For Sharon Henderson, bringing the killer of her daughter Nikki Allan to justice has been an all-consuming, personally ruinous three-decade mission. “While there was still breath in my body, I would never have stopped until the man who killed Nikki was found,” she said.
“Nothing mattered more in my life than seeing justice for her. Over these 30 years, I have been through hell. I’ve fought against problems with alcohol and I’ve been sectioned in a psychiatric hospital. But I knew I’d get him, one way or another, however long it took … I’d see him locked up.”
The Nikki Allan story is one of unimaginable human cruelty, devastated lives and glaring police failings, but also one of justice, albeit justice that took 31 years to achieve.
The cruelty is difficult to grasp. Newcastle crown court heard how Nikki, a shy and clingy seven-year-old, skipped into the clutches of her killer because he was someone she knew and had no reason not to trust.
That man was David Boyd who, for reasons that will never be fully known, battered her head with a brick, rolled up her T-shirt, and stabbed her 37 times. He dragged her body down cellar steps to try to hide her.
The ruined lives include that of George Heron, an innocent man who was hectored by police into making a confession and was later acquitted by a jury.
Henderson says her life has been taken away. “I’ve become estranged from most of my family through this, it’s taken over my life,” she said. “I spent many years drinking to dangerous levels because of this, and since Nikki’s death I’ve been admitted to psychiatric care.
“My three other daughters have grown up knowing a mother who couldn’t get over the death of their sister and who was drinking herself to death. They’ve lived with someone who just couldn’t give up searching for the killer. My life has been on hold for 30 years until someone was finally brought to justice.”
Nikki’s family and her killer all lived on the Garths, run-down and now demolished blocks of 1930s maisonettes in Sunderland’s east end, near the docks.
Henderson’s search for Nikki’s killer began with trying to track down any man who lived on the estate whom she had suspicions about. To help her memory, she drew out a map of the block and tried to eliminate each in turn.
Eventually, only one person was left, she said: David Boyd. At the time, he was using the surname Smith and also Bell, so no one knew his true identity.
Henderson said Boyd, then in his mid-20s, was a friend of her sister’s partner but she had never been able to find anything about his earlier life.
“He was a young man then, but a loner; the only time I can remember seeing him was when he was out on the veranda in front of the flats on his floor. I don’t remember speaking to him. He was there during the police search for Nikki and always hanging around … but after Nikki’s death he left the Garth.”
She went on a mission to track him down. “I made it my business to become friends with his girlfriend and her daughter and I even moved to Ryhope [a former pit village on the outskirts of Sunderland] to be near them. I wanted to be close to them and find out what they knew about who and where he was. I just knew he had something to do with it.”
In 2006, Northumbria police confirmed that a cold case team were reinvestigating Nikki’s murder. One senior officer at the time, talking to the Guardian, denied that they were only doing so because of Henderson’s campaigning.
Henderson sees it differently. “I was so badly let down by the police, they had so many chances to catch Boyd years and years ago. Instead I have spent 30 years investigating Nikki’s death myself and I could have been spared that if the police had done their job properly.
“I was treated like a drunken mother with mental health problems, I never felt listened to by the police.”
Ultimately, it was diligent police work that resulted in Boyd’s arrest in 2018, and now, 31 years after the crime, his conviction for murder.
Advances in forensic science and DNA testing have proved to be the key, with Boyd’s DNA matching microscopic samples found on the waistband of Nikki’s shorts and under the armpits of her T-shirt.
The jury was played police bodycam footage of Boyd’s arrest at his flat in Stockton-on-Tees in 2018.
The case against Boyd has been gradually and carefully assembled, in stark contrast to the original investigation, in which police quickly arrested the wrong man and failed to properly investigate anyone else.
George Heron was 24 and had recently moved to the Garths with his sister. At first, Heron denied knowing Nikki, but he changed his story when witnesses came forward to say they knew each other. Other evidence included a knife that seemed to match stab wounds. He had been seen buying cheese and onion crisps, Nikki’s favourite, which police believed the killer used to lure Nikki into the building where she died.
After three days of police questioning, Heron confessed to killing Nikki. Before then he had denied it 120 times.
The hatred directed at Heron was immense, meaning the trial was held in Leeds rather than in north-east England. That did not stop local people travelling daily to the court and packing the public gallery.
The case against Heron unravelled quickly when the judge, after two weeks of legal argument, ruled that six of 12 police interview tapes were inadmissible because officers had used “oppressive methods” to obtain the confession.
But still the prosecution continued, with Heron accused of offering Nikki crisps, cigarettes and money to lure the girl. One witness said Heron would sometimes cuddle Nikki and tell her: “I love you around the world.”
After a trial lasting six weeks, the jury acquitted Heron. Twenty police officers had to restrain the packed public gallery as it erupted when the jury foreman announced the not guilty verdict.
Heron’s solicitor, Peter Thubron, said the case was one of the saddest and most frustrating of his legal career. “We did a thorough and professional job and we obtained the correct result, but we did not congratulate ourselves on our success and we do not intend to celebrate a victory,” he said. “I can tell you that we come away from this case feeling very deep sadness.”
The judge, Mr Justice Mitchell, attacked the police’s repetitive line of questioning and the nature of some of the questions, which included asking details of his sex life and whether he was gay.
“It was wrong … to pound him with sexual allegations,” the judge said. He also asked why only a legal executive – and not a fully qualified solicitor – was present for the first six hours of the interview. Heron had progressed from denial to full admission without the full benefit of a qualified solicitor with him at any stage. “That must never be allowed to happen again,” he said.
Heron moved to the south of England, living under an assumed name. When a tabloid newspaper tracked him down, he asked why he could not be left alone and said he doubted he would be around for much longer.
“There were times I wondered if I had killed Nikki,” he said. “So many people said I had that I started to doubt myself.”
