Nearly 30 years ago, a small, red toolbox found in a field west of Modesto by kids looking for lizards turned out to be a booby-trapped killing machine when a curious young mother took a hacksaw to its small padlock.
The bomb that killed Jennie Holloman blew 3-foot chasms in the floor and ceiling of her mobile home, disemboweled her toddler and sent shrapnel into a neighbor's barn across the street. It also left her husband, Gary Holloman, a truly hollow man.
News accounts over the years have described the horrific homicide but never revealed its most painful secret, to Holloman, at least — that he was the prime suspect. For decades, he has struggled to turn authorities' suspicion elsewhere, even hiring his own private investigators.
He's estranged from the tiny daughter he pulled out of rubble. Pieced together by surgeons, she's now a woman with children of her own. She says her father is obsessed with the case and has let it ruin his life.
Disabled and retired at 57, Holloman continues chasing leads, reading books and trial transcripts featuring motorcycle gang members he suspects built and sold the bomb. He also maintains a Web site dedicated to solving the murder.
In case a shadowy figure familiar with vehicle ignitions doesn't appreciate his poking around, Holloman revs his pickup by clicking a remote starter from at least a block away, just in case. He blames a dozen short-lived relationships on his inability to allow anyone to get close, saying, "I'm always afraid they're going to die."
After almost 30 years of mostly private frustration, Holloman said he no longer cares whom his questions offend, even if it endangers him.
In a series of interviews, including a visit to the now-peaceful site of the grisly blast, Holloman periodically wept, especially when fingering tattered bits of his wife's clothing he's kept all this time. He apologizes, saying he can't hide emotion as well since the onset of Parkinson's disease a few years ago.
"I don't want sympathy," Holloman insists. "I want justice."
Dust, debris and death
On Sept. 19, 1982, Jennifer "Jennie" Holloman, 21, took a hammer and screwdriver to a padlock securing a 12-inch toolbox brought to the door by her nephew and another boy who said they found it among tall weeds near Woodland Avenue.
Her husband suggested she fetch a hacksaw, which would do less damage than prying, and he went into the bathroom of their single-wide mobile home. It sat on 28 acres owned by his parents, next to a house that was vacant at the time.
A white blast pumped shrapnel through walls, missing his head by 6 inches. When Gary Holloman came to his senses, he stumbled into the living room and shouted for his wife into 3-foot hole in the floor where she'd been kneeling.
"I hate to think I was screaming at her (as if she were) alive, screaming into the hole and no answer," he said.
Finding no dial tone on the telephone, Holloman rushed to a neighbor's home, then returned and realized his 20-month-old daughter was moving under the debris. His thoughts never turned to a 5-month-old son, later found unharmed in a bedroom.
"I picked her up and her intestines fell out," Holloman said, wracked at the memory. "I laid her by the door because it was the cleanest spot, took a piece of paper, pushed them back in and held her till the paramedics arrived. I watched her turn blue and her eyes shut."
Robin Holloman lived, minus a kidney and some intestines. A chunk of shrapnel worked its way out of her arm seven years later. At 31, she now has a family of her own. "If you saw me walking on the street, you would never know," she said.
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