Crime: Nothing to Cheer About

Wanda Webb Holloway may be the ultimate stage mother. Last week a Houston jury found the 37-year-old suburban housewife guilty of concocting a bizarre scheme to assure her daughter Shanna a place on the high school freshman cheerleading squad by killing the mother of her chief rival, Amber Heath. With flawed but cold-blooded logic, Holloway concluded that Amber would be too distraught over her mother's death to compete against Shanna for the coveted position.

When Holloway approached her former brother-in-law, Terry Harper, to find a professional hit man, Harper informed the police and secretly recorded 45 minutes of conversation in which...