The moment Jamie Dickerson saw her daughter in the hospital on life support — with bruises on her neck and ankles and broken blood vessels on her cheeks — she says she knew the 29-year-old had been victimized by another person.
“I knew it was foul play,” Dickerson tells PEOPLE about her daughter, April Holt, a mother of two from Antioch, Tenn.
Dickerson, however, had been told that her daughter had tried to take her own life on July 29, 2023, after April’s husband said he found her unresponsive in the shower with a bag taped to her head.
Dickerson didn’t believe it then and she didn’t believe it in the weeks and months after April died from her injuries July 31, 2023.
“She’d requested a divorce two weeks prior,” says Dickerson.
April had previously tried to leave her husband, Donovan Holt, 33, she says, but she’d never gone through with it.
But in her latest attempt, says Dickerson, “April was serious.”
Insisting that her daughter did not die by suicide, Dickerson, 45, of Bell Buckle, embarked on a year-long investigation that included bringing important evidence to light and in June, allegedly drawing out a confession from Donovan herself.
In July, Metro Nashville Police Department Cold Case Unit detectives allegedly obtained an official confession from Donovan, who, authorities claim, admitted “he was responsible for strangling his wife,” according to a statement from the department.
Indicted by a grand jury on charges of reckless homicide, evidence tampering and false reporting, Donovan was arrested in San Antonio, Texas, on Thursday, Sept. 19, according to the MNPD. It’s not immediately clear if he has entered a plea and PEOPLE was unable to reach an attorney for him.
He was extradited back to Nashville, where he is being held on $75,000 bond in Davidson County Jail awaiting his Oct. 23 arraignment, according to online court records. It is unclear whether he has retained an attorney who can speak on his behalf.
Donovan Holt.
Metropolitan Nashville Police Department
Dickerson, who first spoke to local outlet Fox 17, News, says she worked “relentlessly, two to three hours a day for months and months” in her quest for justice for April.
“I had to fight for her,” she says.
When it comes to protecting their children, she adds, “Moms have superpowers.”
Solving Her Daughter’s Homicide
April, who owned her own lash studio in Nashville, loved being a mother to her daughter, 12, from another relationship, and son, 8, whom she had with Donovan, and was looking forward to the future, Dickerson says.
So when Dickerson saw her daughter’s battered body, she immediately told police she believed April was the victim of a homicide. “I knew my baby,” she says. “But they didn’t believe me.”
Jamie Dickerson and her daughter, April Holt.
Courtesy Jamie Dickerson
In November 2023, the Medical Examiner’s Office ruled her death a suicide due to complications of suffocation, the MNPD said.
Still, Dickerson followed her gut and persisted.
“I had to keep calling for meetings with the DA and the police department,” she says, claiming that police largely “disregarded” her questions.
Determined to find answers, she turned for help to the Community Review Board, a police advisory and review committee for the city of Nashville.
Four months later, the board sent her a 47-page report with one glaring piece of alleged evidence: that the only fingerprints on the bag and tape found around April’s neck were Donovan’s.
Despite that, “They said they still didn’t have enough evidence to convict him,” Dickerson says.
So she kept going. She sent Donovan a screenshot of the report. “I told him he had a choice,” she says. “He could tell me what happened, or I was going to go to the cold case department.”
Donovan subsequently called her and allegedly said he had strangled April, dragged her to the shower and taped a bag over her face to make it seem like she died by suicide, says Dickerson, who recorded the conversation.
She notified the MNPD, who began investigating anew.
The MNPD did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s questions about why the department didn’t initially pursue the case as a homicide.
Helping Others
To help others who have lost loved ones, Dickerson is working on starting the Grieve With Me Center in honor of April’s memory.
April Holt.
Courtesy Jamie Dickerson
In a GoFundMe she created to raise money for the center, she wrote that she is starting the center because there were few resources for her and her grandchildren when April died. Her aim is to create “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 also wants to create a new state law to make it easier for families to seek justice for their loved ones.
“I want to keep April’s light on,” she says. “I’m going to keep doing things that let her shine.”
