At 13, Shanna Widner adored her mother, Wanda Holloway. “She was very involved. All my friends loved coming over because she took us to do things and made sure we were entertained, and we always had a great time,” Shanna exclusively tells In Touch. “I had such a cool mom. I was very blessed.”
Then her world came crashing down. In January 1991, Wanda was arrested for scheming to hire a hitman to kill a rival mom whose 13-year-old daughter kept beating Shanna for a place on the middle school cheerleading squad. The news studded their Channelview, Texas, community and gripped the nation. Nearly 34 years later, a new documentary – The Texas Cheerleader Murder Plot, which debuted on Investigation Discovery on December 18 and is available to stream on Max—is revisiting the infamous story, as Shanna, now 47, shares for the first time the truth about what happened — and how she’s made peace with the fact that her mother was branded a monster.
Wanda was desperate for Shanna to be a cheerleader — so desperate that she contacted former brother-in-law Terry Harper, who had a criminal record, to help her hire a hitman to take out the competition, prosecutors claimed. Wanda hoped if her adversary, neighbor Verna Heath, were dead, then Verna’s 13-year-old daughter, Amber, would be too distraught to compete, paving the way for Shanna to take her place on the squad. Terry, however, secretly went to the cops and recorded his conversations with Wanda, who divorced Terry’s brother Tony in 1980.
After agreeing on a price of $2,500 and giving Terry her $2,000 diamond earrings as a down payment, Wanda was arrested.
The intended victim, in the “cheerleader mother murder-hire” case, Verna heath(l) and her daughter Amber(r) arrived at court. Mrs. Heath was intended murder victim, in alleged plot by Wanda Webb Holloway, the mother of a cheerleader rival of Amber Heath. Holloway’s trial for solicitation for capital murder opened in Houston.
The woman branded “The Pom Pom Mom” faced two trials. Though the defense claimed Terry manipulated and smeared Wanda to help his brother gain custody of their kids, Shanna and Shane, Wanda was convicted of solicitation of capital murder and sentenced to 15 years. “It was devastating and traumatic for me,” Shanna, a schoolteacher with two adult sons, tells In Touch. But the first verdict was overturned on a technicality (a juror was ineligible to serve, it was later discovered) — so Wanda headed back to court. This time, she pleaded no contest and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. She was released on probation in 1997 after serving just six months.
Their mother-daughter bond was forever changed. “We never lost touch or anything; we’ve always been in each other’s life,” Shanna says of her relationship with Wanda, now 70. “But maybe … I had some anger going on underneath.” Her family coped by refusing to talk about the ordeal, so “I kept stuffing things down, not dealing with it,” which led Shanna to develop severe anxiety and depression.
She says she forgave her mom decades ago. But to find peace, “I had to forgive myself as well. I felt like it was my fault — if I had been better, then maybe this wouldn’t have happened. I kind of took the blame.”
Making the documentary has helped Shanna “heal,” she says, “because it’s made me talk about and confront what happened — something I could never do in the past.”
