CRIME HUNTER: Pom Pom Mom murder plot was RAH! RAH! RAH!

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Across the planet, cultural rites can seem bizarre to people here.

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Take Texas and the broader U.S. South.

Down in Dixie, Friday night high school football is a religion and the coach is God. But kids’ beauty pageants and cheerleading are also up there as anomalies.

Wanda Webb Holloway took cheerleading very seriously indeed. That level of motherly dedication made Holloway the Pom Pom Mom.

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Channelview, Texas is 24 km from downtown Houston but it might as well be 100. It is a hardscrabble place, tough but polite, where folks are always looking for the next thing.

In Texas Monthly magazine, writer Mimi Swartz described it thus: “The only colour seems to be the perilous orange of the refinery gas flares; at the Dell Dale highway exit, the white elephant rearing about the flea market looks hopelessly grimy, and off the road the rain soaks the yards of the tract and trailer homes to a dirty brown.

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“Winter in Channelview can bring menace and breed hopelessness, two qualities with which Wanda Holloway, who had spent most of her life here, was more than well acquainted.”

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Most of the men in Channelview worked at the nearby oil refineries, all making the same money. But Wanda Holloway stood out. She was always better dressed, and better put together than the other women in town.

And some resented her for it.

Beneath the surface, her courteous manners and warm smile hid a brooder who would do anything for her 14-year-old daughter Shanna.

In January 1991, Shanna narrowly missed earning a spot as a cheerleader on her junior high team for the second year. Friend Amber Heath got the place instead.

This would not do.

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Wanda Webb Holloway had raised Amber to be a cheerleader. She was undoubtedly living her life through her daughter and something had to be done.

She contacted her former brother-in-law, Terry Harper, and asked if he could arrange for Verna Heath, Amber’s mom, to be murdered. Her logic was that if Verna got iced, the kid would be so distraught she would quit the cheer squad.

And that would open up a spot for Shanna.

Harper had other ideas: He went to the cops.

Holloway was arrested the next day.

“When it all happened, it wasn’t talked about in my family,” Shanna told Good Morning America in 2012. “We didn’t discuss it. It was like it didn’t happen. It was just put on the back burner like nothing had happened.”

Except it did. Every newspaper and network news outlet zeroed in on the bizarre yarn.

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At Holloway’s first trial, the cornerstone for the prosecution was tapes provided by Terry Harper, coupled with his testimony. The scheming stage mom offered diamond earrings never to see the unsuspecting Verna Heath alive again.

Her team argued that it was Holloway’s ex-husband, Tony Harper and his brother Terry, who conspired to frame Wanda. And they had an ace: Terry’s estranged wife claimed he beat her into silence over the plot to help his brother get custody of his two children.

Wanda was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to 15 years in the slammer. However, because one of the jurors was a felon, a mistrial was later declared.

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At her second trial, she pleaded “no contest.” It’s not an admission of guilt but a concession the prosecution has more than enough evidence to convict.

She was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Sept. 9, 1996. Wanda was also ordered to pay $150,000 to the Heath family.

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Shanna Widner is now 46 years old and does not have much of a relationship with her mother who lives just a few miles away. She stays in touch through her children.

“You have to understand that I’ve only started dealing with this two years ago,” she told Good Morning America about why she allows her mother and sons to stay so close.

“So there would have been no reason for me to have to change the way I acted towards my mother if you pretend like nothing happened. When my boys were born, she was just as much a part of my life as she had always had been.”

She has not taken her mother’s approach to parenting.

“Obviously, I veer away from being a stage mom. I think I’ve learned that lesson,” she said on GMA.

“My sons participate in football and one of my sons didn’t want to play anymore and I was okay with that. If it’s not fun I think parents should take that into consideration. If they’re not having fun, then try something different. It’s not worth it.”

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Any true crime aficionado knows that cases like Pom-Pom Mom are eternal. Now, Investigation Discovery has announced the airing of the Texas Cheerleader Murder Plot on Dec. 16.

ID said in a press release: “Thirty years after Wanda Holloway was convicted of trying to hire a hit man to kill her daughter’s cheerleading rival, the Texas Cheerleader Murder Plot unpacks what really happened in the lead up – and wake of – these shocking events that rocked not just the close-knit community of Channelview, Texas but also the nation.”

The true crime network adds that Shanna will tell her side of the story about her mom’s “true motivations” and “who was secretly pulling the strings behind the curtain to set Wanda Holloway up.”

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@HunterTOSun

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