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Murder file yields chilling details

By JOHN MUNFORD
jmunford@TheCitizenNews.com

[Editor’s note: This story is based on numerous investigative documents collected by sheriff’s detectives that were reviewed by The Citizen Tuesday morning following the guilty pleas offered and accepted on behalf of Holly Harvey and Sandra Ketchum Thursday. The documents provide a glimpse into some of the evidence that likely would have been presented to jurors in the cases had they actually gone to trial.]

When she pled guilty last week to killing her grandparents in their north Fayette home Aug. 2, Holly Harvey pointed blame at her girlfriend, Sandy Ketchum, saying it was Sandy who told her to run upstairs after her grandfather, Carl Collier, in the heat of the attack.

Sandy, however, told Lt. Col. Bruce Jordan of the Fayette County Sheriff’s Department that Holly “had been discussing killing her grandparents for days,” according to a written summary of the interview she gave police the day after the killings.

Sandy added that Carl and Sarah Collier wouldn’t let Holly and Sandy see each other.

Sandy, who was 16 at the time, also indicated to Jordan that Holly, then 15, planned the crime, saying Holly wrote a to-do list on her arm with the words “Kill, Keys, Money and Jewelry.”

Police said both girls were armed with knives during the attack, and Holly admitted in court last week that she had picked “the biggest knife” in the kitchen while preparing for the assault.

The knives were later recovered by police, along with Mr. Collier’s truck, which the girls used to flee the area, calling several friends along the way and urging them to watch the 10 o’clock news, according to witness statements filed in the case.

In her statement to Jordan, Sandy said Holly first stabbed Mrs. Collier in the back, but the Colliers managed to pin Holly down on the bed in her basement bedroom, telling her, “You’re on drugs, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Sandy said she was hiding beside Holly’s bed and took part in the attack after Holly asked, “Why aren’t you helping me?” At one point, police said, Mr. Collier ran upstairs and that’s when Holly insists that she hesitated before Sandy ordered her to follow him.

Sandy told Jordan that after she “finished with” the attack of Sarah Collier, she went upstairs and dodged a coffee mug thrown by Carl Collier as he tried to fight off his granddaughter. Sandy said she then saw Holly “delivering a severe blow to Carl’s neck which sent Mr. Collier to the floor,” Jordan noted in his summary of the interview.

By the time the attack ended, both girls had blood all over themselves, down to their undergarments, sheriff’s detectives noted.

Jordan noted Sandy’s response when he asked “why they were so compelled to kill the Colliers.”

“We just wanted to leave to be together forever,” Sandy replied, adding, “Those people didn’t deserve to die.”

Carl Collier, a former member of the Fayette County Board of Education, was 75 at the time of his death; his wife Sarah was 72.

Reports in the case file indicated that Sandy expressed urges to kill herself after the arrests, and she was placed on suicide watch.

Sandy and Holly were arrested at a house in Tybee Island where they had befriended two boys, spending the night at their house. A Tybee officer reported that after she was booked at the police station, Holly asked him if “they” were really dead, referring to her grandparents, the Colliers.

“I asked her who, and she responded, ‘Did they die all the way?’” said the written statement from Tybee police officer Frederick L. Anderson III.

A friend of Holly’s gave a statement to police, saying that Holly “hated her grandparents, mainly her grandma.”

“She was very disrespectful to them,” the friend wrote. “She hated living there.”

In her statement to police, Sandy admitted that she called friends trying to get a gun before the killings. One of those friends, interviewed by police, said in a statement that Sandy told her she was scared because “I’m gonna go to jail for murder.”

Also in the case file was a letter to Holly from her mother, Carla Jane Harvey, who was serving a prison sentence for possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. In the July 28 letter, Carla tells her daughter she is astonished that she was put on probation in Fayette County for an unspecified juvenile offense.

“It ain’t no joke,” Carla Harvey counseled her daughter. “If you care about your freedom at all you’d better fly right and straighten up.”

Carla Harvey also sympathized with her daughter’s position.

“I can’t stand the thought of you being there and what you have to go through,” she said, likely referring to Holly’s living situation with the Colliers. Carla Harvey also apologized for putting her daughter through the situation.

“I want you to have faith that this will all be over soon,” Carla Harvey wrote. “And believe that we are gonna be together and happy real soon.”

Jordan has publicly said this is one of the most disturbing cases of his law enforcement career. Superior Court judges Paschal A. English and Johnnie L. Caldwell Jr., who have between them over 50 years of experience in the Griffin Judicial Circuit as judges and formerly as prosecutors, said last week they agreed this was one of the most savage crimes they have seen.

Holly was due to enroll as a freshman at Sandy Creek High School, according to school officials. Sandy was last enrolled in the Coweta County school system, according to some of her friends, but she was living at home with her mother in Griffin at the time of the killings, police said. Now the teenage lovers will serve prison sentences, with Holly sentenced to two consecutive life prison terms and Sandy sentenced to one life term last week.