Outraged that her daughter Shanna hadn't made the cheerleading team two years in a row, Texas mom Wanda Holloway hired a hitman in 1991 to try and kill the mother of Shanna's rival — in the hopes of making room for Shanna on the team.
Harris County Sheriff’s OfficeWanda Holloway was arrested in 1991 for trying to hire a hitman.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, Wanda Holloway lived vicariously through her young daughter Shanna. In particular, Holloway pushed her to achieve the cheerleading dreams she had been denied in her youth.
Determined to see Shanna join the cheerleading team, Holloway spared no effort. However, when Shanna failed to make the team for two years in a row, losing to her peer Amber Heath, Holloway became enraged and desperate. She decided to take decisive action.
In 1991, as the next year of cheerleading tryouts approached, Holloway approached her former brother-in-law, Terry Harper. She had a shocking request: for Terry to kill Amber’s mother, Verna Heath. Holloway believed that Verna’s death would leave Amber too distraught to continue cheerleading, which would in turn open up a spot for Shanna.
But instead Harper reported Holloway to the authorities. She was arrested and charged with solicitation of capital murder — attracting national attention and earning the nickname: “Pom-Pom Mom.”
The case has since become one of the most extreme examples of the lengths some parents go to secure their children’s success. This is the story of Wanda Holloway and the so-called Texas Cheerleader Murder Plot.
Wanda Holloway And Her Unfulfilled Cheerleading Dreams
Wanda Webb Holloway was born in 1954 and was raised in a lower-income neighborhood of Channelview, Texas. Her father, Clyde Webb, was a tester at a concrete plant while her mother was a high school cafeteria worker.
YouTubeWanda Holloway, as seen on local news.
As a young child, Holloway was eager to please. But because she’d grown up in a poorer part of town, she was also overly conscious of how others perceived her and worried that people judged her.
“Wanda felt people looked down on her. She was very hyper, very active, she always wanted everybody to like her,” Tony Harper, Holloway’s first husband, told Texas Monthly in 1991.
Holloway also had a dream: to become a cheerleader. But her parents, strict Baptists, prevented her from trying out because they thought the cheerleading outfits were too “skimpy.”
Wanda Holloway put other dreams aside as well when she got married to Harper at 18. Instead of pursuing a degree in business, she started a family. She gave birth to her son, Shane in 1973, and her daughter Shanna, in 1977. But in 1980, Holloway and Harper divorced.
ABC 13 Archival FootageShanna Holloway, the daughter of Wanda Holloway.
As Shanna grew older, Holloway increasingly focused her attention on her. By the time that Shanna was in middle school, Holloway had begun to hope that Shanna could become a cheerleader.
“[Wanda] couldn’t be a cheerleader, but she could be a cheerleader’s mom,” Tony Harper remarked.
A Bizarre Cheerleading Murder-For-Hire Plot Unfolds In Rural Texas
In 1989, Shanna tried and failed to become a seventh-grade cheerleader at the public junior high school in Channelview. The next year, she failed again. Both times, Shanna had narrowly lost out to another student, a girl named Amber Heath. But though Shanna had begun to get bored with cheerleading, her mother Wanda Holloway was determined that Shanna would make the high school team in 1991 — at any cost.
Tryouts for Channelview High School were set to take place in March 1991, so Holloway put her plan into action. She decided to hire a hitman, and reached out to her former brother-in-law Terry Harper that January for help.
KPRC 2/YouTubeVerna Heath, the woman targeted by Wanda Holloway.
Terry had had trouble with the law before, but nothing serious and nothing violent. His rap sheet included several misdemeanors, including a charge for drunk driving. But he was most likely the only person that Holloway knew with a rap sheet at all. Unfortunately for her, Terry immediately went to the police when she told him what she wanted him to do, and police detectives gave him a hidden microphone to record their conversation.
In January 1991, Terry Harper did exactly that. He told Wanda Holloway that it would be $2,500 to kill Amber’s mother, Verna Heath, or $7,500 to kill both Verna and Amber. Holloway told him to just kill Verna, who she blamed for Shanna’s failures to make the team. Plus, Holloway believed that with Verna dead, Amber would be too distraught to try out — and she couldn’t afford the higher price tag for both murders, anyway.
“You want her dead?” Terry asked Holloway on Jan. 28, according to coverage by the The New York Times.
ABC 13 Archival FootageTerry Harper testifying at Holloway’s trial.
Holloway replied: “I don’t care what you do with her. You can keep her in Cuba for 15 years. I want her gone.”
To pay for the hit, Wanda Holloway offered her diamond earrings.
“I couldn’t pull the trigger myself,” she told Terry as she removed the studs, “but I can sure do it this way.”
With that, police had enough evidence to arrest Wanda Holloway. On Jan. 30, 1991, they charged her with solicitation of capital murder.
The Trials Of The Texas “Pom-Pom Mom”
Wanda Holloway’s trial began in June 1991. Armed with Terry Harper’s recordings, the prosecution found it easy to explain her motives to a jury, and Holloway was found guilty of capital murder. She was sentenced to 15 years in prison. But then the case took a surprising twist.
To the surprise and despair of many, Holloway’s first trial was declared a mistrial. In a second trial in 1996, Holloway pleaded no contest to the charges and received ten years in prison with a fine of $10,000. She was then released from prison on March 1, 1997, just six months into her sentence, and ordered to serve the remaining nine-and-a-half years on probation.
ABC 13 Archival FootageWanda Holloway with her daughter, Shanna, at her trial.
Understandably, Holloway’s reputation was destroyed. Newspapers across the country reported that she was a crazy “Pom Pom Mom,” and kids in town taunted each other by saying they were “gonna sic Mrs. Holloway on you.” Meanwhile, life for her intended victim, Verna Heath, was never the same.
“I felt numb and I felt hurt and I sank into the couch,” Heath, who visibly lost weight in the aftermath, remarked of learning that Holloway wanted to kill her. “You’ve really got to dislike someone to do that.”
Ironically, in a move that was meant to bring mother and daughter closer, Holloway’s acts also drove a wedge between her and Shanna. In the years since, Shanna has admitted that she didn’t even really want to be a cheerleader anymore at the time that her mother’s crime took place.
“At some point it clicked; This isn’t fun,” Shanna told PEOPLE in 2012. “But I was so close to my mom. She was my world, and I wanted to please her.”
ABCShanna speaking on Good Morning America in 2012 about the Texas Cheerleader Murder Plot.
Though Wanda is close with Shanna’s two sons today, Shanna doesn’t have much of a relationship with her mother herself.
“We do not have a very close relationship,” she explained in an interview with Good Morning America in 2012. “We don’t have a mother-daughter relationship where you sit around and gossip.”
As to her relationship with her own two sons, Shanna has taken notes from her mother.
“Obviously I veer away from being a stage mom,” she remarked. “I think I’ve learned that lesson.”
After reading about Wanda Holloway, dive into 11 murder-for-hire plots that went terribly wrong. Then, read about Moriah Wilson, the cyclist murdered by her boyfriend’s on-and-off-again girlfriend.
