Episode 215: The Torture and Murder of Shanda Sharer | Morbid

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I have been listening to the Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club, which actually Elena recommended to me.

She did not listen to it, but she said, girl, this title sounds so you.

And let me tell you, it did. I've been listening to it while I walk and I am absolutely loving it.

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Hey weirdos, I'm Alayna. I'm Ash. I am Ash.

In this... Is, is morbid? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, I just want to make sure. Yeah, it's morbid.

Did I throw you off like totally? I don't know.

I just felt like I was silly. I loved it.

It was silly. Also, Ash is drinking coffee.

So she's like, all of a sudden got this crazy buzz.

I am jazzed the fuck up. No, because you know what?

Let's take a moment to tell you about my new favorite Starbucks drink.

I have to. They just did a iced brown sugar oatmeal cake. shaken espresso.

Yeah. She had me try it. It's really good.

It's so good because I don't like super sweet coffee.

And sometimes I feel like I usually get a caramel macchiato. but they never put the same amount of caramel every time.

No, it's always different. Sometimes it's like far too much and I get a big glurp of it and I want to like yak.

But with this, you don't get that. You just get like brown sugary.

It tastes like... How when you're eating like a bowl of hot brown sugar oatmeal, like maple oatmeal, that feeling is what this gives you.

It does. It's got that vibe. But iced. About it, but iced.

But like it still warms my soul. It does.

It's got everything you need. Morbid is brought to you by Starbucks.

Please sponsor us. Remember when they messaged me and they were like, can we use your tweet?

And I was like, of course. course and then you're like oh that's it I

I thought we were going to get like lifetime supply of Starbucks, but it's fine.

Anyways, this podcast is not about coffee.

We love you anyways. Well, hey, everybody.

How are you going to transition out of that?

What I'm going to do is... I'm going to bring you way down.

I'm going to bring you down, down, down, down.

Down diggy, down down. Because today we are covering a case that has been sitting in my research folder for weeks.

Weeks and weeks. Oh, no. Months and months and months.

At this point, yeah. Every single week I say I'm going to do it and Ash is like, are you doing it?

And I'm like... Nope, can't do it. Because it's just one of those that I know I wanted to cover.

But hoo boy. Yeah, it's difficult. It's a hard one.

I think you and I have also realized that researching at night is just not possible anymore.

It's not. Because you'll have like this beautiful, glorious day filled with like family and fun.

Yeah. And then you'll just be like, oh. It's something about nighttime.

I can't. enjoy researching something that dark.

And it's weird because I used to be fine doing that.

I don't know what shifted. Same. I'm much better researching in the morning.

Me too. Give me all the darkness in the morning.

I can handle all of it. Which I feel like is kind of weird.

Very weird. Right. Like I start my day off pretty fucking bleak.

I'm just like, but then I'm fine. But then it's over.

Yeah. But at night. No, I just don't feel like I get good research done.

So this one was tough because it was just like every time I went to do it, I was like, oh, this is too much.

Yeah. It's a lot. But I should probably tell you what case it's going to be.

Probably. I'm sure you know because you saw the title.

We're going to be covering the horrific abduction, torture, and murder of Shanda Sher.

So this is another Patreon pick, but it's got a little twist.

Because the Patreons... While this was, it was like neck and neck with the other case that was up in the poll for this week for them.

And this one was, I mean, a handful of votes it lost by actually But the other case is going to be a Patreon bonus episode because it's ongoing.

It's a little... The more research I did, the more I was like, I don't know if this is like a full, full episode.

And I don't know if I want to like... you know, kind of have it be like a beat to be continued kind of thing.

Sure. Kind of happening right now. So you don't know when you're going to continue it anyway.

Yeah. So that's definitely going to be a Patreon bonus episode that I'm going to do.

So Patreons, you can look forward to that.

And I figured because I wasn't doing that one, I'll just give you your second choice.

Big bang boom. In this one, I was already like...

I want to do it. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm here.

So I want to give you guys two books to go read on this case.

Of course. Your Librarian of the Year, Elena Urquhart.

We love a good book. about these things.

No, we do. And these books, I feel like they're always written by journalists who get all these... just insider things for the courts and the transcripts.

They get so much stuff that it's just like, I just want you to go buy their books because they deserve to be recognized for it.

Absolutely. The first one I want you to look at is Little Lost Angel by Michael Quinlan.

Great book. It's going to horrify you and upset you, but it's well done.

Okay. Then the other one, a lot of people might know this one.

It's called Cruel Sacrifice by Aphrodite Jones.

Yep. Both of them are great. I got tons of information from them, but I also left out a lot of details that I think you should go read the books for because there's a lot of like, interviews and like tons of transcripts from things and Definitely go read the books because you will get a full, like, rounded view of these girls because when I was reading this book...

I think we've all kind of... A lot of us have heard of this case.

Yeah. This is a big true crime case because... because of how gruesome and grotesque and awful it is.

But, like, you don't always get the full picture of everybody involved.

Yeah. You kind of know that there's four teenage girls who attacked this.

By the way, Shanda Renee Sher was 12 years old.

She wasn't even a teenager. I feel like that gets forgotten a lot.

It's like, this is a bunch of teenage girls.

Yeah, it's a bunch of teenage girls and a literal child.

A literal 12-year-old. But when you look into the backgrounds of these teenage girls, the murderers who did this, It tells a lot.

Okay. It really does. And I didn't know a lot of that.

Is this a very... sad case all around it is because of their background it's really sad because like i don't i actually don't know a lot about their background yeah I know about this case, but... That's how I went into it, knowing a lot about the case, not a lot about the people involved.

And once I started looking into it, I was like, whoa, now I'm going to let you guys make your own decisions on like nature, nurture, all that good stuff.

We've been so into that lately. It just seems like a lot of cases lately have had like a lot of conflicting things with that.

Yeah. So this case takes place in, it actually, the actual murder took place in Madison, Indiana.

Okay. This was on January 11th, 1992. And basically this whole thing began as a love triangle of sorts. between Shanda Sher, who is 12 years old, Melinda Loveless, who is 16, and Amanda Heavren, who is 15.

It was kind of one of it. When you look at it on the surface, you're like, okay, this is what happens in high school.

Like people get jealous that they're, Because everybody's dating everybody, it's always like you're going to run into your ex and your new girlfriend or boyfriend.

Yeah. This is just one that when you look at it, you're like, yep, that's normal.

And then it starts getting deeper and deeper and it gets, you're like, something's wrong. with the people involved here.

Like, especially Melinda Loveless, you're like...

Oh, yeah, that's not a normal way to behave.

This is not your typical teenage high school.

Yeah, like, Shanda did not... Nobody would do anything to deserve what she got, but, like...

This is... The amount of rage that Melinda Loveless had for this 12-year-old girl is... truly something.

And it's like when you look into her background, which I'm going to get into right now, You can see why she's filled with rage.

That was pretty much instilled into her at birth.

See, that's sad. I guess it's one of those things where you can feel bad for... Exactly.

Exactly. The part of her that's not a murderer.

Yes. You feel bad for the child. She definitely didn't have a chance.

That is for sure. So Melinda Loveless is a great name for her for many reasons, because she murdered a 12-year-old.

That's pretty loveless. But also, sadly, because I'm pretty sure she grew up in a house that was loveless.

That's Awful. So and it's horrible. I want to like disclaim right here that there is like. child abuse involved, there's sexual assault involved.

This case has pretty much everything, so just be aware of that.

She was the youngest to Marjorie and Larry Loveless.

Larry is a literal monster. He's dead now, though, so don't worry.

No, no. He's a demon, like Larry is a true demon.

Margie was only 17 when they married and he was 20, which is fine, but They had Melinda's older sister, Michelle, and Larry molested and physically abused Michelle from the time she was an infant.

An infant? Yes. Larry was a literal, he was a pervert to everyone around him, including his own family.

He was sex obsessed. especially with his wife, and he would force her to do things she wasn't comfortable with.

He demanded it all the time. He would force her to have sex at all times during the day and at night, She could not say no.

He eventually went on to do this with other women while he was married to Marjorie as well.

They had their second child, Melissa, and he was possessive.

He was emotionally abusive to Marjorie. He was...

It comes out later that he was sexually abusing both girls.

Ew. What is wrong with people? It's pretty terrible.

Eventually, Margie... Marjorie, because her name is Marjorie, but they call her Margie.

Yeah. Margie started having an affair with a neighbor and it was...

You know, so now the father's having affairs.

He's abusing everyone in the house. Marjorie's now having affairs with neighbors and such, and she's basically trying to like tell him to fuck off.

So none of them are taking care of the kids.

Right. This is just them trying to one up each other and hurt each other.

And, like, Margaery is one thing. I think she was just put into a really terrible...

Situation in this marriage, and she kind of just wasn't ready to have to... split her emotions between taking care of kids and taking care of herself, I think is what happened.

Yeah. But Larry is an actual demon. He was also an alcoholic.

He would force Marjorie to engage in swinging with other couples.

Oh, man. And then he would just force her to have sex with men in front of him.

Oh my God. This is like a horror house.

Yeah. I had no idea she grew up in a house like this.

I had no idea. Wow. That will do something to you.

It's a nightmare. By the time Melinda was born, he was a raging alcoholic and this is what the house was.

Right. So it's like you can see this is what she was born into.

And then she's being assaulted and molested again.

Exactly. Now, I will say that Melissa and Michelle are the ones who did come forward and say that he did this to them.

Melinda has never said that he did a tour.

Everyone believes he did, obviously, because of track record and what's going on.

But because of there was some reason that they weren't going.

I think it was because she was in prison and she didn't at the time and she didn't want to. be part of what was going on because he did get in trouble for it eventually okay Because he was not just sexually abusing his own children.

He was sexually abusing other people. Okay.

And younger people. Wow. So he did get in trouble for this.

Not like you want him to, but we'll get to that.

But yeah, so, but I will say, I just want to be clear that Melinda never came out and said he did it.

In fact, she denied it, but... Take with that what you will.

But she definitely wasn't treated well in this house.

It's just because she wasn't being sexually molested.

And basically, Melinda's older sisters became her parents because her parents were so negligent.

She called Michelle mom. Oh, wow. And apparently Larry convinced them that they were her actual parents.

What? Like literally told these girls, like, you're her parents, like you're her mom.

OK. And Michelle was like, I literally thought I was her mom.

She was like, I didn't understand it, but I was like, I have to take care of her.

That's... The psychological effect that that will have on every party involved.

There's every kind of abuse happening here.

Wow. Yeah, it really fucked with them. That is so psychologically abusive.

It really is. He also would... Every pet they would get, he would either kill the pet or he would let it loose and just...

They would never find it again. Why get a fucking pet?

Because he enjoyed doing this. He enjoyed it.

Oh, my God. This is so fucked already and we're five minutes in.

I mean, and this is a... pretty brief overview of that house.

And again, especially the Aphrodite Jones book, Cruel Sacrifice, That really goes into detail about what happened here, like, if you want to know more.

Now the family, so what's happening here is like sex obsessed, terrible depravity happening in this house.

And then all of a sudden the family switched to become very religious.

Oh. So they went the total opposite and they attended a Baptist church.

So there was exorcisms here. There was speaking in tongues.

It was one of those. Okay. And they were basically shoving everyone off that wasn't saved.

So you had to be saved. uh he like really went into this he became like uber religious to the point where like He was burning all their stuffed animals and books because they weren't teachings of like whatever the hell he was trying to teach them.

Okay. And is he still abusing young women at this point?

Oh, of course. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.

Absolutely. Cool. He would like rip their posters off the wall like they weren't allowed to have anything like no music.

So now this was just taking religion and using that as an abuse form.

Exactly. He is weaponizing this religion now.

Right. So he once burned a like beloved doll of Melinda's because he said it was a demon.

Oh, and she said later, like in prison interview, she was like, I will never forget that.

Like, that was my best friend, that doll.

And he didn't like that. I think he said he didn't like its eyes.

So he just was like, I'm burning it. I don't like your eyes, Larry.

And I think what I read in the book was that her mom actually like bought her the exact replica of that doll to try to, like, make up for it, but she was like, it wasn't my, like, that was my best friend.

Like, I... spent all my time with that doll.

Wow. So it's just like, this is what's happening in her house.

When Melinda was five, this blew my mind.

When Melinda was five years old, they just decided she needed an exorcism.

They exorcised her at five? Oh, my God. See, that's going to make me cry.

And you know how they exercised her? They put her in a motel with a 50-year-old man who claimed he could do it, and they left her. for five hours with him oh my god she doesn't remember what happened during that time but she thinks she just napped Dude, I'm going to have, like, I'm going to, like, lose my mind.

And I think this is giving. like, insight into... Because when you find out what Melinda does later... I mean, yeah.

It's monstrous. And you can't even fathom how somebody would get that way.

And you're like, well, here it is. along the way she definitely did well and here's the thing the fact that she doesn't remember any of that That really says something.

And I'm not saying that anything happened because maybe it didn't.

But a lot of times in traumatic situations, your brain has as a way of compartmentalizing.

Oh, for sure. And people get like mad at me for like saying psychological things like that.

Cause I don't have a degree, but yeah, but it's, I've had things happen to me that I have compartmentalized along the way.

I was literally just going to say. you can speak from a personal experience of some things, and when you can, you should.

Exactly. That can be a thing. We're not...

It's not a blanket statement of, like, everybody does that.

But, like, that is an absolute, considering what was going on in her life.

It's a very real possibility that these people were not good people around here.

Pretty big possibility. Exactly. So they ended up putting their kids in Graceland Baptist schooling. where they were beaten in school, like as kids.

Wow. Melinda had really become infatuated with her father despite all of this. which can happen.

Yeah. Like, especially with abuse victims, they can turn around.

It's, it's, You just that's all you know.

Well, it's a coping mechanism. And he also.

And I'm sure a lot of people, unfortunately, may even know this themselves, that oftentimes abusers will... like cuddle with you afterwards and like really like try to make you feel like they'll vote on you.

Yeah, it's like in the Colleen Stan case, how Cameron did that to Janice, and that's how she got through the abuse.

She just looked forward to that part of it.

They look forward to the little tiny light at the end of the tunnel.

Human. And I think because she was so little and she was so young that those parts were the parts that her brain really... clung on to I think with him.

That's so sad. there i think he also and um i believe her sisters you know also went with this that Melinda was also much more submissive to him than Michelle and Melissa were.

So... they would kind of push back on some things because they were older and they were, you know, they knew it wasn't right.

And she was so young, so she was being very submissive to him, which made him treat her better.

So she was seeing a different side to him even though she was seeing all of this other horrible stuff.

Eventually, he was going on this whole religious kick and then all of a sudden he was like, you know what, I don't want to do this anymore.

Because he had stopped drinking. He made everybody in the house stop drinking.

But it was like a... It wasn't like I want to stop drinking to be a healthier person and like be a better dad and all that.

It was just like, no, like it was one of those like crazy like bible burning i have to stop drinking kind of things which doesn't work usually yeah uh He started drinking again.

He was getting tired of not being like an open pervert to the family.

So he was like, I really just like to go back to my ways of like being disgusting.

So the entire family was excommunicated from the church.

Wow. Yeah. Eventually, Margie was still having tons of affairs at this point.

And things are just getting worse and worse, more perverted at home, more weird.

He's sleeping in the same beds as these kids.

He's doing... Weird shit. He's, like, peeking on neighbor kids.

He's, like, doing things to, like, other... He's a monster.

Yeah. Can I just, like, spoiler alert this right now?

Does he get any jail time? Okay. It's coming.

Don't worry. It is. What's wrong with the world?

Yeah, it's pretty awful. But don't worry, he's dead.

So he would also tell the girls about their mother's affair.

To make her look bad. And then he would make them call her. while she was out and when she and say and make them ask her are you at work And when she wasn't, he would be like, see, she lied to you because she doesn't love you. she doesn't want to be here with you oh my god so they grew up being like thinking their mom Didn't love them.

Which, to be honest, and they all said it later, they were like, she put men in front of us.

And he was a monster in his own right, and her thing was she put men in front of us.

Because instead of protecting them from that, he made it a thing.

Exactly. So these girls had nothing. They had nothing to go.

Literally nothing. Nobody was taking care of them.

I'm surprised they didn't like run away. way.

Well, I know. Oh, my gosh. I know. Eventually there was divorce.

But, you know, before divorce actually happened, there was physical fights, there was obviously sexual abuse, there was weird behavior in the home, just like any, like he would put like Blankets on all the windows so they couldn't have light.

They couldn't listen. Yeah, it's just he did weird shit.

There was a time when Marjorie threatened him with a knife on the front lawn in front of the girls.

They saw and dealt with it. A ton. Every form of abuse that you could possibly think of, I think you just mentioned. every form of abuse.

Like I said, Melinda Loveless is an absolute monster, but she is a monster that was made.

It's like she had a crash course in being a monster.

In my opinion, she's a monster that was made.

She didn't have a chance from the get-go. almost more heartbreaking but like you can't take that and and excuse what she did it is that's why nature nurture becomes such a difficult thing to talk about because it's like you do feel bad for the kid You feel bad for the Kiki.

How can you not? They didn't ask to be in that environment.

But then, you know, people go through terrible shit.

I was just going to say that. And they don't do that.

I think it... So it has to be a little bit of nurture along with it, or nature a little with it, because it's like... you have to have that in you a little bit.

Because unfortunately, people are abused all the time.

Like, it is a huge part of society, unfortunately.

Which is horrific. But there are people, it's like you get two choices.

You can keep on keeping on or you can just totally... choose the other side it's true and i think it's it's who you are that determines where you go And you know, I do think a lot of the time, like your support system says a lot, like helps you along the way.

Because I think there's even like for me, like I didn't experience nearly any of that.

That's horrifying. But. i i had you guys so exactly you have support yeah i think i don't it doesn't sound like she had anybody No, it doesn't really, like, she had a lot of friends, she had a lot of, you know, she had cousins and stuff, but I think it was just...

I just don't think she had a... I think it was just her whole life was enveloped in this.

There was, like, no one checking up on her to make sure that she did the right thing.

But again... Having that as your childhood does not excuse you to do the shit she did is just unthinkable.

Right. It's unthinkable. Wait until we get to the end, too, because when we talk about who Melinda is today, it confuses you even more.

It's very confusing. Because your brain does develop more.

It does. So, yeah, okay. So in 1998, there was a warrant out for Larry Loveless, just to give you a little update.

And it was charging him with three counts of rape. six counts of sodomy and two counts of sexual battery, all of these were against children, according to the Associated Press.

Ah! And... So the affidavit said that he had forced several young girls into various sex acts from 1968 to 1989 when he lived in New Albany, Indiana.

Oh, okay. Now, unfortunately, because of the statute of limitations, all counts were dropped.

So he was only charged with one count of sexual battery. so obviously he got off and you're like fuck that guy but then He died December 15th, 1998 because he got hit by a bus.

Okay, so I was literally going to say that.

I hate to say, like, did he have a brutal death?

But like, if anybody deserves to be run over by a fucking bus, it is Larry.

He was a monster. He was a monster. He was an absolute monster.

I am a firm believer in karma. Absolutely nothing of value to society and all he did was damage everyone around him.

The complete opposite. That's all I will say about that.

Oh, man. You just actually like I have like there is like tightness in my chest right now.

Yeah. Well, now coming back to, you know, Melinda Loveless, because I just wanted to give you that little update that like.

He did kind of get a little bit of karma.

Melinda did have trouble with the divorce when her parents divorced because, again...

She's much more infatuated with her father than the other two are.

And she just had a very big attachment to him that she wanted to please him.

She wanted him there all the time and now he wasn't going to be there all the time.

So both of her parents did remarry, and her stepfather, who married Marjorie, was named Michael.

He was seemingly a very good guy and a very good stepfather.

He wanted to create a normal environment for her and her sisters I like so wasn't expecting that no that's I didn't either you were like and her stepfather I was like oh fuck And that's the thing.

So she did have someone who came in and really wanted to help.

It's like what I just said. So she did have somebody.

She did have somebody. So it's like, but she would not allow it.

She didn't want anything to do with it. He even came to her and told her, he's your father, I can be your best friend.

He was like, I just want to help you. I just want to make everything be better. sobbing in the club right now.

But she hated him because she was so brainwashed by Larry that she would not accept this man as a good man.

Now, she started having a ton of emotional issues that are coming forward now, obviously. likely had them all along with what was going on she's getting older you're becoming a teenager, they're starting to show themselves in different ways.

Because of the issues with her father and her attachment and seeming seeming abandonment by him, that's going to make her start focusing a lot on replacing that affection.

Yeah. So she's focusing a lot on boys, and she's using boys and those kind of relationships to fill that void.

And she... was beautiful. Melinda Loveless was beautiful.

Yeah. She could attract anyone she wanted.

And she did. Okay. But she started discovering that, like, yeah, boys are like temporarily taking care of this like pain that I'm feeling or whatever I'm going through.

But then she started realizing, I like girls more, I think.

So she decided that she was bisexual. And this is when she met Amanda.

Amanda was 15 years old. Because Amanda, I guess, knew her cousin.

That's how they met. Sure. Amanda, when she met Melinda, was infatuated.

Infatuated with her as soon as she saw her.

Because again, Melinda's beautiful. Melinda, in turn, became obsessed with Amanda.

This was... her first, I think it was both of their first like female relationship, like bisexual or lesbian, because I believe that Amanda was like was gay and Melinda was considered herself bisexual.

Neither one of them had actually been with a girl before that.

Sure. So this is all very new. This is all very exciting.

They are 16 and 15 to add on to it. Right. when everything is more intense and exciting.

And, you know, it just they invested a lot of feelings and a lot of intense energy it's like a double whammy because like when you're like little and it's your first relationship that's like one whammy because like You know, usually it doesn't work out.

Of course. And then number two, Melinda has gone through all of this like emotional trauma.

So she's way more emotional. emotionally invested in this.

Exactly. It is like asking for a huge fucking explosion.

And it's in there in Indiana in the early 90s.

Gay relationships are not exactly... I didn't even think... This is like a fucking... triple exactly so it's like there's a lot oh man there's a lot on this there's a lot So they really clung to each other very quickly.

Unfortunately, with everything going on at home and Melinda's entire life up to this point, Melinda was also very volatile and very violent as a human being.

That was how she reacted to things was violence and anger. and emotional outbursts.

So she kind of started abusing Amanda. Oh, no.

Especially emotionally. She would lash out at her in like a moment's notice. and she would take out her frustrations on her.

And she would also force her, which this tells you a lot, into sexual situations a lot where Amanda said that she would sometimes be like, I don't want to.

And Melinda was like, well, you have to.

And she was like, and a lot of times afterwards, I was like, I did not like that.

Like I didn't want to do that. And she was like, and she was very obsessed with it.

And it just became too much of a focus and it made Amanda uncomfortable.

Yeah. Which obviously, you look at her background.

She learned that. Yeah, that's very learned behavior.

Now, again, at this point in time, Melinda was 15 when she met Amanda.

Um, she was 16 when the, uh, when she murdered Shanda share.

Okay. Um, She's very sexually active at this point, but she's also reverting into a time in her life where she's basically a child again, emotionally.

So she's acting out in this very adult way.

But she's also becoming, which we've seen this before, I think when people get stunted in a certain place in their childhood.

Yeah. They try to revert back into that.

She was always watching, and her stepfather said that this really bothered him. because he said she was 15 years old and she's always watching like kids programs on TV, like cartoons.

She would play with kids' toys at 15, and she knew... nothing of the outside world.

Like, she wouldn't watch the news. She never read news.

She didn't want to talk about anything. He said, I believe he said, like, she barely knew who George Bush was.

Wow. And especially during that time, like, wow.

Yeah. And he's basically said everything relative to the outside world that wasn't kid, like very below her age group, she was not interested in.

Which is interesting that that to me looks like There's a lot of damaged stuff happening here.

She was also wetting the bed at 15 still.

And that is like a huge indicator of sexual trauma.

She was traumatized. Like she's in a traumatized state.

She's just living life in a traumatized state.

That is really sad. Yeah. And the more she rebelled against her new stepfather and lashed out at Amanda, she also started... changing who she was hanging out with and she was starting to hang out with the punk crowd or like punkers they love it And she started dressing more like Madonna in, like, the 90s.

Pretty bad. which is badass but like she this is like she's becoming a little more like edgy and she's She's staying out.

She's drinking. She's partying now. Now it's she's teenage.

Melinda is. really going for it at this point.

And now she's starting to get into trouble.

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Her grades are slipping. She's not doing well.

And this is when Shanda Shara arrived at the school.

So Shanda Renee Sher moved to New Albany in 1991.

She moved with her mother, Jackie, and her stepfather.

Her parents were divorced, but she was super close to both her mother and her father and both her step-parents.

Oh great. They all loved her. She loved them.

So she had the complete opposite. Complete opposite.

And she would spend the week with her mother and then she would spend weekends with her father. and she had been attending a private school up until this point and she wanted to switch to public school she She'd been wearing uniforms her whole life.

And she was very into fashion. Love it. So she was... excited to be able to experiment a bit.

I mean, like fashion at that point was like fun and crazy.

Oh, hell yeah. She wanted to show off her style, so she didn't want to wear a uniform anymore.

90s fashion is where it is at. It really was.

It's still where it's at. Exactly. She was nervous for public school, but she was also very excited for that part.

Now, apparently she was a great kid. A great kid.

Jackie said she had an older sister named Paige who was like... kind of the troublemaker of the two.

So she said Shanda was like the complete opposite.

She never got in trouble. She had great grades.

She was a cheerleader. She played softball.

She did gymnastics. I think she played basketball.

Like, She's very well-rounded. She would try anything.

Any after-school activity she would do. She loved doing like typical teen stuff, like having sleepovers, going to the mall, talking to boys, like just...

Anything you like hair, makeup. Take me back.

Again, the early 90s. So hair was like that really teased.

Huge. Scrunched hair. Aquanet. Well, Aquanet's more 80s, but.

Lots of heavy makeup with, like, crazy day glow colors and, like.

You look at the pictures and you're like, she was such a... She was... beautiful.

I mean, beautiful. You were just like the woman you would have become.

And it just really sucks. Like I said, Shanda had a sister, Paige, who was actually a nurse at the time, and Shanda wanted to be a nurse too when she grew up.

Like her sister. She did look a bit older than 12, everybody said.

I was going to say. And she also liked to dress older, so a lot of people confused her for older.

Once she went to public school, when she had transitioned into this new school where, you know, Melinda is and Amanda is... her grades begin to slip.

Because she immediately started focusing on the social aspect that she wasn't having in those other private schools.

Yeah. She didn't want to do sports anymore.

She didn't really focus on her grades. She was just wanting to hang out with cool kids and like you know, hang out with boys, hang out with girls, talk on the phone.

This is an entirely new world for her. Totally different.

It's literally like culture shock. It really is.

So she just kind of just was like overwhelmed by it and fell into it.

Now, Amanda noticed her right away. But Amanda is still dating Melinda.

Yes. Okey dokey. So this pissed Melinda off.

Real quick. Like immensely. By this time, Melinda's hold on Amanda was stronger than can even be expressed.

I mean, they were... In a scary relationship at this point.

She was... very possessive and very obsessed with her.

And when it looked like she was taking notice of the new girl now, she was going to make sure to stomp that shit out right away.

This was not going to happen. So she started bullying Shanda immediately.

Oh, because that makes a lot of sense exactly you would think that she would be like hey Amanda stop looking at another girl like maybe focus on that yeah And what are you doing bullying her?

She just came to school like she didn't do anything.

So she would literally, like, comment on her looks, like, right in front of her, like, in front of people, like, call her ugly.

Which she was not. She was not. She would literally like comment on like do things that like I remember in like junior high. it was always like make fun of like boobs or something like you're in a flat chest are like, look at your huge boobs.

You know what I mean? So that's what they would do to her. and she would call her ugly in front of everybody.

It was just like... She would bully her in the lunchroom.

She just went hard at Shanda immediately.

Which shows so much insecurity. Now, despite all of this, Amanda and Shanda did meet eventually and started to become close.

Okay. So they started to like each other.

Okay. They immediately struck up a bond. and Melinda was kind of powerless to stop this, even though she... put everything she could into it.

And when you say like each other, you mean like on a romantic level?

Yeah, on a romantic level. They were definitely very They had like a very close friendship when they first started and then they began to feel romantic feelings for each other.

Okay. And it was just one of those things that Melinda at this point was kind of like treating Amanda like shit.

And so Amanda, I think, was already like looking elsewhere, you know, when it was kind of like she was like, oh, this is what it's like.

Maybe it can be like this. Now, unfortunately, when you look at it, it's this whole thing is just like not a good situation because it's like Amanda Deft was playing these two girls and she was enjoying having the attention of both of them, by no means could she ever imagine that it would go the way it went or go anywhere near the way it went.

But it's like you look back and it's like, you know, at 16, you're thinking like, cool, I have attention of like two people that I like, like two pretty girls.

That's a fucking. A dream at 16. Exactly.

So, you know, but Melinda tried to stop it.

That's for sure. first she tried to become friends with shanda and she thought this would kind of make it weirder for her and Amanda to start something because she was like, I'm gonna like buddy up to her and be like, oh, you know, like Amanda's my girlfriend.

Like, you can't do this to me, Chanda. Yeah, like, you can't do this to me.

We're friends, you know? Girl code. Exactly.

There was a lot of notes that went back and forth.

They wrote a lot of notes. And if you look at, I think it is in the Cruel Sacrifice book, all of them are in there.

Oh, shit. So definitely go read. But I'll tell you a couple of them here.

At one point, Melinda wrote this to Shanda.

She wrote, Shanda, don't be mad at me, please.

I want to be your friend. I just don't like when you speak to Amanda when I'm not there.

I mean, why can't we all three be friends?

You act as if you've got something going with her.

Amanda and I are going together and she loves me and I love her and she only wants to be friends with you.

You need to accept that. Shanda, Amanda told me you were going through bad times.

Well, if you need someone to talk to, you can always talk to me."

I don't want you sneaking behind my back.

Why don't you speak to Amanda when she's with me?

You need to find a boyfriend because Amanda is mine.

You can't even, you can even ask her. Please talk to both of us or you can forget about Amanda. you, me and Amanda need to have a talk together and get this squared away, then we could all be friends.

Sorry I'm writing so sloppy. Can you meet us at lunch?

Your friend, Mel. Oh, so that's her trying to like, oh, my God, Shanna.

I think you just have the wrong idea here.

We could be friends. And it's not like, oh, hey.

It would make... If she was just like, hey, I'm dating Amanda and I'm feeling like you're kind of like stepping into my territory here, that's fine.

But she's like, you're not allowed to speak to her.

Yeah, that's like that's that's the part of shit.

We're a unit. So you can only speak to both of us.

Both of us or none of us. Yep. That's it. take it or leave it and yeah okay well amanda and shanda did not stop talking to each other This was not going to be the thing that stopped them.

Melinda got more and more mad. Like, why don't you just break up with Amanda then?

So here's a note that Melinda wrote to Amanda.

Amanda, why did you write her fucking name on your folder?

It hurts so much when I saw it. I didn't think you would put her ugly name on your folder and you wrote it.

You must have liked her enough to write her name.

Why? Well, I'm gone. Melinda, P.S., just tell me you like her once because I know.

See, that's kind of sad because she's like...

It's like one of those, because when you look at it, Without knowing anything else, you're sitting there being like, well, that sucks.

Like, Amanda, come on. Yeah, like, you're like, blech.

But then you see what happens and you're like, whoa, blech. like that's not normal you're just always making a lot of noises at this noise It seemed like Amanda was into both of these girls.

She liked them both. She had been with Melinda for almost a year before Amanda came into the picture.

Like, on and off. And there is a degree of her being afraid of Melinda.

Yeah. For sure. Like, I know that it's not okay to play both sides, but... No, but there is, there's a lot involved.

This is not a black and white... this happened, so this is why, this is what happened. there's all these things of going, yeah, it's not okay to play these girls.

Like, that's not cool to do. Right. But you are right.

She was definitely scared of Melinda. She knew what Melinda was capable of.

Yeah. There's a lot of gray area. Exactly.

And I think this was one of those things that in Amanda's shoes, yeah, was she doing the right thing?

No. No. But I think she was 15 years old.

She liked both these pretty girls and she couldn't decide.

Right. And she didn't think it was going to go that far.

And you're not thinking at 16 that you're like really hurting people.

You're not thinking that. She's 16, Melinda's 15, and Shanda's 12.

Shanda is 12. At this point, Melinda and Amanda are both 15.

Okay, okay, okay. Then Melinda turns 16 before Amanda does.

Okay. So she's like a little older. Okay.

Like months. Yeah. Meanwhile, both of these girls, Shanda and Melinda, are infatuated with Amanda.

So it's just... intense feelings all around.

Now I need to look at Amanda. So they took this out on each other instead of turning to Amanda and being like, you gotta make a decision here, you know?

Which often happens. Often it gets taken out on the other person when it really should be focused on someone else.

Melinda noticed that Amanda started paying more and more attention to Shanda and was neglecting her relationship with her.

And she's getting more and more pissed because now she's really starting to drift over to Shanda.

Right. So then a school dance happened.

Oh no. And Melinda wrote to Shanda. Shanda, hey girl, what's up?

I'm in study hall being real bored. Amanda was outside my door so I played it off and got something to drink, dumbass teacher.

These are just like so... These notes are so relatable.

Yeah, we've all wrote those. Well, have you decided if you're going to attend the dance?

I'm not. I'll probably end up going to the mall and see a fucking lame movie or something.

Well, I've bored you enough, so I'll see you later, babe.

Love ya. Melinda. That's her tone to Shanda about it.

And then... She writes one to Amanda. Amanda, I love my hair.

It feels so much better. I really don't want you to go to the dance, but if you really have to go, I just wanna go with you.

I don't want you to go without me. We can talk about it Friday at lunchtime.

I don't really want to wait until Friday, so I might go out with someone else. and then have her drop me off at Hazelwood at a certain time.

Well, I'll talk to you later. Love, Melinda.

So she's basically, for Shanda, she's like, I'm not going to the dance.

I don't have any plans to go to the dance.

And then to Amanda, she's like, I don't, I'm not necessarily going, but if you're going, you are taking me.

Right. And that's it. Now, Amanda and Shanda went to the dance together.

Melinda showed up. Oh, She lost her shit and she chased Shanda around the dance, threatening to hurt her. um where where are the chaperones yeah that's no good what not a good reaction And after this is when shit like rocketed into the stratosphere, because this is when Melinda and Shanda began having legit fights. fights in the school like belinda was like attacking her physically They were constantly feuding, constantly at each other's throats.

Melinda was saying constantly that she just wanted to beat the shit out of Shanda. talking about killing her saying I want her dead like this was multiple people were like oh yeah she talked about it all the time But at that point when you're 16 and your friend's like, oh, I'm going to kill her.

Yeah, you don't think that she's really going to kill her.

So there was also a lot of behind the scenes things happening with these girls, like lots of... you know, love triangles and lots of parents getting angry about finding out that this one's talking to this one and Both of them were talking to other people at different times.

It was a messy, messy, messy thing. And you said the parents kind of knew what was going on?

The parents were finding things, like letters.

Yeah, in these notes. And they weren't under, they were trying to confront these kids, but they were not getting the whole story.

Of course not. you know, I forbid you to talk to this one.

I forbid you to talk. It was... You're not going here.

You're not doing that. Exactly. It was just, it was a fucking clusterfuck.

It really was. That was the way you just said that was the most Boston.

It was. You literally said cluster. A clusterfuck.

So Melinda and Amanda were eventually forbidden from seeing each other from their parents.

Melinda and Amanda. Yes. Okay, okay. And they weren't allowed to speak to each other, but they still snuck communication, obviously.

Obviously. There was another girl named Carrie that was involved that was actually in love with Melinda at one point, and she was fighting Amanda for her.

It was like bonkers. We should have just gone that way.

Yeah. It just. Melinda and Carrie get. together the end yeah and that could have been it bye it was bonkers but meanwhile all the while melinda is still obsessed with amanda No matter what's going on, she's trying to get this girl that's like obsessed.

Melinda is trying to get this girl, Carrie, who is in love with her.

To beat Amanda up for her. But then she's still obsessed with Amanda and still wants to be with her.

Wow. So it's like she's inflicting actual violence upon her, but still being like, I want to be with you, though.

And it's like, no, you can't send people to beat the shit out of me. and then want to be with me.

Melinda did not know what she wanted and did not know how to form a healthy attachment to someone.

Nobody knew what they wanted here. No. And what they all needed to do was sit down for a second.

And play The Sims or something. Like, just take it down a notch.

This is all too much. It's like, I'm 35.

I've never had this much drama in my life.

But so Amanda, again, playing both sides.

It's ugly everywhere you look. Yeah. Now, after the Carrie fight with Amanda, because eventually they did get into a fight, Like Carrie and Amanda at Melinda's behest.

And after that, that's when Amanda was like, I'm good.

I think I'm going to take my business over to Shanda over here because she was like, you're becoming a lot.

And like, I don't know if I can deal with this anymore.

You've been a lot. Yeah, I think that was like the big like, ugh.

So on October 24th, they had Amanda and Shanda had like their first like... really awesome full date night together where they went to like this harvest homecoming festival they went to a haunted house with amanda's parents And they had a sleepover at her house that night.

Like, it was a big, like, The whole night with like a festival and everything was a very wholesome like with the parents kind of thing.

That makes you so sad because you, do you remember like going on a date with someone that you just thought was the best.

Yes. That was the best feeling in high school.

Yeah. I mean obviously like still now but like It was such a bigger thing back then.

And it was so wholesome at that time. That makes my heart her and it was with her parents like amanda's parents were involved with this whole thing so So it was getting really serious after that, like after that date.

That's when they were like, really into each other.

Like, it was just like, that was it. Because there's always that one that you're just like, we're in love.

Yes. Oh my God. I remember that shit. Well, Melinda found out about this date. obviously and she told this is when she told a friend she was like i'm going to kill shanda like she's gonna die So she also told her friend, her cousin Crystal, that she wanted to, she was the one that she told, I'm going to kill Shanda.

And Crystal encouraged the idea. At the time.

Because again, Crystal's also a teenager.

So like they're all, I think they're all just like, yeah, fuck her up. you know like yeah they're not thinking actually but like yeah i mean but still like let's calm down Yeah, it's insane.

And you can read some stuff like that Crystal said about it in the books, but like she was basically...

She basically in the book, like Crystal was like, you know, like she tried to make her stop and she wouldn't stop seeing Amanda.

Oh, okay. Of course she was going to be the shit out of her.

And it's like, guys. That's not warranted.

Like, I just look around at everybody and I'm like, what did you all grow up in?

Like, you're first reaction is like, let's violently hurt this person instead of being like...

Maybe this isn't the right thing. Do you remember, though, girls like that in high school?

Yeah, I remember. like girl like it sounds so silly but like girl fights in high school were some of the most terrifying things I've ever witnessed in my life yeah Because it's like, where does that come from?

Like, damn. In high school, you see some shit.

You do. High school is a battlefield, man.

So now there are, you know, there's more fights happening with Melinda and Shanda.

They're constantly at it at this point. And Jackie, Shanda's mom, said this was when Shanda was starting to change.

Like she was... She was seeing her as like really stressed.

She was kind of pulling into herself. Because she's scared.

She seemed very, it was just a lot on her.

She's 12. I know that. We forget. She is 12 years old.

She's not a teenager. She's not even 13.

And 13 would still be like, oh, my God. Was this school like the junior high and the high school were one school?

Yeah, I think it was all one big school.

This is when Amanda and Shanda were really getting more and more serious.

Amanda was completely completely ignoring Melinda now, which is not good.

Not what she was down for. Shanda at this point gave Amanda a ring that she wore all the time so it was like they were like They were dating.

They were locked in. After finding some very explicit letters between the girls and...

Shanda denying that she was in a physical relationship with Amanda, her parents decided that they wanted to actually put her back in private school.

Yeah. I was wondering if that was something that was going to happen.

Yeah, because not only were they finding explicit letters and Shanda's lying to them about it, but they're also finding letters from Amanda saying, like, Melinda's going to kill you because of this.

Yeah, they were like, OK, we can see that something we don't like this.

Well, on the experience as a whole, because like you said, even when she first started, like her grades were slipping.

She didn't have the same interests she used to.

So they're like. this was a mistake. Like this was a grand experiment that did not, that went awry.

So let's just... Let's reverse this. So they put her in a private school called Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

Which I was like, what a school name. Wow.

Like Our Lady of Perpetual Hope. So that's where she went.

Okay. And it was basically to take her out of this Melinda and Amanda situation.

They were like, we got... Hopefully we can diffuse this.

And it was working. She started thriving immediately again.

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That's greenlight.com slash wondery. friends at school like popular girl grades are going up she's doing after school activities she's back like she's coming back and better than ever but amanda and her were starting to talk secretly again How?

They just figured it out. Like phone calls and shit.

Sure, sure, sure. I don't know why I just said that.

And you were probably... You were too young to like not have cell phones, but like you figured you had to figure it out.

And if you had like several lines in your house, like if you were happen to have like an upstairs phone line, you know, that like you would call on that. or someone else would call and there was call waiting that you could flick the other person onto the call so you didn't have to call that person.

You could be real sneaky. You lost me, but okay.

You could be real sneaky. Yeah. Oh, I remember that.

Okay. Yeah. But it was on a landline, not a cell phone.

Yes. I got that much. Just saying. So they're talking now.

There's another school dance happening. They tried to sneak Shanda into the school dance at the public school, but she wasn't allowed in because she wasn't a student.

So Melinda is at the dance, sees all this going down.

And she flips out. And because Shanda is no longer at school right now, so she thought she was over this whole thing.

So now she sees that Amanda is still into this girl.

So she demands Amanda tell Shanda that she doesn't love her.

And that she didn't want her. And she did.

Amanda told her in front of the entire thing, like, I don't want you.

I don't love you. even though she was trying to sneak her into the dance.

Okay, what sense does that make? Linda explicitly told her at this dance, if you talk to Amanda again, I will fucking kill you. in front of a bunch of people.

I need to know where the teachers are in this dance.

I don't know. Where are the adults in this situation?

I do not know. Not doing their job. It literally seems like Shanda was the only one, like, connected to an adult.

Right? It really does. And I mean, I guess Amanda because...

You know, her parents were on a date. Exactly.

Now, after this, Amanda sent a letter to Shanda explaining why she did that.

And she said, you're in danger if we keep dating.

And she was like, and I don't want to put you in danger.

Melinda's scary. This is insane. She was basically like, girls want to beat the shit out of you and I'm trying to protect you by not By pretending that I don't want to be with you, basically.

So now this is getting like Shakespearean.

Okay, I was literally gonna say this is like Romeo and Juliet.

Yeah, like shit is getting very intense.

Houses are against each Very intense for people with not even learner's permits at this point.

Everybody take a step back. It's like this is a lot.

Now, Melinda had really made herself at school.

She was making herself Queen Bee at this point.

Because people are fucking terrified of her.

But people also... over her well because I mean she was pretty girls wanted to be her girls and boys wanted to be with her, it became a thing where people literally were worshipping her.

I mean, people called her a goddess in that school actually they were literally like quotes from students that were like she was flawless She was a goddess.

Like there is nothing to say that is a flaw about her.

Like people fell at her feet. Okay. And she was loving it because it's power.

Yeah. Well, and because also look at her.

She doesn't have that at home. Exactly. So this is like her...

Oh, yeah. This is her territory. She has probably been raised with the idea, especially from her dad, that she's beautiful.

Mm-hmm. and like use that. And that's like your main thing.

And she's watched other people manipulate people with their looks and again she's beautiful that's what like later the police say it and we'll mention it later but Not that, but they say like, not like, oh, she was hot.

No, they were saying like she was trying to use her looks against us in an interview you as a 16 year old like she was trying to seduce the police what Yeah, and they were like, you could tell she's just used to using that face.

Like that's, she's used to using it and getting what she wants and she thought she could get out of this.

Right. It's truly outrageous. Now, we gotta bring in the next person into this thing, because now we see... I'm sorry, what?

Not in this love triangle, sorry. So... We've met Melinda.

We've met Amanda. We've met Shanda. Yes.

So now Melinda's Queen Bee, she's talking to Amanda, but Shanda and Amanda are still secretly talking.

Even though Amanda said like people want to hurt you.

Exactly. But they're still secretly talking.

Okay. Now, we got to bring in 17-year-old Lori Tackett.

She's one of the murderers. Yeah. So we're going to talk about three more girls here.

Lori Tackett, Hope Rippey. and Tony Lawrence.

Tony Lawrence and Hope Rippey are both 15 years old and Lori Tackett is 17.

Those, along with Melinda, are the four girls who murdered Shanda Sher.

Okay. Now, Lori Tackett... Is real scary.

She is 17. She's real scary. Yeah. And she's 17.

So she came from Madison. She didn't go to school with them because she was in another town.

But whenever their group... They started, like... becoming one group through like the punk scene and like yeah you meet other kids yeah They went to shows a lot and they would see each other, so that's when they started to know each other.

Melinda was part of that group, so they knew each other a little bit.

Laurie hated her family, and she was also into the occult.

She also felt accepted by, you know, this new punk scene that she was becoming part of in this new place like New Albany. because she was also bisexual and again early 90s indiana she was not feeling very accepted no On top of that, she grew up in a very religious household.

Mm hmm. I almost hesitate to call these places religious households.

I think they're just psychotic households like this is not what religion is supposed to be.

Right. what this is because I always feel like when I say religious household, it's like, this isn't just like a Catholic household or like, No, I mean, like, we... People who practice the Jewish religion are like, you know, this is...

Crazy people. It's like I said in the beginning, this is weaponizing religion.

This is very much weaponizing. This is like sick people who are using religion to like hurt their kids, basically.

And again, it was the same kind of thing, speaking in tongues, the healing stuff, the like crazy sermons, like all that.

And she grew up being told that she was going to burn in hellfire for literally every single thing she did.

So her home was even a place where medicine was for sinners.

So when she was sick as a child, she couldn't have medicine because that's for sinners.

One night when she was 14, her mother caught her putting on a pair of jeans.

She wasn't allowed to wear jeans or pants of any kind.

And when she put on jeans, her mother beat the shit out of her. chased her around the house, she was 14, and tried to strangle her.

What the fuck? She got away from her own mother and ran to the neighbors for help.

And child welfare services came in. I was just going to say.

There was a whole thing with that, which you can still read about, but it was a whole thing.

But as a result, she said her goal was to be the exact opposite of her mother.

So she was like, I wanted to be evil to spite her.

So, again, another person who has been raised to be evil.

Doesn't have a chance. basically, because when you see Laurie Tackett and Melinda Loveless are two very terrifying people.

Very, very terrifying. But they were both definitely raised in the most horrific homes.

Of all of them. Yeah. I keep saying like doesn't have a chance and that feels wrong.

So I'm just going to say like the odds were stacked against them.

The odds were stacked. I do feel like you always have a choice to, like, be evil or not.

Yeah, I always feel that. too. And it's like, but when these odds were definitely stacked against them.

For sure. she fell into that punk crowd because she was trying to rebel against her Yeah.

And they were forcing more and more religion on her, the more and more she rebelled.

And did they know that she was, because did you say she was bisexual?

She was. And did they like catch on to that?

I think they were starting to see because she was, you know, she was hanging out with more girls.

She was dressing a little more masculine.

She had cut her hair short. And in the 90s, everybody thought if you had a short haircut, you were a lesbian.

So they were basically... you know, trying to exercise her, telling her she's going to hell.

She was extremely depressed at this point.

This is horrible. And clearly going through it without any help because she wasn't allowed to go to therapy or anything like that.

Her parents refused to allow her any kind of help at all.

Like, she couldn't talk to friends. She couldn't talk to a therapist.

She's probably not even going to a doctor if they don't believe in medicine.

Yeah, she's not. She wasn't allowed to go to a doctor.

So they're just using religion and... And obviously that didn't help anything.

So her friends said that she was, by the time she was like becoming a teenager and like 17 and stuff, She was very withdrawn, very angry and very violent.

Her grades were atrocious. she was miserable and she was also scaring the shit out of everybody around her because she was violent and also just like acting strange like she would do things to scare people she had like outbursts Like, she tried to slit someone's wrists at a party in front of a bunch of people.

Oh. She would also talk about sacrificing animals and killing people a lot.

Yeah. She loved to talk about like how she just thought she was destined to murder someone because she wanted to see what it would be like.

Okay. So she is deeply, deeply, deeply disturbed.

Deeply. One evening, she attempted to cut and suck the blood from her friend's girlfriend's arm.

And there was a giant fight about that, obviously, because it was not a consensual thing.

She literally tried to cut her and just like... forcibly suck the blood out of her arm because she would cut herself and suck her own blood and be like, I love the taste of blood. and like would cut other people and like suck their blood.

This is when she was kind of ousted from that group after she pulled that stunt.

Yes. And this is when she started hanging out with Melinda more and more because that group was like, you can go over there.

My brain is still trying to comprehend most of that. will.

No. And that's okay. I don't know if I should.

That's okay. So Laurie was also very close to a girl named Hope Rippey.

And she was actually, she actually treated Hope as a friend and kind of as like a little sister.

She actually like... wasn't terrible to her.

Because it seems like there was, like, an ounce of her that was...

She needed something. She needed it, so maybe the hope was providing it.

I'm not really sure. But Hope was best friends with a girl named Toni Lawrence.

And again, they were both 15. There's so many people involved.

Hope was pretty standard when it comes to home life.

There's not a lot about their home life.

I don't think any of them had... Leave it to beaver childhoods, but nothing like Lori and Melinda.

Yeah. She didn't have any significant traumatic experiences that are reported, at least.

She did well in school. She had friends, was generally a happy kid.

Tony was an okay student, but not somebody who got in trouble or anything like that.

Pretty average. Neither one of them got in trouble.

And Tony had friends, but was very quiet and very shy.

She was, however, going through some personal trauma at the time.

Tony was, not Hope. because she had been sexually assaulted by a boy outside of her family, and she was severely depressed.

After this, she kind of rebelled a bit in response to that trauma, as often can happen.

So Tony, Hope, and Lori were friends and they went to one school in Madison.

Right. And then Melinda and Lori had become friends through that punk scene with those three girls.

Exactly. Got it. So Melinda's friendly with Lori, but she doesn't really know Hope and Tony at this point. okay um they did so yeah so that it's hard it's like so many people to like groups to No, but I think you did a good job.

That makes sense to me. Yeah. So as a reminder. lori was 17 melinda was 16 at this point and tony and hope are 15 and shanda is 12 okay On January 10th, Lori and Melinda invited Tony and Hope to go to a rock concert in Louisville. which was like 50 miles away.

They did normal things that night because this is when they were first meeting Melinda.

So, and they all liked each other. Yeah.

They did normal things. They got some fast food.

They were picking up stuff for the concert.

The car ride there, all of them lied to their parents about it.

None of them knew they were going to Louisville.

Then on the way back, because they were going to stop in New Albany really quick to get something.

Lori asked Tony, do you know what the plan is tonight?

And she was like, well, yeah, we're going to the rock concert.

And she was like, well, yeah, we're going to do that.

But she was like, we're also going to kill a little girl.

Ah! And that's how she said it. We're gonna kill a little girl.

Because that's what Shanda was. Yeah. So...

You will see throughout this that Tony is... very much a not active member of this in any way.

To help or to hurt. She's just there. terrified and basically there for the ride i'm gonna like oh wow oh hope helps a couple of times so she's not so she's involved she doesn't go full on and she doesn't do you know as much as lori and melinda but hope definitely helped tony did not help she did not put her hands in this okay So Melinda and Laurie explain to them that this Shanda girl was stealing Melinda's girlfriend, Amanda, and that they had had enough, and that she needed to die, and this was gonna happen.

So Melinda even showed them the knife, which was in her purse, And Giddley said, this is the knife I'm going to use.

So they plan to go to Shanda's father's home where she was for the weekend.

Uh, Lori and Hope went up to the home. They knocked on the door.

She doesn't know who Laurie and Hope are.

Yeah. So they knock on the door and Shanda comes to the door.

And they're like, hey, we're Laurie and Hope.

We're friends with Amanda. And Amanda really wants you to come out.

And like, we're going to bring you to her.

So she said, she was like, where's Amanda?

And she was like, well, she wants us to meet her at the witch's castle. which I'll explain what the witch's castle is after.

So Shanda was like, yeah, like, can you guys come back around midnight?

Because my dad isn't going to let me out.

She has to sneak out. So and apparently her father like heard part of this. and was like, who are these girls?

And Shanda was like, oh, they're just friends, dad.

And later her dad was like... I knew they weren't her friends because they asked is Shanda home when she answered the door.

Like I knew they didn't know her. Yeah. So he was already like, when she came back in, he was like, you're not going out with them.

Like, just so you know. I can't. So they left.

So she was like, come back. It's like, I'll sneak out.

So they left and first they went to the concert in Louisville because they were like, we have a few hours.

And Hope and Tony apparently only stayed in the show for like a little bit.

They went back out into the car. They ended up meeting two guys and like making out with them.

You should have left with them. I think Tony at one point joked with one like take me with you take her with you.

Well then Tony randomly told one of them the two girls we're with are planning to kill someone tonight.

Yeah. What does one say to that? I have no idea.

One says to that 911. I'd be like, what?

Huh? You want to talk to a police officer?

So after a few hours at the concert, they come back.

This is not, this is unreal. Oh, it's truly unreal.

It's truly unreal. So they come back to the car.

They drive back to Shanda's house. It's like past midnight at this point.

And they did the same thing where Tony and Melinda waited in the car. and they basically were luring her out to see Amanda.

Melinda was hiding in the car. Covered by a blanket because if Shanda got in the car and saw Melinda...

She would run the other way. Like, they knew that.

So, you know, Hope and Laurie went and got Chanda.

Hope even went up to Shanda's room with her to get an outfit, like helped her pick out an outfit to see Amanda.

When Hope knew what was going to happen here.

Yeah. And did, I'm sorry, it was Tony that didn't play a hand in anything?

Tony just was in the car. Okay, cool. Sorry.

So they bring Shanda back into the car. They put her in the middle seat, of course, in the front.

Stop. I'm like actually... Oh, it's gonna get really bad.

This is horrific. Just so you guys know, it's gonna get really bad.

So Shanda got in the car, they start driving, and suddenly Melinda leaps up from the back and holds a knife to Shanda's throat. absolute nightmare.

And she says, surprise, but you weren't expecting to see me.

Now, obviously. Shanda was terrified, immediately started screaming and sobbing.

Telling them, like, please bring me back home.

Telling her, like, I won't see Amanda anymore.

Like, please just stop, like, begging her.

And she but Melinda kept telling her she had told she said, I've told Amanda what I was going to do, that I was going to kill you.

And Amanda wanted me to do this. What the fuck?

Yeah. This girl. Evil. So they brought her to Witch's Castle.

Now it's a place in Utica and it's in this like very heavily dense forested area and it's like The whole witch's castle thing is it's like this little stone building, like a ruins of a building.

And the legend says that this is where a coven of witches once lived.

And there's, of course, this tale about the residents burning the hometown and now it's cursed and all that fun stuff.

And it's also just referred to as Mistletoe Falls because mistletoe grows heavily around there.

But kids use it as like a spooky hideout.

It's just like a local thing. Yeah. And for this girl involved in the occult and shit.

And people use it for that kind of stuff.

Like they're always finding like, you know, quote unquote, satanic. like vandalism on it and stuff yeah uh so yeah so they lori and melinda dragged shanda out of the car They brought her to the dungeon in this place, which is basically, it's not a dungeon, that's what Laurie called it.

It's just like an altar area. So it's like an outside.

And they bound her wrists and ankles with rope.

They threatened her. They hit her several times.

Hope taunted her with a knife. and made her take off all her jewelry, including a Mickey Mouse watch that she had on.

Dude, she's 12 years old. They also lit a shirt on fire for light.

And then Lori turned to Shanda and said, that's going to be you soon, Shanda.

Stop. No. She was severely beaten. She was made to strip down to only her underwear by Melinda and Lori.

Tony and Hope. eventually were just in the car.

Tony never came out of the car, but Hope went back into the car.

Tony said she watched as they both held Shanda's arms together.

And Melinda attempted to slit Shanda's throat with the knife.

But the knife was too dull. Melinda eventually used her foot to try to cut her, like literally stand on the knife to try to make it go through, but it was that dull.

At this point, Hope got out of the car, and according to her, She said she was trying to grab Shanda away from them.

No, you weren't. But Tony said from her vantage point, she was holding Shanda for them.

If you were trying to get poor Shanda away from these girls, you just wouldn't have been involved in this in the first place.

She wasn't. And you know what? fuck Tony for not trying to do something either.

Exactly. Exactly. I get you're scared, whatever, but like you probably could have stopped.

But, like, what are you doing? The second you get in that car and they say, we're going to kill a little girl tonight, I'd be like, drop me off right here.

I'd be like... And you know, she had every opportunity.

Like you said, she told somebody at the concert...

I'm sure there was probably a fucking payphone at the concert.

Well, that's the other thing. Lori and Melinda were in the concert.

You could have gotten away. We're outside.

Run. Call a cab. I know there was cabs. Call the police.

Yeah. be like, they are really going through this.

Stop this. Be a good person. Exactly. Be a leader.

It could have been stopped because Do I understand that when shit was going on, that she was probably fucking terrified?

And she doesn't want to be caught. She's thinking she's going to be killed when they were showing what they could do?

Right. Okay. But you had every opportunity before that?

Like there was many times where this could have been stopped.

And that's what makes me really angry. I don't even think we pointed to the fact these girls were just jamming, knowing that this was going to happen.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So, I mean, this is going to get worse.

So... it's just awful so so they couldn't get so hope tried to help them hold her down i Tony said when Hope came back in the car, she was like, why are you helping them?

And Hope was like, I was trying to help Shanda.

And she was like, no, you weren't. So either, so then Lori sat on Shanda's stomach and Melinda sat on her legs and they stabbed her repeatedly. and then strangled her with the rope they had rope yeah they had rope This whole time, Toni said she was listening to the radio in the car.

And trying to drown out whatever noise. I was just thinking, like, what is she sitting there thinking?

Lori said, so Lori came back and was like, Shanda's unconscious.

At this point, they thought they killed her.

So they were like, she's out. And then they were like, you need to help us get her in the trunk.

And Tony was like, no. I'm not doing that.

So they did get Shanda into the trunk, but Tony didn't help.

And apparently hope didn't help either. She started to cry, according to Tony.

Too late for your fucking crocodile tears. exactly so the group went to Lori's house at this point they think Shanda's dead And they're just basically trying to figure out what they're going to do.

So they have some soda at Lori's house and just sit and hang out.

And all of a sudden, they hear the dogs start barking outside.

And when they listen closely, they can hear Shanda screaming from the trunk.

Now, Lori says, I've got this. Don't worry.

So she goes outside and stabs Shanda several more times until she stops screaming.

Just in the middle of it. The street? Yep.

And she and Melinda, so she comes back in covered in blood.

She's like, Melinda, we have to go drive her somewhere and make sure And at one point Laurie was like, maybe we should just drive around until she like slowly dies back there. evil.

I'm like, whew. Yeah. So she and Melinda left Tony and Hope at Laurie's house and Melinda and Laurie drove Shanda in the trunk.

Just thinking that she's like bleeding out.

Yep. Now every once in a while they would drive and if they would hear it, she several times woke up and would scream and kick.

They would pull over and they would assault her with a tire iron.

They would either beat her in the head with it.

At one point, they sexually assaulted her with it.

Lori beat her so badly at one point with the tire iron that when she came back to the car she told Melinda it was So cool, because I could feel her head cave in.

I, like, what? They stopped several times to do this.

Lori doesn't even know this girl. She literally doesn't know her from the hole in the wall.

She says later, I had never met her. You know, like, honestly... I didn't know this girl at all.

She didn't do anything wrong, Shanda, but... even if like Melinda told you all this horrible stuff that she's doing, you don't even know that to be true.

You don't know her. Exactly. Like when you just take shit at face value.

That's your own funeral, man. And also, this is a 12 year old.

It's a child. You're 17. What the fuck is wrong with you?

And this isn't just like... Not that any kind of murder is okay, but this isn't just like we're shooting her in the head and that's it.

We are torturing her viciously for hours. hours, the entire night.

Like this goes on forever. And they did this several times.

They drove around. She would start screaming because, man, that little girl fought.

And she would start to scream. They would pull over.

They would hit her with the tire until she stopped. keep driving.

This happened several times. This is an absolute nightmare.

You wouldn't even think this could be possible.

And I'm giving as much details as my stomach can muster to get out.

There's more. In the books, there's more that is just so gut-wrenching that I don't even know if I could say it out loud.

I don't even think I could read that book.

So my eyes are welling up like I know they literally are.

I can confirm that. Like I have like that like thing in my throat.

It's hard. Really. There's a couple of. details that I'm not including in here that like I literally can't say out loud like it'll make me cry so I'm just like giving you what you need what not what you need but I know what I think is important to tell you to to really hammer in how horrible these girls were.

When they came, finally came back to Laurie's house Tony and Hope said they were giddy and laughing about it.

They were like, acting like they just did something hilarious.

They told them that every time they were like, oh, every time she made a sound, we just pulled over and beat her in the head with a tire.

And then Melinda said, we must have hit her like 60 times.

Here's the other thing. I just said like Tony and Hope had so much time to run away at the rock show.

You were just left there alone for hours.

Call your mom to pick you up. They were alone for hours.

And again. This little girl's life could have been saved at so many points throughout this.

I hope those girls think about that every fucking day that they wake up every night.

That they go to bed. I hope you think about what a piece of shit you are for not stopping them.

And that's the thing. Nothing excuses this.

Nothing. Nothing. And nothing excuses this kind of inaction.

Against a 12-year-old girl. Yeah, Toni. You didn't wield the tire.

You didn't... stab her, you didn't light her on fire eventually. but you didn't do anything.

And again, this was not a situation where you were stuck in this car.

And you felt like you couldn't get out or you were going to get murdered.

There were several times where you were away from these two.

That you could have gone to get help. It just...

It was almost like that was what was supposed to happen.

Like, this was all set... I mean, none of this was supposed to happen by any means, but...

It was almost like those little times, like I believe like times in the world like that.

The universe was being like, do you can do something.

Stop. Here you go. They could have saved her.

They could have saved her. Oh, my God. so they ended up leaving so they were like we gotta leave now because now we gotta figure out where to put her because they were like, we're pretty sure she's dead, I guess.

Like, didn't know. Hope, so they go outside, and they were like, Here, they basically wanted to show them how bad she looked.

And Tony said she refused to look, so she got in the car.

And Hope said, she said that Hope stood over her, said, not looking so hot now, are you?

And then squirted Windex on her. What? Like squirted Windex into her wounds.

And you're trying to say that you fucking helped her?

Because they had stabbed her like everywhere.

They had stabbed her in the head. She's been beat with a tire iron.

I mean, Lori said that she felt her head cave in.

It's horrific. And here's Hope making a joke.

Not even making a joke, further assaulting her.

Yeah. They then drove again and they forced, they told Tony to go into the store and buy a two liter of Pepsi.

So she was like, okay. So she did. Tony went and got the two liter of Pepsi.

Um, Hope told them like told, and while they were doing this, Hope told them of a place they could bring her.

Yeah, Hope can go fuck herself. Told them.

And Hope was also telling them while they were in there. that Shanda was making noises in the trunk again.

And there was a guy pumping gas, I guess, behind them that Tony said was like, Like, confused.

Why didn't he do something? But I don't know if he heard exactly what they were saying or if he was just like, what is happening?

But like, dude. Like, come on. So they filled the two-liter bottle.

They ended up, like, she gave the bottle to Lori.

She dumped it out. and filled it with gas.

They drove to another remote location, which was told to them by Hope where to go.

They opened the trunk and it was Lemon Road, which is off of Camp Meeting Road, which is like a very remote site on this like gravelly dirt road.

That's past Jefferson Proving Ground, if anybody lives in Indiana.

The site was just like open fields. There was like one abandoned house, like a farmhouse on site.

That's it for miles. It was like nothing.

So they dragged her out of the trunk. She's still alive.

Um, they threw a red blanket on top of her and Toni said she saw her clutch the blanket but she couldn't move.

And she couldn't speak. So then Melinda came to the car and asked Tony to give her a lighter from the floor, which Tony gave to her.

Hope is said to have poured the gasoline on Chanda, and Laurie and Melinda lit her on fire.

So Tony said Lori and Melinda got into the car laughing hysterically. and happy and hoped, she said hope looked like she was just in another world.

She was like in a trance. They drove a little ways up the road and then Melinda made them turn around again. because she said she wasn't sure if Shanda was dead and she wanted to make sure.

So she got out, Melinda, and she walked back over to Shanda's body and poured the rest of the gas on her to make sure that she was dying.

She also made fun of the position she was in and laughed about it.

They all then went to McDonald's and ate breakfast together because it was early morning.

I'm like not talking. I know. Wow. I know.

It's, this is, this is why this, like, for months I've been like.

When you said that she clutched. Touch the blanket?

Yes, that is the part that just... I see it.

I see it in my head and it's just like, I want to like drive there and like leave flowers or something.

Cause she's a baby. She's a 12 year old baby.

And it's like, oh, how do you do that to someone?

I feel like crazy. And you know what? No, it should.

Honestly, these stories should be told and they should elicit emotion and they should elicit strong emotion. how do you do that and when you hear about what her mom does later her mom What a fucking, an icon because like, holy shit.

You know how, like, when we were telling the Molly Bish story, you were like, I want to, like, I want to.

Like, I want to go there. I want to leave a kindness rock for Molly Bush.

I want to do something. Yes. Yeah. They say that time waits for no one, neither should payday.

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How do you do that to someone who just, like, your girlfriend didn't like you.

She liked Shanda. When it's like you're 15.

She's 12. Yeah, she's 12. So they went to have breakfast at McDonald's and it's early morning at this point.

And now the light, the sun has come up. and two brothers named Donnie Foley and Ralph Foley.

They were hunting for quail at the Jefferson Proving Ground.

This was a rural area like I said, lots of farmland.

Suddenly they spot a pile of what they assumed were rags on the side of the road.

It was literally right off the road, they said.

I was just going to say, was this literally just off the side of the road?

Yeah, they said it wasn't like a well-placed... track yeah road because they were hunting so it was like a little gravelly road that like no one really went down yeah But they said they saw it.

They were like, is that a mannequin? Like, what is that?

They said it thought it was like a life-sized doll of some sort.

It's never a mannequin. It isn't. And they stopped to make sure because, like you said, they shouldn't assume it's a mannequin.

And they walked up to it and they said just from the smell alone, they could understand that this was obviously a burned body of a young girl.

They said she was obviously bloodied and burned beyond any description, to be honest.

They said her head and face and upper torso were burned to a crisp.

Her lower half was clearly bruised and bloodied and beaten.

She was only wearing a pair of blue underwear.

They called police. The police came at 1055 a.m.

The first on scene was Sheriff Buck Shipley.

And he called in Indiana State Police because it was so bad that they were like, we need all the help we can get.

How do you even like, how do you go on after seeing something like that?

Some of these officers said that they literally like broke down in tears at that scene, like couldn't handle it.

And some of them were like 20-year veterans on the force and had seen shit.

You would see that image every single day of your life.

Every day. Every day. Even just like a magic, I don't even, I'm like trying not to, but.

I can't. So they next called in trooper or detective Steve Henry and a forensic expert, Sergeant Curtis Wells.

Those are the people inside. scene. So they said obviously something was used to ignite specifically her face and her hands to obscure her identity.

So that was very specific. So Hope knew what to do, apparently.

Exactly. They said there was a pool of blood under her and that her hands were in the position that many fire victims' hands are in.

They call it the boxer position. you know, where the hands will ball into fists and kind of raise like into a boxing position due to the intense heat will make the tissues strain and warp. so her underwear was pulled to the side intentionally she had been posed in a sexually suggestive way as well are you kidding me Yeah, according to the investigators, they said that by the looks of it, they said someone intentionally did this to make her look that way.

She was taken to the Jefferson County morgue.

Meanwhile, Steve, her father, is waking up.

And Shanda's not in her room. Oh my god.

So he's panicking. This poor man. This poor family.

This poor family. So he's panicking. So he starts searching.

He's calling everyone he can. He's not finding anything else, so he calls Jackie, her mom, and is like, we need to, what's going on?

They end up calling everybody they can, but nothing is happening.

So at 1.45 in the afternoon, they filed a missing persons report in Clark County. me.

Now, Tony and Hope at this point had gone home and they're fucking panicking.

So they burst into hysterics, Tony and Hope.

It's too late for that. It's way too fucking late for that.

They told Hope's parents that they had witnessed a girl being killed.

No, you didn't. I mean... Melinda and Lori were at Melinda's for a sleepover because they were going to stay at Melinda's house that next night.

And... you know uh melinda's mom marjorie said that they were acting strange or at least melinda was And she said and according to multiple sources, Melinda told Amanda what had happened.

So she called her and had her pick her up and told her.

And Amanda said she didn't believe it because she was like, why would I believe that?

Yeah. of course she didn't tell her like the details but she said like we killed her So then she was like, do you want proof?

And she was like, yeah, I want proof. Like, I don't believe you.

So they showed her the trunk. And they said the trunk is absolutely, and Amanda said I could see her handprints and like fingerprints.

I could see everything. She's probably trying to like clot.

Oh, yeah. And she said when she saw that, she lost it and she immediately left.

She was like, I don't know what to do. At 8.20pm, while all this is going on, everybody's suddenly losing their shit.

At 8.20pm, a boy, sorry, a boy comes into the police station.

And he says he happened to be at a local bowling alley that night and he heard some teenage girls crying. discussing being witnesses to a brutal murder.

And he said they seemed like they were nervous and like freaking out, but they were also talking about it, like two people.

So this kid came in to be like, I don't know if this is true, but they were talking about it.

I love this kid. Thank goodness. At the same time that this is happening, all of a sudden the Madison Police Department calls this police department the New Albany one.

And they say, Tony Lawrence has come into the station with her father.

So now they're starting to put this together like, oh, Toni Lawrence is one of the teenage girls.

They were at a bowling alley? Yeah, they went to a bowling alley.

And she said she had to talk about something involving a murder.

So they brought her to the sheriff's department and she just spilled.

She told them who Shanda was, that she thought she was around 13.

Initially, Toni was so frenzied and upset that she was like having trouble keeping things straight.

She was hysterical. She was. She was hysterical.

And at one point, she said that Shanda was from New Albany.

So they started looking in New Albany for minors that had gone missing or anything and nothing's coming up because her parents had reported her missing to Clark County.

So that's the only it was just kind of like a moment where like nothing was coming together.

But eventually they found the missing persons report in Clark County and they were able to match it to Shanda.

Now, an arrest warrant immediately went out for Lori and Melinda and Hope.

They surrounded the Loveless home at 2.30 a.m.

Good. They barged through the door. They went up and ripped Lori and Melinda out of bed to arrest them.

And they're reading them their rights. And Lori said, wait, can I ask you something?

And the police officer was like, sure. And she said, are we on candid camera?

Are you fucking kidding me? Yeah. That same night, Hope Rippey was also arrested.

Lori doesn't give a shit about any of this.

No, she doesn't care at all. she oh she said later she says to melinda later like she was like she was like i don't feel bad Like I don't feel bad for what we did.

So I don't understand why everyone's freaking out.

Like she didn't feel bad at all. While interviewing them, Melinda, like I said earlier, was trying to seduce the police officers.

What was she doing? They said she kept, like... leaning forward to try to like show them basically down her shirt and she was like You know, basically like flirting with them, acting much more adult than a 16-year-old would, like using seduction. methods like girl even if you were like older and attractive you're in here for a brutal yeah brutal torturous, murder.

They are looking at you like you're the devil himself.

Which they should be. And it's so and they said they were like, she's a very pretty girl.

Like she's a 16 year old girl. She's very pretty.

And she's clearly used to doing that. to get out of things.

So they also said, they also, I guess the two guys that were interviewing Laurie, which is, this is interesting. had very different views about her.

One of them was like, oh no, she's a remorseless monster.

And the other one was like, no, I don't think she is.

Weird. Yeah, so I don't know what that was.

I think she's a remorseless monster. It was interesting.

So they also said that Melinda was very unintelligent.

Like, they said that you really couldn't follow things she was saying, because she was... very like she was she was like talked fast but didn't make a lot of sense And they said that if they would have dropped her at a site like nearby, she would never be able to make her way home.

Yeah. She didn't even know who the president was.

Yeah, she's very reduced to a child, intelligence-wise.

So one of their friends who I'm going to call Karen because her name is in the book. but I think that names are changed sometimes and I don't know if this is I know that some of the names are changed in the book I'll just call her Karen So Karen was, this girl was friends with all of them.

Like she knew all of these people. Was she like in the punk scene?

Yeah, she just had come across all these people.

And she said, quote, Melinda always wanted me to take her to Shanda's house to beat her up.

And I said, I'm not going to do it. And she said, I'm going to kill her and I'll just have someone else take me there that will help me beat the hell out of her.

And she said, sometimes she would look at me and tell me, if you don't take me to her house, I'll just go on a rampage at school and get suspended. what the fuck and she also said melinda told me before that if she had the chance she would kill shanda And Laurie was the type of person that would probably do that for her, help her out just to keep a friend.

That is so dark. She said Melinda knew that Lori had been telling everybody that she would enjoy killing somebody. that it would be her destiny to go out and kill someone just to see what it felt like and just to hear someone screaming.

That girl is like, she sounds like she is not even helpable.

In Shields, this girl also mentioned that Laurie had a real fixation with arson and like lighting things on fire.

Interesting. So when the news broke, obviously it was everywhere.

Shanda's friends at her new school were absolutely devastated.

How do you get through that as a 12-year-old? friend that's as like a community i don't even there was counseling offered for them like it was a huge deal Um, Jackie's mother at this time had, when she was going through Shanda's things, found a hidden box with more letters between her and Amanda,

And they detailed from Amanda how Melinda was dangerous and how she was going to kill her and how that's why they had to stay apart.

You don't take that seriously. No. And she found this after the fact too.

So she was like... This can only be used to, like, further prove that Melinda did it and, like, that she had purposely and, like, with malice aforethought done this, but...

Can you imagine reading that later? No. So an autopsy was conducted on Shanda by Dr. George Nichols. of Kentucky State Medical Examiner's Office.

She had multiple injuries to her entire body.

I mean, her head, her neck, her arms, her legs.

There was stab wounds all over her legs.

There was stab wounds all over her chest, her stomach, her head, her face, her neck.

She had ligature marks on her wrists and the thing that really, really sucks about this whole thing is soot was found in her upper airway. which meant that she was alive when she was lit on fire and had died of smoke inhalation Of her own burning body.

That is the most fucked up way to die. Yep.

She literally died from breathing in her body's fumes.

So she was alive when they lit her on fire.

Well, you said, I mean, she clutched a blanket.

Yeah. So they also confirmed that she had been viciously sexually assaulted with an object.

And they believe it was obviously the tire iron.

During the trial, for these girls. Steve Sharer, her father, spoke directly to Hope and Tony And he said to Tony, he said, you have no idea the problems you have started in our family as we try to cope with this.

It's very hard to understand why you did not try to stop this from happening. because this was for Hope and Tony's trial.

Yeah. And then he looked at Hope And he said, may you rot in hell with the rest of your murdering friends.

Absolutely. Which I was like... She wants to sit there and be like...

I didn't do anything. And he did it right because he looked at Tony and was like, no one will understand why you didn't stop this.

So like. no one's forgiving you for that.

Like, you're not let off the hook. And then to look at Hope and just be like, rotten fucking hell with the rest of your murdering friends.

Like, you were just as culpable. Yeah. It's just so Jackie actually showed a slideshow of Shanda. to the court with pictures of her as like a baby.

And at one point, Hope looked down, wouldn't look, and she...

And Jackie asked the judge, will you please force her to look?

And the judge said, lift your fucking head up.

Lift your head and look. So she was forced, ordered to watch.

Good. I am so, I love that. Yeah. Steve actually died in 2005.

He had battled with depression and alcoholism after this.

People said he just, he never got How do you ever get over that?

But he never was able to even cope, which...

How do you? How do you? Yeah, I don't even know how you would.

There's no way of reconciling that in your brain.

Yeah, I just, I don't understand that at all.

So all four of them were tried as adults.

Good. All of them. And Laurie and Melinda, the death penalty was on the table for them.

It should have absolutely been instilled.

Hope and Tony, since they had spilled the beans and had cooperated with the police.

They did take plea deals. That's bullshit.

Tony was sent to criminal confinement because although she didn't do anything to harm Shanda physically with her own hands she didn't help either you're an accessory So she got 20 years in prison.

Hope ended up getting 50 years in prison.

Good. And what the judge said to Hope was Hope Rippey had choices.

There were avenues of escape, ways to help yourself, ways to help Shanda.

She poured the gasoline so no one would get caught, even though she knew it would kill Shanda.

Her lack of mercy, of tender courage, is a horrifying lesson to us all."

She definitely didn't get off. But then she appealed her sentence and got it reduced to 35 years.

How? Tony was released after nine years in prison.

That's absolute bullshit. She was released in 2000.

That's bullshit. was out in 14. Absolutely.

And she was released in 2006. She poured gasoline on an already dying girl's body She sprayed Windex at her while she was dying in the trunk She giggled along the way Yep.

So Lori and Melinda pled guilty to avoid the death penalty. um and both of them got 60 years in prison which was the maximum sentence um And Lori later said in prison, she said, quote, I didn't know Shanda at all.

I didn't go into that evening knowing anything was going to happen, wanting anything to happen.

That's not true. Peer pressure. That's all it was.

It spiraled out of control way too fast.

It's something that never should have happened.

It's never, it shouldn't have ever happened, but none of that statement is true other than that.

Lori was released in 2018 after 26 years in prison.

How is 60 years the maximum sentence? This is one of those.

How? How? For burning an alive human being?

I... Well, unfortunately Melinda was also released.

How are you let back into society? Melinda was released in September 2019 after only 27 years.

How? Yep. What did she do in prison that made anybody believe that she wasn't going to light somebody's alive body on fire again?

Well, I can tell you what she did in prison.

I can do that. Melinda in prison was actually working with... a thing called ICANN or Indiana Canine Assistant Network in prison.

What is that? They basically have prisoners train dogs to work with disabled people and child abuse survivors, like dogs that will be like comfort animals.

And actually, she was known when she was in prison to be one of the best. they brought all their most challenging dogs to her and she could, like, She shouldn't have even been around dogs.

She shouldn't have had the pleasure. One of the breeders of the dogs that Melinda was training... was actually a burn victim, like a burn victim survivor.

Like Shanda. And so she said that she brought, so she was in contact with Jackie, Shanda's mother, this breeder. and she said you know I don't know and she basically was like I don't tell me if you don't want this but I'm just offering this to you and she was Like, I don't know if it'll help you to see that she's doing better things in prison or like becoming a better person. but she was like do you want to see a video of her training a dog no and Jackie was like yeah I do.

I mean, I give Jackie absolutely all the credit in the world.

I want to know if she's doing something. better with her life because I need to know that.

Like, I just need to see that she's evolving as a human being and that she's not just this monster.

Jackie's an incredibly human being. So she watched her this video and Jackie said, quote, I was really taken aback.

I saw someone almost reborn. She was sincere.

She was compassionate. I think the ICANN program allows her to have something in her life that she can show love back to, and there's never betrayal on either side.

For her to be able to reach into herself and go, Melinda's a fucking monster.

Yes. She took my baby from me. But for her to be able to go, But in her childhood, something was taken from her.

And this program is allowing her to like... somehow give it back.

You know what I mean? That's an incredible human being. and be loved by something.

Like, and for her to, like, Jackie to be able to, like, Have the emotional grief, the emotional capacity.

That's truly outrageous. Like, that's amazing.

That's like an angel on earth. It truly is.

Well, you want to hear what, how, like she's amazing.

In 2012, Jackie donated a pup for the program named Angel and asked for Merlinda to train it. in Shanda's memory wow has Melinda ever said sorry you know what's horrible Jackie received shit for that People literally gave her shit for that.

How? Because people are shit. It is none of your fucking business what anybody wants to do to get over the death of their child.

Whatever the fuck. fuck shit like unless you've even if you have experienced that don't say shit But you could never even imagine what the I can't even fathom what that woman went through.

And people want to talk shit about her? Yeah, people gave her shit about it.

That's like, I actually saw somebody on a message board when I was, um... researching the Molly Bish case, like blame her mom.

And I made a fucking account to yell at them.

I don't even give a. I was like how dare you how dare you how dare you say anything about the mother of a of somebody who was taken away from them yeah it's like to to blame them like that's unbelievable how dare you Well, what she said about this choice was she said, quote, it's my choice to make.

She's my child. If you don't let good things come from bad things, nothing gets better.

And I know my child would want this. My child would want this.

Good for her. And if she says this is what her child would want.

Then she knows. Then shut the fuck up and let her do it.

Right. Like, what the hell? And what Melinda said about this...

Well, she said, you know what? I didn't believe it when she was first told that. she was going to be getting a dog named Angel from Jackie Shanda's mother.

And she said... that it was only when she saw the puppy that she was like, holy shit, this is real.

Like she really did give me a dog. And then she said, that's the one Jackie had touched, had held, had named.

And I said, wow. And then she said, she helped me to heal, forgive and grow.

Whether she wanted that or not, she did a good thing.

I would thank her. I couldn't thank her enough.

Angel is in good hands and I'm doing it for Shanda and I'm doing it for her.

I just got like a little lump at the end of that.

Yeah. But that's, I mean... it's insane to me that Jackie, I shouldn't say insane, it's marvelous to me that Jackie was able to find that like kind of like i'm telling you peace in that way that is an angel on earth like an absolute angel on earth It just, like, every time I read about it, I was like, wow.

Like, that's next level. Has Melinda ever apologized to Jackie?

No. I don't know if she's like... I think she has, but I don't think... Not that an apology makes anything better.

I don't know if Jackie is really looking for...

She said several times, I never want to come face to face with them.

I never want to have a discussion with them or anything.

But she was like... This is just something I could do to, like... And honestly, I bet it was something that was... healing to her.

Exactly. And if it was healing to her...

It didn't do anything bad. It was a good gesture.

A dog is being trained by apparently No matter what, she's good at it.

If she's training this dog in Shanda's name... to help someone else, at least something good came out of it.

This case is very stressful with that stuff.

It is. I think it was honestly Bethany Frankel that said this, but it's like... when you hate somebody, it's like not being able to let go of that is like drinking poison and expecting them to die.

It's so true. I saw that. It's so true. It's hard to understand that and it's hard to... get through that in your brain, but it is true.

It's true when you can look outside of it and just to see that Jackie was able to be in it and see that is wow.

Yeah. Wow. Like, truly amazing. And even her doing that doesn't mean that she forgave Melinda.

No. That was just something Shanda, she said, would want to... want her to do there was a listener that wrote in something about like the like forgiving like and how you don't have to forget to move on I forget exactly what she said but that yeah because you don't i need wow but that that's the case of shanda share and it I'm sorry everybody.

That was one of the most difficult cases we've ever done.

That was a tough one. And I didn't even give, like, there's even more details that, you know, you can find, but I...

I wanted to at least include what I thought was pertinent. the cases we've covered, I've always sat here and been like, oh my God, stop.

Like, wow. Like, how do people like that exist in the world?

Mm-hmm. This is something I'm going to think about for like years to come.

Oh, yeah. When I first heard this, I first heard this case like when it happened, you know, a little bit after it happened and everything, like when I was a little older.

It's never left you. And I never stopped thinking about it.

This is the one that has sat in my brain for years and years.

How are people like that? How do people like that walk the earth?

Yeah. How many times did somebody walk past Melissa in a grocery or Melinda in a grocery store?

Yeah. And like not realize that that's what she was going to do someday.

Yeah. I have no idea. It's, yeah. The world is a nutso place.

It truly is. So. We really hope you keep listening after that.

I hope you do. And we hope you keep it. Weird!

But never in a million years. Like, that's not even weird.

Yeah, that's not even, that's just fucked.

Thank you. If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.

Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

The town of Agde in France is famous for sun, sand, sea and sex.

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The town's mayor, a respected pillar of the community, has been arrested for corruption.

His wife claims he's been bewitched by a beautiful clairvoyant.

Then there's the mysterious phone calls that local people have been getting.

I am the Archangel Michael. The whole town has been thrown into chaos.

As the mayor is unable to carry out his duties, I would like to address you all.

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[The Tragic Abduction and Murder of Shanda Sharer: A Deep Dive into Childhood Trauma and Cruelty]-[Episode 215: The Torture and Murder of Shanda Sharer]

📋 Summary

The Tragic Abduction and Murder of Shanda Sharer

The Roots of Depravity: The Perpetrators' Backgrounds

A Fatal Love Triangle

The Night of the Murder

Aftermath and the Complexity of Forgiveness

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript