Grandchildren Tied to Houston Shooting : Crime: Police say family tried to have grandparents killed. Refusal to build a pool or basketball court is the apparent motive.

There was something truly odd about the shooting of the grandmother.

Juanita Baird didn’t think she had any enemies, but when Harris County Sheriff’s Detective Ronnie Roberts talked to her in the hospital, he told her she had probably been shot by someone she knew.

Robbery had not been the motive. Nothing had been taken from the modest home in north Houston.

Then came the events of the last week, in which Baird’s own daughter and four teen-age grandchildren were accused in the shooting. More bizarre was the fact that detectives believe those five people paid a 14-year-old girl $60 to pull the trigger and another $15 to the 13-year-old boy who accompanied her into the Baird home.

The reason, said Roberts, was that Baird and her husband, George, would not build a swimming pool or basketball court for the four boys.

The backdrop of all this is a rough Houston neighborhood where, as Sheriff’s Lt. Ricky Williams put it, “For a price, you can get most anything done.”

Just how this murder plot was hatched--the exact time when animosity led to thoughts of killing--is still unclear to investigators. But Roberts said he knew it had been in the works for at least a year.

Roberts said Barbara Katherine Wilson, 41, and her four sons lived in a trailer on the property of her parents, the Bairds. Her husband long dead, Wilson got by on food stamps and welfare. But Roberts said the Bairds also imposed strict rules on Wilson and the boys in exchange for providing lodging.

Every bit of money that Wilson’s family raised--much of it from the collection of aluminum cans--went into a bank account controlled by George and Juanita Baird. If Wilson needed money for her or the boys, she had to ask for it. The boys weren’t allowed to have friends over to the trailer. Wilson was not allowed to have boyfriends stay overnight in the trailer.

“Their rule was, ‘If you’re going to live on my property, you’re going to do what we say,’ ” said Roberts. “If she (Wilson) put on too much makeup, they would tell her she looked like a slut. It’s a totally dysfunctional family.”

So it went until the night of Oct. 24, when Juanita Baird was watching the World Series on television and her husband was in the garage. As it happened, George Baird went into the garage every night about that time to listen to a radio game show. His hearing was failing and the volume on the radio bothered Juanita.

The door of their house opened and two youngsters stepped in, with a girl carrying the gun. Roberts said two shots were fired, one of them hitting Juanita Baird in the chest. She was seriously wounded. George Baird was spared because of the nightly sojourn to the garage. The youths fled, and Juanita Baird was rushed to the hospital, where she later recovered.

Roberts said it took a few months, but he started hearing things about the shootings. One young boy said the $60 could have been his if he had agreed to do the job. The rumors eventually led to Barbara Wilson.

Roberts said Wilson agreed to a polygraph test, which in turn led him to conclude that she was involved.

“She threw ink all over the wall,” he said of the test, meaning that the machine was showing extreme readings. “Then she started crying and telling us all about it.”

Wilson has been charged with solicitation of capital murder and remains in jail in lieu of $20,000 bond. Her oldest son, Joseph, 18, was charged with the same crime. The other boys, ages 13, 14 and 16 were turned over to the Harris County Juvenile Probation Division. The 14-year-old girl was charged with attempted capital murder.