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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The first sign of trouble appeared in 1989, when Shanna was scheduled to try out for seventh-grade cheerleader at Channelview’s public junior high school. Wanda had planned for the event — she had taken Shanna out of Channelview Christian School, a private elementary school, and enrolled her in Alice Johnson Junior High to assure her eligibility. What she had not foreseen was that Amber, who was still at Channelview Christian, would be one of Shanna’s competitors. Verna, intending to send her daughter to Alice Johnson when she reached seventh grade, got the principal’s permission to let Amber try out, and during the three days during which campaigning was allowed, Verna picked Amber up at the private school and drove her to the junior high to meet, greet, and lobby her future schoolmates. This was a carefully orchestrated campaign — Verna even had flyers printed with peppermint candied attached. In response, Wanda was “severely bent out of shape,” according to one observer. It is possible that this particular competition made her feel like a Channelview nobody all over again — it wasn’t just her daughter who was threatened but her own hopes of advancement. As Tony Harper noted, “She couldn’t be a cheerleader, but she could be a cheerleader’s mom.” And perhaps she felt betrayed by a friend.
Wanda complained about Amber to the school board; she pestered other parents to urge their children not to vote for “the outsider,” as she came to call the girl. She even talked about getting a lawyer. However, she could not save her child, or herself from disappointment: With two slots open and three competitors, Amber won but Shanna did not. Wanda was devastated. “Wanda went through a lot when Shanna didn’t make it,” said one school administrator. “Had they not allowed Amber to try out, Shanna would have made it.”
In deference to Wanda — and, it was said, her powerful husband, C.D., who was then on the board of the Channelview Band — the school later amended the rules so that potential cheerleading candidates would have to spend on semester in the Channelview system before trying out. For Wand, it was small consolation. “She felt so helpless,” the administrator continued. “She was so desperate. She felt her child had been cheated.”
The next year, Wanda worked even harder to get Shanna elected. Months before the event, she called on her ex-husband Tony and told him that she wanted to create something special to guarantee victory for Shanna. In what would become known as the Ruler Incident, Tony came up with the idea of handing out wooden rulers and number-two pencils printed with “Vote for Shanna Harper for Cheerleader.” “I thought it was a good idea because most kids couldn’t afford them,” Tony said. Wanda thought it was a good idea too and offered to split the cost with him. Anxious and excited, she called him every day until the supplies arrived. Then, when the campaign began, she took them to school. Later that day, Harper got a tearful call from his ex-wife. “They’re not gonna let me do this,” she told him.
The handouts did not comply with the school-election cod — rules that Wanda would have been familiar with, according to Tony — and the vice principal had confiscated them, with the support of the cheerleading sponsor. When Wanda continued to pass the rulers out a few days later, a meeting was called at the school. The sponsor asked the parents of the cheerleader candidates to attend. One member of the group was Verna Heath. Afterward, Shanna was disqualified. When Wander learned of the decision, she was mortified. She begged the vice principal to reconsider, as did Tony, to no avail. “She did it because the heaths and other parents had had such luck the years before,” said one person close to the Heaths. “She thought she could make up for last year.” Sometime after that, Shanna told her father that she didn’t want to be a cheerleader anymore. Her mother, however, was not about to give up the fight. “Wanda,” the source continued, “had personalized it.”
People in Channelview wondered why Wanda chose to involve her ex-husband’s brother, Terry Harper, in her plan. He was not the luckiest member of the Harper family; “Lots of rain hits him,” explained Paula Asher, Tony Harper’s attorney. Married several times, Terry had had some minor brushes with the law; he had been charged with several misdemeanors including drunk driving. Around Channelview, that just made him rough around the edges. To the police, however, Wanda’s choice was less mysterious. “You don’t just go to Kmart and hire a hit man,” said Sergeant Flynt Blackwell, who worked on the investigation. Most ordinary people lack the underworld connections of, say, Colombian drug dealers. When they go looking for a hired killer, they turn to the first person they know who had the slightest criminal history. But, as Wanda would learn, trouble with the law does not a criminal make — one reason why so many people who shop for killer wind up talking to police informants and, in turn, undercover cops. Such was the case with burly, blue-eyed, gap-toothed Terry, 36, a sandy-haired construction worker who lived in a trailer. He had decided in the fall of 1990 to quit “cussin’, drinkin’, and going to clubs” and had instead put his faith in the lord. Wanda Holloway would be the first to test his resolve.
Cheerleader tryouts for Channelview High School were not scheduled until March 1991, but Wanda had begun to stew on the event several months in advance. She had taken a job doing clerical work in the high school band director’s office and had asked at least one administrator for advice on advancing Shanna’s chances. Should she try to cozy up to the sponsor? Was there any way to get Amber or another competitor disqualified? Eventually, however, her quest led her to Terry’s trailer: She pulled up outside, honked the horn, and when he came out, said that she wanted to talk to him but not at home. The two met at a nearby convenience store called Bo’s. Though Terry would later describe Wanda’s mood as “no different from normal — she’s a very outgoing person,” Wanda had a probing question for him. She wanted to know just how much he loved his niece and nephew. “Well,” Terry told her, “I love them with my life.” Wanda was glad to hear it and then told him that she wanted two people taken care of and she didn’t care how. Terry appalled, had a straightforward answer to Wanda’s straightforward request. “I said, ‘I don’t do anything like that and I don’t know anyone who would do a thirteen-year-old child.” Wanda said that she would get back to him. “I thought, fine,” Terry recalled. “I just wanted to get out of the car.”
he heard nothing more from Holloway until Christmas Eve, when, opening presents at his parent’s house, Shanna asked to speak with him privately. “Mom wants you to call her at this number,” she said. Terry figured that Wanda wanted one of two things: to call of the deal or to push him to find someone to pull it off. When he discovered that it was the latter, he tried to reason with her, Why didn’t she just let Shanna try out for cheerleading, and if “She doesn’t get it, she don’t get it?” he asked Wanda. She had her answer read. “No,” Terry said Wanda told him, “she’ll be too devastated and never try out again.”
Realizing that Wanda intended to go through with her plan, Terry went to his brother, Tony, who directed him to the Harris County Sheriff’s Department. When he was asked later by one reporter why he had come forward, Terry’s explanations were both metaphorical and practical. A man or aphorisms, he quoted the two pieces of advice he like to live by. The first was, “Your mind’s like a parachute, it only works when it’s open.” The second was, “Truth’s like iodine, it only helps when it hurts.” But the main reason Terry went to the police was that if anything should happen to Verna or Amber Heath, he wanted to be sure that he was not considered a suspect.
Convincing the cops that Wanda was serious, however, was tougher than he expect. That was partly because Terry was put in touch with Detective George Helton, a lanky and garrulous chain-smoker. Hits were a sideline, not a specialty of this seventeen-year law enforcement veteran and Harris County Organized Crime/Narcotics Task Force member. He was happier busting dope dealers. Besides, Helton had worked the ship-channel area for more than a decade and was all too familiar with the dead-end weirdness that characterized it. The last hit he had investigated near Channelview involved a husband who wanted to get rid of his wife. “I don’t care if you hit the bitch in the head with a hammer,” he told Helton right before he paid him the $5,000 fee. The police arrested the man and informed his disbelieving spouse while she was shopping at Kroger. The husband went to trial and got probation; the couple remain reconciled to this day. Then, too, Helton had just bought himself a new pair of $300 lizard-skin shoes, and he did not want to ruin them by traipsing around in the rain for surreptious meetings that might go exactly nowhere. “No shit,” he said without enthusiasm when Terry, over coffee at McDonald’s, said he knew someone who wanted two people killed.
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