Teen Accused in Mother’s Killing Allowed to Attend Her Funeral

A Superior Court judge Tuesday gave a Burbank teenager accused of helping kill her mother permission to attend the mother’s funeral today--but not the burial.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Norman Montrose said Superior Court Judge James Bascue apparently restricted Amber Bray, 18, to the funeral service “for security reasons, and also because there is some distance between the services and the site of the interment.”

The service will be at a Burbank church, with burial at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills.

Prosecutors allege that Bray let her alleged boyfriend--Jeffrey Glenn Ayres, 22--into the family’s Burbank duplex last week and stood by as Ayres shot and stabbed to death her mother, Dixie Hollier, 42.

Friends and relatives of Bray say they do not believe the charges. They contend that Bray, a high school senior, had no relationship with Ayres.

Bray’s attorney, Joy Wilensky, said Hollier’s family wanted Bray at the services, according to a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office. Prosecutors and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department offered no objections, and so Bascue granted the motion.

“The family seems to want it, so I saw no legitimate reason to oppose it” once the Sheriff’s Department had assented, Montrose said.

Sheriff’s Deputy Benita Nichols said deputies would arrange for Bray’s transportation and have taken prisoners to funerals several times in the past.