[imagesource: Lexington County Sheriff]

Gina Grant appeared to be the ideal candidate for admission to Harvard University.

From a young age, she was admired by friends, mentors, and teachers alike—praised not only for her stellar academic record but also for her relentless dedication to extracurriculars. Her kindness, it seemed, was the perfect complement to her many achievements, making her the kind of student Harvard would be lucky to have.

In 1995, it seemed Gina Grant’s relentless hard work had finally paid off when she secured early admission to Harvard. But the triumph was short-lived.

Anonymously mailed news clippings landed in the hands of school officials, exposing a dark and horrifying secret. Just five years earlier, Gina Grant had brutally killed her own mother—a mother who had been abusive for years.

Harvard swiftly rescinded Gina’s offer of admission, citing that she had misrepresented herself on her application. Yet, their decision ignited a firestorm of controversy, stirring a national debate that went far beyond her case.

Questions of admissions discrimination erupted, challenging the very limits of redemption and justice for crimes committed in youth. Was Harvard right to revoke her future, or had they denied her a second chance at life? The country was divided, and Grant’s story became a flashpoint in the conversation about crime, punishment, and the right to start over.

Born in 1976 in Lexington, South Carolina, Gina’s family included her father, Charles; her mother, Dorothy Mayfield; and her older sister, Dana. As a child, Gina had always been closer to her father than her mother and so his death from lung cancer when she was just 11 shattered her world. Devastated and overwhelmed by grief, Gina’s once bright and carefree spirit dimmed, leaving her lost in the shadow of a life without him.

Her mother, on the other hand, dealt with the tragedy in a far darker way. She reportedly turned her grief into blame, directing her bitterness toward Gina. Day after day, she belittled the young girl, cruelly insinuating that she was somehow responsible for Charles’ death. As if that wasn’t enough, she forbade Gina from displaying any photos of her beloved father in their home, erasing even the comfort of his memory.

The weight of her mother’s anger was suffocating, which was only expounded by her mother’s alcohol problem. Mayfield allegedly drank herself into a stupor daily and often left her daughters alone for days on end while she entertained various male companions. On one occasion, Gina even woke up to find one of her mother’s male friends dead in their home.

“She saw things that no child should see,” Eddie Walker, a former assistant principal of the Lexington Middle School where Gina was a student, told The New Yorker in 1995.

With Mayfield’s alcoholism escalating over the years, so did her abuse towards Gina.

Mayfield reportedly unleashed viciously abusive tirades on a regular basis, her rage spilling over until she ultimately passed out in a drunken stupor. Friends later recounted stories of seeing Gina with unexplained bruises and injuries, whispers of her torment lingering in the air. The situation escalated to a horrifying climax when Gina found herself on crutches after one particularly brutal beating that landed her in the hospital.

The poor girl tried to run away twice, but both times, she was caught and sent back home. But despite all her strife, Gina continued to thrive in school. As if it was the only safe place she could escape to, Gina poured herself into her studies so that she was heralded as a gifted student beloved by her peers. She even served as her school’s first female student body president in the eighth grade and dreamed of becoming a Supreme Court justice or a doctor one day.

And then, she finally snapped.

“It was the worst case of psychological abuse I have ever seen — and I’ve seen other kids who have killed their parents,” Dr. Harold Morgan, a forensic psychiatrist who worked as an expert witness on Gina Grant’s defense team, told The New Yorker.

On September 13, 1990, Gina got into an explosive fight with Mayfield over Gina’s boyfriend, 16-year-old Jack Hook, whom her mother had forbidden Gina to see. Unable to take the control and abuse any longer, Gina grabbed a crystal candlestick holder and smashed it 13 times into her mother’s head.

Gina’s older sister Dana arrived at the house and found it suspiciously locked. She called the police, who soon arrived at a disturbing scene. The 14-year-old had tried to cover up the crime, mopping up the blood and hiding the evidence in her closet.

She also kept changing the story, raising suspicions.

In her police interviews, Gina changed her story several times. Initially, she claimed that her mother had attacked her in a drunken rage, fell down the stairs, and then stabbed herself in the throat, exclaiming, “One of us has got to go.” Later, Gina claimed that her boyfriend, Jack Hook, had killed Mayfield. Hook denied any involvement, and later said he knew nothing about Mayfield’s alleged abuse.

But as soon as police discovered the bloody candlestick holder in Gina’s closet, she finally confessed that she had hit her mother in self-defence.

During the trial for Dorothy Mayfield’s murder, the prosecution painted a chilling picture of a calculated crime, intent on portraying Gina Grant as a cold-blooded killer. In stark contrast, the defence leaned heavily on the allegations of abuse that Gina had suffered at the hands of her mother, arguing that these experiences shaped her actions.

A significant turning point arose when Grant’s earlier claims that her friend Hook had committed the murder came under scrutiny. The prosecution produced damning evidence in the form of recorded calls Grant had made to Hook’s mother, revealing how she repeatedly asserted that Hook was innocent and not even present during Mayfield’s death.

“Perhaps you can understand Gina killing her mother because it was an alcoholic, abusive relationship,” said Hook’s lawyer Stephen McCormack, according to The New York Times. “But can you then justify that, after the fact, she tries to cover it up to the point where she callously implicates someone else and acknowledges to his own mother that she was lying?”

The trial wrapped up in January 1991, when Gina Grant pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter and received a sentence of about a year in juvenile detention.

After serving about eight months in juvenile detention, Gina moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to live with her aunt and uncle and start a new life in a place where no one knew her past.

Again she became an honor student with an IQ of 150, a co-captain of the tennis team, a member of the academic decathlon, and a volunteer tutor for underprivileged children.

In 1994, Grant applied to Harvard University for her undergraduate degree, citing in her application how she was a troubled orphan who had endured impossible hardship and come out on top, excelling in academics and in her personal life. But she had neglected to mention how her mother had died, which again, became her downfall.

When news broke that Harvard had taken back their offer for Gina to study there, the public and students at the university raised their voices, claiming she was being unfairly treated. Afterall, juvenile criminal records are typically sealed to protect young offenders from discrimination and to allow them a second chance to succeed.

In the end, Gina Grant quietly accepted an offer to enrol at Tufts University. As of today, her whereabouts are unknown.

[source:allthatsinteresting]