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Nikki Allan: 30 Years For Justice

The story of a mother’s fight for justice for the murder of her 7-year-old daughter.

In 1992 Nikki Allan lived with her mother Sharon and three sisters in the East End of Sunderland – in an area known as the Garths. They were blocks of flats and housed generations of families.

On the 7th October that year she was lured away from where she was playing near to her home and murdered by a neighbour David Boyd. He was in his early 20s and lived in the same block of flats as Nikki and her family.

At the time the police focussed their investigations on an entirely innocent man – George Heron – who was charged with murder. At his trial in 1993 the judge refused to allow his taped β€œso called” confession to be heard by the jury. He was found not guilty and in 2023 received a formal apology from Northumbria Police.

25 years after Nikki’s death, with Sharon still fighting for justice, police said they were putting a new forensics team on the case. Advances in DNA technology eventually led police to David Boyd. But why did it take three decades to catch Nikki’s killer?