The man who murdered a seven-year-old schoolgirl used no fewer than SEVEN names to evade justice for more than 25 years.
David Boyd, 55, has been found guilty of the murder of Nikki Allan following a 31-year quest for justice by her mother Sharon Henderson.
Boyd used a series of different names as he evaded justice for his horrific crime. He made up an alibi given to cops when another man, George Heron, was wrongfully accused of Nikki's murder in 1992.
By the time Heron was cleared a year later, Boyd, the real killer, had already covered his tracks. Various aliases were deployed as he spent years as a free man despite committing the most horrific murder of a schoolgirl.
He used the names David Thomas Boyd, Jason Branton, John Eastman, David Smith, David Bell and David Thomas Smith. An alternative spelling of one of his surnames also appeared on his court file.
A series of police mistakes helped Boyd escape justice. He admitted having a "phase" when he was aged about 22 where he "began to fantasise about both adults and children, in particular young girls".
He had a conviction for breaching the peace from 1986 when he approached four children in Sacriston, Co Durham, and grabbed a 10-year-old girl. Boyd asked her for a kiss before letting her go and ordering the children "not to tell anyone" what he had done. In 1999, convicted of indecent assault, telling a doctor he had been "drunk, depressed, acting on impulse" when he assaulted the girl.
In a report prepared ahead of sentencing in March 2000, probation officer Gillian Dixon said Mr Boyd told her he began to have "dirty thoughts" when he saw the girls and felt "excited" about touching them. Boyd told Ms Dixon: "I would think about young girls being naked, touching their body and having intercourse with them."
She said he claimed to immediately feel "disgusted and ashamed" after grabbing the girl. But police never made the connection between him and Nikki until 2017, a quarter of a century after the 1992 murder.
Nikki's mum Sharon Henderson said: "If they had, it would have saved me 30 years of looking for him myself, 30 years of pain and heartache."
A former neighbour on Teesside revealed that he would never give his full name to anyone. A nomad who lived just three doors from Nikki Allan's grandfather at the time of her murder, he also gave police a false alibi about his movements on the night that she died. Yet he was the last man to see her alive; had previous convictions for child sex offences; and admitted that he had sexual fantasies about children.
Sharon had long harboured suspicions about Boyd, and says that she alerted officers; but she admits that she was hindered because she did not know his real name. Boyd was born David Thomas Bell in London on June 1, 1967. His dad served in the forces and so he moved around the country.
By the time he had moved to Sunderland, he had no family living nearby and he had changed his name to David Boyd; over the course of his adult life, he variously used David Thomas Boyd, Jason Branton, John Eastman, and David Thomas Smith. Boyd gave a statement to Northumbria Police following the arrest of his former neighbour and friend George Heron, who was cleared of Nikki's murder in 1993.
The trial at Leeds crown court heard evidence that Heron's confession had been made under duress and he walked free protesting his innocence.
Initially, Northumbria Police said that they were not looking for anyone else in connection with Nikki's murder and the case went cold.
Boyd, who lived on the same floor in Wear Garth, Sunderland as Nikki's grandfather Dickie Prest, and two floors above the schoolgirl and her family. He had been living with his girlfriend Caroline Branton in the Garth.
Following a mother's instinct, Sharon became convinced that Boyd was involved with the murder of her daughter. Police re-opened the file on the case in 2017. That cold case review led to Boyd's arrest in April, 2108.
He told police that he was born in London, but the family moved due to his father's job. His parents split up when he was a child. His mother remarried. At the age of 14 he went to Redworth Hall residential school in Co Durham, and left when he was 16.
At the age of 17 he went to Barnardos at Ryton Dene near Blaydon. He left when he was 18 and moved into a boarding house. He moved to a resettlement unit in Chester le Street and then onto Sunderland.
In 1987, the defendant moved into a flat at Burleigh Garth and got to know a few of the locals including Terry Clark. He met his girlfriend Caroline snr in 1988 through her daughter, young Caroline. They had a sexual relationship, he told police; he said that he moved into her home just a couple of days after they met.
At the time young Caroline and her daughter were living at the flat which had three bedrooms, a sitting room, kitchen, hallway, and bathroom. The front door led onto the veranda.
He was referred to his 1992 witness statement when he talked about how he knew Nikki Allan and her family. He agreed that in the statement he gave the impression that Sharon, Nikki's mum, and Sharon's dad were family friends. He said that on one occasion Terry Clark, the boyfriend of Sharon's sister, had asked him to babysit for Nikki and her sister, which he did for about 10 minutes. He said that he would also see Nikki in the Garth where they lived.
But he hid the terrible secret of his crime for almost three decades before he finally faced justice, only letting his mask slip when he was arrested to ask the officers: "What evidence have you got on me?"
The officer in charge of the cold case review, Lisa Theaker, now assistant chief constable with Cleveland Police, came across Boyd while out shopping near his home in Norton, Stockton-on-Tees. He was wearing an 'I am Unstoppable' T-shirt. It was not long before he was stopped, however.
The rigorous police re-investigation looked at more than 1221 suspects and took DNA from 839 men. A 1 in 28,000 match of the male 'Y' chromosome finally brought Boyd to justice, 31 years after his brutal murder of a defenceless schoolgirl. He will spend the rest of his life behind bars.
