A child killer who brutally murdered a “bright and sparky” seven-year-old girl and managed to escape justice for more than 30 years has been sentenced to life in prison.
A judge on Tuesday ruled that David Boyd must serve a minimum term of 29 years for the murder of Nikki Allan.
Nikki was killed in October 1992 after she was lured to a derelict building in Sunderland with, the prosecution said, an intention by Boyd to commit a sexual offence. When Nikki resisted and screamed, Boyd beat her over the head with a brick and stabbed her in the chest and abdomen 37 times.
It was a shocking, high-profile crime in which police arrested and prosecuted George Heron, an innocent man. He was cleared by a jury and the case was reopened in 2017 with advances in forensic science enabling police to link DNA found on Nikki to Boyd, 55, of Stockton-on-Tees.
He was arrested in 2018 and after a complex investigation, which involved ruling out another 1,000 men, he was this month found guilty of the murder after a trial at Newcastle crown court.
On Tuesday, the judge, Mrs Justice Lambert, said Nikki’s terror must have been “unimaginable” and it was a crime that would “horrify all those who hear or read about it”.
She said she had to sentence Boyd as the law stood in 1992, when life sentences were shorter. If the crime were contemporary the minimum term would have been 37 years.
The Heron prosecution came after his supposed confession, which followed three days of intense police questioning and 120 denials. He was found not guilty by a jury after a judge ruled that a number of police interviews were “oppressive” and inadmissible as evidence. The case led to changes at a national level in the way police interviews were conducted.
Northumbria police have written to Heron to apologise, an apology also extended to Nikki’s family including her mother, Sharon Henderson, who has never stopped campaigning to get justice.
Henderson said afterwards she was “absolutely devastated” at the sentence, adding: “I thought life would have meant life, I’ve been let down again by the justice system.”
She is being helped by the the Centre for Women’s Justice. Speaking on the steps of Newcastle crown court, the organisation’s director, Harriet Wistrich, said an inquiry into the “scandal” of the original flawed investigation was needed and a civil claim for damages against Northumbria police was being pursued.
Victim impact statements were read on behalf of Henderson, and Nikki’s father, David Allan.
Henderson, who was 25 at the time of the murder, described Nikki as a “bright and sparky” child with “a beautiful smile” who was “always a mammy’s girl”.
The trial of Heron was traumatic, she said, with police telling her afterwards they were not looking for anyone else. “After the acquittal I was accused of being a bad mother, even though my children were looked after. Local people were angry towards me and not towards the person responsible for her murder,” she said.
“I was left feeling that I had to fight for justice for Nikki. I’ve fought tirelessly and endlessly for this. It has been so hard, it has just become part of my life. The stress of it has led to a deterioration in both my mental and physical health. I’ve been sectioned and spent periods of time in hospital.”
In a statement, Heron said he had lost what little honour and property he had when he was falsely accused of the murder. He said: “Moving around several times and trying to rebuild what is left of my life hasn’t been easy – learning to trust anyone is difficult, and I haven’t even felt that I could trust in any professional to get help.”
His anger and upset had driven him to drink, he said. “Nikki Allan’s murder destroyed so many people’s lives – I am just one of those people.”
At times Henderson said she had targeted people she suspected of covering for others and this had led to her arrest.
Allan expressed his “anger and hatred”. He said he lived close to the building in which Nikki was murdered and it was a constant reminder to him.
“I think about Nikki lying on her own in the cold in that building that night. The building which, on the night she was missing and murdered I drove past countless times looking for her. Since Nikki’s death I can’t go to funerals because I’m reminded of the sight of her coffin.”
The prosecutor, Richard Wright KC, argued there had been a sexual component to the murder, given Boyd’s convictions for indecent exposure and indecent assault on a nine-year-old girl in a park in 1999.
Jason Pitter KC, Boyd’s defence counsel, argued that mental subnormality had to be taken into account when sentencing. He said his client had learning difficulties and his IQ was in the bottom 2% of the wider population.
The sentencing followed legal argument and was not straightforward as Boyd was being dealt with as the law stood in 1992, when home secretaries determined how long life prisoners must serve before they could be considered for parole.
