The remarks of the judge passing sentence on child killer David Boyd may be televised live, it emerged after his conviction today (Friday May 12).

Following the guilty verdict returned by the jury on the killer of Nikki Allan, more than 30 years after her brutal slaying, the judge at Newcastle Crown Court said, “for various practical reasons”, she would be unable to pass sentence next week.

The unanimous guilty verdict delivered by the jury forewoman was greeted with huge cheers and yells of “thank you” from the public gallery in Court One at the Quayside court building.

Trial judge, Mrs Justice Christina Lambert, who had asked for the verdict to be received in silence, promptly asked for the public gallery to be cleared, before addressing the jury and lawyers in the case.

Read more: Jury finds David Boyd guilty of killing Nikki Allan in Sunderland

She apologised for “the commotion” and said, as a result, the sentencing hearing later this month may be heard in front of an empty public gallery.

“At the moment, it’s my view is it will be ‘in absence’ (of anyone in the public gallery).”

Prosecuting counsel, Richard Wright KC, also apologised for the outburst from the gallery.

He told the court, after the gallery was cleared: “It’s obviously wholly unacceptable.

“I can’t give the court an assurance that it won’t be repeated.

“There are some (in the gallery) whose behaviour has been better than others, though.”

He said he would not want those who behaved well in the gallery to suffer for the excesses of those who shouted and yelled when the verdict was delivered.

The judge said she was of the view that some of those who caused the commotion were inebriated and should not have been allowed into court.

Read more: Nikki Allan: Stockton man lacks 'courage' to give evidence

Mrs Justice Lambert said she would pass sentence on Tuesday May 23, following submissions by both Mr Wright, for the Crown, and Jason Pitter KC, for the defendant.

She told them: “There’s a bid for the sentencing remarks to be televised. I have been told that.

“It’s not particularly unusual in this day and age and, therefore, it can’t take place for various practical reasons next week.”

She said a meeting would be staged at the court on Wednesday next week as to the practicality of the sentencing hearing being televised.

Following the jury verdict, the judge told the court: “That concludes the proceedings for today.”

Before he was led from the dock and taken back to the court cells, she told the defendant: “I’m going to sentence you on May 23, at 10.30am.”

She said the respective counsel could address her as to the sentence tariff at 10.30am that day, and, after considering their submissions, she would deliver her sentencing remarks at about 12-noon.

Case history

David Thomas Boyd, now 55, of Chesterton Court, Norton, in Stockton, denied the charge of murder of the seven-year-old schoolgirl, whose body was found in a disused trade and civic building, not far from where she lived, off High Street East, in Sunderland, in October 1992.

The prosecution in the case at Newcastle Crown Court said he knew Nikki, as his girlfriend was a babysitter for her mother, he lived near her family and he was familiar with the building where she was found dead.

Boyd, who was not a suspect at the time of her death, was arrested during a re-investigation into her unsolved murder more than 25 years later.

A DNA profile taken from him in a sample in October 2017 underwent testing by more modern methods than was available in 1992 and came up with four matches fro the clothing worn by Nikki on the night of her killing.

Read more: Sharon Henderson's fight for justice to find Nikki's killer David Boyd

In a series of interviews after his arrest in April 2018 he maintained his denials to her murder and repeated them in a number of interviews since, although he chose to remain silent in one.

When he was confronted with the new DNA evidence he could only suggest it may have been from him spitting over the balcony of his second floor flat at the Wear Garth complex.

He said some of his spittle may have hit Nikki, playing down below.

But he chose not to give evidence in his trial, relying on what he told police in his interviews.

The prosecution alleged that Boyd, who lived on the same Wear Garth flat complex in Sunderland’s East End as Nikki’s family at the time, lured her away as she sat on a wall waiting for her mother leaving the Boar’s Head pub, on High Street East, at some-time after 9.43pm on October 7, 1992.

Shortly before 10pm a woman waiting to pick up her mother from her shift at the nearby MacFish factory, on Low Street, saw a male walking with a little girl skipping, apparently happily, behind him.

Grainy cctv footage from the next-door Rose Line building featured what appeared to be a male figure walking along Low Street, with a much smaller person just behind.

A staff member leaving MacFish, walking with colleagues for a bus on High Street East, heard two sounds, seconds apart, like a piece of wood breaking, followed by a “wailing” noise from the disused Old Exchange Building.

The jury was also told a woman living opposite the Old Exchange heard, “a short-lived, but piercing scream from a girl, followed by a second smaller scream a couple of minutes later”, both apparently coming from the building.

When Nikki was reported missing, later that night, Boyd was back at his flat in Wear Garth and recalled people going to search for the little girl.

But he was to tell police later that he was told not to join the search as he should, “get his head down”, to go to bed as he had community service work to complete the following morning.

It was on his return from that community work session the following day that he said he was told Nikki’s body had been found by searchers, in the Old Exchange Building.

Boyd told police he had been in the derelict building with a local boy looking for wood to build him a pigeon cree, days earlier, and had used the same gap in a boarded up rear window to gain entry that investigators believed Nikki’s killer used on the night she disappeared.

The prosecution said Boyd benefited from police concentrating their focus on another local resident, George Heron, who within days was arrested and charged with the murder.

But at trial the following year he was found not guilty and was allowed to change his identity and leave the area.

Northumbria Police re-opened the inquiry by 2017 and took samples for forensic purposes from people involved in the original investigation

In interviews, in 2018 and 2019, following his arrest after the re-investigation he denied involvement in the murder and said at the time he had run an errand to buy fish and chips for a neighbour, although he said this was an hour later, at about 9.30pm, compared to the time of 8.30pm he told the police in his witness statement during the original inquiry.

During his trial the court heard of his convictions for indecent assault of a girl, in a park in Stockton, in 2000, and for breach of the peace, in Sacriston, County Durham, during which he kissed a young girl, in 1986.

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Prior to the 2000 sentencing hearing he told a probation officer that at the time he was "going through a phase" where he fantasised about young girls and wanted to touch their naked skin.

Following her summing up of the evidence in the case today, the 12th day of the trial, the judge, Mrs Justice Christina Lambert, sent the jury out to begin its deliberations at 12-noon.

She told them they were under, “no pressure of time”, but said they must strive to reach a unanimous verdict on which all 12 of them agree.

Shortly after 2.30pm word reached the clerk that a verdict was reached by the jury and the court was re-assembled.