Slain Woman Mourned by Hundreds

BURBANK —  Searching for solace amid a tragedy that a priest described as “sad beyond all description,” hundreds of friends, co-workers and family members gathered Wednesday to mourn Dixie Lee Hollier, the Warner Bros. Records manager whose teenage daughter has been charged with her murder.

Only hours before the funeral at St. Robert Bellarmine Catholic Church in Burbank, a judge rescinded his order of a day earlier that would have permitted the daughter, Amber Merrie Bray, 18, to attend the service.

Bray’s lawyer had earlier persuaded Superior Court Judge James Bascue that most of Hollier’s family wanted the dead woman’s eldest child there even though she had been charged in her mother’s death.

But the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the Burbank police objected, citing concerns over security. At least one relative also complained, said Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office.

Bray may face the death penalty in the crime, along with her boyfriend, Jeffrey Glenn Ayers. Both are charged with conspiring to kill Hollier so the daughter could inherit money. Hollier, 42, was shot, stabbed, and beaten to death Jan. 16 in the family’s Burbank duplex. Police said they found Ayers crouched over Hollier’s body with a knife in his hand as they responded to a call from a neighbor.

Bray’s public defender, Joy Wilensky, said her client was devastated by the judge’s decision to ban Bray from the service and accused law enforcement officials of treating Bray unfairly and attempting to “to turn Amber’s family against her.”

“Many times, people are let out of jail to attend funerals, which is the right thing to do,” Wilensky said. “She is a teenage girl, she is presumed innocent at this point, and she was her mother.”

Officials were concerned that Bray, who is being held without bail at Sybil Brand Institute for Women in Los Angeles, might attempt to flee, said Burbank Police Lt. Larry Koch.

Authorities were also concerned about providing enough personnel to protect Bray at the funeral, Koch said.

“There would be family members from all sides, relatives of the victim, relatives of the suspect,” Koch said. “When you put all those people together and bring out Amber, there is the possibility you could have some problems.”

As it turned out, the funeral was a peaceful and poignant celebration of Hollier’s life. Mourners entered the church accompanied by the type of popular music Hollier loved and worked with, including Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven” and Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

She was carried to the altar in a pale pink casket covered with sprays of pink and white roses.

Hollier’s youngest sister, Laurie Treacey, eulogized the single mother of three as a “free spirit who sometimes walked to a different beat,” a flower child turned career woman who possessed a keen wit and curious intellect. But most of all, Treacey said, her sister was a devoted mother who put aside her own dreams to raise her children.

“Dixie lived modestly because her children and their needs always came first. Everyone in her family knows about her deep love and devotion to all of them,” Treacey said, flanked by two of Hollier’s other siblings.

During the mass of the resurrection, Msgr. Patrick Reilly alluded only obliquely to the double tragedy that has befallen Hollier’s family. “The two most prominent emotions at this moment have to be pain and bewilderment,” Reilly said. “Our sense of loss is compounded by a sense of confusion.”

But Reilly urged the mourners neither to minimize the tragedy nor to let it define the rest of their lives.

“What happened is a tragedy and sad beyond all description, but it is not the sum of life,” he said. “The fact of thorns do not eliminate the fact of roses.”

Amid the tears, there was one moment that brought grateful smiles to the congregation. Hollier’s ex-husband, Tom Bray, who is also the father of Amber and her younger sister Amy, 15, performed a trumpet medley. He started with the sad strains of “Amazing Grace”, then broke into the upbeat Dixieland jazz melody of “When the Saints Go Marching In.”