It was an arrest that rocked the blue-collar town of Channelview, Texas, and gripped the nation in January 1991.
Wanda Holloway, a 36-year-old devoted mother of two who served as an organist at the local Missionary Baptist Church, was charged with conspiring to kill the mother of her 14-year-old daughter’s cheerleading rival.
Authorities alleged the so-called Pom-Pom Mom attempted to hire the hitman to bump off 38-year-old Verna Heath so her daughter Shanna could win a spot on the cheerleading squad.
The murder was foiled when police learned of the plot and arrested her.
More than thirty years later, the case is the subject of a documentary, The Texas Cheerleader Murder Plot, which premieres Wednesday, Dec. 18, at 9/8c on ID and streams on Max. (An exclusive clip is shown below.)
The two-hour special includes an interview with Shanna, who sheds light “on her mother’s true motivations, how she coped with her mother’s actions, and who was secretly pulling the strings behind the curtain to set Wanda Holloway up,” according to an ID press release.
The documentary will also “unpack the impact the crime had on the nation, delving into the way in which broadcast news — and popular culture — ultimately got it wrong.”
The thrice married Holloway allegedly cooked up the scheme after Shanna twice failed to make the cheerleading squad and blamed Verna and her daughter Amber for ruining her chances.
Shanna Harper.
AP Photo/David Scarborough
“That’s all she ever talked about, that cheerleading stuff,” her former father-in-law, R.E. Harper previously told us. “She’d go on and on about it to anybody who’d listen.”
Holloway allegedly got in contact with her former brother-in-law Terry Harper, who she’d run into months earlier and asked him if he could arrange a hit. Startled, he told her he could — and then went to the Harris County sheriff’s office. He agreed to wear a wire and gather evidence against Holloway.
Amber and Verna Heath.
AP Photo/David Scarborough
In one call, she gave him Verna’s address and her daily routine.
They also settled on a price.
“$5,000 for the girl. $2,500 for the mother,” he said.
“The mother, she ain’t worth crap, is she?,” Holloway said, laughing.
Holloway met up with Harper in a parking lot two weeks later and settled on getting rid of only Verna. “The mother’s done more damage than the daughter,” she said. “The mother is the one that screwed me around.”
“This guy, badass or what?,” she asked about the purported hitman.
“Yeah, yeah, he’s bad to the bone, baby,” Harper replied.
“He’s gotta be,” she said, “this is the only way I could ever do it, is pay somebody.”
At the end of the meeting, Holloway gave Harper a pair of diamond earrings for a down payment.
Holloway was later charged with solicitation of capital murder.
She was found guilty during her first trial, but the conviction was overturned, ABC13 reported.
She later pleaded no contest to avoid a second trial.
She was sentenced to 10 years in prison but received probation after serving just six months, per ABC13.
