Cheerleader Case: the Ultimate Stage Mother?

Principal James Barker can quote Johnny Carson’s gag about Johnson Junior High School: “Give me a C, Give me an H, Give me a gun!”

The positive aspects of the school rarely receive much attention, Barker said, “But, you know, you put out a hit contract and--wow!--Paris and London want to know about it.”

Authorities here say that Wanda Webb Holloway was the ultimate stage mother. She was so intent on having her 13-year-old daughter, Shanna Harper, make the cheerleading squad that she tried to hire a hit man to kill a rival’s mother.

George Helton of the Harris County Sheriff’s Department said Holloway would “go to almost any length, apparently, to further the career and popularity of her daughter. She’s an overachiever-type mother. The impression I got is the mother is living her life through the daughter.”

Holloway, 36, has pleaded innocent to a charge of soliciting capital murder and is free on $10,000 bond pending trial June 10. Penalties for the offense range from five years to life in prison.

Prosecutors say that in January, Holloway contacted her former brother-in-law, Terry Lynn Harper, and asked him to find someone who would kill Verna Heath before the spring cheerleading tryouts.

She at first offered $7,500 for elimination of both Heath and her daughter, Amber, authorities say. Later, she allegedly offered just $2,500 for the mother’s death, believing the girl would be overcome with grief and drop out of the competition.

Prosecutors say that Terry Lynn Harper, a former convicted felon, told authorities about the scheme and an undercover officer was assigned to pose as the hit man. Holloway, in a recorded conversation, offered as a down payment diamond earrings supposedly worth $1,500, they say.

Since their mother’s arrest on Feb. 1, Shanna and her 17-year-old brother, Anthony, have begun therapy. Their father, Tony Harper, sued for custody. In a three-hour meeting in court, he and Holloway reached a joint-custody agreement.

“Her life has been turned upside down,” Holloway’s attorney, Troy McKinney, said. He denied the allegations against his client but would not discuss them in detail.

“All I can say is there’s a whole lot more to it than what’s been published,” he said.

Neither Shanna Harper nor Amber Heath came to school for more than a week after Holloway’s arrest. Both girls have since returned to their eighth-grade classes in Channelview, a blue-collar suburb on Houston’s east side.

“She wouldn’t take to anybody at first,” classmate Amanda Rymer, 13, said of Shanna. “They were all looking at her. I think most people felt more sympathetic towards Amber, but her friends acted regular and now everything’s back to normal.”

“It amazes me,” said Barker, the principal. “The kids here have handled it well. And there was not one parent phone call on this.

“But there have been hundreds (of calls) from everybody, from Geraldo to Oprah, the London Mail, Bowling Green--and even Johnny Carson did a joke about it.”

“I think the students realize this is not the student’s doing. It is the parent’s,” said Ida Gilbert, the assistant principal. “This child had nothing to do with what the parent did.”

“Everybody was shocked,” said Jeremy Anthony, 13, a former neighbor. “My brother used to go with Shanna, and we would go over to their house all the time. It really surprised me--I mean, her mother was all nice and everything.”

“Every time I’d walk in the hall, I’d hear, ‘I’m surprised that Shanna’s mom would do that,’ ” said Bobbi Mackie, 12.

Both girls are good students and popular at school, classmates said. Shanna and Amber are friends, school officials say, but they “move in different circles.”

“All of us love them here,” Jeremy said. “When Shanna first came back people were shocked, but she’s got her friends back now.”

Shanna tried out for the nine-girl Johnson Hornets cheerleading squad in the seventh grade, but was cut. She passed preliminary tryouts before judges last year, but was disqualified from the student election after her mother distributed promotional materials. Campaigning is against the rules.

“Mr. Harper had made up some rulers and pencils at the suggestion of his ex-wife, with the words ‘Vote for Shanna’ on them,” said Paula Gavrel Asher, the father’s attorney in the custody case. “But when school officials said she couldn’t use them, Mrs. Holloway took it upon herself to attach them to posters and distribute them, and Shanna was disqualified. Once again, little Amber was the winner.”

High school sports are enormously popular in Texas, and football games can be at the center of small-town social life.

“I think cheerleading is very important to a lot of young ladies because they prepare for it for several years,” Gilbert said. “If they are a cheerleader here at the junior high school, they certainly have a better chance of making the high school team.”

Amanda Rymer, the girls’ classmate, said Shanna wasn’t as distressed about losing as her mother.

“I don’t think Shanna thought anything about it,” she said. “But her mom, she expects so much out of her.

“I mean, her mom just had a big cow. She was mad!”