Man Who Only Confessed to Strangling Wife After Her Mother Confronted Him Sentenced

Holt pleaded guilty to reckless homicide, tampering with evidence and false reporting. This after the death of his wife April Holt, who was found July 31, 2023 in the couple’s bathroom with a plastic bag taped tightly around her neck, was initially ruled a suicide.

That ruling was amended after April’s mother, Jamie Dickerson, investigated the case independently, eventually confronting her daughter’s alleged killer on her own and getting him to confess on a FaceTime recording she then handed over to police.

“I knew that April was unhappy. She requested a divorce two weeks prior, and she was dead two weeks later,” Dickerson told Fox affiliate WTVC in September. “She had bruises on her wrists, her neck, her ankles, her thighs and none of it was taken as evidence.”

Dickerson told Fox affiliate WZTV that police refused to believe her that her daughter’s death was a suicide, so she took the investigation into her own hands.

Speaking with ABC affiliate WKRN, Dickerson said that in the immediate aftermath of her daughter being found, Donovan “was acting very, very strange.” She described him as “holding his head. He was rocking and pacing.”

Additionally raising a red flag for her was that she claims Donovan told her she could make all medical decisions for her daughter, and even gave her his wife’s cellphone.

She further told the outlet that April’s son was at home when the incident occurred, and he told his grandmother that he’d witnessed his parents fighting on the day of April’s death. She added that she found out Donovan had pawned his wife’s wedding ring a week prior.

Dickerson’s investigation included combing through a 47-page cold case supplement report that was attached to her daughter’s case file. But it was within those pages that Dickerson found the piece of evidence that she hinged her own independent case on.

According to Dickerson, the report stated that only Donovan Holt’s fingerprints were found on the bag and tape, and not April’s. How could her daughter have committed suicide alone without leaving any fingerprints on the bag or tape that were secured around her head?

Rather than turn to the police, Dickerson made a bold decision. She confronted her suspect herself via FaceTime, recording their conversation.

“That is when I confronted him and he confessed to me and so that is when I went to the police,” the distraught mother told WZTV.

“He just goes into how he killed her and he described how he killed her,” she added to WKRN. “How he strangled her and that he didn’t know what to do.”

After she brought this confession to police, MNPD detectives were able to get their own confession after questioning Donovan, who finally admitted he’d killed his wife by strangulation, per the WZTV.

As to how this could have happened in the first place, MNPD said there was “no evidence to counter Holt’s explanation given during interviews in that time period.”

“I feel like they failed my family, I have had to fight at the same time as grieve my daughter,” Dickerson told WZTV. The cause of death on April Holt’s autopsy report has been changed from suicide to homicide.

Now that she has the truth of how her daughter died, Dickerson is honoring April’s memory with a GoFundMe page she set up to raise money for a grief center in Nashville, as well as to provide financial support for April’s two children.

“After losing my daughter and seeing the far and few resources available for children and adults during their grief journey, I want to meet a need within the community,” she wrote on the fundraiser’s page.

“A place to just sit and be, enjoy a cup of coffee, a place of grief resource classes, youth grief groups, grieving through art classes, and future grief camps,” she added. “People often go through grief alone even when they have large families. Grief is a journey to go through, not get through,.”

“Living life with a piece of you missing doesn’t have to be done alone,” she wrote. “The ‘Grieve with Me’ grief center will bless the community and prayerfully spread to other communities as well.”

In an update shared in October, Dickerson touted that they’d received enough donations to rent the building for their center, with the non-profit organization’s Facebook page sharing their progress, including outreach programs for younger people who’ve lost a parent with regular updates.