When April Holt’s husband called her mother and said she was unresponsive, she knew something about his story seemed off. Jamie Dickerson told Fox News Digital that her daughter was in good health and happy and would never die by suicide, yet that’s what many deemed happened. April Holt’s husband, Donavan Holt, 33, reportedly had a history of strange and possessive behaviors, but April never thought he could murder her. Apparently, she was dead wrong.
April Holt, 29, died on July 29, 2023, at her Nashville, Tennessee, apartment, and at the time, only her mother suspected her husband. Dickerson worked diligently to prove Donavan Holt had committed murder and ultimately got him to confess. Now, she hopes she can live in peace.
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April Holt was supposed to be with her mom the night before she died.
Dickerson explained to Fox News Digital that she and her daughter planned to be together for a church lockout the night before she died, but April Holt canceled to take her son to a football game.
“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,” Dickerson said. “And so I laid down, and I didn’t reply to her. It was the last text I ever got from her.”
An hour later, she received the call that would change everything.
Donavon Holt called Dickerson and said he’d found his wife unresponsive in the shower.
“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,” Dickerson told the news outlet. “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.”
She said her son-in-law acted strangely at the time.
“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,” Dickerson told Fox News Digital. “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 later found out something concerning.
She said April Holt had a bag over her head, something her husband allegedly told doctors, yet medical staff claimed to be unaware of this significant detail.
The Metro Nashville Police Department told Fox News Digital that April Holt’s death was unclassified and under investigation, despite the medical examiner initially calling it suicide.
The mom wanted answers.
Dickerson didn’t believe her daughter, a mother of two, would kill herself. She found a 47-page cold case supplement that she said proved Donavon Holt was her daughter’s killer. The document noted that only Donovan Holt’s fingerprints were found on the bag and tape that was over April’s head, not April’s, according to Fox News Digital. Dickerson wanted him to confess.
“That is when I confronted him (Donovan), and he confessed to me, and so that is when I went to the police. I wasn’t shocked,” she said. “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.”
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Police arrested Donavon Holt.
As soon as Dickerson reported the confession, police reopened the case. The 33-year-old was arrested in San Antonio, Texas, and brought back to Nashville. He was charged with reckless homicide, false reporting, and tampering with evidence.
Dickerson told Fox News Digital that, sadly, she was not surprised.
“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 said.
“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,” the grieving mother added.
