Holt. (Jamie Dickerson Facebook)
“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,” Dickerson said. “It was the last text I ever got from her.”
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 on his way to the hospital with her as she was not breathing.
“So I jumped in my car, but even right when I got the first phone call, I was like, ‘Something’s not right. April’s in perfectly good health.’ An hour and a half ago or so, she texted me perfectly fine. So something’s not right. Like I thought maybe she had passed out. Maybe she hit her head because she passed out. I didn’t know. I mean, like, why would she just not be breathing? I didn’t know anything about it,” Dickerson said.
Upon arrival at the hospital, Dickerson said she looked into her daughter’s eyes and knew she was not 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 getting a text from her the night of her death. (Jamie Dickerson)
Dickerson said she immediately noticed that April’s husband, Donovan Holt, was acting strangely.
“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,'” Dickerson continued.
Dickerson said she did not find out until later that April had a bag over her head. She said Donovan claimed to tell the doctors, who said they were not aware.
The Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) told Fox News Digital that April’s case was an unclassified death that had been under investigation for months.
Police said no evidence was developed to counter Donovan Holt’s explanation given during interviews in that time period, and the police department was in consultation with the Medical Examiner’s Office and the District Attorney’s Office, who initially ruled her death as a suicide.
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Jamie Dickerson says her daughter April Holt did not commit suicide and her mother’s intuition was proven right. (Jamie Dickerson Facebook)
Dickerson said even though the death of her daughter was first ruled a suicide, she found a 47-page cold case supplement report with evidence proving her daughter did not kill herself, and she was determined to get her son-in-law to confess that he killed her.
The key piece of evidence in the police investigation report was that only Donovan Holt’s fingerprints were found on the bag and tape, not April’s, Dickerson said.
“That is when I confronted him (Donovan) and he confessed to me and so that is when I went to the police,” said Dickerson. “I wasn’t shocked. And I know that sounds very strange, especially when he gave me the confession, because I had already known for years. I’ve been processing these emotions. The harder part is, I didn’t allow myself to really grieve or heal yet. So I’m just now entering that season of that,” Dickerson said.
Detectives reopened the case once Dickerson reported Donovan Holt’s confession.
“A fresh set of eyes even went over the investigative file. After the victim’s mother reported a conversation she had with Mr. Holt, the death investigation was immediately reopened, and MNPD detectives traveled to Texas to reinterview 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 charged with reckless homicide, false reporting and tampering with evidence after an indictment by the grand jury.
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Jamie Dickerson’s instincts led to a murder confession in a Nashville cold case that Nashville police initially ruled a suicide. (Jamie Dickerson Facebook)
When asked if she ever thought her son-in-law could do this, Dickerson said she was not surprised at all.
“He had an obsession with April. So the weird part is, is like you see these movies, and they love somebody so much that they’re willing to do literally anything. I think that was him because she’d left him before, and he would sleep outside of her apartment. He would sleep in her car if it was unlocked,” Dickerson recalled.
“And it’s heartbreaking. It’s absolutely heartbreaking. And so I’m just, I’m not shocked. I think that 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 has so much relief knowing that Donovan is behind bars and that her grandson is safe with her after the trauma he was put through that day.
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“The person you were supposed to love, you killed, and then you put a trash bag over her head and ate lunch? Like she wasn’t in the other room dead? And then you sent your son in there to be traumatized for the rest of his life. It’s just bizarre,” Dickerson said.
Despite being angry at Donovan for taking April away from her, Dickerson said she does not want harm to him and hopes he finds peace because April would not want her harboring hate.
“As a Christian woman, I pray that his heart gets right. That’s what I would want for him. I know it’s what April would want. And even after killing my daughter, that is what I’d want for him. And I would want anybody to be able to have everlasting life,” Dickerson said.
