Who Trolled Amber? - Three doors down: Episode 1 - Missing

Episode Date: October 2, 2023

In 1992 on a council estate in Sunderland a seven year old girl is murdered. It took the police 30 years to find the killer, a convicted child sex offender who lived three doors away from where Nikki Allan went missing. What happened on the night of her disappearance?Listen to the full series today. For the premium Tortoise listening experience, curated by our journalists, download the free Tortoise audio app. For early and ad-free access to all our investigative series and daily and weekly shows, subscribe to Tortoise+ on Apple Podcasts.If you’d like to further support slow journalism and help us build a different kind of newsroom, do consider donating to Tortoise at tortoisemedia.com/support-us. Your contributions allow us to investigate, campaign and explore, and to build a newsroom that is responsible and sustainable. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show of glamour and scandal and political intrigue and a battle for the soul of a nation. Hollywood Exiles, from CBC Podcasts and the BBC World Service. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. ACAST helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com Tortoise

Hello, it's Basha here. Nikki Allen was seven years old when she was brutally murdered in 1992. Her killer lived a few floors above Nikki in the same block. He was known to the police. He was the kind of offender who should have been caught. But it took over 30 years for David Boyd to be found guilty. Three Doors Down tells the astonishing story of Nikki's mum, Sharon Henderson, and her 30-year campaign to get justice for her daughter's killing. It shines a light on police

behaviour and the treatment of working-class women, and it's a personal tale of trauma and resilience in the face of systemic police failure that couldn't be more timely. David Boydd stand up. It's a Tuesday afternoon in late May in a packed courtroom at Newcastle Crown Court. For the murder of Nicky Allen on the 7th of October of 1992 the sentence of the court is one of life imprisonment. You will serve a term of 29 years... The judge, Mrs Justice Lambert, is sentencing David Boyd, a known child sex offender,

for the murder of seven-year-old Nicky Allen nearly 31 years ago, in 1992. A further aggravating factor is the vicious and brutal nature of your attack. She sentences him to life in prison and rules that he must serve a minimum of 29 years. Boyd is now in his mid-fifties. It seems unlikely he'll ever be freed. The jury had taken 90 minutes to reach a guilty verdict after a trial which lasted a month.

Nonetheless, you are providing a statement in which you gave yourself a false alibi. I must, of course, consider... There's normally tension on the press bench when the jury comes back, but not this time. As it filed in, the reporter from a local paper who had sketched out his copy on his phone typed guilty in a text to his newsroom and held his finger over the key, poised to send.

When the verdict was read out, there was uproar in the public gallery. Cries of yes and you bastard. Nicky Allen's family punching the air shouting thank you to the jury. Our commitment has always been to establish who was responsible and to bring them to justice. always been to establish who was responsible and to bring them to justice. New forensic techniques have been key in this investigation in identifying David Boyd and the residents of Sunderland have also played their part in ensuring justice for Nikki and her family. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank each and every resident who provided us with

their DNA. Without their help today's conviction would not have been possible. On the steps of the court, Deputy Chief Constable Lisa Theaker, who led the investigation, paid tribute to Nicky's family and praised the commitment of her team in tracking down David Boyd. It looks like a victory for Theka and her team, and for policing in general. But there's a different version to this story. I started looking at Nicky's case when I knew things weren't right. George Herron, he looked weak, he looked feeble, he looked pale, greasy hair, big glasses.

He was kind of your stereotypical child murderer, if you like. When I started reading the article and I seen his face, I was like, oh, my God, that's him that had grabbed me when I was 13. What's the point of the police force when we're doing all their jobs? Sharon Henderson, Nicky's mother, has been trying to find her daughter's murderer for 30 years. I needed to do it myself because nobody's gone to come out there, Sharon, now and get justice for your parents.

You have to go out there yourself and do it. And yet the basic facts of the case are remarkably straightforward. David Boyd lived in the same block of flats as Sharon and her daughters, and three doors away from Nicky's grandparents, the place from where she first went missing. David Boyd was known to the police. He had a conviction for breach of the peace in 1986, after approaching four girls, aged eight to ten,

grabbing one and asking for a kiss. In the same year, he exposed himself three times to a woman. In 1987, he was again investigated for showing his genitals, this time to a 15-year-old girl. In both these last instances, the police recorded the incident but took no further action. David Boyd is the kind of offender who should have been caught. So why wasn't he? Why did it take 26 years for the police to interview him as a suspect in Nicky's murder?

What does Sharon's story tell us about Britain's police and the way they treat working-class women, in particular single mothers like Sharon? I'm Julie Bindle. From Tortoise, this is Three Doors Down. A murder, a mother and a 30-year investigation. Episode 1, Missing. I was visiting my mum and dad in Darlington in June 2006.

I remember sitting in their backyard reading the local paper. The first thing that grabbed my attention on an inside page was a photograph of a woman kneeling by a child's grave. The headline read, Mum's bid to dig up daughter. A mother has threatened to dig up her daughter's body in a bid to bring her killer to justice. I read the name of that blonde-haired woman kneeling by the graveside, Sharon Henderson. I was immediately drawn to her story. I wanted to meet her and find out what had happened for her to be threatening to dig up her own daughter's body. A few weeks later we had dinner in a Chinese restaurant.

Her blonde hair is tied back off her face and there is a foreboding look in her dark blue eyes. Over special fried rice and sesame prawn toast, neither of which Sharon touched, and Diet Cokes, I got to know Sharon. Sharp and never missing a trick, she impressed me immediately. A woman who had clearly been underestimated and keenly aware of how and why she had been treated

by those she named professionals. There's a steely determination to Sharon, which is apparent from when you first meet her. When you speak with her, she's the kind of person who doesn't fidget, who holds eye contact and who tells you straight if she doesn't agree with you. Sharon told me about how she'd written in vain

to the Queen, Prime Ministers and members of the House of Lords and anyone else she could think of that might help with Nicky's case. And she has one single focus to get justice for Nicky. Sharon speaks to Nicky every day. Nicky was a happy, mischievous child.

With a toothy grin and shoulder-length, light brown hair. She tells me about the personal toll her daughter's death has on her. How she struggles on occasions with her mental health. With excessive drinking and prescribed drugs. But she is determined to get justice. On that evening in 2006, in the Chinese restaurant, we had no idea that it would be another 17 years before there was a conviction. We've been regularly in touch during the intervening years. My partner Harriet Wistrich has been Sharon's solicitor for that time too. Growing up in Sunderland in the tail end of the 1960s and 70s,

Sharon didn't enjoy an easy life. I didn't have a mother growing up. I was brought up in care, which I didn't mind, from three to 14. That's when I went to live in the guards. I wasn't brought up with a family. I came straight from care. You didn't know your future, that you're going to be a single parent. But we didn't have a sad life. We had a happy life.

Sharon has said to me repeatedly that in all of the coverage of the death of her daughter, people often forget that before all this, they were a family. We were a happy little family. I'm definitely not a perfect mother. I tried my best. I wasn't taught how to be a mother, and I right from wrong. I visit Sharon at her home, a small, neat terraced house in Roka, not far from the sea.

I once recall her rolling a cigarette and her telling me about finding out that Lisa Theka, the officer in charge of the investigation, had taken part in the TV programme Catch a Killer in an Hour, which made her roar with laughter catch a killer in an hour she started shaking her head and said she can't even bloody catch a killer in 30 years another time she told me that somebody had come along to the victims rights group that she was involved in he'd witnessed a tragedy taking place involving people he didn't know. Sharon paused and said, I suppose some people are so bored they pretend they're victims themselves to come and listen to all the stories and get a free cup of tea and a biscuit. In these moments, I saw the woman who was there before this

tragedy happened, dark, witty, but made vulnerable by events that she had no control over. Sunderland, 1992, is where this story takes place. It's a forgotten corner of Britain, along with the rest of the North East, an area that has never recovered from the recession under the Thatcher government, when the mining and shipbuilding industries disappeared. We were just a workforce. If you think about it, go back a couple of hundred years, the North East was just a workforce. Get in the pits, get in the mines and dig the coal and go and build the ships and everything was heavy work.

This is Geoff Moon. For decades, he's run the Welcome Tavern, a pub in the heart of the once-thriving Docks. Overlooking the Docks is a working-class housing estate called the Garths, notorious bricked silhouettes in the east end of the city. Notorious because there's something of a no-go area for the police. Locals, in particular the men,

prefer dealing with neighbour disputes and petty crime themselves. The Garth flats were four floors high and in three blocks that all faced onto a square centre. The flats had verandas and parents would stand outside smoking and chatting to one another, while keeping an eye on their children playing in the communal area below. Massive community spirit within them, by the very structure, the very shape of them. Everybody, you know, you were kind of looking at everybody's house. Many of Geoff's regulars lived on the Garth estate.

It was a lot of families, so the Garth was always filled with kids. When I was a kid, like, my one nana lived on one side, the other grandmother lived on the other side, and me great aunts all lived next down, and me other aunts lived further along. Me mum's sister lived next door to her mum. So it was, you could go house to house. As a kid, it was great.

In one of the ground floor flats lived nikki her three sisters and their mum sharon it's tea time on a school night sharon and nikki go to see sharon's father who lives two floors above them but nikki is anxious to go home you knew that she was wanting to go back to play with her sisters, basically. She was bored at your dad's. Well, she didn't like the over on, she didn't like the over. Nicky is scared of the sound of the vacuum cleaner, so she asks her mum if she can go home before her and see her sisters.

Sharon watches her walk the 150 yards across the pathway and down the stairs before she disappears from sight on the ground floor where she would turn along the corridor and into her own flat But she never arrives Sharon's memory of the next few hours is hazy I didn't have a clue what was happening, really didn't Everything was just, it's really hard to explain is hazy. I didn't have a clue what was happening. Really didn't. Everything was just...

It's really hard to explain. Sharon is frantic. She's going door to door asking each flat if they've seen Nicky. Her neighbours join in. There was people out there. It was lively. People out looking there. It was already

a dark autumn evening, but as the search continues, it's getting late. 11, quarter past 11. So you'd called time? Oh, yeah, we were upstairs and we just looked out and it was like, oh, dear me. And, like I say, you could see people out with torches and stuff like that.

And she says, oh, the band's missing. And I just said, typically, I hope the band's all right and whatever, yeah. I mean, it was like before 12 when I'd come back in to wear your garth after. And then you're like really panicking. And then the police is like, you cannot move from your door, Sharon. The block of flats opposite Sharon was known as Burley Garth. Most of our friends was in Burley Garth, that was in the same class.

So she might have been there. Nicky and her school friends would play outside between Weirgarth, where she lived, and the facing block of flats. Well, that's where I thought she was. And you know, you've got to give people time for checking the bedrooms, checking all the beds and that. And I had to stand at people's doors waiting for things like that. People are out in slippers with torches. Word spreads. That's one thing, having a tight community, news travels fast.

We were upstairs and we just looked out and it was like, dear me, you could see people out with torches and stuff like that. And she says, oh, the band's missing. And because it was night, it's like, you know... It happened that quick. People just, like, come from nowhere. The time goes on and Nicky still hasn't been found. Sharon is becoming hysterical with worry.

This was about 2 o'clock when I'm thinking this. Somebody's took her from the garth, from the stairs or the arch, thinking it's somebody in a car by then, because everybody I knew, all her friends had been to all her houses, and then people getting in touch with other people that went to the school but didn't live in the garths, lived in the light areas, and then people started to travel out, a ddim yn byw yn y garthau, ond yn byw yn y rhain. Ac yna dechreuodd pobl i fynd i ffordd. Ac yna ddod y helicopter i ffwrdd, ac fe ddim yn gallu...

Fe ddim yn gallu gweld y helicopter, ac rwy'n siwr bod yna... ...rhywbeth newydd. Roedd un helicopter... ...a'i ddrych, oedd o gwmpas y pen, a dyna beth... ...a ddodd y meddygwr, oherwydd roeddwn i'n sgrinio a'i chwarae. Oherwydd roeddwn i eisiau mynd all because I wanted to get out of the house to look for Nicky and there was just this same voice on the air as if it was a recumbent

and that was a copper on a mic just shouting, Nick, you're going to get wrong your mam's waiting for you, your mam's waiting for you at your grandda's the same things over and over again because they thought she might have been frightened now if she'd been outside the garth and come back and seen all this like stuff going on in that and i heard another helicopter and somebody said that was a i didn't have to use them them days or press it was half

past nine at night when nikki's mother told her to head down a flight of stairs back home from her grandparents' flat. And you were obviously sick with worry. You'd been given a sedative, presumably, when the doctor came round to keep you calm while the search went on. It was frightening. I'm like a zombie. You're just sitting there, and just staring and that's all I remember, the helicopter all the time and then the next morning I remember standing at the sink and it just seemed like if I had to like draw a picture of it, it's like loads

of ants and that was the people in the car, me looking down. There was no space, there were just all over the place, people. And then Joan came in with the court. Now, how did the police not spot the court? I've been took to that place where the court was. Is this Nicky's coat that she came in with? I had cotton shoes. Joan found Nicky's coat and shoes. Well, a lad did, and they picked it up,

and Joan carried it to the door. And when I look back, I did the placemats, that. I cannot understand. This was just the beginning of the police's mishandling of the case. Sharon's next memory is in a hospital ward. I got took to hospital then. It was awful lame. And you were taken away in an ambulance

because you realised something had gone horribly wrong. Do you remember what happened next? I went in, the police wanted to speak to my step-mum and my dad. I was still in a deers thing. The poor is in a little room. I was just sat there like a zombie on the bed so the form went and of all the people that they tell me some me Pam was dead was me real mom Fina is Sharon's birth mother but Sharon did not see her as a mother figure. The two had never been close.

But it's her birth mother who gives Sharon the news that her own daughter, Nicky, has been murdered. I'd just seen all these crowds of people outside the building. And I knew straight away, is that where they found Nicky? And David went, yeah, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I just, shit. And I had to stop the car and I was trying to go out and I kicked in the doors and that.

And then the police came and it was them that wanted a break of the news to us. That Veena had already told you? Veena, because everybody said the firemen carrying Nicky out the back, coming up. Everybody said the firemen carrying Nicky out the back, up and up.

Of course. Yeah. The news is overwhelming. Nicky's tiny body had been found in the derelict old exchange building close to the Weirgarth flats where she disappeared from the previous night. After hundreds had searched all night, Nicky's red shoes and purple coat were recovered outside the old exchange. A short time later, a young teenager ran hysterically from the building after going in and finding Nikki's body. Nikki was hit, hurt and bundled through a boarded up back window,

her head beaten with a brick, stabbed more than 30 times and dragged dead down into the far corner of the basement and left. Well, until late this afternoon they were continuing their search in and around the old exchange buildings. They're looking for what they've described as the blunt instrument that they believe was used to carry out this murder. Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Hi, I'm Una Chaplin, and I'm the host of a new podcast called Hollywood Exiles. and I'm the host of a new podcast called Hollywood Exiles.

It tells the story of how my grandfather, Charlie Chaplin, and many others were caught up in a campaign to root out communism in Hollywood. It's a story of glamour and scandal and political intrigue and a battle for the soul of the nation. Hollywood Exiles, from CBC Podcasts and the BBC World Service. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. ACAST.com

The moment Nikki's body was found, Sharon's life shattered. Basically, my word fucked up from them finding our body. Once things started to settle down and the behaviour of certain individuals and stuff like that and people soon backed away, behaviour of certain individuals and stuff like that, and people soon backed away. But the one thing that didn't falter was the very fact that there was a child that was murdered. That, if anything, kept it just about, you know, sort of floating.

What do you mean, kept what about floating? The support, if you like. Right. What Geoff is speaking about here is just the start of what began to unravel with Nicky's case. Some people turned against Sharon when rumours began to spread about where she was on the night of the murder. People, you know, everybody believed the media,

everybody believed the police. And what did they believe, though? Rumours that I was out in a pub, or Nicky was penny for the guy in, or I was up the town drinking, and poo me was standing in the middle of the garth in me dressing gown and jar, missing our remain shape before me burn.

I'm so glad there was all them witnesses I'd seen when I was going door to door looking for Nicky. I didn't give a shit about rumours, but I believe more people would have come forward if the police had worked properly on the case instead of fucking it up. Some people might have come forward by now. The rumours that Sharon is speaking about

are not just local hearsay. They were lies. And they were spread by the very people who should have been investigating the case. I want to know why it took the police 30 years to find the man who killed Nicky. In the next episode, we'll hear how the 24 hours after Nicky went missing were crucial in the investigation. The cop in charge was briefing the press that Nicky was outside the Boar's Head begging for pennies for Halloween. That's what she was supposed to have been doing. That's where

she was supposed to have been abducted from. This series was reported by me, Julie Bindle. It was written by me and Joanna Humphreys. The producer was Joanna Humphreys. The narrative editor was Gary Marshall. The sound design and original theme is by Tom Kinsella. The executive producer was Jasper Corbett. Tortoise. you need with Uber Eats. Well, almost almost anything. So no, you can't get an ice rink on Uber Eats. But iced tea and ice cream? Yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats. Get almost almost

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