Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 8, 1991 TAG: 9104060429
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROXANNE ROBERTSi/ THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Wanda Webb Holloway, of Channelview, Texas, had always dreamed of being a cheerleader. But her parents, strict Baptists, wouldn't hear of it. "Her father said the uniform was too skimpy," said Tony Harper, Holloway's ex-husband. "He didn't think good girls tried out for cheerleader."
When the names of next year's cheerleaders at Channelview High were announced, Amber Heath was one of the lucky 10 girls chosen. It was no secret that Holloway had wanted her daughter, Shanna Harper, to make the squad. But as it turned out, Shanna never entered the competition. No one in this little town, maybe not even Wanda herself, expected it to come to this.
A Harris County grand jury indicted the mother of two on a charge of solicitation of capital murder. Holloway is accused of trying to hire a hit man to murder Verna Heath, the mother of Shanna's longtime cheerleading rival. According to investigators, Holloway's plan was to have Heath killed before the cheerleading tryouts, leaving Amber so grief-stricken that she would drop out of the competition.
Holloway has pleaded innocent to the charge and refuses to talk about the case until her trial in June. If convicted, she faces five years to life in prison.
Word of the indictment shocked the 7,000 residents of this blue-collar suburb of Houston. At first, people thought it was a bizarre practical joke. But the news quickly spread: The combination of Texas, cheerleaders and murder proved irresistible to the rest of the world.
"You know, you put out a hit contract and - boom! - Paris and London want to know about it," said Jim Barker, principal of Alice Johnson Junior High School, where Shanna Harper and Amber Heath are eighth-graders.
The town has been besieged by reporters and television crews scrambling for interviews; "Hard Copy" sneaked into a basketball game to get footage of the cheerleaders; "A Current Affair" hid in the bushes outside the Heath home. Producers for "Oprah Winfrey," "Geraldo" and "Sally Jessy Raphael" swept in waving flowers and plane tickets at anyone willing to talk; book and movie offers flooded in.
There are already people who want the "Channelview Tour": to wit, the Holloway and Heath homes, the schools, the churches, and the fast-food restaurant where Wanda Holloway allegedly passed her $1,500 diamond earrings to her ex-brother-in-law, Terry Lynn Harper, as a down payment on the murder contract. The scandal even landed in Johnny Carson's monologue: "Give me a `C' . . . give me an `H' . . . give me a gun."
Barker's got a stack of news clippings a foot high, calls from the William Morris agency to buy the rights to the school's part in the story, and a theory about the universal fascination with this case: "I think there's an element of Wanda Holloway in all of us where our children are concerned." Even the people who understand cheerleading don't understand about cheerleading in Texas.
Forget Dallas and Houston. Texas is mainly a huge state crammed with small towns where Friday night high school football is more than a game, it's a way of life. And cheerleading has always been a way for girls to be a part of it.
In 1972, just when the women's movement declared cheerleading sexist, the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders burst on the scene with white hot pants, white boots and a strict moral code: no drinking, no unladylike behavior and absolutely no fooling around with the football players.
Cheerleaders became the sexiest, most glamorous, most wholesome thing a girl could be in Texas - not counting beauty queens.
It is this tradition that gave rise to Wanda Webb Holloway and Verna Heath.
The two women always had a lot in common. Both grew up in the area and now live in neat brick houses two blocks from each other in the Sterling Green subdivision, north of the fast-food restaurants, trailer parks and the Arco Chemical plant. Both are 37 and spend their days juggling kids and church - Holloway is the organist at Channelview Missionary Baptist Church. Verna Heath and her husband, Jack, a grocery store manager, have three sons, one of them Amber's twin, Aaron. Holloway has a 17-year-old son.
But each has just one daughter - both of them popular with classmates, energetic, top students. When Shanna and Amber, both 13 years old, were inducted into the Junior Honor Society just after Holloway's indictment, the two were called onto the stage, one after the other - Harper, then Heath.
Wanda and Verna and Shanna and Amber
The lives of Wanda Holloway and Verna Heath first crossed at the Christian elementary school where both their girls were enrolled. After school, the children would play at each other's home.
Nathan Hyman, the principal at Channelview Christian School, said that throughout their childhoods, Shanna and Amber were drawn to the same activities, competing against each other all along the way.
Amber always seemed to edge out Shanna, with a flair that she learned from her mother. Verna Heath is a championship baton twirler; her mother is a twirling coach and instructor. Amber had a baton in her hand by age 2 and was competing nationally soon afterward. As the junior high's former cheerleading adviser put it, Amber has "real showmanship. She's a natural."
"What parent is not proud when their child achieves something they worked for?" Verna Heath said last week. She believes in healthy competition. That's what her mother taught her, what she taught her daughter. "When Amber does something, she does the best that she can do. If she wins, it's a bonus. If you lose, you're not a loser."
Then there was cheerleading.
Two years ago, Amber was among four sixth-graders chosen for cheerleading slots at Johnson Junior High. Shanna was not. Holloway complained to the School Board that Amber, still a student at Channelview Christian, was not eligible for the squad because she was not a student in the public school system. Her own daughter had transferred to Cobb Elementary that school year.
Channelview Christian principal Hyman said Amber had received permission to compete at Cobb for the junior high squad. The School Board responded to Holloway's complaint by imposing a one-year ban on extracurricular activities for future transfer students, but it allowed Amber to remain on the Johnson squad.
Last spring, the girls once again competed against each other for one of the four slots reserved for eighth-graders on the squad.
The competition had two parts: The candidates were graded by a panel of independent judges on their athletic ability; those who cleared that hurdle were then put to a popular vote by their classmates.
Junior High principal Barker said, "The kids are not going to vote - regardless of how popular the child is - if they cannot do the athletic flips and tumbling. If you can't do that, you can forget about being a cheerleader here. . . . I stand there with my mouth open to think a child has been trained to do this throughout the years," Barker said. "These are kids who know their business."
Shanna and Amber both made the cut and were placed on the ballot for the one-day campaign before the student body. Candidates were allowed only two posters in the halls, along with campaign badges.
Before the final vote, the principal said, Wanda Holloway turned up in front of the school that day handing out pencils and rulers inscribed "Elect Shanna Harper Cheerleader." As a result, Shanna was disqualified from the competition for a violation of the campaign rules.
Amber, for the second year in a row, was selected for the squad. Last year Amber was also voted "most spirited" and "friendliest" by her classmates. This year Amber and Shanna both ran for student council president: Amber was elected president, Shanna vice president.
Last fall, Wanda Holloway hired professional cheerleading coaches to prepare Shanna for the tryouts at Channelview High.
The police report
The rest of Channelview will have to wait until the trial begins June 10 to find out what really happened next.
According to investigators, Holloway called her ex-brother-in-law, Terry Lynn Harper, at the beginning of this year and asked him to help her find someone to kill Verna and Amber Heath. Harper, who was granted probation in Harris County on drug charges in 1981, contacted the police. He then acted as an informant for the Harris County Organized Crimes and Narcotics Task Force and worked as the go-between for Holloway and the "hit man," an undercover detective experienced in murder-for-hire cases.
Harper was wired for all his subsequent conversations with Holloway during the three-week investigation. While the investigation was in progress, the Heaths - unaware of the purported plot - were under police protection without their knowledge.
According to investigators, Holloway initially considered having both Verna and Amber Heath killed for $7,500. She later offered $2,500 to murder only Verna. Murder contracts have a sliding fee structure, according to Lt. Charles Shaffer of the task force. "Children are always more expensive," he said. Holloway was arrested at her home on Jan. 30. She was indicted by the grand jury on Feb. 19, after it heard the taped conversations.
Neither the prosecutor nor the defense attorney nor the task force is disclosing further details of the case.
"You'd be surprised how easy it is to kill people and how many people want to do it," said prosecutor Alice Brown. But Lt. Shaffer calls this case "so far out in left field that in my 20 years, I've never run across anything like it."
The cheerleader myth
Anyone in Channelview will tell you cheerleading is no big deal. In the next breath, they'll say things like, "It's something special for the cream of the crop."
It can also be a ticket out of those towns: There are four-year college scholarships for cheerleading and twirling. But that's later on.
"It's so neat being a cheerleader," said Penny Edwards, a former member of the Channelview squad, just like her mother and sister before her. "It's just so glamorous. You get so much attention and you look so cute in your little skirts. It just makes you feel so wonderful inside."
Life goes on
Cheerleading in Channelview will never be the same.
Shanna Harper came back to Johnson Junior High a week after her mother's arrest but did not enter the contest for next year's cheerleading squad. After the arrest, her father, a 38-year-old insurance executive, went to court and obtained joint custody of Shanna and her brother, Shane, a senior at Channelview High. Harper and Holloway were divorced in 1980. She remarried five years later.
Of his daughter, Tony Harper said, "She's doing OK. She's steady right now."
Her mother, free on $10,000 bond, continues to play the organ at church and attend her daughter's school activities.
Amber Heath competed in the preliminary cheerleading tryout and made the cut to compete for the student vote.
Verna Heath has had to hire a lawyer to handle the flood of interview requests, book and movie offers.
In the meantime, she's trying to be a normal mother. Heath helped her daughter make her handmade cheerleader campaign posters. "It's Ambertime!" announced one of the posters. "Can't Touch This."
One of the students walked up to Amber. "Oh, you're the one they tried to kill. I'm going to vote for you."
by CNB