Fifty-six-year-old Joe Harvey and his fifty-four-year-old wife Mattie, nicknamed “Teat,” were fixtures in Lewis Chapel Mountain, Tennessee, a town of approximately 14,000 people in the Appalachian Mountains thirty-five miles north of Chattanooga. For thirty-five years, the couple ran a combination convenience store and automobile repair next to their home on the edge of town.

If the Harveys’ had a fault, it was that they were too trusting. What money they did not keep at their business, they kept in their home. Many people knew of the arrangement and friends and family warned them of the dangers. Joe and Teat, however, brushed those concerns aside, believing everyone was as honest as they were. That unyielding faith proved fatal.

For the first time in memory, the Harveys, without explanation, did not open their store the morning of March 4, 1991. After being unable to reach them, a concerned neighbor called the authorities.

Arriving at the home, Sequatchie County Sheriff Joe May entered through the unlocked front door. Upon entrance, he found the majority of the home’s interior had been torched. An empty gasoline can sitting on the kitchen table was a telltale sign of arson.

Sheriff May feared the worst when he found drops of blood scattered throughout the home and on the porch. His fears were confirmed six weeks later when the couple’s car was raised from the Tennessee River, just across the Alabama state line at Bridgeport. Joe and Teat’s bodies were inside the trunk; each had been shot to death.

Over $150,000 in cash was determined to have been taken from the Harvey home. The community was shocked when it was learned that the culprits were two of the people the couple had trusted the most.

Joe and Mattie “Teat” Harvey

While Joe and Teat had no children, they did have a large extended family to whom they were close. In particular, the couple loved their twenty-seven-year-old niece Cheryl Holland like a daughter. She lived just across the state line in Rossville, Georgia, only a few miles from her aunt and uncle’s home.

Shortly after Joe and Teat disappeared, family members were also concerned for Cheryl, as she was also missing.

Cheryl Holland

On March 8, five days after the Harveys were last seen, Cheryl’s pick-up was found abandoned at a truck stop along Interstate 81 in Greene County, two hours east of Lewis Chapel Mountain. The doors were unlocked, and inside were her keys and pocketbook. Her necklace was found on the ground beside the vehicle.

The findings suggested Cheryl may have been abducted.

Truck Found

But No Cheryl

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) was brought in to assist the Sequatchie County Sheriff’s Department in the investigation into the disappearances of Joe and Teat Harvey and their niece Cheryl Holland. T.B.I. agents were bothered by what thirty-year-old Eddie Wooten, Cheryl’s common law husband, told them.

During his first interview with authorities, Wooten said he and Cheryl had traveled six-hundred miles to Newport News, Virginia, on March 6, two days after the Harveys disappeared, but that he could not remember the motel where they stayed. In a subsequent interview, he stated that a month before Cheryl disappeared, he had taken her to a hospital in Knoxville, one-hundred miles away, for a week-long treatment of stomach cancer. His memory, he claimed, again failed him as he could not remember the name of the hospital.

Eddie Wooten

Several family members confirmed Cheryl had borrowed money from them, saying she needed to go to an institution for treatment of stomach cancer. She asked that her condition be kept within the family and members obliged.

Cheryl’s last trip to her doctor, however, had shown her to be in good health, and she had not checked herself into any Knoxville hospital for treatment. In addition, neither her name nor Eddie’s was found on any Knoxville hotel or motel registers for the time period they claimed to have been in eastern Tennessee. Finally, on the day that Wooten said he had driven Cheryl to Knoxville for treatments, she was confirmed to have been working at a truck-stop in Chattanooga.

Cheryl Feigns Sickness

When confronted with his lies, Wooten broke down. He said that during the last week of February and first week of March, Cheryl came home from work saying they needed more money. She formulated the plan to murder her aunt and uncle and take the large sum of cash inside of their home.

That evening, Wooten and Cheryl purchased a gas can and filled it with gasoline at a different service station from the one owned by Joe and Teat. After visiting Cheryl’s mother, they went to her aunt and uncle’s house next door.

After letting themselves into the home, Wooten said, he shot Joe and Teat to death. He and Cheryl then put the bodies into the trunk of the Harveys’ car. All the while, Wooten said he and Cheryl’s six-week-old son and Cheryl’s five-year-old daughter from a previous relationship were in their car parked in the driveway.

Wooten followed in his car as Cheryl drove Joe and Teat’s car into Alabama. They stopped at the Bridgeport Ferry along the Tennessee River where they ran the Harveys’ car, with their bodies in the trunk, into the river.

Cheryl, Wooten claimed, then returned to the home and gathered the estimated $150,000 in cash. She attempted to cover up the crime by setting the house on fire, hoping to destroy the home, but only the inside was charred.

The T.B.I. found a bloody thumbprint, confirmed as Cheryl’s, on the bottom of the gas can.

Terrible Cheryl

On April 17, six-and-a-half weeks after Joe and Teat Harvey disappeared, searchers found their Oldsmobile submerged under the Bridgeport Ferry just across the Alabama state line.

As Wooten had claimed, the beloved couple’s bodies lay in the trunk. Each, again as Wooten had said, had been shot in the head.

The Harveys’ Car

Is Pulled From The River

Eddie Wooten was arrested and charged with two counts of first degree murder.

Cheryl Holland’s disappearance was no longer investigated as a missing person and possible abduction. A warrant was issued for her arrest on the same charges.

Cheryl Sought

Cheryl Holland’s case aired on Unsolved Mysteries the evening of February 26, 1992. Forty-five minutes after the show’s conclusion, she was in police custody.

A viewer recognized Cheryl as a convenience store clerk in Rollingwood, Texas, part of metropolitan Austin. She had been working at the locale for six months under the alias Amy Foerster. She was confronted while working at the store, confessed her true identity, and was arrested.

Cheryl Holland’s Assumed Identity

To avoid possible death sentences and to be given the chance of parole after serving twenty-five years, Cheryl Holland and Eddie Wooten both pled guilty to the murders of Joe and Teat Harvey.

Killing Couple

Eddie Wooten was incarcerated at the Northeast Correctional Facility in Mountain City, Tennessee. He was denied parole on April 9, 2020. He has since died.

Wooten Dies Behind Bars

Cheryl Holland is incarcerated at the Tennessee Prison for Women in Nashville. She was denied parole in November 2021 and will next be eligible in November 2025.

Incarcerated Cheryl

On March 2, the day before Joe and Mattie Harvey vanished, Cheryl was seen at the truck stop where she worked writing a check to a bearded man.

After news of the charges against Cheryl were publicized, a service station attendant in Greeneville, Tennessee, approximately one-hundred-seventy-five miles northeast of Lewis Chapel Mountain, recalled seeing her at the service station on the evening of March 7, four days after the Harveys were last seen. Interstate 81 runs through Greeneville and the service station was not far from where Cheryl’s car was found abandoned the following day.

The attendant recalled Cheryl entered the store at close to 9:30 p.m. but soon exited without purchasing anything. The attendant next saw her in the parking lot being approached by a bearded man wearing a black leather jacket who proceeded to speak to her. Cheryl appeared unnerved by him and quickly made her way to her car and drove out of the parking lot. The man then hastily entered his vehicle, a red and white pickup, and proceeded to follow her. This man resembled the man seen attempting to speak to Cheryl in the Greenville convenience store parking lot five days earlier.

Roughly an hour later, Cheryl was seen using a payphone at a truck stop, twelve miles from the service station, and she was later seen in her pickup speaking to two men.

Cheryl has never identified these men. It is not known if they had any involvement in the murders of Joe and Teat Harvey.

Who Were The Mystery Men

Seen With Cheryl?

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/78797770/clarence-joe-harvey#

 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/78797775/mattie_harvey#

 

SOURCES:

• Associated Press
• Austin Daily Texas
• Johnson City Press
• The Tennessean
• Unsolved Mysteries