Baffling Turn for Young Couple

She was a onetime honors student and high school cheerleader who attended church youth group meetings and berated friends who smoked cigarettes. He was an amiable high school dropout who drifted from job to job and outlined money-making schemes on a computer. She worried about her weight. He called himself G.O.D., a nickname from the Dungeons & Dragons-type fantasy games he often played.

To those who knew them, such outward appearances made Amber Merrie Bray and Jeffrey Glenn Ayers an unlikely couple. Many doubted that the relationship, which blossomed among the cliques and coffee shops of downtown Burbank last fall, would last. Yet none imagined that it would take such a tragic turn, with the young lovers charged in the slaying of Bray’s mother.

As the two await arraignment nearly two weeks after the killing, friends of the couple are scouring their past encounters and conversations with the pair, searching for clues or a foreshadowing event, anything that could illuminate what remains for them a baffling slaying.

The facts, as laid out by police, are straightforward enough.

The mother, Warner Bros. Records manager Dixie Lee Hollier, 42, was shot, stabbed and beaten to death on Jan. 16. She was attacked before dawn in her bedroom and attempted to flee down a hallway after the first bullet was fired. Police say they found Ayers, 21, straddling her body, arms raised in mid-strike. Nearby lay the kitchen knife that had been used to cut Hollier’s throat and sever her windpipe.

Later, police would allege that before attacking Hollier, Ayers had paused to riffle her purse, taking cash and an ATM card.

Initially, Bray, 18, the eldest of Hollier’s three children, was questioned as a witness along with her siblings, ages 15 and 5. All were in the family’s West Oak Street duplex during the minutes-long assault, and at least one of them called 911 for help, police said.

Within hours, however, Bray was placed under arrest for complicity in her mother’s death. Prosecutors allege that as part of their plan, she purposely left the front door unlocked that morning so Ayers could enter.

He allegedly was armed with a gun he bought the day before at a location authorities refused to disclose. A search of Ayers’ apartment turned up documents showing that he and Bray spent two months plotting to kill Hollier so Bray could collect her inheritance, which consisted largely of a $300,000 life insurance policy, authorities said.

But the police account does not satisfy the abundance of questions being raised by friends and family of the accused.

Was financial gain truly the motivation? If Bray was really so unhappy at home with her mother, why didn’t she move out? And if the pair truly had a plan, then why did it go awry?

“Based on how G.O.D. played games, it would seem a little sloppy,” said Richard Stiles, 26, a friend who knew Ayers from science fiction and historical role-playing games. “I think he did it for her, whether it was love or not.”

The last time Stiles saw Jeffrey Ayers was Jan. 6, 10 days before Hollier’s death. Ayers had come over to Stiles’ apartment to watch “Tank Girl” and “Judge Dredd” on video. But he declined to stay for a role-playing session based on the “Star Wars” movies. It was Bray’s 18th birthday and Ayers had promised to take her out to dinner, according to Stiles.

His regular “gaming” buddies had been seeing less of Ayers--who called himself G.O.D., short for Games of Deception--since he started seriously dating Bray in late September or early October. The pretty, blond high school senior, whom he met in downtown Burbank through mutual friends, was his first real girlfriend and by most accounts, Ayers had fallen hard for her.

“Until she came into his life, he always said being with a girlfriend was stupid, a waste of your time,” said Dennis Morin, 23.

Until then, Ayers had plenty of time to hang out at the Media City Center video arcade, drink coffee at Norm’s and Taco Bell, or direct long games of Shadow Run at The Last Grenadier, a Burbank shop that sells role-playing supplies. After a shoulder injury kept him from pursuing a dream to join the National Guard or Marines, he worked at a McDonald’s for a few months, then tried telemarketing, according to friends.

But he lived rent-free with his mother and had not seemed much interested in working since his grandmother died last year and left him a small inheritance, friends said. He talked about making money through various business ventures. His latest scheme was to invest in a series of 900-number telephone lines, said Ken Nolls, 20.

At the same time, friends describe Ayers as uncommonly generous. When they were low on money, he bought meals and groceries.

Most observers say Ayers and Bray seemed playful and happy together. Yet one friend, Pam Minnick, 20, said she was surprised when, after the pair had been dating only a few months, Bray told her that she and Ayers were already talking about getting married.

“She had a list of everyone who would be at the wedding and her bridesmaids. We were laughing about it because she had 100 people to invite and Jeff only had a few,” she said. “They talked about getting jobs, getting an apartment together, and as soon as she turned 18, getting married.”

Bray’s attorney, Joy Wilensky, has instructed Bray’s relatives--who initially denied that she was romantically involved with Ayers--to stop talking publicly about the case. Immediately after the killing, Bray’s father and aunt defended her, saying that any disagreements with her mother were typical teenage complaints. They were at a loss to explain her linkage to the crime.

Wilensky maintains that accounts of the killing are replete with “half-truths” and that there could be more than one explanation for the police-collected evidence.

Teenagers who knew Bray from school say they never heard her complain much about anything. Like any adolescent, she bristled at the curfew her mother imposed, fought with her younger sister and got irritated when she had to baby-sit her little brother.

The most striking thing about her was how reserved she was, classmates and teachers said. During her freshman year at John Burroughs Senior High, she was picked for the cheerleading team. Somewhat overweight at the time, she didn’t fit in with the other girls on the squad, said Jennifer Ervin, 17.

“She didn’t have very many friends, but it didn’t seem to bother her,” said Ervin, who attended both Burroughs and Monterey Continuation High School this year with Bray.

Her parents separated when Bray was 3 and divorced when she was 7. Her father, a former jazz musician named Tom Bray, subsequently moved to Las Vegas. Because he lived out of state, Bray did not see him often, but they maintained contact by phone, said Sonya Chang, 42, a friend of the Holliers.

Other classmates said that while she was at Burroughs, Bray was known as an exceptionally bright student, “the type of girl you always copied your Spanish homework off of,” in the words of one. She did well in her honors-level classes even after she started regularly cutting school last year.

Due to her chronic truancy, Bray was transferred in mid-October to Monterey Continuation, an alternative school for students with academic or attendance problems. There, she continued the same low-profile, high-performance pattern of behavior she had exhibited at Burroughs, according to school officials. By Christmas break, her attendance at Monterey had become sporadic and she would have been expelled from school on the same day she was arrested.

None of her friends knows why Bray skipped school so much, whether she was bored, lonely or both. She did not drink or use drugs and was known as a fervent anti-smoker, friends said.

Her closest friends tended to be older and formed two seemingly disparate circles. One group came from the evangelical church her family attended, Toluca Lake Trinity Foursquare. The other was the “gaming” crowd around Ayers.

WHen Hollier’s family buried her Wednesday, it was the church group that showed up to offer sympathy.