Dani Garavelli on the trials for the murder of Nikki Allan

This is fantastic piece of longform journalism which explores the death of a young girl in Sunderland thirty years ago, and the recent trial of a man accused of her murder. Dani Garavelli reported on the murder and subsequent trial and acquital of a suspect in the early nineties and revisits Sunderland to talk to Sharon, mother of Nikki Allen.

What​ do you remember, Sharon? ‘I remember the helicopter circling above Wear Garth. I remember it was torturing my brain because a voice was saying: “Nikki, you are going to be all right, your mam’s waiting for you at your nana’s.” On a loudspeaker, over and over. “Your mam’s waiting for you, you are not going to get wrong.” And everything was going very fast, crowds and crowds of people shouting, and Nikki’s name through this mic. And later Jenny told me: “You started screaming, we had to close the windows and doors because your screaming was that loud.” I remember a doctor came and stuck a needle in my arm. But it didn’t knock us out. I just sat like a zombie and then all the voices sounded drunk, they sounded slow, like “Niikkkiiii”, and everything, the shouting, the helicopter, all in slow motion.’

Thirty years had passed since I last interviewed Sharon Henderson. In 1992 I was the crime reporter on the Journal in Newcastle. I had been sent to her flat on the Wear Garth estate close to the docks in the East End of Sunderland after her seven-year-old daughter, Nikki, was murdered – battered with a brick and stabbed 37 times. She had gone missing around 10 p.m. on 7 October. All night, neighbours’ torches formed pinpricks of light along the south bank of the River Wear. Her body was found the next morning in the derelict Old Exchange Building. In 1993, one man, George Heron, had been acquitted of her murder; now another, David Boyd, was about to stand trial.