Sharon Henderson finally discovered who killed her daughter Nikki Allan, three decades on
Time is a healer. That’s what I’ve been told by people over the years, but in my experience, time doesn’t heal your pain, it simply enables you to find a way to manage and live with it.
And my pain, that of a mother losing a child, is arguably the worst any human being can suffer, because my daughter died in the most heinous and cruellest of ways – something that more than 30 years on still gives me nightmares.
My daughter Nikki was the second oldest of my four girls and was by far the clingiest. She was my shadow and would follow me everywhere with a huge toothy grin, asking what I was doing and could she help too.
It was no different on 7 October 1992, when Nikki, seven, asked me what I was looking for as I rooted through the kitchen cupboards. I had a sore throat and wanted some painkillers, but with none at home, I told my oldest daughter Stacey that I was just popping to her nana’s flat, two floors up from ours, to see if she had any.
A single mum, having my dad Dickie and stepmum Jenny living so close was a godsend and I didn’t think anything of leaving Stacey, then nine, while her two sisters, then three and one, slept and Nikki came with me.
But as I rifled through Jenny’s cupboards, Nikki suddenly jumped up from the sofa where she was sitting when Dad started vacuuming. She hated loud noises and came running to me, scared.
Wiping away her tears, I told her to go back to the flat. It would only take her two minutes to get home back down the stairwell.
Wear Garth, where we lived on Sunderland’s Garths estate, was a giant square, and we all looked out for each other’s kids, so I knew Nikki would be safe. Only, when I got home 20 minutes later at 9.40pm, Nikki wasn’t there. Instantly, I knew something was wrong and I frantically dashed around the flat before sprinting outside, screaming Nikki’s name.
Dickie and Jenny hadn’t seen her since she’d left either and, wasting no time, we contacted the police. When officers arrived they told me to wait on the steps in case Nikki came home while everyone searched the estate in droves. I just sat, shivering, as search helicopters flew overhead, realising how serious things had got, because why else would they bring in helicopters unless the search
