By the summer of 2023, mother of two and positivity coach April Holt had a following of over 200,000 on Tik Tok.

April built her quirky and optimistic online image around her happy home life.

Her post told the story of overcoming adversity and manifesting great things.

“Keep growing y’all,” she would say.

“Keep manifesting and have a great hamburger.”

In late July, April was found unresponsive in the bathroom of her home.

She would die days later.

While law enforcement was content to categorize the case as a tragedy of April’s own choosing, the 29-year-old’s mother, Jaime Dickerson, knew better.

This is the story of a mother’s unflinching fight for justice.

The case takes us to the outskirts of Nashville, Tennessee, where a young mother, entrepreneur, and influencer met a questionable end.

April Holt celebrated her 29th birthday in early July 2023.

The young entrepreneur from Antioch had already accomplished quite a bit in life.

An independent lash technician, April had left her job and launched out on her own, building her own business and being her own boss.

“Happy 29th birthday to me,” she posted online.

“I am blessed to experience another year of life.”

“I have lived through 10,585 days.”

As April reflected on her greatest achievements, she was most grateful for family, particularly her two children, 11-year-old Serenity and her 7-year-old son, Denzel.

April was an engaged, loving mother.

She shared the best of her family life with the world through her Tik Tok account.

She focused on positivity videos, presenting a spiritual life and coaching her over 200,000 followers on the value of manifesting the life you want.

Her videos were at times motivating.

“I just pray and send good energy to anybody who’s seeing this,” she said in one clip.

“I hope you have an amazing day on purpose.”

“Be intentional and grow just a little bit.”

“Progress over perfection.”

Sometimes they were goofy.

Over the years, a few of April’s posts also became deeply honest and revealing.

April’s homeschooling as a child was a particularly sore point.

She posted about what she described as her isolation from society.

This was an experience she learned from and overcame in her teenage years.

April and her husband, 33-year-old Donovan Holt, lived the ups and downs of their marriage online.

They shared their origin story.

Friends that became best friends that became lovers and eventually husband and wife.

They were parents to daughter Serenity, whom April had when she was a teen, and their son Denzel.

“Yeah, being best friends… that came first,” Donovan said in one video.

“If we weren’t friends first, it wasn’t gonna last.”

“Like that’s been the base of the whole relationship foundation.”

“It’s what kept us through our separation honestly.”

April agreed.

“He really is like my bestest friend ever,” she said.

“The best friend I could ever ask for and I married him.”

There were rough patches, including the period of separation that Donovan mentioned.

The couple had also faced financial hardship, bouts of depression, and serious health issues.

Always positive, April framed their story as a journey of the pair overcoming adversity.

The story that she told always ended with love and success.

Yet, even April acknowledged her own dark moments.

“Let’s talk about how I’m going to fake it till I make it,” she said in one video, applying new lashes.

“Because I had a mental breakdown the other night and I plucked all of my lashes off.”

“Lately I have been going through just a lot.”

“And I can definitely say that I’m in like a depressed state.”

“Like, I’m just overwhelmed.”

“And I know that like I’m manifesting more negative experiences on myself with how I’ve been.”

“So, I have to get out of this funk.”

“So, I’m going to literally fake it till I make it.”

“And I’ve done this before.”

“This isn’t the first time.”

This vulnerability existed alongside a relationship that was, in reality, deeply troubled.

Two weeks prior to her death, April had filed for divorce.

This was not the first time.

The marriage had been a rocky one.

The couple had originally sought a divorce years earlier, leading to a three-year separation.

During that time, they posted a video explaining the decision.

“So the story is that we are getting divorced because it was our decision,” Donovan said.

“It’s my best friend.”

“I still love her to death.”

“We still got a child together.”

“We still going to be hanging out.”

“She has a path to go.”

“I got a path to go.”

April added, “No hard feelings.”

“This is not a messy divorce or anything like that.”

“This is my best friend at the end of the day.”

They eventually reconciled after this extended separation.

In their videos, they prided themselves on their ability to forgive and grow together.

But the arguments must have escalated.

Unlike previous occasions, in July 2023, April was not backing down.

She told her mother that she was holding firm and leaving Donovan for good.

Jaime learned later that Donovan had pawned his wedding ring just a week before April died.

On the morning of Friday, July 28th, April spoke with her mother, Jaime, on the phone briefly.

They had plans to see the Barbie movie, but she couldn’t make it that afternoon.

“Donovan has to work,” April told her.

“I can’t go to the movie, but I’ll meet you at church… tomorrow.”

They agreed to meet at their church the following day.

It was just a few hours later that Jaime received a phone call, one that she would never forget.

Donovan was on the other end.

“He was upset, kind of like in a panic,” Jaime recalled.

“He’s like, ‘I… we found April.’”

“‘She wasn’t breathing.’”

“‘And so she’s in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.’”

April had been rushed to the hospital.

He said their young son, Denzel, had found her in the bathroom.

She was in the shower, a plastic bag taped over her head.

April wasn’t breathing.

At the hospital, Jaime recalled Donovan continued to act strangely.

He was not expressing the kind of distress and confusion one would expect from a distraught husband, she thought.

He allowed her to make all of the medical decisions regarding April’s treatment as they fought to save her.

Jaime recalled that Donovan held his head in his hands and he rocked back and forth.

After 3 days of further emotional agony, on July 31st, April had still not regained consciousness.

She was declared dead from her injuries.

In November, the autopsy report was released.

The results were not what Jaime had expected.

The medical examiner concluded that the cause of death was suffocation.

The conclusion reached by the Metro Nashville police was that there had been no foul play.

Investigators informed Jaime Dickerson that her daughter’s case would be closed.

There was nothing further to investigate.

Jaime rejected the decision outright.

She told investigators that she would continue and walked out on them.

“After they closed April’s case, DA and everybody agreed to close it,” Jaime said.

“I got up, marched out of that room, and I said, ‘I’m not done.’”

“‘I’m going to keep investigating.’”

Jaime knew her daughter well.

She knew that both faith and resilience were qualities that April had in abundance.

Jaime also believed that there was no way that April would have chosen to leave her children.

Someone had taken her life, and Jaime believed that she knew exactly who that person was.

What followed was a fight that Jaime would need to wage to apply public pressure.

She needed to get the attention of the Nashville police as well as the DA’s office.

She began with seeking exposure.

Jaime sought out local news stations.

She reached out to area celebrities.

She posted about the case regularly on her social media.

It was an uphill battle.

After the investigation had been officially closed, it became difficult, if not impossible, to gain any traction in the media.

“There has not been one news channel in the local Nashville area that has picked up April Holt’s story,” Jaime lamented 14 months later.

“Not one from day one.”

“And I’ve reached out to channel 2, channel 4, channel 7, channel 5, any channel out there.”

“Not one will even respond.”

Jaime did not only campaign online.

She requested the full case file and began researching.

By lodging a formal complaint with the community review board in Nashville, Jaime forced a full review of the handling of April’s case.

Eventually, the Metro Nashville Police Department launched a second investigation.

Four months later, they returned with a 47-page report.

The reinvestigation did not prompt a change in the categorization of the case or the nature of April’s death.

However, what it did provide was a wealth of detail for Jaime to scrutinize.

She combed through the report and related documentation over many hours.

The days turned into weeks and months while Jaime worked.

Meanwhile, the grieving mother also aimed to provide a stable and supportive home life for her grandchildren.

She posted about taking Serenity and Denzel to grief counseling.

She shared how their nightmares kept her and her husband up at all hours.

Jaime also spoke openly about her own grief, even publishing a book about her bereavement process entitled Grieving Through Grace.

She also became an advocate against domestic violence.

Initially, investigators had claimed that April showed no signs of trauma stemming from the incident that had caused her death.

According to Jaime, there were visible signs on April at the hospital that suggested this was not true.

April had noticeable bruises.

The autopsy recorded marks on her neck, her thighs, and her ankles.

She even had a gash on her inner thigh.

But the most significant piece of evidence in this new report, which was overlooked by the initial investigation, could not be ignored.

There was only one set of fingerprints on the bag taped to April’s head.

And there was only one set of fingerprints on that duct tape.

Those fingerprints were not April’s.

They were a match to Donovan Holt.

In September 2024, Jaime confronted her former son-in-law directly with the information that she had uncovered.

“And I said, ‘You can tell me the truth or I’m going to go meet with the cold case team next Thursday and have this reopened,’” Jaime recounted.

During this conversation, Donovan confessed.

“I’m not shocked,” Jaime later told her followers.

“I don’t have that emotion because I’ve been literally doing this for a year knowing what happened.”

“I already knew.”

Jaime went to the police with the confession, which she had recorded.

In light of this development, April’s autopsy was reviewed and its conclusion finally changed.

The manner of death was formally recategorized to a homicide.

On September 20th, 2024, the MNPD announced that Donovan Holt had been arrested in San Antonio, Texas.

He had confessed to killing his wife directly to detectives.

Donovan was indicted by a grand jury for reckless homicide, evidence tampering, and false reporting.

After speaking with the Nashville cold case unit, any ambiguity that remained in the case was resolved.

The 33-year-old told police the same version of events that he had conceded to his former mother-in-law.

He and April had been having an argument on the morning of July 28th, 2023.

This was the fight their 7-year-old son Denzel had heard from his room.

Donovan had angrily strangled his wife in the heat of that argument.

To conceal the crime, he had dragged her into the shower, positioned the bag over her head, and taped it in place.

Then he left her.

He proceeded to make lunch for their son.

Only after Denzel had eaten, Donovan asked him to go check on his mother.

He then proceeded to call the ambulance.

Donovan was transported from Texas to Tennessee and held on a $75,000 bond.

April’s children are with their grandmother, who has reported that they are doing as well as one could expect under the circumstances.

Some days are better than others.

Jaime has thanked her supporters on social media for supporting her and the family through this horrific ordeal.

Her fight, it seems, is not quite over.

Jaime is currently campaigning to have the murder charge against Donovan increased.

“I am trying to get the charges increased,” she announced.

“There’s no reason that they are as low as they are.”

“There is no reason that they shouldn’t be first-degree instead of reckless homicide.”

“There should also be child endangerment added to these charges.”

“And so that is my next uphill battle that I’m trying to fight.”