The Cheerleader Murder Plot
Everyone in Channelview knew that Wanda Holloway would do anything for her daughter. That was the problem.
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Holloway grew up on the south side of I-10, the rougher stretch of Channelview. Her father was a tester of a concrete plant, and her mother worked in the high school cafeteria. “Wanda felt people looked down on her,” recalled Tony Harper. If she felt some shame at her station, Wanda inherited from her father, Clyde Webb, a drive that she might one day use to propel herself beyond it. Tony described Webb as “headstrong” and, by way of example, said that when Webb lost a power struggle at the church to which he and his wife belonged, he left with a splinter group and started a new one. The Webbs did not have any more money than anyone else in town, but they always seemed to stretch for their kids. Their son was not remembered as being exceptional; Wanda, however, was consistently referred to by those who knew her as an overachiever. As a young girl, she took piano lessons and, in high school, was zealous about her business courses, at which she excelled. “She was very hyper, very active, she always wanted everybody to like her,” says Tony of their high school days. But Holloway never could get the acceptance she wanted. She longed to try out for the cheerleading squad or the drill team, but her father found the activities an affront to his conservative religious beliefs. The costumes, he said, were too skimpy. Whorish.
Other dreams slipped away more gradually. When she married at eighteen, Holloway abandoned her business education; her husband did not want her to work, and she wanted to start having children. Tony, whom she had known most of her life, came from a family that was not wealthy but was wealthier than her own: His father owned three gas stations, and his mother had her own business, Peggy’s Cameo Boutique, a lingerie store. Tony and Wanda settled into the classic Channelview life. “I thought you got married, got a job, had kids, and that was it,” Tony said simply. “Wse had a good life; we were going in the right direction.” Wanda may have coveted her mother-in-law’s Cadillac — she wanted her own Lincoln Town car — but in those days, Tony, a sturdy-looking man with a solid, somewhat obdurate air, had a modest job at a railroad warehouse, and the couple lived in a house on the same street as the rest of the Harper family. It was when her children were born that Holloway’s hopes seemed rekindled. Her son, born in 1973, she named Shane, after the heroic loner in the movie of the same name. When her daughter was born four years later, Wanda stressed the point, naming her Shanna. Though Tony prospered, opening Harper’s Insurance (“Insurance With a Personal Touch”), the marriage foundered. The divorce in 1980 was testy but far from acrimonious: Wanda got the house and most of the furnishings; Tony cleared out with his water skis, recliner, and pickup truck.
It was Wanda’s next two marriages that caused talk in Channelview. The first was to an older, wealthier man living in Beaumont, and when that ended, after a brief try at a reconciliation with Tony, she married another older, wealthier man from Channelview, C.D. Holloway. C.D. had his own oil-field service company. Though he was twenty years her senior, the two had been attracted to one another when she was his choirmaster and Wanda was the pianist at the Missionary Baptist Church. C.D. and Wanda made their home in Sterling Green, a tony subdivision by Channelview standards, and eventually, Wanda got her Lincoln Town Car. Local gossips took note of C.D.’s airplane; Wanda took to talking about diamonds and moving to River Oaks or Memorial. But like to many people from Channelview, the couple never made the break. They stayed in the modest tract house with the sloping roof and pink burglar bars. “Maybe he just gave the appearance of cutting a fat hog in the rear,” said one Channelview native of Holloway’s wealth.
Still, with C.D., Wanda seemed to have found a measure of peace. A friend once asked her if all that money made her happy. “Well,” Wanda said, smiling, “we’re havin’ fun.”
After Wanda Holloway’s arrest, must was made of the differences between her and her nemesis, Verna Heath. The police and the press painted Verna and her daughter, Amber, as winners, while Wanda and Shanna were assigned the roles of also-rans. Verna had been a twirling champion and was the daughter of a well-known twirling teacher; Wanda had never been allowed to set foot on the field at halftime. Even the economic differences between the two families were said to be profound — Jack Heath managed a Gerland’s Food Fair in Deer Park, while C.D. Holloway hadhis own company. (The two families actually lived around the corner from one another, and their houses have the same floor plan.) But as with so many competitors, the similarities between the two women far outweighed their differences — for a time at least. When Verna stood behind the screen door, her stocky body tense, her arms folded over her chest, her chin thrust forward, and told one reporter that Wanda Holloway “is a mother who goes 150 percent in everything she does,” it was possible to believe that she was talking about herself. Or, as Tony Harper put it, “Verna is the same caliber woman as Wanda is.”
Wanda’s ambition would naturally lead her to Verna heath. Verna, after all, had succeeded in a realm where Wanda had been prohibited. Those who dismiss cheerleading as trivial and vapid miss its essential and enduring reality — that it is still one of the best ways a young woman can advance herself socially, not just in school, but beyond. If it remains important in a place like Plano, where a child can have many options, it is doubly so in a place like Channelview, where feminine beauty is short-lived and harshness is the norm. Verna learned this lesson at home. “My first twirling experience was with a stick with a cork with my father’s trotline painted sliver,” said Joyce brown, Verna’s mother. Brown, who grew up poor in Huffman, recalled that the school drum majorette was one of the most beautiful girls she had ever seen: “She rode my bus, but whenever she put her stick down, I picked it up.” Fiercely intense, brown made three of her four daughters into twirling champions (her older daughter and son triumphed in 4-H), just as today she tries to mold the talents of the daughters of refinery workers. In her cinder block studio in Highlands, she offers not only twirling but also tap dance and modeling.
Verna absorbed her mother’s lessons well, channeling her competitive instincts into the family tradition. “I remember, in twirling there were girls who liked it because they liked being in front of the band,” she said of her school years. “But it was my life — I loved it.” She learned about jealousy too: “in high school, one girl would not even stay in the band because I got drum major and she didn’t.”
But when it came to her own daughter, Verna abandoned her mother’s old-fashioned quest for beauty and poise for something more contemporary. Both Verna and Wanda sent their daughters to the Alpha Gymnastics studio, a towering gym in Pasadena just across Spencer Highway from Gilley’s. There, the girls could learn cheerleading from teachers certified by the National Cheerleading Association, as well as tumbling and gymnastics, skills now demanded of most cheerleaders. (“A lot of these girls think they’ll be a cheerleader in a month,” said one teacher of this new professionalism. “They can’t understand why they’re not going to make it.”)
At Alpha, parental sacrifice is powerfully evident. Often, the kids are better dressed than their mothers, and there is more tension in the viewing area than on the floor. Mothers invoke Mary Lou Retton and sound like professional handicappers when they talk about how much more demanding the physical requirements of cheerleading have become. They wince when a child blows a somersault and snap at a son who needs help with his long division while his big sister does flip-flops on the mats below. They shell out $36 an hour for private lessons and then coach the coach, politick the school sponsors, demand that the newspaper run their daughters’ cheerleading pictures, and even, sometimes, float nasty rumors about the competition. Last year there was a bomb threat at the cheerleader tryouts at Alice Johnson Junior High, though it has not been tied to Holloway’s case. “This has probably happened before, and the people just didn’t get caught,” half-joked one woman who knew of the rivalry between Verna Heath and Wanda Holloway, as well as the cheerleading milieu.
Among these moms, Verna and Wanda were well known. Each had the reputation of going all out for her daughter. Amber, who inherited her mother’s opulent brown curls and her father’s pale-blue eyes, had accompanied Verna to her grandmother’s twirling studio since she was a small child. She had been winning twirling contests since she was three. By the seventh grade, Amber had become a yearbook star, having been named friendliest and most spirited. Shanna, an honor student like Amber, was also popular and talented. She was vice president of the eighth grade when Amber was president. (The two did not compete — they ran for different offices.) Both girls were pretty, though both could affect a fussed-over, far from casual style. It is not surprising that, like their mothers, they both were considered snappy dressers. “Shanna always mentioned that she would like to be Amber’s friend because they were so much alike,” one of Shanna’s friends said. Too often, however, her best friend was her mother. Perhaps driven by her own dreams, Wanda saw to it that Shanna had private cheerleading lessons, a modeling stint at San Jacinto Mall, and mother-daughter outfits that further blurred the distinction between Shanna’s life and her own — one of the outfits was even a cheerleading suit.
The relationship between Verna and Wanda began when their daughters were sleep-over friends in elementary school. Like many friends, they shared coffee and car pool — “My wife had braided Wanda’s hair before,” Jack Heath told the Dallas Morning News, offering proof of their intimacy. But they were never the best of friends. “I’ve always been so busy, I never had time for close friends,” Verna said of her role as a mother. It may be, too, that Wanda underestimated the force of Verna’s ambitions for her own daughter.
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