Kimberly Dotts - Murdered by Friends on Mothers Day

Kimberly Dotts was murdered by her friends in 1998

Losing a child to murder is unthinkable – a parent’s worst nightmare. A child being murdered by their friends is even more shocking. The so-called friends of Kimberly Dotts ended her life on Mother’s Day 24 years ago, and while two of the people who were involved are behind bars, their community is still processing the tragedy and an important question: how do we punish kids who kill?

PART ONE: Horror in Gallows Harbor

May 19th, 1998, was an unseasonably hot Tuesday for the search party combing a wooded area in central Pennsylvania, United States. The Clearfield County spot known as “Gallows Harbor,” along the West Branch of the Susquehanna River, is popular with hunters, campers, and teenagers. But on that day, the locals weren’t looking for a party or a trophy catch – they were searching for 15-year-old Kimberly Dotts, who was last seen in the area on May 10th, Mother’s Day.

A few teenagers did find Dotts’s body in Gallows Harbor that day, partially covered with branches, leaves, and twigs. They assumed it was Dotts – her body was in the third stage of decomposition and unrecognizable after nine days in the elements. The group of friends she was last seen with were already questioned about her disappearance, but this discovery turned interviews into interrogations, especially since one of them – 18-year-old Aaron Straw – discovered Dotts’s body.

Straw revealed a shocking series of events that started with a sleepover and ended with a brutal murder. “I didn’t mean for Kim to get hurt,” he told police, “just to scare her.” Straw was homeless, had a one-year-old son with an ex-girlfriend, and quit his job as a fast-food cook within the past month. He was the eldest of five children, two of whom were adopted by other families. When Straw was 13, he left his mother and her live-in boyfriend to move in with his step-grandmother.

While he admitted to participating in the events leading to Dotts’s death, Straw was reluctant to take full responsibility. He blamed his 16-year-old girlfriend, Jessica Holtmeyer, saying, “Jessie would not listen to anybody, and she had to kill her because she didn’t like her.” Straw’s step-grandmother empathized, saying that “Jessica sometimes had control over him.”

Police brought Holtmeyer in for questioning the next day. She had a reputation among her peers – she liked horror movies, tried out for the football team, got in trouble for smoking and skipping class, and wore a nose ring. Like her boyfriend, Holtmeyer lived with her grandmother who insisted, “she cares for people…she has never hurt anybody.” Other family members agreed that Holtmeyer was nonviolent, emphasizing her church activities (she was an altar girl and youth group member) and the way she helped her handicapped uncle.

Straw, on the other hand, painted a more sinister portrait of Holtmeyer as a bully who bragged about arson and animal abuse. Holtmeyer wasn’t willing to take full responsibility for Dotts’s murder either, however, Straw’s confession made her sound not only capable of it, but eager for the opportunity. Two similar but critically different stories began to emerge.

During a pause in Holtmeyer’s interview, the police officer who escorted her outside made small talk by asking about school. Holtmeyer’s response led to a break for police and her immediate arrest.

I go to Clearfield High School, or at least I used to. When I get nervous and excited, I black out and people tell me things I did. I’ll probably spend the rest of my life in jail.
Jessica Holtmeyer

Straw’s and Holtmeyer’s stories did agree on one thing: others participated in Dotts’s murder. By the weekend, five more individuals – four of them minors – were facing homicide charges. All of them were present when Dotts was tortured. They all helped cover up the crime. All of them gave different versions of what happened. And all of them plead to lesser charges in exchange for information that put Straw and Holtmeyer behind bars for life.

PART TWO: An Initiation Gone Too Far

Let’s unravel this tragedy by returning to Mother’s Day weekend in May 1998. The Dotts family moved to Curwensville, Clearfield County, a town of about 2,600, in January that same year. This is part of the State College (Penn State) region of Pennsylvania, northeast of Pittsburgh. It’s home to Lock Haven University but it’s otherwise known as rural and blue collar. It’s also an economically depressed region with a high crime rate.

In a documentary on this case, Clearfield is described as “a lower-class type of town. A lot of parents work and have to work as many hours as they can possibly get just to…get by, and a lot of kids just run around…everybody usually ends up on drugs or in trouble.” That trouble is often as serious as murder, and this was one of several teenage homicides in the late 1990s, including the 1997 murder of a 15-year-old, the 1998 murder of an 18-year-old, and the 1999 murder of a 19-year-old. But this particular case stood out, with coverage reaching international news outlets, and you’ll soon see why.

Kimberly “Kimmy” Jo Dotts was born April 13th, 1983. She was the middle child of Jodi and Richard Dotts, who married in 1980 and are still together. When Dotts died on May 10th, 1998, she was in the eighth grade and still new to her school. She was also overweight and had a learning disability, making her a target for bullies. She frequently babysat her younger sister and loved playing Barbies with her. The naïve, sweet-tempered Dotts also loved animals and going to church.

On Friday, May 8th, 14-year-old Dawn Lanager invited Dotts over for a two-night sleepover with a few other friends. Dotts’s family was excited that she was finally starting to fit in, and her older brother happily took up babysitting duties that weekend so she could go to the sleepover. From this point forward, no two accounts of what happened that weekend are exactly the same.

Lanager’s friends called themselves “The Runaway Gang” because they were planning to run away to Florida that weekend. Dotts’s family doesn’t believe that she would go with the group to Florida, but her younger sister reported her coming home briefly on Saturday and telling her, “I’m running away.” In addition to Lanager and Dotts, the “gang” included 18-year-old Aaron Straw, his girlfriend, 16-year-old Jessica Holtmeyer, 17-year-old Clint Canaway, 16-year-old Patrick Lucas, and 14-year-old Teresa Wolfe. Dotts’s 24-year-old cousin, Tracy Lewis, joined them to furnish rides and alcohol. Two men in their early 20s, friends of Lewis’s, also hung out with the teens that weekend and provided the lift to Florida, but they apparently weren’t involved with Dotts’s murder or coverup.

Early in the weekend, before they had a ride lined up, a few of the teenagers stole a car for the Florida trip and crashed it. After this, they walked to Holtmeyer’s house. Some recalled that Holtmeyer didn’t like Dotts and was upset that she was tagging along, others that Holtmeyer didn’t know Dotts prior to the sleepover and was indifferent.

At some point, the group hitchhiked to the Gallows Harbor area. There, they looted the camping trailers looking for road trip supplies like money and alcohol, stealing a dog, rope, and some sparklers as well. They vandalized the campers too, even flipping one over.

On Sunday, as the gang waited for their ride, they passed their time with a dangerous initiation ritual. Gallows Harbor got its name from local lore about being the site of hangings. It seems this inspired the teenagers to create a noose from their stolen rope and hang it from a tree. By most accounts, each gang member put the noose around their neck, while some say it was only three of them, but perhaps it was only Dotts.

Depending on who you ask, either Wolfe, Straw, or Holtmeyer actually fashioned the noose, while it was either Lewis or Holtmeyer who looped it around Dotts’s neck and dragged her around the clearing. One of the teenagers said they interfered because Dotts was crying and afraid. Either right before or right after this, depending on who’s telling the story, Dotts had placed her head in the noose as it hung from a tree. Lewis might have yelled, “yank it,” prompting Straw and Holtmeyer to pull Dotts off the ground (or onto her tiptoes) for approximately 20-30 seconds while she cried (or long enough for her to start convulsing). Either nearby trucks or an approaching four-wheeler caused them to drop Dotts, choking and crying, to the ground.

This is when everyone but Straw, Holtmeyer, and Wolfe left the area and a distressed Dotts. When the coast was clear, the remaining teens coaxed Dotts, eager for social acceptance, back into the noose. All agree Straw replaced the rope over another tree and tied one end to a rock. Straw alone or Straw and Holtmeyer yanked the rope again and hung Dotts until she convulsed and then lost consciousness.

Straw said Dotts’s lips were blue and she wasn’t breathing, and that’s why he threw a log on her stomach, which had her flailing and gasping for breath. He said he attempted to relieve the pressure of the noose by burning it off her neck. Wolfe and Straw said that’s when Holtmeyer picked up a four-inch-thick, basketball-sized rock, raised it above her head, and hit Dotts in the face with it at least two times. Wolfe retrieved the rest of the gang, and they all worked together to hide Dotts’s body.

As the sun set on Mother’s Day 1998, Holtmeyer hitchhiked back home. The rest of the group caught their ride to Lakeland, Florida. Not knowing their daughter was never coming home, the Dotts family filed a missing person’s report, and the Clearfield community launched a search effort.

PART THREE: Justice Served?

Police learned early on in their investigation that Kimberly Dotts and the group of friends she was with were soliciting rides to Florida, and the group returned by the following weekend. After Dotts’s body was discovered, Aaron Straw accused Jessica Holtmeyer of targeting Dotts in a thrill kill.

Once the rest of the gang were interviewed, another motive developed: Dotts was murdered for threatening to back out of or reveal their plans to run away. In this version, Dotts’s cousin, the 24-year-old Tracy Lewis, instigated her death. Dotts had told on Lewis once before for providing alcohol to minors, so the idea that she would tell now wasn’t a stretch.

Over time, more details emerged pointing the finger squarely at Holtmeyer. Some say that during Dotts’s hanging Holtmeyer said “snitches get hurt” or “that’s what happens to snitches.” Dawn Lanager, the one who invited Dotts to the sleepover, said Holtmeyer laughed about the killing and later said she wanted to “cut [her] up, scatter her all over the woods, and keep one of her fingers as a souvenir.” She said they watched the movie Scream together that weekend and, reacting to Drew Barrymore’s hanging death in the opening sequence, recalled Holtmeyer saying “it would be fun to hang someone.” Lanager’s murder charges were dropped in exchange for that testimony. Straw also agreed to testify against his girlfriend in exchange for his death penalty charges being dropped.

Holtmeyer and Straw were the only individuals who went to trial for Dotts’s murder. Holtmeyer went first, after her lawyers unsuccessfully sought a transfer to the juvenile system. The district attorney publicly stated that he was seeking the death penalty, which would have made Holtmeyer Pennsylvania’s first female and third minor to receive a death sentence. The Dotts’s family advised against the death penalty, but not out of sympathy. “When you’re on death row, you’re there so long with nothing to bother you,” Dotts’s mother said. “In jail, [Holtmeyer] will be with the murderers and rapists. We thought the death penalty would be too easy for her.”

The official autopsy says Dotts died from repeated blows to her head from a rock, but the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy testified that by the time she was bludgeoned, Dotts was “dead or…in the process of dying” due to the hanging. Holtmeyer’s attorney argued that the teenagers who testified against her “were liars who traded outlandish stories for lesser charges.”

In January 1999, after less than a day’s deliberation, the jury returned a guilty verdict on one count of conspiracy to commit homicide, two counts of aggravated assault, and two counts of conspiracy to commit aggravated assault. At 17, Holtmeyer was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Straw’s trial began a few months later, with his attorney claiming that Holtmeyer was the true villain. He argued that she made Straw hang Dotts, and that Dotts would be alive if Holtmeyer hadn’t bludgeoned her. After deliberating for 75 minutes, the jury convicted Straw of the nine counts against him, including first-degree murder. He also received a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. On the verdict, Dotts’s mother shared that it provided the family with “a lot of closure…it didn’t take Aaron Straw’s life, but it’ll make his life a living hell.”

Prior to both trials, per their plea deal, three of the other teenagers involved were sentenced to six months of juvenile detention. This includes Teresa Wolfe, who tightened the noose around Dotts’s neck and witnessed her murder without interfering. Dawn Lanager, the one who invited Dotts to her demise, got only probation, the lightest sentence of all. Tracy Lewis, Dotts’s cousin, plead guilty to reckless endangerment and conspiracy to commit aggravated assault. It looks like she served five years of a five-to-twenty-year sentence before making parole, but she had a prior record as well.

PART FOUR: Cruel and Unusual Punishment

Back then and to this day, the Clearfield community is conflicted over whether justice was served. Some believe Jessica Holtmeyer deserves a second chance, noting her traumatic childhood and accusing Aaron Straw of controlling abuse. They feel The Runaway Gang are more responsible for Kimberly Dotts’s murder than they admitted, throwing Holtmeyer under the bus to avoid serious consequences themselves. News reports at the time recognized the uncomfortable ethics surrounding so-called killer teens. They questioned why two young people were in prison for life while their co-conspirators were free from detention before the first anniversary of the murder had even passed. Locals are still distressed seeing The Runaway Gang in Clearfield raising their own families. Still others wonder why more individuals who were involved never went to trial at all.

The Dotts family suffered an immeasurable loss that reverberates to this day. Referring to Holtmeyer’s family, Dotts’s mother says, “They still have the opportunity to go to the prison to hold her hand…and look at her in the visiting rooms. I can’t do…that and I’ll never be able to do that.” She says only one of the teenagers – Clint Canaway – ever apologized to her family. It was on the Montel Williams show, and Dotts’s mother wasn’t receptive. “I told him, ‘I do not accept your apology now.’ He was there with Kimmy that day and did nothing.”

Holtmeyer appealed her sentence and filed petitions in 2001, 2002, and 2010, but all were denied. In 2012, a Supreme Court ruling in Miller v. Alabama changed the way juveniles could be sentenced, and in August of that year, the court stayed Holtmeyer’s petition for the first time.

Another ruling in 2016 – Montgomery v. Louisiana – reinforced that it was unconstitutional to sentence a minor to life in prison without the possibility of parole and allowed the decision to apply retroactively, so Holtmeyer amended her petition to include the new ruling. Hers was one of 479 cases in Pennsylvania of minors serving life without parole sentences, the most in the country. It wasn’t until July 2018 that Holtmeyer’s case was reviewed and resentencing ordered. In December that same year, the court resentenced Holtmeyer to 35 years to life. Including time served, that means she’s eligible for parole in 2033, at 51 years old.

Holtmeyer appealed her new sentence, claiming that she was given a mandatory sentence without proper review of her case’s specifics. She argued that the shocking nature of Dotts’s murder overshadowed her factual role in it, and that the Dotts family’s victim impact statement at her original trial weighed too heavily on the judge’s current decision. Prison employees, specialists, and other experts supported Holtmeyer’s case for reentry, including her psychologist, who said the extreme trauma Holtmeyer suffered from her boyfriend at the time made her susceptible to “automatic obedience,” and that she was now fully rehabilitated. While the court acknowledged her progress and Holtmeyer’s low risk to public safety, the judge ultimately denied her appeals and upheld her sentence of 35 years to life in a September 2020 ruling.

In light of the resentencing, an online petition to never grant Holtmeyer parole has amassed over 1,400 signatures. The Dotts family is among those who never want Holtmeyer to be released. Dotts’s grandfather says, “It’s not justice for someone killing somebody so brutally to get off on parole…I will do everything I can to stop it.” Dotts’s mother agrees, adding, “We went in front of 12 jurors and they convicted her. She got life with no possibility of parole, so there should not be a possibility of parole.”

The Supreme Court ruled that Holtmeyer’s original sentencing was “cruel and unusual punishment,” and what occurred to Kimberly Dotts, to her family, and to the Clearfield community, was certainly cruel and usual as well. How can we achieve justice in a case like this?

As I researched this case, I could imagine the family’s and community’s desire to deliver devastating punishments. I could imagine local law enforcement’s pressure to deliver swift justice. I could imagine those teenagers’ fear as their secrets unraveled, and their desperation when given the opportunity to save their futures by turning on an unpopular classmate (especially since her boyfriend already had).

None of us can say what we would do in the exact same circumstances, but I do have questions:

Why was law enforcement unconcerned about the variations in the teenagers’ stories or how they changed over time?
If Tracy Lewis instigated the teenagers to retaliate against Dotts for snitching, and she was the adult in the situation, why wasn’t she held more responsible for her influence?
How did Jessica Holtmeyer become the one who murdered over snitching on the gang’s runaway plans when she didn’t even go to Florida?
Isn’t it suspicious that the teenagers who pinned this on Holtmeyer were the ones who fled after the murder? They were together for a week, without Holtmeyer, with the opportunity to conspire.
Do we accept that Holtmeyer’s statement to police was an admission of guilt?
Would it have been harder to charge everyone involved as severely as the emotions of this case demanded unless the investigation narrowed it down to a single mastermind and her bullied minions?

Maybe The Runaway Gang’s stories are the whole truth and the right people are serving the right sentences according to their responsibility for Kimberly Dotts’s murder. What do you think? Only the eight young people in Gallows Harbor on Mother’s Day 1998 will ever know for certain.

This episode sponsored by Manscape.