Criminology - Shanda Sharer

Episode Date: January 15, 2023

12-year-old Shanda Sharer was murdered in 1992. The details of her murder shocked the area. There had been just three other murders in the previous 12 years in the County, and none of them were as gruesome. People were even more shocked when it was revealed that four teenage girls were responsible for the brutal murder. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the murder of Shanda Sharer. It didn't take long for Melinda Loveless, Laurie Tackett, Hope Rippey, and Toni Lawrence to be identified as the perpetrators of Shanda's murder. Some of the girls talked about it openly to friends. Investigators learned that it was Melinda Loveless who held a grudge against Shanda because she thought Shanda was messing around with her girlfriend, Amanda. Melinda recruited Laurie, Hope, and Toni to follow her plan even though the three girls didn't even know Shanda. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Listener discretion is advised. Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 240 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Morph, what's going on with you, buddy? Working, recording, the typical stuff. New Year, same stuff. How about you?

Yeah, New Year, same stuff. You know, it's been a pretty mild winner for us. Pretty mild. But I'm ready for it to be over, man. I'm ready for the summer already. I don't want to speed up time. I never want to do that. But, you know, the winter, it's dark, it's cold.

I'm ready to be outside again. You got a few more months, so. Yeah. No doubt about it. Hey, let's go ahead and give our Patreon shoutouts. Yelly G jumped up to our highest level. We had Katie, Krista Jones, Chanel Summers, Tana Ogle, and Brian Chunk Amas.

So it's a lot of great new support. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you so much for taking the time to support the show. It means a lot to us. And for anyone else that would like to support the show, they can go to patreon.com slash criminology. All right, buddy, let's go ahead and jump into this week's case. And we have an especially brutal one.

The details of this case were shocking to many. And just as shocking to a lot of people was when it was revealed, Who was responsible for this terrible crime? We're talking about the January 1992 murder of Shanda Sherer. Shanda Renee Sherer was born on June 6, 1979, in Pineville, Kentucky, to parents Jacqueline and Steven Cher. Her parents divorced and Jacqueline remarried, and she, along with Shanda, moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where Shanda attended junior high at St. Paul School.

She was active there in activities like cheerleading and softball. But the second marriage didn't work out for Jacqueline. And following that second divorce, in 1991, Jacqueline and Shanda moved to New Albany, Indiana. While there, Shanda attended Hazelwood Middle School, but later transferred to Our Lady of Perpetual Help School, a Catholic school New Albany where she played basketball. Shanda was outgoing and athletic, and she wanted to one day be a nurse. Between her parents' divorce, the moves from state to state, the transfers of schools, all of that had to weigh on Shanda and she longed for freedom. In the book about this case called Cruel Sacrifice by Aphrodite Jones,

one of Shanda's diary entries read, I wish I could live with my dad and have as much fun as possible. She also wrote about wanting to be 13. So she could stay up late and talk on the phone and have sleepovers and do all of the things she felt she was ready for if her parents could just understand that, you know, she wasn't a baby anymore. So it really seemed like Shanda was going through the typical preteen to teen angst that many kids at age go through, that transition from being a kid to a teenager and wanting

that independence and wanting to forge their own identity. So I have a daughter around Shanda's age and I totally get what she was going through. She wanted this sort of independence and wanted to assert herself. And I definitely get that. And I think we have all gone through that growing up. And I know you have two daughters. So I'm sure you're very familiar with kids making that change from, you know, preteen to teen and wanting to establish themselves. Yeah.

When I look back on it, especially with my oldest, who, you know, is now in her 20s, I remember both of my daughters really, you know, they wanted to grow up before they were ready. to they wanted to be able to do things that they weren't ready to do and all that. And now with my oldest, it's like, she wants to go back. It's, it's kind of interesting to see the change. She's starting to get in the real world and do real world things and have, you know, adult responsibilities. And she's like, man, I just want to go back to where, you know, mom and dad take care of it all. Yeah, and that's something I'm familiar with too, because I think I thought the same thing.

You get out there on your own. and you see, hey, I had it pretty good, you know, had to do chores around the house, stuff like that, but having to pay bills and having mom and dad do everything, that's something that you can't appreciate until you're out on your own. We mentioned Shanda's transfer of schools in New Albany. She went to Hazelwood Middle School for the first few months of the fall semester. She and a classmate at Hazelwood, Amanda Heverin, got into a fight after Amanda saw her arguing with her cousin, Nathan, and she tried to break it up. Both Shanda and Amanda were sentenced to detention, which they served together,

and they really hit it off and became friends while they were in detention. But this new friendship caused problems between Amanda and 15-year-old Melinda Loveless, who was Amanda's sort of off-and-on girlfriend. Melinda wrote Shanda letters that clearly showed she wasn't happy with the friendship between Shanda and Amanda, as documented in the book Cruel Sacrifice. One of the letters read, I want to be your friend. I just don't like when you speak to Amanda when I'm not there.

And you need to find a boyfriend because Amanda is mine. Amanda also wrote letters to Shanda. Some of them addressed Melinda's behavior towards Shanda. One of them read, hey girlfriend, what's up? Please don't let Melinda bother you. Please don't stop liking me because of her. Though Melinda was overbearing and doing everything she could to split Shanda and Amanda up, they really liked each other and to them the amazing time.

When they spent time together was worth the drama. They continued to talk and pass letters even though Melinda continued to be upset about their friendship. In October 1991, Shanda and Amanda went to a school dance together at Hazleton. Melinda went to the dance to catch them together and confront them. When she saw Amanda with Shanda, she was furious. She had specifically told Amanda not to go with. with Shanda and that she herself had wanted to go with Amanda. Belinda was so angry that she publicly threatened Shanda and chased her.

She also slapped Amanda. Somehow though, despite the drama, Amanda made up with Melinda after the blowout, but she still kept seeing Shanda. The letters from Melinda became more heated. Why did you write her fucking name on your folder? One she wrote to Amanda read, it hurt so much when I saw it. She also wrote, I'm gone. meaning that she didn't want anything to do with Amanda.

But of course, she really didn't want things to end with her, and the drama between the three girls continued. In late October, Amanda and Melinda skipped school together. Somehow Amanda's parents found out that she skipped school, and her parents were worried. Amanda's father, Jeffrey, looked in her room for clues as to where she might be, and found sexually explicit letters from Melinda to his daughter. He immediately requested a restraining order against Melinda Loveless and submitted her letters to the authorities,

and a juvenile probation officer. Just days later, Amanda and Shanda went to a homecoming festival together. Word got back to Melinda, who was enraged. A few days after that, Amanda failed to wish Melinda happy birthday. And this enraged her even further. So it seems like there's some drama going on here between these three. I don't know how much of that is typical from what I've heard, and my kids, again, aren't old enough, but a lot of times,

once they hit that age where they're, we mentioned they're sort of going into that teenage period, there can be a lot of friction, a lot of emotions, and this kind of thing happened. And from what I've heard, is that a lot of times the drama with girls is worse than with boys. So I wonder if any of that was at play,

but we also have what sounds like not just friendships here, but a romantic love triangle is also going on. So that's probably compounding things. Yeah, I mean, both of my girls experienced scenarios where there was drama with friends. And I just think that's part of growing up. Now, normally, you know, that drama plays itself out. People think it's bigger than what it is at that age.

But obviously, in this story, we're going to see that all of these events lead to something, you know, very horrific, extremely tragic. like Amanda's parents had done, Shanda's mom, Jacqueline, found very detailed sexual letters to her daughter that Amanda had written. She was concerned, but Shanda denied any sexual or intimate relationship and told her that the letters didn't really mean anything. I think we have to remember that at the time of these letters, Amanda was 13 and Shanda was 12. So you really have to understand why the parents of both Shanda and Amanda were so obsessive. over these sexually detailed letters to their daughters. In fact, Shanda's mom was so upset with the entire saga that in November 1991, she transferred Shanda to a Catholic school in the area,

Our Lady of Perpetual Help, so that she would be away from the drama and influence of Amanda and Melinda. She had seen so many changes in Shanda, including her mood, the way she dressed and her grades, that she just felt public school wasn't working. working out. But this transfer move didn't help. To calm Melinda down, she continued to send Amanda nasty letters, full of threats to Shanda. On November 22nd, Amanda and Shanda's cousin tried to sneak Shanda into the Hazelwood dance, but staff recognized the former student and kicked her out. They were standing together outside when Melinda pulled up in her car. Melinda told Amanda to

tell Shanda that she didn't love her, and Amanda did as she was told. And then, according to the book Cruel Sacrifice, Melinda said to Shanda, if you even try to talk to Amanda again, I'm going to fucking kill you. After that incident, it seems that Shanda and Amanda did become somewhat distant, and Shanda started hanging out a lot with a boy around her age. On December 12th, Amanda typed a letter to Shanda breaking up with her because she had heard she was dating a boy. She had handwritten all the other letters that she sent Shanda.

The typing in this letter was formal and serious, and in her mind she was making it sound more official. The breakup might have seemed like the end of the volatile love triangle once and for all, but things were about to turn deadly. On January 10, 1992, three teenage girls, 15-year-old's Hope Ripy and Tony Lawrence and 17-year-old Lori Tackett were hanging out. Each of the girls had lied to their parents and said they were sleeping over at each other's houses. Lori Tackett drove the group from Madison, Indiana to New Albany to visit Melinda Loveless, who was now 16 years old.

Tony and Hope didn't know Melinda, but Lori did. They had met in Louisville in October 1991 at a mutual friend's house. They became close very quickly, and by December had become nearly inseparable. At Melinda's house, the four girls got to know each other. They hung out and talked, just like, you know, any other. teenagers would. Melinda, however, took the opportunity to show off a knife. She was open about her plan to use it to scare Shanda, who neither of the other girls had even ever met. Melinda spent the night talking negatively about Shanda, explaining how she had stolen her girlfriend and how

she would relentlessly copy her. The group agreed to accompany Melinda to scare Shanda. Now, I don't know about you, Mike, but when I was a teenager and we hung out in a group like this, there would frequently be someone that would come up with some hairbrain idea, something that probably, in hindsight, wasn't very smart or could have led to serious trouble. And usually it would just be talk and nothing would come from it. But, you know, obviously this is a case where something did come from it. But, you know, I don't know if that's a common thing, but it's, definitely something that I experienced. How about you? Yeah, I would say it is pretty common.

You know, when a group of kids get together, who knows what the conversation is going to turn to and, you know, in a scenario where one person is upset with someone, okay, maybe that's going to dominate the conversation. And that person who's upset may have a bunch of ideas about what they want to do or how to end this feud with their nemesis or whatever you want to call it. I think that's where we get into the area of peer pressure. You know, a lot of times you think about peer pressure when it comes to drugs, but there really is peer pressure when it comes to things like this. Okay.

If you were just sitting and thinking about this on your own, would you think this is a bad idea? I should not do this. but in that group setting, when that peer pressure hits, sometimes people go along with things that they know they really shouldn't be doing. And just like you said, Morp, I'm sure I did some of that too. Obviously, nothing to the extent to which we're going to get into. But, you know, I did some things that I'm sure I shouldn't have done,

wouldn't have done had I not been in that group setting. and maybe under different circumstances, things wouldn't have turned out the way they did here, and these girls wouldn't have gone along with this plan. But at the time this happened, they had no other ride to get home but Lori. They had also lied to their parents about where they were, and if they didn't go along with the plan and got stranded, it would mean that they'd have to call their parents and come clean about the lies they had made. 15-year-old Hope Ripy drove Lori Tackett's car from New Albany to Jeffersonville, where Shanda's father lived.

Shanda's parents shared custody of her, with weekdays being spent in New Albany with her mom, and weekends being spent with her dad in Jeffersonville. The girls weren't quite sure where they were going, so they stopped into a McDonald's to ask for directions. Just before dark, they pulled up about half a block away from Stephen Scherer's house. Melinda hid in the car and had Hope and Tony go talk to Shand. and tell her that Amanda wanted us here. They claimed to be Amanda's friends and told Shanda that Amanda was waiting at a nearby abandoned stone house

called the Witch's Castle. Shanda couldn't go though because her dad was awake. So she told the girls to come back for her at midnight when he was asleep. When Hope and Tony got back to the car with the news, Melinda was very angry. She didn't plan for Shanda to say no. The girls reassured Melinda

that Shanda had been genuine and really agreed to meet up. up. They just had to wait a bit longer. The group decided to kill some time by going to a punk show at the Audubon skate park just across the river in Louisville to listen to the band Sunspring. After the show, the four drove back to Shanda's house in Jeffersonville. On the way there, Melinda changed her tune a bit. Well, you know, really actually a lot. She started enthusiastically talking about killing Shanda, not just scaring her. The plan was, went from scaring Shanda to killing her. If any of these girls realized this was going too far, none of them spoke up. And it seemed as though they were still on board to lure Shanda to an abandoned house in the woods. The group arrived back at Shanda's house at around 1230, and Melinda hid in the back of the car under a blanket, while Lurie and Hope went to get Shanda. This time, Shanda was hesitant and almost didn't go with them. They told her that I might have.

Amanda was still at the Witch's Castle and that she wanted her to join them. Eventually, Shanda gave in and decided to go with them to see Amanda. She got dressed and headed out with them. Once Shanda got in the car, Hope started asking her about Amanda in their relationship. Shanda told Hope that she really liked Amanda, even though they hadn't been seeing each other for very long. As they drove to the witch's castle, Belinda sat up behind Shanda, grabbed a fistful of her hair, and held a knife up to her throat. She started asking her questions about Amanda and whether they had been having sex or not threatening her and calling her a bitch. By the time they got to the witch's

castle, which was in an isolated area up on a hill near the Ohio River, Shanda was terrified and crying. The group dragged her inside and used rope to tie her arms and legs together. Melinda took off Shanda's rings and her watch. Shanda's watch, a Mickey Mouse watch, began playing a song. Hope taunted Shanta, dancing to it while Melinda doled out her jewelry to the other girls. Melinda also threatened to chop off Shanda's hair and told her that she would be the next victim, whose bones would fill the witch's castle. Lori went out to her car and got a shirt and lit it on fire in front of Shanda. Lori told Shanda to imagine herself as the shirt, because that was her fate too. Though this was meant to spook Shanda, it actually scared the girls because they were sure someone would see the flames.

So they put Shanda back in the car and left. They had to stop at a gas station for directions because they got lost in the dark. So they hid Shanda in the back seat under a blanket, like Melinda had kept herself hidden from Shander earlier. Melinda stayed in the car, standing guard, while Lorry paid and asked for directions inside. Hope pumped the gas. Tony went to a payphone and called one of her friends in Louisville, but didn't tell him anything about the situation. The group tried to follow the directions they received at the gas station,

but ended up having to stop at a second gas station for directions because they got lost again, with Shanda still hidden in the car. Tony and Hope flirted with boys at the station before they left. And Morve, I just want to take a second here and talk about, you know, how scared Shanda Shander must have. been in this situation. She was 12 years old, you know, to have someone put a knife to your throat, to light a shirt on fire and say, this is what's going to happen to you. And really, to be kidnapped and thrown in a car and hidden under a blanket, she had to have been so terrified.

Yeah, I can't imagine how terrified she was at that age, 12 years old, with this group of older girls being threatened with a knife. I mean, that would be scary for anyone of any age. So one thing I think about is what went through her mind. Did she think maybe do I make a move to escape here while they're at one of these gas stations? I don't think anyone really knows what it would do until they're in that situation. But apparently she didn't try and make a break for it or ask for help or get out of the car. Maybe with the whole situation, she was just too scared or her.

overwhelmed to even think about doing that. About an hour later, they ended up in a wooded area in Madison near where Lori Tackett lived. Tony and Hope refused to get out of the car and follow Lori down the dark logging road in the woods. Melinda and Lori took Shanda to an abandoned building. While Hope and Tony stayed in the car, Shanda was forced to take off all of her clothes except for her underwear. Melinda put all her clothes in the car. Hope took off her own bra and put on Shanda's polka dot bra. Tony turned the radio up. Lori held Shanda's arms behind her back and Melinda started beating her. Shanda promised to stop seeing Amanda, but this wasn't good enough. Melinda

punched Shanda multiple times before kneeing her in the face, which caused Shanda's braces to badly cut her lips. Melinda tried to kill Shanda by cutting her throat, but the knife she had brought with her wasn't sharp enough. By this time, Hope had joined the group while Tony stayed behind in the car. While Hope held Shanda down, Melinda tried to cut her throat again, using her foot to apply pressure, but it still didn't work. Instead, Melinda and Lurie stabbed her, passing the knife back and forth to each other. Melinda held her legs down while Lori strangled Shanda with one of the ropes. Once she was unconscious, they thought that they had killed her.

They put her in the trunk and went back to Lori's house. They washed themselves off and had sodas while Lori told the fortunes of the other girls using runestones. Before long, they heard Lori's dogs barking outside and screaming coming from the trunk of the car. Lori ran out and stabbed Shanda a few more times, believing then that she had finally killed her. At 2.30 a.m., Lori and Melinda decided to go for a joyride to a nearby town named Cannon. When they heard Shanda crying in the trunk, Lori pulled over. They opened the trunk and saw that Shanda was in bad shape. She sat up, but she couldn't speak, and her eyes were rolling back in her head.

Tackett grabbed a tire iron and bludgeoned Shanda with it until she stopped making noises. Then they sexually assaulted her with the same tire iron before closing the trunk and taking off again. They made multiple stops on their droll. joy ride with Shanda in the trunk. Before the sun came up, Lori and Melinda returned to Lori's house, where Tony and Hope were waiting. Hope inquired about Shanda. And the two laughed as they recounted the torture that they had inflicted on her all night. Lori's mom woke up and was angry that her daughter had been out so late and brought friends back without permission and she told Lori to take them all home. On the way, she stopped and told Hope and Tony to look in the trunk. Tony refused,

but Hope took a bottle of windex from the trunk, sprayed it on Shanda, and taunted her before the girls once again hit the road. They stopped again at a gas station, this time a Clark oil station just north of Madison. Tony bought a two-liter bottle of Pepsi and they put a few gallons of gas in the car. The Pepsi bottle was dumped out and refilled with gas. They then drove north the Lemon Road off U.S. Route 421 at Hope's suggestion. Again, Tony stayed in the car. Hope, Lori, and Melinda wrapped a blanket around Shanda, who was miraculously and unimaginably still alive. They dragged her body into the nearby field, and Hope poured some of the gasoline onto the blanket and Shanda. They then lure on fire using a match and got back in the car. Just after they took off,

They went back because Melinda didn't think that they had killed her. And she poured the remaining gas onto the fire. And more if we said right up front, the details of this murder were gruesome. They're nasty. And I think one of the things that, you know, jumps out at people about this story, number one is the details of what happened to Shanda that night that led to her death. All of that was brutal. But I think also the ages.

of Shanda and some of the people who participated. Yeah, and you don't really think about teenage girls being capable of this kind of crime. This sounds like something we're talking about, an episode of some ruthless serial killer or predator who's got a long history of crimes, and this is his latest attack on someone, and we're always baffled by that. But here we're talking teenage girls without criminal records, you know, as far as we know, So the level of depravity here is awful. And then also you have multiple stops, multiple attacks on Shanda.

And during all those times, none of these girls said, what are we doing here? We have to stop this. We have to go get her help. None of them ran off and said, I can't be part of this. They all banded together and stayed with this group that was doing this. And I, you know, I just can't comprehend that. And I'm sure a lot of people can't. Now, we talked about like Tony staying in the car at certain points in the story.

But yeah, I agree with you. And I go back to one thing that we said. And it was that, you know, some of these girls didn't even know Shanda at all. They basically, it seems we're going along with Melinda. hyped up by, you know, her hatred of Shanda and decided to go along with it. So the fact these girls would do this to someone they didn't know to anyone, but especially someone they didn't know, it just boggles my mind why they would go through with something like this.

Yeah, and I think it's a big piece, right, of why this case captured the attention of so many people. Obviously, you know, the media big time, when you look at all the facets. And obviously we have more to touch on, but the ages of the people involved, the acts that they commit. In the suburbs of D.C.,

a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved, until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible.

A new series from ABC Audio in 2020. Blood and water. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Those are going to stand out. Those are going to jump out to people reading stories. It's hard not to see something like that and want to know more about it. It goes back to kind of the crux for me about true crime.

why do people do what they do? And in this case, why did these girls kind of go along with Melinda? And I'm sure we'll talk about it more. At 9.30 a.m. The girl stopped at McDonald's for breakfast. Lori and Melinda made jokes about Shanda coldly comparing her burned body to their sausage patties. Tony went to a pay phone and called a friend. This time, she told her friend. about Shanda's abduction and murder. Lori dropped Hope and Tony off at their homes and then took Melinda back to hers. They called Amanda and Lori told her that she had killed Shanda. They also planned to pick her up later that same day.

So Amanda gets this phone call and finds out that Shanda has been killed. It's hard to imagine agreeing to hang out with someone who just claimed to have committed a murder of someone you cared about, but we don't know what was going on in Amanda's head. Maybe she thought they were joking. She did not think they were serious. Lori and Melinda went back to Melinda's house, where her friend Crystal Wawthon showed up. They also told Crystal about Shanda's abduction and murder, but she didn't believe them either. The three drove to Amanda's house and took her back to Melinda's house, where they again told her about Shanda's abduction and murder.

They looked in the trunk, and Amanda saw bloody hand. prints and socks, and it finally sunk in that they weren't joking. Amanda immediately asked Lori to drive her home. Once outside of Amanda's house, Melinda kissed her and asked that she keep what she knew a secret. Of course Amanda agreed. She promised not to say a word to anyone, and then she went inside. That same day, brothers Don and Ralph Foley were on their way from Cannon to go quell hunting when they came to Lemon Road. They saw Shanda's body, but at first they thought they they were looking at a discarded mannequin. When they got closer and realized what they were actually seeing,

they headed to a phone and called the police. It was 10.55 a.m. when they made the call less than two hours after the girls arrived at McDonald's see breakfast. Investigators were initially unable to identify the body because it had been burned beyond recognition and the hands had been burnt damaging the fingerprints. Shanda had been left with her legs. posed in a sexually suggestive manner, with her underwear pulled to the side. Investigators had no idea. They were looking at the body of a child.

At first, the theory was that some witness to a drug deal gone wrong, had been killed and dumped. That morning, Stephen Sherrod found that Shanda was missing. He called friends, neighbors, and Shanda's mom, but no one had seen or heard from her. At 1.45 p.m., Shanda's parents filed a missing person. report. At around 8 p.m., a 15-year-old boy went to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office to report that he had heard teen girls at Anderson's bowling alley talking about a murder. The way they were talking, he knew they weren't joking. At 8.20 p.m., Hope and Tony were taken into the

Jefferson County Sheriff's Office by their parents. They were both very upset and nearly incoherent, but they both told investigators about their involvement in the attack and murder of a girl named Shanda. They told police what happened and told them about Melinda and Lori Tackett's involvement. Law enforcement in multiple counties in Indiana worked to piece together that the missing Shanda from Clark County was the same Shanda that Hope and Tony were talking about. Dental records were used to confirm that the body found off Lemon Road was indeed Shanda Shair. You know, one thing more if it strikes me about this case is how quickly everything kind of happens in the timeline from the murder to these girls being brought in.

Well, and when you look at it, it's because they're talking to everyone. I mean, they are literally telling their friends and, you know, talking about it at a bowling alley, as if they just went out for pizza on a Friday night. They don't seem to understand or care about the gravity. of this situation. It is so strange. And I think we've talked about cases before when people start bragging and talking about a crime. And it seems like it's especially younger killers that do this where, you know, they can't help but talk about stuff where a hardened, experienced killer that was older, usually will just keep it to themselves and never say anything. So I wonder if that just has

anything to do with being young and not thinking things through. Obviously, I didn't think things through in the very beginning to do all this, but here they are not even trying to cover it up, essentially. Shanda's autopsy painted a grim picture of what had happened to her and how awful and brutal her murder really was. Ligature marks were still visible on her wrists. There were third and fourth degree burns on her upper body. Damage to her rectum, proved that a blunt object, likely the tire iron, had been shoved no less than three and a half inches deep while she was alive. No one would ever wind up admitting to that assault. Tragically, there was soot in her airway proving that she had still been alive when she had been set on fire. Her official cause of

death was smoke inhalation and severe burns despite the numerous other injuries. Just after 2 a.m. on January 12, 1992, Melinda Loveless and Lori Tackett were arrested at Lovelace's house. Marjorie, Melinda's mom, was clueless as to why so many officers were literally breaking down her door in the middle of the night. Melinda and Lori had been asleep when officers arrived and entered the house. When they got to the police station, the girls didn't seem too concerned over the situation,

as both Melinda and Hope were smiling in their mugshots. Shanda's murder shocked the county. There had been just three other murders in the previous 12 years, and none of them were as gruesome. The community learned about the horrible murder of a 12-year-old girl and were equally as stunned to find out that a group of girls not much older than her had done it. Prosecutors wanted both Lori Tackett and Melinda Lovelace, tried as adults, and on March 15, 1992, they were both charged with murder, arson, battery with a deadly weapon, aggravated

battery, criminal confinement, and intimidation. They were also separately charged with child molestation and criminal deviant conduct for the sexual assault of Shanda. On April 9, 1992, Melinda Loveless and Lori Tackett reached charge with an additional count of felony murder. On the 22nd of April, Tony Lawrence accepted a plea deal. In return for her testimony against Melinda Loveless, Lori Tackett and Hope Rippey, all charges would be dropped against her, except for one count of criminal

confinement, which she would plead guilty to. Melinda Loveless, Hope Rippy, and Lori Tackett refused multiple plea deals. On July 13, 1992, prosecutor Guy Townsend charged Lori Tackett and Melinda Loveless with conspiracy to commit murder and also filed paperwork to turn their cases into death penalty cases. Hope Ripley was not old enough to be eligible for the death penalty. On August 17th, Tony Lawrence was found unresponsive in her cell after taking an overdose of Larazepam. She was rushed to the hospital and survived and wound up being housed at Lifespring Mental Health Facility in Jeffersonville until October 1992. On September 21st, 1992, Melinda Lovelace and Lori Tackett agreed to plea arrangements in exchange for

pleading guilty to murder, torture, arson, and criminal confinement. All other charges would be dropped, and the death penalty would be taken off the table as a possible sentence. They officially pleaded guilty in November. In January 1993, Lori Tackett and Melinda Lovelace were each sentenced to serve 60 years in prison. They were both sent to the Indiana Women's Prison in Indianapolis. Tony Lawrence was sentenced to a maximum of.

20 years in prison for one count of criminal confinement due to her plea deal. Hope Rippy had continued to maintain her innocence and was set to go to trial in March 1993, but ended up taking a plea deal after the other girls were sentenced. In June of that year, she was sentenced to serve 60 years, but 10 years were suspended due to mitigating circumstances, which we'll get into in a bit. She was also sentenced to an additional 10 years of probation. At her sentencing, Stephen Scher was able to address. Hope Ripie and said, may you rot in hell with the rest of your murdering friends.

Due to testimony at Melinda's sentencing hearing, her father, Larry, was arrested on January 11, 1993. He was charged with three counts of rape, two counts of sexual battery, and six counts of sodomy. The victims were his own daughters and niece. So a couple of things more that have found interesting as it relates to the criminal proceedings. Lori Tackett and Melinda Loveless both tried as adults. And to start out, they rejected plea deals. And then at some point, they made the decision to accept a plea deal. It sounds as though it probably hinged on the prosecutors removing the death penalty from the table.

And you see that quite a bit. I think when you get down to it, Some defendants are very defiant to start out with. You know, I'll take my chances. I'm not copping to anything. But when you have that death penalty kind of hanging over your head, that can be a very motivating factor for some. Death penalty debate aside,

whether it's a good thing or a bad thing or should be enforced or not, if there was a crime that would qualify for it, this would be the kind of crime for what happened to this girl. You know, we're talking a 12-year-old child here, and maybe had this been a hardened career criminal with a history of this kind of stuff, the death penalty may never have come off the table, but because of the ages of these girls

and the mitigating circumstances we're about to talk about, it seems like the system was a little bit more lenient with them. In 1994, Tony Lawrence, earned her GED. In 2000, she earned an associate's degree, which also earned her almost one year of time served. On December 14th, 2000, 24-year-old Tony Lawrence was released from prison. After 2002, her parole was complete. So if I'm doing my math correctly, which I don't always do, you know, Tony Lawrence was sentenced to a maximum of 20 years. She did about eight of those years. It's just striking that, you know, at the time she got out, she was still only 24 years old.

On November 3rd, 2004, Hope Rippey sentence was reduced to 25 years by Indiana Superior Court Judge Jenny Meneer. 29-year-old Hope Rippey was released on April 28, 2006, and completed her parole in April 2011. So for Hope, you know, she got that maximum 60-year, sentence, she ended up doing 13, 14 years, and again, was only 29 years old when she got out. On May 8, 2005, Stephen Scher passed away at the age of 53, reportedly due to complications from alcoholism. Apparently, his daughter's death had taken a terrible toll on him. And this is so unfortunate. You see it in many cases. The parents of a murdered child. are always going to have struggles in dealing with that death.

Some people struggle with it more than others and are unable to cope in some situations. Yeah, there's definitely a ripple effect to these crimes we talk about, and oftentimes that shows up, and whether it's someone that takes their own life or turns to alcohol, drugs, or we even see it where strong marriages, wind up in divorce. So there's all kinds of different things that occur after the fact here.

In October 2007, Melinda Loveless filed for early release, but it was denied. In 2012, it was reported that Melinda was helping to train service dogs. Staff at the Indiana Canine Assistant Network have lauded her ability to train difficult dogs. She even groomed dogs before their court appearances as support dogs for children who need to testify at trial. Jacqueline, Shanda's mother, donated a service dog named Angel to be trained by Melinda in Shanda's honor. They shocked a lot of people that were familiar with Shanda's murder. Jacqueline made a goal to donate one service puppy each year in Shanda's name, whether Melinda

Lovelace trained them or not. On January 11, 2018, 43 or Lori Tackett was released from prison. It happened to be the 26th anniversary of Shanda's death. And in September 2019, 43-year-old Melinda Lovelace was released from prison. She was the last of the four behind bars. So obviously, Morph, Lori and Melinda had the longest sentences. And I think rightfully so when you look at the situation, the scenario, they both ended up doing, what, 27, 29, 8 years, something like that. like that, but they got out at the age of 43. And people can debate on whether that was the right

thing or the wrong thing, whether it was not long enough. But I do want to go back to Shanda's mother, Jacqueline, you know, donating these service dogs seemingly being more than okay with Melinda training these dogs in honor of her daughter. You know, you, you're just, you. You're you mentioned it. It shocked a lot of people. It kind of shocked me when I, when I read about it, I'm always amazed by how strong and forgiving some people are able to be, mostly because I just don't know if I have that in me, if I would be able to do that. I feel as though I would be filled with such hatred that it just wouldn't let me get to a place where, I could ever, I don't even know if forgive is the right word, maybe it is, a person who took my

child's life, let alone kind of interact with them on an ongoing basis. Now, it's great what Melinda was doing, but I don't know if I'm, if I'm strong enough, man, I really don't. And you have to wonder if maybe she wanted Melinda to do something positive to help other people. And these dogs, as we mentioned were helping kids. So in the end, this was something good. And maybe that's why she was able to sort of have that forgiveness in her heart because she knew it was helping other young people. So we hinted earlier at mitigating circumstances for some of these individuals involved with Shanda's murder. All four of the perpetrators responsible for her murder claimed to have been victims of abuse themselves. So based on that,

there were mitigating circumstances that the court was asked to take into account. Tony Lawrence had been sexually abused by a family member at the age of nine and again by an older boy when she was 14. When she was in the eighth grade, she tried to end her life. Hope Rippey had begun to self-harm when she turned 15. Lori Tackett had been sexually abused when she was five and again when she was 12, her mother, a fundamentalist Pentecostal Christian, had once tried to strangle her when she found out that she had been wearing jeans to school instead of dresses. After Lori badly cut her wrist, she was taken to the hospital where she had surgery to repair the wound. She was then treated at a psychiatric facility and diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.

Melinda witnessed her father, Larry, sexually and physically assault her mother multiple times. Her mother, Marjorie, tried to end her life more than once when Melinda was a child. Larry's other daughters and his niece claimed that he sexually assaulted them and on some occasions molested his own daughter, Melinda Loveless, though she has never made that claim. So while all these things that happened to these girls are terrible, and there's no doubt that they are terrible. They don't excuse what they did to Shanda. And we talk about it in a lot of episodes. There are a lot of bad things that happen to people. I wish they didn't happen, but they do. Now, most people don't end up committing awful murders as a result of these traumatic

experiences that they go through. They work through things in therapy. They find coping mechanisms, whatever it is. And I think this is an issue that, you know, a lot of people who delve into true crime can have to wrestle with. There's no excuse for what happened to Shanda Sherrick. But we talked about it earlier more. people don't think about girls this age being capable of something like this.

So you start searching for answers or reasons or, you know, things that may have led up to it. Could some of these things have had an impact? And I'm sure the answer is yes. But why? You still have that question. And there's something terrifying in the knowledge that four separate individuals, children would be capable of murder and torture because they happened to all be together.

Three of the girls had never even met their victim before the night they killed her. So it wasn't personal. It's not like someone snapped in the heat of an argument. There was no grudges or revenge. They were all under the influence of Melinda Lovelace. And at any point, they could have stopped what they were doing and not gone through with it.

In the book, Cruel Sacrifice, Shanda's mom was quoted as saying, I sat through three sentencing hearings and had to look and listen to my daughter's murders day after day while they have lied and put on acts that are worthy of an Oscar. I have listened while each and everyone cried, child abuse and rape. I see attorneys trying to convince everyone that these girls were all victims. The victim here is Shanda Renee Sherer and her family and friends. So I just got done talking about, you know, some of the abuse that's,

some of these girls went through. And then you have Shanda's mother saying that they lied. They put on acts that are Oscar worthy. As she put it, she wasn't having it. More if as far as these girls being painted as victims, she wanted everybody to know that the victim was her daughter, Shanda. Now,

I don't know if she's saying that they didn't experience what they said they experienced or that they did, but it didn't cause them to murder her daughter. I was a little fuzzy on that part. But either way, you could see where her kind of line of thinking is. She was not happy that they were being painted as victims, but you get it from a defense attorney perspective. You're trying to do whatever you can to mitigate the sentence against your client. Yeah, there's no doubt that the job of the defense attorney is to bring up anything they think will help their client.

And having this stuff in these defendants' background obviously played a role in their upbringing and their decision-making, things like that. And obviously, the court took all of that into consideration. But to me, just my personal opinion, whether they were victims or not, doesn't give them the right to do something like that. that to someone else. And although they were teenagers, they still knew right from wrong that you can't just murder someone. But I think that's part of the whole argument that younger offenders aren't fully developed in their mind. So they don't think about the consequences of their actions, even if they know it's wrong at that moment. They don't play out everything. Okay, what will happen to me? Why shouldn't I do this? And that's, I think, a big argument.

argument to be had in this case. All four of the people who decided that kidnapping, torturing, terrifying, and killing a 12-year-old girl was okay are free today. Shanda Renee Sherr would be turning 44 this coming June if it hadn't been for Melinda Loveless, Lori Tackett, Hope Rippey, and Tony Lauren. And, you know, we talked about the fact that they're free. We talked about, you know, how old they were when they got out. I don't, know if they struggle with this. They should, but they have to live with that every day. The knowledge that, you know, they took a very young girl's life.

Now, you just wonder if that's something that they think about. Are they remorseful? Does it haunt them? I don't know. For some people, it does. And for some people, it doesn't. It depends on the makeup of, you know, different individuals. We know and have profiled serial killers or different types of killers who have no remorse whatsoever.

They just don't sit back in their cells and think about, well, I wish I hadn't have done that. And I feel bad for, you know, killing this person or that person. I wonder what it's like for these four women. Yeah, especially if they consider the details of their actions what they did to this poor little girl. Again, I have a 12-year-old daughter. So I'm, as we're talking about this case, I'm just envisioning something like this, God forbid, happening to her.

And I can't imagine how anyone would do that in the first place, but then not have some kind of regret or remorse later on. So you touch on a good point. Does the thought of what they did come up and did they learn from it? Are they doing good things with their lives to help other people to maybe make up? Not that they can make up for that, but to help offset the bad that they did.

Are they doing good things? Yeah, I mean, I think at this point, because they've served their time, they did what they were supposed to do, that's all you can hope for. That they live their lives in the best way possible. They become productive members of society. whether you agree that they served as much time as they should have, they did serve all of their time that they were required to. So in that sense, they've paid their debt and hopefully they,

like you said, you know, make up for it by living good lives and, and helping others. And not that it can ever excuse what they did or make up for what they did, but what else, you know, what else can they do at this point?

But that's it for our episode on Shanda Share, tough one, morph, because, you know, you and I both have girls. And thinking back about them for me when they were 12, for you, you're kind of in that right now, but that helplessness and the hopelessness that, you know, Shanda must have been feeling at that time, it's, it's heartbreaking. It really is. And not having a single person there to help her. Just a very tough episode to do. But if you love the show, haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, give us a five-star rating, leave a review, all of that helps, as does word of mouth. Keep telling your friends about the criminology podcast. That really goes a long way. If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter

with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by going to facebook.com podcast. And you can also join our Facebook discussion group, Criminology Podcasts, Discussion and Fans. So we're rolling in 2003. That is another episode of criminology. But we'll be back with everyone next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So for Mike and Morf. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.