Teen girl, ex-girlfriend admit killing grandparents
FAYETTEVILLE, Georgia (AP) -- A 15-year-old girl and her ex-girlfriend pleaded guilty Thursday to stabbing her grandparents to death last summer so the young couple could be together.
Holly Harvey told the judge that while she was knifing her 73-year-old grandmother, "my eyes were closed the whole time."
Harvey pleaded guilty to two counts of malice murder and was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences. She will not be eligible for parole for 20 years. Sandy Ketchum, 16, was sentenced to three life terms, to be served concurrently.
Sarah Collier and her husband, Carl Collier, 74, were each stabbed numerous times August 2 inside the couple's house in northern Fayette County, outside Atlanta.
As part of her plea, Harvey detailed how she killed the couple.
She said she and Ketchum had stayed out all night, then spent the morning of the killings listening to music in her basement bedroom. That was when Ketchum suggested stealing the grandparents' truck "to get something to calm us down," Harvey said.
"'We'll have to kill them to do that,"' Harvey said she responded.
"But I didn't mean nothing by that," she told Judge Pascal English.
Ketchum first suggested hitting them in the head with a lamp, then suggested getting a knife, Harvey said. "I got the biggest knife I could find out of the kitchen," she said, adding that they practiced stabbing a mattress to see if the knife was sharp enough.
When the grandparents came downstairs to get a suitcase, Harvey said she stabbed her grandmother.
Harvey said her grandfather pinned her down, and she stabbed him in the chest. She chased him as he ran upstairs and tried to call for help, pulling the phone out of the wall, Harvey said.
"He grabbed the knife and I thought he was going to stab me," Harvey said. She said she took the knife from him and started attacking him.
When the judge asked Harvey why she did it, the teen said, "For Sandy," and added, "So that we could be together."
Ketchum's hearing was much shorter. She was not forced to detail the crime because she had immediately cooperated with authorities and showed signs of remorse, officials said. She was prepared to testify against her former friend, had the case gone to trial.
The teens had faced two counts of felony murder, two counts of malice murder and one count of armed robbery. The maximum sentence the girls could have received was life in prison without parole.
The girls were arrested the day after the killings at a beach house on Tybee Island, about four hours away. Police say they found a to-do list of sorts scrawled in ink on Harvey's arm: "kill, keys, money, jewelry."
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