Justice at last for mum who fought for 30 years to bring her little girl’s killer to court
A MOTHER’S three-decade quest for justice finally came to an end yesterday when a paedophile was convicted of murdering her seven-year-old daughter.
Sharon Henderson, 56, was overcome with emotion as the jury at Newcastle Crown Court found her former neighbour David Boyd, 55, guilty of murdering Nikki Allan in October 1992.
As the verdict was announced there were cheers of ‘yes’ and ‘thank you’ in the public gallery as family and friends hugged each other.
Outside court Nikki’s sister Stacey said: ‘It’s the best day of my life.’
When confronted with new evidence in a police interview, Boyd was wearing a Tshirt bearing the slogan: ‘I am unstoppable.’ It was an understandable feeling given he had lived for three decades as a free man following a string of police blunders in the initial murder investigation.
But Ms Henderson never gave up hope of seeing the monster, who stabbed Nikki 37 times and battered her with a brick before dumping her in a derelict building, face justice.
She has made no secret of her alcohol and mental health problems triggered by the crime and her resulting determination that the killer was caught.
The mother of four’s efforts resulted in a meeting in 2017 with Northumbria Police Chief Constable Steve Ashman and the decision to fund a review of the case using new forensic techniques. A ‘Y’ DNA technique – which separates the male bloodline – used on evidence deposited on Nikki’s clothing cracked the case.
The police accept that Boyd may not have been caught but for Ms Henderson’s perseverance. But the decades of suffering could have been avoided were it not for their initial blunders.
‘I was so badly let down by the police, they had so many chances to catch Boyd years and years ago,’ Ms Henderson said.
‘To hear everything they missed or failed to investigate has been devastating.’ Outside court yesterday she added: ‘This evil man slipped through the net to murder Nikki when he was on their [police] files in the first place’.
In 1992 police convinced themselves another man was Nikki’s killer and used ‘oppressive’ questioning methods to force a ‘confession’. When that suspect, George Heron, went on trial at Leeds Crown Court the following year the judge ruled his taped ‘confessions’ could not be put before the jury.
At the time Ms Henderson believed her daughter’s killer had walked free.
She and the police were both wrong about Mr Heron. But Boyd, the real killer and by his own admission the last man to see Nikki alive, was never considered a suspect.
He gave a witness statement describing seeing Nikki playing outside shortly before she vanished.
Aged 25 at the time, he was considered a ‘helpful’ neighbour by detectives. They were unconcerned that three days earlier he had taken a 12-year-old boy into the building where Nikki’s body was found.
Boyd, who lived in the same block of flats in Sunderland as the victim, had been convicted of a breach of the peace for approaching four girls aged eight and ten, asking one for a kiss and then telling the children not to tell anyone. Months after this he indecently
‘I was so badly let down by the police’ ‘Evil man slipped through the net’
exposed himself to a woman out jogging. But these convictions six years before the murder didn’t register with police.
Alarm bells still didn’t ring in 1997 when Boyd admitted exposing himself to three young girls in a park, or in 1999 when he indecently assaulted a nine-year-old girl and was jailed for 18 months.
While awaiting that sentence Boyd told his probation officer that he had obscene sexual fantasies about young girls.
Speaking in recent days Ms Henderson said: ‘While there was still breath in my body I would never have stopped until I got the man who killed Nikki, nothing mattered more in my life than getting justice.’
Boyd, of Norton, Teesside, will be given a mandatory life sentence on May 23.