Tennessee mother is skeptical about her daughter’s ‘suicide’ and is vindicated by her husband’s confession

A mother’s fight for answers about her daughter’s death paid off as her resilience led to her daughter’s husband confessing about 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 she just had plans for the future. Usually people don’t say, ‘I’ll meet you at church.’ the next morning.’ I put all these pieces together and I’m like, none of it makes sense,” Jamie Dickerson, mother of 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 nearly lifeless in her Antioch apartment in July 2023 with a plastic bag taped tightly around her neck.

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

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“So I did the blocking and got up. The next morning I was cleaning, jumped in the shower and was just lying down and I saw that she had sent me a text and it was just like, ‘How did the lockdown go?’ “I can’t make it to the Barbie movie today because Donovan had to work” and so she just told me she would meet me at church the next day. And so I lay down and didn’t answer her. Dickerson said. “It was the last text I ever got from her.”

Dickerson said she fell asleep again, and an hour later, Donovan Holt called and said he found April unresponsive in the shower and was taking her to the hospital because she wasn’t breathing.

“So I jumped in my car, but as soon as I got the first call I thought, ‘Something’s wrong. April is in good health.’ She texted me about an hour and a half ago, so I thought maybe she had passed out because I didn’t know. “Why wouldn’t she just breathe? I didn’t know anything about it,” Dickerson said.

When she arrived at the hospital, Dickerson said she looked into her daughter’s eyes and knew she was no longer there, 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 on the night of her death. (Jamie Dickerson)

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

“From that second I walked into the room at the hospital he was just rocking like he was pacing. And I’m curled up on a bench next to him, crying hysterically and just crying out to God to save my child, even though in my gut I knew she was gone,” Dickerson said.

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

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

The Metro 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 was presented to refute Donovan Holt’s statement in interviews during that period, and the police department consulted with the coroner’s office and district attorney’s office, which initially ruled her death a suicide.

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Jamie Dickerson says her daughter April Holt did not commit suicide and that her mother’s intuition proved correct. (Jamie DickersonFacebook)

Dickerson said that although her daughter’s death was initially ruled a suicide, she found a 47-page cold case report with evidence that her daughter did not kill herself and she was determined to get her son-in-law to do so to confess 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’s when I confronted him (Donovan) and he confessed to me and then I went to the police,” Dickerson said. “I wasn’t shocked. And I know that sounds very strange, especially when he confessed to me, because I had known about it for years. I processed these emotions. The harder part is that I haven’t allowed myself to, so I have to really grieve or heal now,” Dickerson said.

Investigators reopened the case after Dickerson reported Donovan Holt’s confession.

“A new look even went through the investigation 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 re-interview him, implicating himself in the matter.” April Holt’s death,” police said in a statement to Fox News Digital.

Donovan Holt was arrested in San Antonio, Texas, and returned to Nashville Friday afternoon. After a grand jury indictment, he was charged with involuntary manslaughter, false reporting and tampering with evidence.

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Jamie Dickerson’s instincts led to a murder confession in a cold case in Nashville that Nashville police initially ruled a suicide. (Jamie DickersonFacebook)

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

“He was obsessed with April. The strange thing is that in these films you love someone so much that they are willing to do literally anything. I think he was because she had already left him once. and he would sleep outside her apartment if it was unlocked,” Dickerson recalls.

“And it’s heartbreaking. It’s absolutely heartbreaking. And I’m just not shocked. I think when she said it 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 very relieved knowing 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, and then you put a trash bag over her head and ate her lunch? Like she wasn’t dead in the next room? And then you sent your son there to be traumatized for the rest of his life. It’s just bizarre,” Dickerson said.

Although Dickerson was angry at Donovan for taking April away from her, he said she didn’t want to harm him and hoped he found peace because April didn’t want her to harbor hatred.

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