Eventually emerge family deserve’

NIKKI ALLAN MURDER 25 YEARS ON

Heron admitted killing her, but the judge decides the confession has been obtained ‘under duress’. And once the judge decides the jury can’t hear the crucial plank of the police’s case – there’s no eyewitness evidence or meaningful DNA linking Heron to the crime – their case is substantially weakened.

So George Heron walks free, and a colleague, investigative journalist Nigel Green, who has been writing to him while he’s in prison awaiting trial, meets him afterwards.

Heron maintains his innocence, and although he admits he knew Nikki – he lived in the same Garth – he insists he didn’t kill her.

Nigel leaves George Heron on a railway station platform, ready to start a new life well away from Sunderland – a place he can never return to, even though in the eyes of the law he is an innocent man.

George Sinclair, the detective superintendent in charge of the murder inquiry, retires without ever seeing Nikki’s killer brought to justice.

Nikki’s grandad Dickie and uncle Greg both die without seeing the killer caught, and mum Sharon continues her one-woman campaign to stop her daughter’s unsolved murder being forgotten.

It’s been featured on the BBC’s Crimewatch, and Northumbria Police, who came in for intense criticism over their handling of the investigation, have had the murder reinvestigated by a “cold case” review team, using DNA-testing techniques to re-examine the physical evidence they have.

The theories around ‘whodunnit’ have never gone away.

Certainly one person knows the truth, though there may be others. I have my own opinion, but that’s all it is.

For the sake of Nikki’s family, and the stain this tragic episode has left on the East End, I hope the truth does eventually emerge. It’s the least they deserve after being denied closure for the last 25 years.