The victims of what investigators think was a shooting spree by 36-year-old Mary Ann Holder will be Friday at Pleasant Garden Baptist Church. Officers say Holder apparently shot one of her sons and three other children while they slept at her Pleasant Garden home, shot and wounded her married former lover, then killed her younger son.
Holder then killed herself.
Holder's ex-husband Rocky Smith and the couple's 21-year-old daughter Christina Smith say they had no indication that anything was wrong. Smith said Holder had bought a car full of groceries the day before the shootings.
Holder's ex-husband, Rocky Smith, and the couple's daughter, Christina Smith, 21, say they had no indication anything was wrong. Christina Smith said Holder had bought a carload full of groceries the day before the Nov. 20 shootings.
"I believe that everything has happened for a reason that led up to this moment. I will never know those reasons. I don't think I need to know those reasons," said Christina Smith, who stayed in daily contact with her mother after her parents divorced.
Holder, 36, had been having an affair with Randall Lamb, 40, for more than three years, but it was coming to an end after months of bitter accusations between Holder, Lamb and Lamb's wife, including allegations of stalking and harassment.
Jennifer Lamb had prepared but not yet filed a potentially costly lawsuit against Holder accusing her of alienating the affections of her husband, investigators said.
Criminal investigators also took possession of a $10,000 check Holder wrote to Jennifer Lamb in an apparent settlement aimed at staving off the threatened lawsuit, according to a search warrant. Holder gave the check to Randall Lamb in a Walmart parking lot the night before her shooting rampage, then asked to meet him again the next morning in a community college parking lot.
That meeting ended with Holder firing several shots at Randall Lamb and wounding him in the shoulder. He recovered in a hospital and has returned home.
Holder is accused of killing her two sons — Robert Dylan Smith, 17, and Zachary Smith, 14. Guilford County Sheriff BJ Barnes said she also killed the niece and nephew she took into her home when her sister died — Richard Brian Suttles, 17, and Hannaleigh Suttles, 8. She also mortally wounded Makayla Leigh Woods, Robert's 15-year-old girlfriend.
Investigators plan chemical screenings of the victims to see if the children had been drugged or if there was anything influencing Holder's behavior.
"I think there will be a time that we can say we rule out certain theories, and we can come back and say, 'Based on what we know we think this might be what it was.' But I don't know we'll ever be able to prove why unless she wrote it somewhere we haven't seen so far," said Col. Randy Powers, the chief deputy of the Guilford County Sheriff's Office.
The family donated the organs and tissues of Zachary Smith and Hannaleigh and Ricky Suttles and have been told that nearly two dozen people have been helped, Rocky Smith told WGHP/Fox 8, the Journal's news-gathering partner.
"We've heard of a child up north who got a heart from Zack and a young child here in the Triad who actually got a kidney from Zack. I hope I get to meet all of those folks one day," Rocky Smith said.
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