In Texas, everything really is bigger. The city of Houston embodies this common postcard adage. It's a world-class city with glitter glass towers, mammoth freeways, upscale restaurants and cultural attractions like Opera and Ballet. But in the sprawling outskirts of the city, the entertainment often harkens back to an earlier era. There is a weekly event in the fall that has captivated Houston audiences for a lot longer than the opera, an event where everyone understands the language and no one needs a translator. Football is still king in Houston. Boys as young as 5 and 6 put on pads and helmets and dream of becoming the high school star quarterback. And girls just as young pick up their pompoms and cheer for their brothers, cousins and sweethearts. Sometimes, however, it can get a bit out of hand.

Amber Heath and Shanna Harper grew up together in the Houston suburb of Channelview where they attended the same Christian school. Their mothers were best friends and neighbours. Verna Heath had been a star baton twirler in high school and ran a school for twirlers and cheerleaders. Her daughter, Amber, had inherited much of her mother's talent. Wanda Holloway, Shanna's mother, had wanted to be a cheerleader in high school, but her religious father had prevented her from trying out for the team. She was determined not to deny her daughter the experience. Perhaps a little too determined.

However, Shanna lacked her friend's polish and precision. At the junior high tryouts, Amber made the squad whilst Shanna did not. Wanda vowed to work harder and relations between the neighbours became strained. And when Shanna failed to make the squad the following year, due to her mother's attempts at bribery, Wanda could take no more.

In 1991, as the girls were entering high school, Wanda hatched a plan to remove Amber from the competition. She approached her former brother-in-law, Terry Harper, a man with a chequered past, and asked him to arrange a hit on Amber and her mother. Horrified at the notion of killing over something as trivial as cheerleading, Terry went to the police. With Terry wearing a wire, the police were able to record Wanda haggling over the cost of the killings - $7,500. But Wanda couldn't afford both and in a cold, calculating decision caught forever on tape, she decided to have Verna killed, hoping that Amber would be so distraught over the death of her mother that she would not try out for the squad. And when Wanda gave Terry a pair of diamond earrings as a down payment, police arrested her.

After jurors heard the tapes of Wanda describing how she wanted Verna and Amber dead, they had no trouble in finding her guilty of solicitation of capital murder. She was sentenced to 15 years in prison and ordered to pay a $10,000 fine. She only served six months, since one of the jurors was on probation at the time of the trial, thereby rendering the verdict invalid. At the second trial, Wanda pleaded no contest, and served out the rest of her sentence on probation with 1,000 hours of community service, which was just fine with Verna Heath who, after years in the spotlight, wanted to get on with life, as did Channelview. Today, the town has a big, new high school and most locals want to forget the sordid events that attracted national attention to their community. Instead, they'd rather focus on more important things, like football and cheerleading.