Shanda sharer body8/1/2023 Her attorney would say in court that she had a history of mental problems. Last fall, after her 17th birthday, Laurie dropped out of school. She joined a small clique of perhaps a dozen like-minded kids at Madison High who were known as the "Alternatives." In the eighth grade, she cut short her long blond hair and began to dress in black. Madison Junior High Principal Larry Cummins said that Laurie, 17, had been "a fine elementary student" with "good values." A classmate recalled that Laurie had once been very religious, like her Christian fundamentalist parents.īut then she changed, her classmates said. Toni said the night of horror began Friday when she and another Madison High sophomore, Hope Rippey, 15, were picked up after school by Mary Laurine "Laurie" Tackett. At Christmastime several years ago, a group of 14- or 15-year-olds stole the baby Jesus doll from the courthouse creche, wrote "666" on it - the "number of the Beast" from Revelations - and burned it. The teens who hang out behind the fast food store on Michigan Road claim they know of lesbian and Satanic circles among other Madison teens, so many of them believe the talk about Shanda's killing.Įven Madison Police Chief Bill Tingle, whose department has had no official role in the investigation, said he knew that "there possibly was a 90 percent chance" that lesbian jealousy touched off the crime.Īs for Satanism, he knew of only one concrete incident. "That's what my granddaughter brought home from junior high school," said Fauna Mihalko, 62, who works in the town library's genealogy section. Today, virtually anyone you ask in Madison has heard the talk - none of it officially confirmed - that the dead girl and one of her killers were involved in a lesbian lovers' triangle or Satanism. Lawrence had previously attempted suicide after repeated sexual assaults from men. Loveless proposed her new friends help her menace her ex’s new beau.Despite the scarcity of facts, or perhaps because of it, rumors and whispers about another dimension to the crime soon began to drift across the town, like some cold fog off the Ohio. The teens engaged in self-harm, drinking, and drug use. Tackett, Rippey, and Lawrence were childhood friends from Madison. She dropped out of high school and met Loveless in Louisville, KY. Tackett was in and out of the hospital for committing self-harm on multiple occasions. Child services had to intervene when Tackett’s mother strangled her for changing into jeans at school. Tackett grew up in a strict Pentecostal home. Loveless's father routinely raped her mother while she and her sisters listened, and he allegedly molested each of his daughters. Laurie Tackett was also 17 years old when she helped murder Shanda. Loveless is eligible for release in 2019, after serving approximately 25 years of a 60-year sentence.Īlthough the courts considered the mitigating factors of the four teens’ backgrounds, the Indiana Supreme Court would not overturn Loveless and Tackett’s sentences during a 1994 appeal. Melinda Loveless, the 17-year-old ringleader of the girls who murdered Shanda, reportedly had a tumultuous upbringing. They accepted plea bargains to avoid the death penalty and pled guilty to counts of murder, arson, and criminal confinement. Jefferson County courts tried the four teens as adults. Prosecutors maintained the motive for the murder was jealousy - the same motive identified in the 2003 ‘ Miss Irresistible’ murders. The girls, minus Lawrence, then carried Shanda to a field and burned her alive. They forced her into the trunk of the car and moved her to another location. Subsequently, the teens beat, strangled, and stabbed Shanda. After Loveless threatened Shanda with a knife, the foursome tied her up. The Indiana teens picked up Shanda under the ruse Amanda was at an abandoned property near the Ohio River. Melinda Loveless, 17, Laurie Tackett, 17, Hope Rippey, 16, and Toni Lawrence, 16, plotted to murder Shanda as retaliation for Shanda dating Loveless’s ex-girlfriend, Amanda Heavrin. In 1992, four teen girls tortured and killed 12-year-old Shanda Sharer.
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