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.
If it hadn't been for the maryjane, this never would have happened.
</sarcasm
"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."
Right-O. I guess I was thinking of his post-incarceration interview in which he appeared with his prison "sweetie" and displayed his enlarged breasts. He was soooo weird and creepy. He bragged upon his ability to get any kind of drug in prison. From another source I understand he kept a photograph of one of his victims displayed in his cell. On the whole he made a great case for capital punishment.
No argument there. Unfortunately, Illinois didn't have a death penalty at the time or he certainly would have received it.
"There is the childlike immaturity of not really understanding what she did"
Someone is not a child when they are 15 years old.
It's just like the gun stats which say that all these children are being murdered by handguns; well, that's true only if you include "children" all the way up to 19 or 20 years old.
I never said that. Someone misquoted in a reply to me. She knows exactly what she did, and deserves the death penalty for it.
They can't be executed in GA because they are too young when charged. It is a damn shame.
Being under 17, they cannot get the death penaly here in Georgia. Period.
Pity, ain't it? If anybody ever deserved, these two girls do. Make a great example, too.
I'm not kidding, my just turned two year old understands what death is. When he steps on a bug he knows it's dead. When he sees a mouse or bird one of the cats have dragged in he knows it's dead. He gets mad at the cats. These two little murdering bitches need to be put down. What they did to that girl's poor grandparents is awful. What kind grandparents they were to take her delinquent butt in and then she kills them and in such a horrible way. I bet the family that had her before and was trying to discipline her feels like they made it out with their lives. It could have been them. Too bad it was anyone. Totally senseless. What demon children.
Oh they should really love these two--lesbo, pot smoking, murderers.
The collier's more or less raised Holly and spent so much time trying to help her and in return she made their lives a misery and brutally killed them and she doesn't even care. It's disgusting.
My standard prescription in such cases: Swift trial and execution.
I agree. I was thinking of some of the stupid, juvenile things I did. Many of them I didnt quite understand how what I did hurt people from name calling to fist fighting to vandelism.
But I sure knew where the line was drawn about seriously hurting someone. This disregard for life has always been with us. Theres just so many more people in America today and the media is able to make sure we hear about it immediatly.
Theres something seriously wrong with a 15 year old that plots a murder and carries it out in a manner such as this. I dont think they can be put back into society. Whats to happen if they release this girl in 25 and 35 years and she has to put up with real stress like holding a minimum wage job and trying to pay bills.
One thing I always had was a work ethic that has saved my butt. But more important I had respect for others especially adults and people in authority.I also had remorse when I was caught doing something. Maybe its just me but I dont think young kids today have any respect for others let alone remorse. They expect things to be handed to them and they dont think theres a ladder to climb that takes 25+ years to get to the top if you ever get there.
Besides, it's society's fault for denying these two their 'forbidden' romantic relationship.(Hollywood's influence? Ellen DeGeneres, Rosie, et. al?) These killers are the innocent victims here, not those mean and nasty grandparents.
I should have said many young kids, more so then in "the good old days". I realize that there are many great young people and I did not mean to demean them.
Maybe its what I mentioned earlier about America being so much bigger and the media informing us of everything. But I think it goes back to when we kicked God out of schools. We have taken down the ten commandments. Our kids no longer say a prayer every morning in school.
Abortion on demand which is really murder. No wonder kids have no morals.
Aw, such BS. Those two "girls" would stab their attorney if they thought they could escape from jail.
At least life in prison for both.
And what's wrong with that newspaper? Every sentence a new paragraph?!
I don't care if she is a scared 15-year old. Let her be scared in prison, where she cannot hurt anyone else, and where she cannot become the mother of more killers.
Unfortunately, this kid had apparently been passed around from family to family, and probably had been seeing her mom smoke dope since she was in diapers. Children have to be raised. This girl wasn't. By the time her grandparents tried to raise her, it was too late.
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