Posted on 08/06/2004 7:18:59 AM PDT by madprof98
The two teenage girls spent much of that day holed up in the elderly couple's basement. They had smoked marijuana, authorities say. Each had a knife.
On her arm, authorities say, 15-year-old Holly Harvey had written a to-do list — Kill. Keys. Money. Jewelry.
It was Monday afternoon, and Sarah Collier, Harvey's grandmother, waited for her husband to return from a painting job. Authorities suspect she wanted to confront Harvey and her friend, 16-year-old Sandy Ketchum, about the smell of marijuana emanating from the basement of the north Fayette County home, where Harvey lived with her grandparents.
As Sarah and Carl Collier walked into a bedroom in the basement, Harvey lunged at her grandmother and began stabbing her, investigators say. At some point, Sarah, 73, and Carl, 77, pinned Holly down. The girl yelled for her friend to help.
Lt. Col. Bruce Jordan of the Fayette County Sheriff's Department says that's when Ketchum crawled from under the bed and began stabbing Sarah Collier as Harvey chased after her grandfather, who had run upstairs to call for help.
In the kitchen, he and his granddaughter struggled. Authorities say he, too, was stabbed more than 15 times before falling dead. The kitchen telephone, investigators say, had been yanked off the wall.
On Thursday, shortly after Jordan laid out the crime in disturbing detail, the two girls appeared in Fayette County Magistrate Court, quivering and sobbing under their bulletproof vests.
The handcuffed girls — standing barely 5 feet tall — seemed confused as they entered the courtroom.
Harvey cried throughout the hearing, putting her head down and shaking when Magistrate Judge Charles Floyd Jr. read her grandparents' names. Her court-appointed attorney, Judy Chidester, tried to comfort Harvey, placing her right hand on the girl's shoulder during the hearing.
Chidester said Harvey told her, 'I can't believe they're dead.'"
"Regardless of what you think of her, these were her grandparents," Chidester said. "During the entire hearing she was crying. I think she's pretty much acting like a scared 15-year-old, which is exactly what she is."
Ketchum, slightly taller than Harvey, with deep reddish brown hair, was also crying. Her face crumpled when she glanced back at her family members while being led out of the room.
Afterward, her family did not want to talk to reporters.
Lloyd Walker, Ketchum's court-appointed attorney, said the girl understands the charges against her, but is in shock.
"The reality of what it means to her life, no, she doesn't understand," Lloyd said.
The girls are being held in separate facilities under suicide watch.
A foreboding poem
Since Tuesday's arrest, the case has piqued the nation's curiosity.
How, people wonder, could two young girls be charged with such a heinous crime?
And what may have driven them to kill, as authorities allege?
Jordan says the two were involved in a forbidden romantic relationship. The girls carried out the slayings, he said, to "gain freedom and be able to stay together forever."
On Thursday, police released photos of two bloody knives they said were used in the attacks — one a butcher's knife, the other used for filleting. A third smaller knife was found in Harvey's pocket.
Authorities say they found the knives in a backpack when the girls were arrested.
Jordan has described Harvey has a manipulative, cold-blooded killer. Harvey's attorney, however, described the girl as a sobbing 15-year-old who doesn't understand the long-range implication of what's happened.
Those conflicting portrayals, explained Cathy Blusiewicz, an Atlanta psychologist who specializes in child and family issues, illustrate the two sides of childhood.
"There is the childlike immaturity of not really understanding what she did, while at the same time wanting what happened to have happened," Blusiewicz said. "As hard as it is for an adult to understand this, many children don't realize how final death is."
Since their arrest, a clearer — though still fuzzy — portrait has emerged of the two girls.
For years, Harvey had been living off and on with her grandparents, most recently since late spring, when her mother, Carla Harvey, 37, began serving a three-year term for marijuana possession.
"Holly begged to come live with them; the family she was with was trying to discipline her," said Betty Green, a friend of the Colliers. "So the grandparents felt sorry for her and took her in."
Her father has been "nonexistent" in her life, said Kevin Collier, Harvey's uncle and the couple's son.
The most recent stay with the Colliers had been tumultuous, with Harvey repeatedly running away, using drugs and arguing with her grandparents, according to family members and investigators.
Green said that at 3:30 in the afternoon Monday, she called Sarah Collier.
Collier was distressed, Green said.
"She said Holly had been locked in her room all day, that she hadn't seen her all day," Green said. "She was alienating herself. She felt helpless. She couldn't do anything with her."
Recently, Harvey had told her grandparents she wanted to drive to Florida, but they refused, reminding her that school was ready to start, according to friends of the Colliers'.
This angered Harvey, they said.
Investigators say they have found a poem Harvey had written. In the poem, she described how depressed she had been and that she cried herself to sleep.
In that poem, Jordan said, Harvey wrote that she wanted to kill.
Said Jordan: "She wished for everyone to suffer the way she suffered."
Ketchum, Jordan said, "was in it for the love."
Still, little is known about Ketchum.
She and Harvey met in middle school, friends say.
She attended an alternative school until February 2003, said Melinda Berry-Dreisbach, a Fayette County schools spokeswoman.
She and her father used to live on Stephens Street, in a blue-collar neighborhood in Fayetteville.
Melissa Shepherd, a friend of Ketchum's, remembers the girl as a kind person.
"I can't imagine her doing anything like this," Shepherd said.
Ketchum moved away from her Fayetteville neighborhood about a year ago, though it's not clear where she was living.
Shepherd said Ketchum's father remarried, which made Sandy Ketchum feel displaced.
Since Ketchum was arrested, Jordan said, he has had long conversations with the girl. He said she has been cooperating with investigators and has expressed "extreme remorse."
Calls to tell friends
After Monday's slayings, police say, the girls made off with the dead couple's blue 2002 Chevrolet Silverado truck.
They visited Sara Polk, a friend in Griffin.
Jamie Donaldson, Polk's mother, said the two called and asked if they could take showers and clean up. They told Sara they had been beaten up, Donaldson said in an interview Thursday night.
"I had just driven in and saw Sara standing at a truck talking to some people," recalled Donaldson. "The next thing I know she comes inside screaming, 'People have been murdered.' "
Harvey and Ketchum told Sara they had killed Harvey's grandparents and showed her the bloody knives, Donaldson said.
The family called 911.
Harvey and Ketchum drove toward Savannah, calling their friends on the grandparents' cellphone.
"They were asking if they had seen the news," Jordan said.
As they drove on I-16 toward the Georgia coast, the girls told their friends what they had done, Jordan said.
Several of those friends then called police with tips.
"We got lot of informants quickly that night," said Jordan.
The two girls drove to Tybee Island, where they met Brian Clayton, 22, and his 14-year-old brother walking on the beach, according to an article in the Savannah Morning News.
The girls asked Brian for a cigarette and joined the brothers for a stroll. The girls spent the night in the home Clayton's mother had just rented.
The family thought they was helping runaways, said Clayton's mother, Trish, a nurse who identified herself only by her first name.
"These girls were very young," she told the Savannah Morning News. "They were dirty. I thought something was up, you know, maybe they were runaways. I just wanted to make sure they were OK.
"Who knows what else they were capable of?" she said. "They could have been waiting around to kill us and take my money. We're lucky to be alive."
Jordan agrees.
The boys and their mother, he said Thursday, were in danger because the young fugitives needed money and to get rid of the truck and take another vehicle.
Police arrested them at the house about 2 p.m. Tuesday. The girls were handcuffed, but Harvey, who has petite arms, tried to slip out of the restraints, Jordan said.
When she was led out of the room, she saw more than a score of police and laughed, Jordan said.
"It almost made her giddy," he said, "to know we brought that many officers to arrest her."
— Staff writers Bill Torpy, Henry Farber and Don Plummer contributed to this report.
Being emotionally immature, shallow and selfish (all part of being a teen) are still not excuses for murder. Of course they are crying! They got caught and now they are being made accountable for their actions.
So how do you suppose they'll be dressed and made-up for their trial? I'll bet they'll lose the do-rag, baggy pants, and cigarettes for ribbons, flowery blouses, and slacks.
I know I feel safer with this heinous criminal behind bars. How about you?
I think it is an interesting study. Not only do homosexuals have higher rates of sexually transmitted dieseases but they also seem to have a considerable percentage of famous murderers....Loeb and Leopold, Richard Speck, Wayne Williams, and how many others? It seems if you go perverse one way then it is easier to go perverse another way too.
Of course the media does not present murderers as homosexuals even when they are flagrant.
As we speak, their multiple piercings are healing and they're scheduled to have their "F#$% My Grandparents" tattoos lasered off.
Marijuana: Peace, Love and a To-Do List -- Kill. Keys. Money. Jewelry.
I saw a piece on the murders yesterday on a local news station.
The detective that hauled the girls to the precinct after their arrest said the girls were the most cold, callous murder suspects he has ever dealt with.
BS!
Why do you think she's sobbing?
It's obviously not for her grandparents, whom she and her enlisted friend REPEATEDLY stabbed,
it's for her own ungrateful murderous SELF!
Cold-blooded murderers.....put them away for life. (I would prefer the death penalty, but I don't think that is an option).
They took care of her. Fed her. Clothed her. Sheltered her.
The grandfather is 77 frickin' years old and he's still painting to make an extra buck -- probably to support her.
They cried in court because they felt sorry for themselves. It is really too bad that the death penalty is the worst we have -- they do so deserve worse.
I missed that! 3 years for weed is insane! I will always hate it when they lock people up for some insignificant thing because they can't get them on the real issue. Was it Al Capone they got for speeding or tax evasion or something? When they do this they have liscense to lock any of us up for insignificant things. Weed should not get you jail time. Maybe it should just be legal. I wonder if any freepers have any thoughts on the matter. BWHAHAHAHA
No, that's not the real excuse that they will use in court. They will say in the court room that the girls were mentally ill due to the persecution they felt from society because they are gay.
The two friends, living in Australia, killed the mother of Pauline Parker. They went to prison for several years. Their motive was that they were about to be separated and were trying to avoid it.
After the girls got out of prison, Juliet took on the name of Anne Perry and now lives in England. In the following interview, Perry talks about the film. http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/2194/faq2/Section_4/4.9.html
Yeah, it's Reefer Madness for sure.
I'm with you.
Premeditated murder should NOT have an age limit.
These were planned murders; and these two, no matter what their age; should pay the price.
Forgive me if I seem just a little bit less than sympathetic.
Nope, because then their facade might be broken.
tSG
Not to split hairs on an otherwise reasonable post, but I've done a research paper on Richard Speck and there really isn't any evidence of him being homosexual prior to incarceration.
The crimes he was convicted of were murders of women which involved the rape of one of them. He is also known to have been physically and sexually violent against his former wife as well as prostitutes.
The other three were inarguably queer, as you state.
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