Girl’s Supporters Deny Motive in Mother’s Death

Relatives of a Burbank high school student charged with her boyfriend in the brutal slaying of her mother rallied to the young woman’s defense Thursday, saying they do not believe Amber Merrie Bray could have committed such a crime.

“To me, there is no possible motive for her to be involved in this. She had nothing to gain,” said Sonya Chang, who identified herself as a close friend of the dead woman, Dixie Lee Hollier, and a spokeswoman for Bray’s family. “I think the allegations as we’ve heard them are untrue. [Police] have not fully disclosed what evidence they have.”

The declarations of support for Bray, 18, came on the same day prosecutors formally charged her and Jeffrey Glenn Ayers, 21, with conspiring to kill Hollier, 42, so the daughter could inherit money.

Court documents filed Thursday charged the pair with one count each of capital murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Officials allege that Ayers was the one who actually killed Bray’s mother but they maintain that Bray “aided and abetted” her boyfriend in the crime.

The district attorney’s office said the case meets the legal criteria for seeking the death penalty because Hollier was killed allegedly for the suspects’ financial gain and because they allegedly waited until the victim was vulnerable to carry out the surprise attack.

Bray and Ayers made their first appearance before a judge Thursday in a Burbank courtroom packed with weeping friends and relatives. They declined to enter pleas after their public defenders asked for their arraignments to be postponed until Feb. 1 and were ordered held without bail.

Members of Hollier’s family stood huddled in the rear of the courtroom as Bray, wearing a black hooded pullover with her blond hair tied back, was led handcuffed into the courtroom. The stocky Ayers, wearing jail blues, was placed in the jury box several seats away. At no time did the two defendants look at one another.

Outside the courtroom, Bray’s father and relatives of both defendants declined to speak with reporters.

In the days preceding the killing, Hollier’s neighbors said they heard loud shouting matches between Hollier and her daughter. But Chang said the relationship between Bray and her mother was “a good one, with the normal ups and downs.”

Chang said she had spoken with Bray since her arrest and that Bray told her that Ayers is not her boyfriend and that she had nothing to do with the killing.

“This is the first time the entire family has seen him. None of us recognize him,” she said.

She added that Bray has not slept or eaten since her arrest, and that she is “terrified” of the charges against her.

Chang confirmed that Hollier had recently prepared her last will and testament, but said it was due to her concerns about a chronic medical condition, not because she feared for her life, as a neighbor maintained.

‘She was a good mother, she cared about the kids and was a great person,” said Charmane Deas, Bray’s aunt.

“The family is still very shocked and troubled by all this. We don’t know any more than what we’ve read in the papers, so we can’t say what really happened,” Deas said.

“Dixie worked hard to support those kids, she loved them,” said one family friend who declined to be identified. “There’s no way she could ever have provoked anyone to do something like that to her.”

Hollier, a Warner Bros. Records manager, was killed around 5 a.m. Tuesday in the Burbank home she shared with Bray and two other children, ages 15 and 5. Police allege that Bray let Ayers into the home and that he shot Hollier as she lay in bed. When the wounded woman attempted to flee down a hallway, Ayers continued to shoot, stab and beat her, police said.

Officers who arrived at the scene allegedly found Ayers crouched over Hollier’s body with a knife.

The police said money was the motive for the killing, based on documents they recovered from the apartment where Ayers lived with his mother.