She Killed Her BFF and Escaped Justice for 18 Years

Holly Boisvert stabbed her best friend at the age of 15 but she wasn’t arrested until she was 33

In 2002, Holly Boisvert was only 15 years old. She was best friends with 17-year-old Stacy DeGrandchamp in high school.

On August 15, 2002, Holly stabbed Stacy over a fight they had in the backyard of a home in Fort Wayne, Indiana. When police arrived, Stacy was lying in the driveway and was mortally wounded. She later died at a hospital.

There were eyewitness accounts that placed the blame for Stacy’s death on Holly’s shoulders. Despite the witnesses and Holly herself admitting that she fought with Stacy, no arrests were made.

The case went cold for 18 years before Holly was finally arrested at the age of 33.

Why did it take so long for the police to arrest Holly?

BFFs Till Death Do Us Part

Holly and Stacy were best friends in high school. Stacy was an only child and was described as a straight-A student. She was an aspiring computer scientist and was getting ready to attend Ball State University in Indiana.

While a flattering portrait was painted of Stacy, the same could not be said of Holly. Of the 2 girls, it can be surmised that Holly was the more aggressive and troublesome one. A school administrator described Holly as being arrogant. She was reprimanded for truancy and officials found her to be incorrigible.

Although Holly and Stacy were best friends, like most teens they also had disagreements and got into fights. According to reports, Holly wanted to start a fight with Stacy over a boy.

On August 15, 2002, Holly went out to meet Stacy with the intention of fighting with her. She even changed into sweats and put her hair up into a ponytail. She then declared to a friend,

Stacy is about to take an (expletive) whipping tonight.

On the day of the murder, both Stacy and Holly met up at a home in Fort Wayne. It is not clear if the home belonged to one of them or if it was a friend’s home. Initially, Holly wasn’t sure if Stacy would talk to her and she stayed inside the home but then a friend said it was ok for Holly to come out and meet Stacy who was simply standing outside in the backyard.

As soon as Holly walked out the backdoor, Stacy yelled,

What is she doing here?

Holly said she kept quiet until Stacy started talking about one of Holly’s friends negatively. That was when both girls got into each other’s faces and the fight started.

According to Holly’s account, Stacy pushed her and knocked her into some recycling bins. The girls had a knock-down-drag-out fight which involved pushing, shoving, kicking, hair pulling, and rolling on the ground.

Holly mentioned that when she tried to get up, Stacy kicked her on the head. At some point, during the fight, Stacy was fatally injured. Witnesses say they pulled Stacy out of the fight but she fell to the ground and her shirt was covered in blood. That was how the police found her when they arrived.

An autopsy was performed on Stacy and it was found that she had been stabbed twice, once in the chest and then in the abdomen. The death was classified as a homicide.

The police interviewed the witnesses and questioned Holly. Holly gave them the runaround saying that Stacy got the injuries because she fell on something sharp when she was knocked onto a recycle bin. However, one witness went on to say that Holly had a knife with her during the fight and that after the stabbing, she hid the knife in a nearby car.

Despite all the witness statements, the police never arrested Holly until 18 years later.

Justice After 18 Years

There is much to speculate about why Holly was never arrested for Stacy’s murder in 2002. It is true that she never confessed to the police about stabbing Stacy but there was at least one eyewitness who claimed that Holly had a knife. Did the police consider this witness to be unreliable?

For the case to go cold for 18 years could mean that the police never thought they had strong enough evidence to arrest Holly. On the Affidavit For Probable Cause report, the timeline of events shows that the police had last interviewed an eyewitness for the case in 2003. The next time a police interview would take place would occur in 2019 which is many years later.

The police only began reinvestigating the case after Stacy’s family pressured them to talk to the witnesses again. Stacy’s family sought the help of a local activist group called Justice Accountability Victim Advocacy.

According to Stacy’s family, the location of the murder which was the backyard of somebody’s home was not a regular place for Stacy to visit. Most likely, Holly had invited her to that specific location to fight with her.

Police interviewed Holly again in 2019. This time she admitted that she brought a knife with her to the fight. She still had the knife in her possession and she voluntarily gave up the knife to the police. The knife was confirmed to be consistent with the type of weapon that could cause the injuries that Stacy had been dealt with.

In the meantime, Holly was concerned that the police were on to her. She spoke to the maintenance man in her apartment building asking him questions about how she could get out of her rental lease since she might have to leave town quickly. She also asked the maintenance man if the police could use measurements to match a knife to stabbing wound patterns.

Unfortunately for Holly, the maintenance man promptly contacted the police and he became a witness in the case.

Eight months after they obtained the knife evidence from Holly, the police would be back to arrest her. With tears in her eyes, she proclaimed,

I think I killed my best friend. If I had just walked away and not turned to fight, Stacy would still be alive.

For Stacy’s friends and family, justice had finally been served even though it took 18 years. Holly’s trial and the court case are ongoing.

Sources: Oxygen, Fox 55 Fort Wayne, KPC News, People, Daily Mail

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