[53] On November 14, 2008, Loveless's appeal was denied by the Indiana Court of Appeals, upholding Judge Todd's ruling. Her death is notable due to the torture she endured for more than 10 hours, and subsequently being burned alive. The four girls crossed the river to Louisville and attended a punk rock show by the band Sunspring[30] at the Audubon Skate Park near Interstate 65. It is also to be noted that her body was posed in a suggestive position, very obviously meaning that this was done on purpose and with intention. INDIANAPOLIS, IN (WTHR) - In January 1992, 12-year-old Shanda Sharer was lured from her home in Jeffersonville, tortured throughout the night and burned alive. Loveless ordered Sharer to tell the truth about stealing the girlfriend or have her throat slit. After an inter-county investigation, Shippley contacted the Clark County sheriff and was finally able to match the body to Sharer's missing person report. She was kidnapped, tortured and burned alive by four teenage girls. All four girls had troubled backgrounds, with claims of physical or sexual abuse committed by a parent or other adult. Melinda Loveless, 17, Laurie Tackett, 17, Hope Rippey, 16, and Toni Lawrence, 16, plotted to murder Shanda as retaliation for Shanda dating Loveless's ex-girlfriend, Amanda Heavrin. Copyright 2022 The Washington Times, LLC. At around 7 am on January 11, 1992, Shandas father, Steve, realized that his daughter wasnt at home in Jeffersonville, Indiana; she had been staying with him at the time. By the next day, all four girls were in custody. [56], Tackett was released from Rockville Correctional Facility on January 11, 2018, the 26th anniversary of Sharer's death, after serving nearly 26 years, and has completed an additional year of parole.[57]. Tacketts motives aside, what would drive 16-year-old Loveless to mastermind such a brutal murder? Stephen resettled in Jeffersonville, Indiana with his wife, Sharon. "We bring our challenges, many times, to Melinda because she's able to figure out what their strength is," said Sally Irvin of ICAN. Tackett was released from Rockville Correctional Facility on September 11, 2018, after serving nearly 26 years in prison and completing a year of probation. She's like my kid," said Loveless. Three more hours later, they took her to another . While Tackett, Rippey, and Lawrence had never met Sharer prior to that night, Tackett had already known of the plan to intimidate the 12-year-old girl. She was sentenced to 60 years in prison but has served the required time for her release. Known For: Being Tortured and killed by 4 teenage girls. [68], "Mean", an episode from the fifth season of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, is based on the murder. He filed for bankruptcy in 1980. Larry, who was violent and abusive, did not usually share his income with the family and impulsively spent any money he earned on himself, especially firearms, motorcycles and cars. The murder of Shanda Sharer occured in Madison, Indiana early in the morning on January 11, 1982. The four girls who took place in the events that occured that night are Melinda Loveless, Laurie Tackett, Hope Rippey and Toni Lawrence. The Shanda Sharer Scholarship Fund was established in January 2009. Loveless and Tackett were sentenced to 60 years in prison at the Indiana Women's Prison in Indianapolis. Larry became a marriage counselor with the church and acquired a reputation for being too forward with women, eventually attempting to rape one of them. "You know what, I didn't believe it," said Loveless of the gesture. In November, 1988, Minato (then using the first name Nobuharu) and Hiroshi Miyano (now using the surname Yokoyama), worked together to abduct Junko Furuta as she commuted home from a part-time job. In exchange for her cooperation, Lawrence was allowed to plead guilty to one count of criminal confinement and was sentenced to a maximum of 20 years. However, what was in store for them was much darker. If you don't let good things come from bad things, nothing gets better. She said her goal is to make Shanda proud of her, and she believes Angel would do that. 125 miles away, Shanda's mother, Jacque Vaught, still endures shockwaves from her daughter's brutal murder. The description matched his Jane Doe. State trooper David Camm and Jefferson County Sheriff Buck Shippley and detectives began an investigation, collecting forensic evidence at the scene. Your login session has expired. Sharer was twelve year old girl from Indiana, USA. Full name: Shanda Rene Sharer. Clockwise from top left: Melinda Loveless, Laurie Tackett, Hope Rippey, and Toni Lawrence. Sharer was tortured, beaten and burned in a rural area of Jefferson County, Indiana. "Peer pressure. But in prison, it seems as though Loveless has found some measure of escape from the cycle of violence and abuse. She served over 26 years in prison and will continue to serve parole in Jefferson County, Kentucky. Shanda Sharer was 12 years old on January 11, 1992 when she was brutally tortured and murdered by 4 teenage girls. [1], Shanda Sharer was born in the Pineville Community Hospital in Pineville, Kentucky, on June 6, 1979, to Stephen Sharer and his wife Jacqueline, who was later known as Jacqueline Vaught. [12], In November 1990, after Larry was caught spying on Melinda and a friend, Marjorie attacked him with a knife; he was sent to the hospital after he attempted to grab it. On the cold winter night of Jan. 10, 1992, Loveless enlisted three friends Laurie Tackett (17), Hope Rippey (15), and Toni Lawrence (15) to help her take her revenge on Shanda Sharer. In January 1992, Shanda Sharer was brutally tortured and murdered by four teenage girls, led by Melinda Loveless, a 17-year-old girl from Louisville. [72], The murder of Sharer was covered in the first of two segments in the Lifetime series Killer Kids, episode "Jealousy", aired: July 2014. Unfortunately, that did nothing to stop the horrific events that would soon unfold. They both gave very rambling statements, identifying the victim as "Shanda", naming the two other girls involved as best as they could, and describing the main events of the previous night. The 12-year-old began to cry and tried to answer Loveless' questions, testimony showed. He would also "share" her with some of his friends from work, which she found disgusting. After this incident, Larry filed for divorce and moved to Avon Park, Florida. [15] Tackett began to engage in self-harm, especially after early 1991 when she began dating a girl who was involved in the practice. [60], Sharer's father, Steven Sharer, died of alcoholism in 2005 at the age of 53. Then, on the night the body was found, a 15-year-old girl, Toni Lawrence, walked into the police station claiming to know about the murder. In 1965, Larry became a probationary officer with the New Albany Police Department, but was fired after eight months when he and his partner assaulted an African-American man whom Larry accused of sleeping with his wife. The Killing Field. She claimed that her mother beat her often. Again driving to a remote location, the girls hauled their still-alive victim now only able to whimper mommy out of the trunk, wrapped her in a blanket, and poured the gasoline on her. The girls then took Sharer into their car and told her they were going to drive her to the meeting place at the Witchs Castle, an isolated and abandoned house that served as a local teen hangout. [11], For two years, beginning when Melinda was five, the family was deeply involved in the Graceland Baptist Church. Instead, Loveless would be eligible for parole in 15 years, thus maintaining the original guilty plea. Shanda Sharer, a 16-year-old girl from Missouri, was murdered in 1998. She donated a puppy named Angel for Loveless to train in prison. [4] Early in the school year, she transferred to Our Lady of Perpetual Help School, a Catholic school in New Albany, where she joined the girls' basketball team. Concerned about the effects of their daughter's relationship with Heavrin, Sharer's parents arranged for her to transfer to a Catholic school in late November. Then, the three girls drove to pick up Heavrin and take her back to the Loveless home, where they told Heavrin the story. All four of them were tried as adults and received lengthy sentences instead of the death penalty due to the plea bargain they entered after pleading guilty to their crimes. Veteran journalist and host of Investigation Discovery's "True Crime with Aphrodite Jones", Jones reveals the shocking truth behind the most savage crime in Indiana history-the torture, mutilation, and murder of 12-year-old Shanda Sharer by four teenage girls. [2] After Sharer's parents divorced, her mother remarried and the family moved to Louisville. Next, Loveless repeatedly slammed Sharer's face into her knee, which cut Sharer's mouth on her own braces. One of the dog breeders who supplies Indiana with pups is a burn victim, much like Shanda Sharer was. Then they lit Shanda Sharer on fire and drove off. Shanda Rene Sharer (June 6, 1979 - January 11, 1992) was an American girl who was murdered by a group of girls in early 1992. She demanded that the board be burnt and that the Rippey house be exorcised. The grieving mother said she did it to honor her little girl, who she still thinks about every day. And Im doing it for Shanda. She was abused by a relative at age 9 and was raped by a teenage boy at age 14, although the police only issued an order for the boy to keep away from Lawrence. The former was released in 2000 after serving nine years while the latter served 14 and got out in 2006. Lawrence and Rippey were frightened and stayed in the car. And I know what my child would want. People were even more shocked when it was revealed that four teenage girls were responsible f Catch the episode of The 1990s: The Deadliest Decade, titled The New Girl, on Investigation Discovery on August 19, 2022. Loveless and Tackett stripped off Sharers clothes and proceeded to punch her repeatedly. Angel is in good hands. Loveless instructed Rippey and Lawrence to go to the door and introduce themselves as friends of Heavrin (Loveless's former and Sharer's current girlfriend), then invite Sharer to come with them to see Heavrin, who was waiting for them at "the Witch's Castle", or Mistletoe Falls, a ruined stone house located on an isolated hill overlooking the Ohio River. She was reunited with friends Tackett and Toni Lawrence, whom she had known since childhood, although her parents saw Tackett as a bad influence. Online records list the earliest possible release date forLoveless as Sept. 5, 2019. When they divorced; Jacqueline remarried and moved to Louisville, Kentucky. The perpetrators were four teenage girls who committed unspeakable crimes under the influence of teenage jealousy and peer pressure. She remained on supervised parole until April 2011. In the end, Melinda and Mary pleaded guilty to murder, arson, and criminal confinement, receiving a 60-year sentence in January 1993. Lawrence and Rippey quickly lost interest in the music and went to the parking lot outside, where they engaged in sexual activities with two boys in Tackett's car. Lawrence, Rippey, and Tackett all had histories of self-harming behavior. She had since reportedly married her girlfriend and seems to live in Indiana. First, they took Sharer to a remote trash dump near a logging road in a densely forested area. The authorities learned that while Shanda was in middle school, she befriended an older teenager named Amanda. Oops, this content can't be loadedbecause you're having connectivity problems, Stay always informed and up to date with our breaking news alerts, By Associated Press - Thursday, September 5, 2019. But 20 years later, something no one expected happened. Although Heavrin and Loveless had never formally ended their relationship, Loveless started to date an older girl. 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