A Tennessee man who initially claimed his wife died by suicide was sentenced Tuesday after ultimately confessing to her killing in a shocking turn of events.

Donovan Holt, 33, pleaded guilty in November to reckless homicide, tampering with evidence, and false reporting in the death of his wife, April Holt, 29. He was sentenced to two years and one month in prison, followed by eight years in community corrections.

Police found April Holt unresponsive on July 31, 2023, in the bathroom of the couple’s Cane Ridge home, a suburb of Nashville. A plastic bag had been tightly taped around her neck, and she was later pronounced dead at the hospital. Initially, the Medical Examiner’s Office ruled her death a suicide by suffocation, but that ruling was later changed to homicide by strangulation following persistent efforts by the victim’s mother, Jamie Dickerson, to uncover the truth.

“I knew that April was unhappy. She requested a divorce two weeks prior, and she was dead two weeks later,” Dickerson said. She also noted that her daughter’s bruises on her wrists, neck, ankles, and thighs were initially overlooked as evidence.

The case took a dramatic turn nearly a year later in June 2024, when Donovan Holt shockingly confessed to Dickerson during a FaceTime call. He admitted to strangling April during what he claimed was a sex act and panicked afterward.

“He just goes into how he killed her, and he described how he killed her,” Dickerson said. “How he strangled her and that he didn’t know what to do.”

Authorities arrested Holt in San Antonio, Texas, on September 19, 2024. He later confessed to Metropolitan Nashville Police Department Cold Case Unit detectives.

Dickerson has since launched a GoFundMe campaign in April’s memory, raising funds for a grief center in Nashville and to support her daughter’s two young children.

While some have criticized the sentence as too lenient for the nature of the crime, the judge ruled that after serving his two-year prison term, Holt will remain under eight years of strict community supervision.
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