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Speaker 2: Hi, everyone, welcome back to Facing Evil. I'm Yvette Gentila
Speaker 2: and I'm Rasha Paccuerrero. This week, we are talking about
Speaker 2: a truly shocking case, and that's the case of Shonda Cherer, who,
Speaker 2: at the age of twelve, was abducted, tortured, and killed
Speaker 2: by four teenage girls. Yeah. This is a case of
Speaker 2: teenage bullying gone completely off the deep in and it's
Speaker 2: been the subject of at least two true crime books
Speaker 2: and a play featuring Chloe Sabagnier, and many poems about
Speaker 2: this as well.
Speaker 3: And I think what fascinates everyone, or so it seems,
Speaker 3: is how this crime was perpetuated by teenage girls. I
Speaker 3: mean mean girls is an understatement on this case. It's
Speaker 3: the original mean girls, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so we're going to be getting into that today,
Speaker 2: and we're also going to be talking with our guest
Speaker 2: who is a author and journalist. She is Aphrodite Jones,
Speaker 2: and she's written a book about this case.
Speaker 3: But first our producer Trevor is going to take us
Speaker 3: through today's case.
Speaker 4: Jackie Vaught's daughter Shanda, was kidnapped and murdered in nineteen
Speaker 4: ninety two by four teenage girls.
Speaker 1: Court testimony showed some of the girls had been abused
Speaker 1: by their parents.
Speaker 5: It turns into anger. If you keep that hurt and
Speaker 5: don't let it go or don't forgive that person, that
Speaker 5: hurt can turn into anger and hate, and I'll make
Speaker 5: you do things that you would never really do. That evening,
Speaker 5: there were four girls there that had a lot of
Speaker 5: hatred inside of them, and it just all exploded.
Speaker 1: Shanda Shearer was a twelve year old girl who was
Speaker 1: killed in nineteen ninety two by four other girls in Madison, Indiana.
Speaker 1: The year before, She and her family had just moved
Speaker 1: to the nearby town of New Albany, Indiana. That fall,
Speaker 1: she met a girl named Amanda Heron. Soon they began
Speaker 1: exchanging romantic letters, and in October they went to a
Speaker 1: dance together. At the dance, they were confronted by another
Speaker 1: girl named Melinda Loveless. Loveless was older sixteen. The previous spring,
Speaker 1: she and Amanda had been romantically involved, and although the
Speaker 1: relationship had fizzled out, they had never formally ended things.
Speaker 1: Seeing Amanda at the dance with someone else, Melinda got angry.
Speaker 1: Melinda had a difficult home life with a violent and
Speaker 1: sexually abusive father. She was close friends with seventeen year
Speaker 1: old Laurie Tackett, who also had a difficult time at
Speaker 1: home and had dropped out of high school that year.
Speaker 1: Also in their orbit where two other girls named Hope
Speaker 1: Rippy and Tony Lawrence, who were both fifteen years old.
Speaker 1: The night of January tenth, nineteen ninety two, the four
Speaker 1: girls were hanging out and Melinda Loveless told the girls
Speaker 1: that she was going to use a knife to scare Shanda,
Speaker 1: a girl they'd never met. She wanted to intimidate Shanda
Speaker 1: for dating her girlfriend. The girls drove to Shanda's house,
Speaker 1: where Tony Lawrence and Hope Rippy went to the door
Speaker 1: and told Shanda they were friends of Amanda's and that
Speaker 1: Amanda wanted to meet her at a building known locally
Speaker 1: as the Witch's Castle, an abandoned stone house by the
Speaker 1: Ohio River. When she got in the car with them,
Speaker 1: Lawrence held a knife to Shanda's throat. The girls drove
Speaker 1: to Witch's castle and dragged a sobbing Shanda inside. There,
Speaker 1: Melinda Loveless tied Shanda's hands as Rippy taunted her with
Speaker 1: the knife. The girls took her jewelry and a Mickey
Speaker 1: Mouse watch that she was wearing. Later, Melinda Lovelass and
Speaker 1: Lori Tackett made Shanda strip down to her underwear. Then
Speaker 1: the girls began assaulting her, punching her and taking turns
Speaker 1: stabbing her in the chest. Then they strangled her with
Speaker 1: a rope until she passed out, and then put her
Speaker 1: in the trunk. At one point, Shanda began screaming from
Speaker 1: the trunk, and so Laurie Tackett went to go stab
Speaker 1: her again with a pairing knife. Melinda Lovelace reportedly laughed
Speaker 1: and bragged about the torture to her friends, and finally
Speaker 1: the girls drove Shanda to a secluded area where they
Speaker 1: poured gasoline on her and lit her on fire. Shanda's
Speaker 1: body was found by two hunters and they alerted the police.
Speaker 1: The next day. Hope, Rippy and Tony Lawrence went to
Speaker 1: the county Sheriff's office and gave statements describing the night before.
Speaker 1: They put most of the blame on Melinda Lovelace and
Speaker 1: Lori Tackett. All four girls went to trial and entered
Speaker 1: plea bargains to avoid the death penalty. Melinda and Laurie
Speaker 1: were tried as adults and were both sentenced to sixty
Speaker 1: years in prison. However, they were released on parole in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen and twenty eighteen, respectively. Hope Rippy received a
Speaker 1: thirty five year sentence and was released on parole in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight. Tony Lawrence received twenty years and
Speaker 1: was released on parole in two thousand and So what
Speaker 1: led to the murder of Shanda Scherer and how could
Speaker 1: four teenage girls be driven to torture and kill another
Speaker 1: person so violently?
Speaker 2: Hello?
Speaker 3: Everyone, We are so pleased to welcome our guests for
Speaker 3: today's case. Writer, journalist, and crime expert Afrodyite Jones is
Speaker 3: here with us today. She has written a book on
Speaker 3: the case of Shanda Sharer entitled Cruel Sacrifice. She's also
Speaker 3: written numerous other true crime books, including The FBI Killer
Speaker 3: and A Perfect Husband. Many of Aphrodite's books have been
Speaker 3: made into films and television shows, and she even produced
Speaker 3: her own show, True Crime with Aphrodite Jones, which ran
Speaker 3: for six seasons on Investigation Discovery. The list of amazing
Speaker 3: credentials goes on and on and on. So, without further ado,
Speaker 3: Aphrodite a komo mai or welcome to facing evil.
Speaker 4: Thank you. I've been used to facing evil my whole
Speaker 4: professional life.
Speaker 3: Oh you and us both, Aphrodite, who we got a
Speaker 3: lot to talk about.
Speaker 6: I'm like kidding when I say that.
Speaker 4: You know that, right?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 3: Well, now that we know a little bit about you, Aphrodite.
Speaker 3: You know, of course we want to talk today about Shanna,
Speaker 3: but we want to learn even more about you. So
Speaker 3: we fell into true crime because of our lineage and
Speaker 3: its connection to our mom's story. How did you fall
Speaker 3: into true crime? Like how did you first get interested
Speaker 3: in it?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 2: What led you to this, you know, facing evil of
Speaker 2: your own?
Speaker 6: Well, it was it was honestly a calling for me.
Speaker 4: It was a fluke. I was living in Kentucky, Appalaysia
Speaker 4: at the time. I was a professor college and I
Speaker 4: also did a radio gig because I always was involved
Speaker 4: with media and broadcasting. So I was doing a radio
Speaker 4: gig as well, and an FBI agent killed his lover
Speaker 4: informant and became the first FBI agent in history and
Speaker 4: still to this day to cop a murder plated manslaughter.
Speaker 4: He led them to her bones. She was pregnant and
Speaker 4: threatening him and mountain woman in other words, hillbilly right
Speaker 4: back then, So I'm like, okay, where's the news the time,
Speaker 4: I didn't have it. Newsweek had a blurb this big,
Speaker 4: and I just understand, like, where's CNN? Where is everybody? Why?
Speaker 4: This is a historic case. So I called my agent.
Speaker 4: I had an agent, had Toady written a book about
Speaker 4: the entertainment business, because that's the business I was in
Speaker 4: and wanted to be in.
Speaker 2: Same understand, let me talk.
Speaker 4: To killers and monsters, you know, and people who've lost
Speaker 4: family members. That was not in the carts, I thought. Anyway.
Speaker 4: I called the agent and he said, oh, you can't
Speaker 4: do anything about this. This is a big story and
Speaker 4: Rule is going to be calling. I thought, who the
Speaker 4: hell is and Rule?
Speaker 6: At that time, That's how little I knew about it, right,
Speaker 6: He said, you don't read this. I did a PhD
Speaker 6: in literature.
Speaker 4: No, there was no true prime on the list at NYU,
Speaker 4: so ps she he said, well, reading coulb what I did,
Speaker 4: and somehow thought at that time I could do this,
Speaker 4: and I wound up, you know, interviewing my family. It
Speaker 4: became a TV movie with Patricia Cat Stephen Weber, and
Speaker 4: the book was incredibly successful. And then I hit on
Speaker 4: Curl Sacrifice, and when that happened, I went to the
Speaker 4: New York Times list. I kind of got stuck with
Speaker 4: the genre in particular writing Curl Sacrifice. When I look
Speaker 4: back at it, and I did look back last night
Speaker 4: in preparation for this, that was the hardest book probably
Speaker 4: that I ever wrote, because of the subject matter. Of course,
Speaker 4: I really didn't want another write intrade crime book after that.
Speaker 4: I really did not.
Speaker 6: I was so.
Speaker 4: Mentally drained, emotionally drained from the whole experience. I was
Speaker 4: able to see the car that Shanda was in. I
Speaker 4: was taken to the evidence area where that car was
Speaker 4: in a lot, and they opened that trunk and dry
Speaker 4: blood was still there and you could smell it. Oh,
Speaker 4: and you could see areas where she tried to scratch
Speaker 4: her way through because those old cars in those days,
Speaker 4: you could get through the backseat through the speakers, and
Speaker 4: and this poor girl was trying to do that right,
Speaker 4: you know, when they asked me, did I want to
Speaker 4: see the chunk? Wasn't expecting that. Then what happened was
Speaker 4: when I got to the Hope Rippy's sentencing hearing in
Speaker 4: South Bend, Indiana, a writer came up to me and said,
Speaker 4: I'm writing this book. And I said, well, good luck
Speaker 4: to you.
Speaker 2: Oh, I said, good luck to you.
Speaker 4: You know, like I'm working with the family. I said, okay,
Speaker 4: good luck to you.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I didn't know the name of the book at
Speaker 6: the time.
Speaker 4: I just knew that Jackie bought the mom was working
Speaker 4: with this writer, and in my mind, I had no choice.
Speaker 4: But also the story was really to talk to these girls.
Speaker 4: That was the story. What happened these children's lives. They're
Speaker 4: fifteen and sixteen years old. What could have happened in
Speaker 4: these girls' lives they could possibly have made them do this?
Speaker 4: And in particular obviously Melinda Loveless because she was the ringleader.
Speaker 4: So I wrote to her, oh you did, oh yeah,
Speaker 4: and Melinda answered and when we comes here and I
Speaker 4: have to say back then, I've seen pictures of her
Speaker 4: recently where she was released. She was gorgeous in person.
Speaker 4: She's not photogenic. Her pictures do not do her justice.
Speaker 4: This girl was dropped dead gorgeous, I mean sixteen, but
Speaker 4: she was absolutely stunning. And I could not believe I'm
Speaker 4: sitting there with this beautiful girl who was telling me,
Speaker 4: oh it was it was so sad. She was just
Speaker 4: so nonchalant about it. I was just like, that's how
Speaker 4: it was back then. I'm like, back then, you're sixteen.
Speaker 4: When was back then when you were six?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 6: You know, wow, so weird.
Speaker 4: But she wanted she wanted me to tell the story,
Speaker 4: and she connected me with her mom, who I worked with,
Speaker 4: you know, for quite a while. And obviously then the
Speaker 4: police and the evidence and all the rest of the
Speaker 4: interviews came in. It was tough.
Speaker 2: I can only imagine aphrodity, Like, you know, I'm just
Speaker 2: sitting there listening to everything that you're saying and taking
Speaker 2: it in, and you know, this crime was so incredibly brutal,
Speaker 2: you know, And when we think about it, it was
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety two, like Russia and I were both
Speaker 2: in Hawaii, so I hadn't heard of it at all.
Speaker 2: But the fact that these girls right were so young
Speaker 2: and we've all been through mean girls, teenage bullying. But
Speaker 2: the extremeness the torture in which you were just talking about, right, Melinda,
Speaker 2: like what they did to Shanda, How do we comprehend that?
Speaker 2: You know from you writing your book and interviewing, like,
Speaker 2: how did you so?
Speaker 4: First and foremost, I realized that Melinda, who was the ringleader,
Speaker 4: was the only person who wanted to have this done,
Speaker 4: so it had to be her backstory. I knew there's
Speaker 4: something in her background that's horrific, which there was and
Speaker 4: is apart from that. And her mother admitted to me
Speaker 4: that she was a masochist, and I just she know.
Speaker 4: The mother was raped by various people. The father raped
Speaker 4: the mother in front of the girls. There was a
Speaker 4: lot of sleeping with the girl's pistol whipping. I don't
Speaker 4: you know, craziness in that household that I later discovered.
Speaker 4: But also the thing that struck me was Lori Tackett
Speaker 4: was out for blood. She was a ticking time on.
Speaker 4: So when Melinda Loveless connected with Lori Tackett, she found
Speaker 4: the person she needed. Tony Lawrence and Hope Rippy were
Speaker 4: just in the car for the ride down from Madison
Speaker 4: to no Obany. That's a pretty long ride right now.
Speaker 4: It's not a fifteen minute you know drive away. It's
Speaker 4: an hour plus two almost. It's quite a bit of
Speaker 4: a distance. So you know, those girls went along for
Speaker 4: a ride. They don't even know what they're getting into
Speaker 4: until they got to Melinda's house, who they've never met
Speaker 4: in their lives. And Melinda says, I just she pulls
Speaker 4: out that knife, scare Shanda. They don't even know who
Speaker 4: Shanda is. They don't none of them have met Shanda
Speaker 4: first and foremost you have to say to answer your
Speaker 4: question that this has to do partially with pure pressure,
Speaker 4: because the other two girls that didn't have really either
Speaker 4: a dog in this bite or a bloodlust. How did
Speaker 4: they wind up participating? And that's an interesting dynamic here
Speaker 4: because we see how people I don't know drop like lemmings,
Speaker 4: especially when they're teenagers. The other thing with teenagers, as
Speaker 4: we all know, everything is the end of the world, right, yeah,
Speaker 4: there's no tomorrow here. Everything is the end of the world.
Speaker 4: And it's all you met somebody two seconds ago and
Speaker 4: your best friends, I love her.
Speaker 6: Hell for yesterday.
Speaker 4: But this is like she's so right, So you have
Speaker 4: all these weird mixture of elements that you know, you
Speaker 4: could say bullying. I mean, Shannon was bullied in the school, right,
Speaker 4: Melinda was after her. But this goes beyond any kind
Speaker 4: of bullying. I mean, let's face it, this is one
Speaker 4: of the worst crimes in the history of teenagers.
Speaker 6: It really, truly is.
Speaker 3: I have so much respect for you that you can
Speaker 3: go in as you know, basically as a journalist with
Speaker 3: open eyes and not look at Melinda or any of
Speaker 3: these other young girls because they were young girls that
Speaker 3: did this horrific.
Speaker 2: Unthinkable thing.
Speaker 3: But again I don't want to give them a free
Speaker 3: past because of their history and their home life had
Speaker 3: to affect what they did to Shanda, right, like you said,
Speaker 3: it wasn't just bullying like this was something deeper, something
Speaker 3: horrific had been done to these young girls.
Speaker 4: Well, so, Melinda, we believe was sleeping with their father.
Speaker 4: We know they slept in the same bed. She never
Speaker 4: admitted that he actually you know, had sex with her,
Speaker 4: but we know he had sex with the other two
Speaker 4: daughters and the mother had sex. He raped the mother
Speaker 4: in front of the three girls. All that went on. Also,
Speaker 4: there was allegations that he had molested her cousins, So
Speaker 4: out of all females in that household, she's the only
Speaker 4: one who didn't admit to that. When her parents got
Speaker 4: a divorce and Larry Lovelace left the house, Melinda now
Speaker 4: felt like she's deserved by the only man that she
Speaker 4: cares about. Clearly she's in love with her father, and yes,
Speaker 4: I'm sure she was, you know, being molested thinking that
Speaker 4: this was okay in this incestuous relationship because kids don't
Speaker 4: know what to think, especially if they've been groomed from
Speaker 4: a young age. Is sitting happen when she turned sixteen.
Speaker 4: This is going on from the time she's a little girl,
Speaker 4: and with her older sisters. Now I found out from
Speaker 4: the older sisters who I spoke with. So when you're
Speaker 4: in that scenario and your only person in the world
Speaker 4: who you trust, who you think is your protector and
Speaker 4: your love of your life leaves, now obviously she doesn't
Speaker 4: trust men. So that's why she's with the girls's with
Speaker 4: Amanda Heaven and now Amanda Heaven, who she'd been holding
Speaker 4: on to for dear life right as her person in
Speaker 4: the world who had you know, more of a butch.
Speaker 6: Look, if you want to use that word.
Speaker 4: You know, the backwards baseball hat, the very short hair,
Speaker 4: the whole opposite of Melinda with the long Floyd locks.
Speaker 6: And it was a male figure in her life as well.
Speaker 6: And now that person.
Speaker 4: Is leaving her for some little girl, whoever that little
Speaker 4: girl is. In Melinda's mind, it's not a little girl.
Speaker 4: It's a competition. They didn't separate themselves from whether they're
Speaker 4: fifteen or twelve. Yeah, and that's interesting because you know
Speaker 4: you think of, oh, that's the way it is today.
Speaker 4: All these kids are produced and they mix it up
Speaker 4: and Matt, no, this has been going on from the beginning.
Speaker 2: Of time, right, we were having this conversation about another case.
Speaker 2: And if you think about everything that you just said
Speaker 2: about what Melinda had gone through as a child, and
Speaker 2: if you treat someone like a dog, they're gonna behave
Speaker 2: like a dog. Melinda, she didn't know what love is,
Speaker 2: but she believed that she loved Amanda. And now Amanda
Speaker 2: is leaving her as well.
Speaker 4: And that's another thing. People redirect anger, right, So rather
Speaker 4: than putting the anger toward her mother, who allowed all
Speaker 4: of this and who admitted to me that she was
Speaker 4: a massachist and allowed herself to be raped in front
Speaker 4: of these girls, etc. Et cetera, and has swinging partners
Speaker 4: and other people brought into the house and the girl's
Speaker 4: hearing all of it and knowing the house it's small.
Speaker 4: So Melinda is thinking that that the world is upside
Speaker 4: down for her. It doesn't make any sense to her.
Speaker 4: She needs some kind of validation, and that's what she
Speaker 4: got from Amanda Hevron. So now her validation goes away.
Speaker 4: Now her she doesn't know what's with life. And again,
Speaker 4: you know, with teenagers's the end of the world. For her,
Speaker 4: it was the end of the world. She had to
Speaker 4: eliminate this competition at whatever cost.
Speaker 6: She didn't care, right, Yeah, I mean it's amazing.
Speaker 4: You know. You look at the letters she wrote and
Speaker 4: more of them which was read in the court said
Speaker 4: I want Shanda dead and was very specific.
Speaker 6: Wow, it's not like.
Speaker 4: It was a laughterthought for her. This was premeditated, cold
Speaker 4: blooded killed. That's what this was. Yeah, this was not
Speaker 4: a lord Shanda from her house. Melinda was hiding in
Speaker 4: the backseat of the car under a blanket, and then
Speaker 4: once Shanna got in that car, Melinda jumps out the
Speaker 4: knife to her throat, pulling her back from the front seat.
Speaker 4: She had told the other girls that she just wanted
Speaker 4: to scare Shanda. Lori Teckett, I'm sure knew more than that.
Speaker 4: The other two girls who were along for the ride
Speaker 4: did not. They really had no idea what they were
Speaker 4: getting into. Those two girls would never have done this,
Speaker 4: I'm convinced of that, had they not been in that car,
Speaker 4: had they not been kind of prodded along the way.
Speaker 4: Do you have to think about too and not making
Speaker 4: any excuses for them, because we know Hope Rippy poured
Speaker 4: the gasoline on Shanda. Part of the reason there was
Speaker 4: so much torture, I think is that these girls really
Speaker 4: didn't know how to kill someone. They thought that they
Speaker 4: had killed her after they stabbed her a few times
Speaker 4: and pulled the rope around her neck, thinking that they
Speaker 4: strangled her.
Speaker 6: And next thing I know, she's banging in the back
Speaker 6: of the car.
Speaker 4: But now you have two other girls in the back
Speaker 4: seat here in Shanada. What are they thinking? Am I
Speaker 4: going to be next? Like?
Speaker 6: Look what they just did to this little girl.
Speaker 4: We don't know Melinda, they never met before. She's holding
Speaker 4: her knife to Shanna's neck and threatening at that witch's
Speaker 4: castle that she's going to put her in with a
Speaker 4: bag of bones with the other bones, and the girls
Speaker 4: at that point all chimed in because that was just
Speaker 4: kind of having fun, you know, it was a game
Speaker 4: to them in the beginning. They drummed this whole thing
Speaker 4: up and they scared her.
Speaker 2: This is just a whole another level of cruelty. And
Speaker 2: when I think about, like for me, thinking about this case,
Speaker 2: and it's probably it may be different for you because
Speaker 2: you were, you know, right in the mix of it,
Speaker 2: you know, interviewing, and you wrote a book about it.
Speaker 6: But do you.
Speaker 2: Think that these girls should have been tried as adults?
Speaker 4: Absolutely. I met with one of their lawyers and I'll
Speaker 4: never forget he said to me, this is a mind
Speaker 4: feel out there. Every time you get another teen who's
Speaker 4: coming to you for whatever reason in the you know,
Speaker 4: violation crime. They've committed act of violence. They're just waiting
Speaker 4: to blow up. Now, this was thirty years ago. It's
Speaker 4: funny that right now we say that about now right
Speaker 4: we see school careersoting those didn't even exist back then.
Speaker 4: In nineteen ninety two, when this book in ninety three
Speaker 4: was being written and came out, there was no schoolhouse shootings.
Speaker 6: Yet there was nothing.
Speaker 4: So when this lawyer said to me, I face a mind.
Speaker 4: Feel out there every time. You know, he represented juveniles.
Speaker 4: Every time another juvenile came to him for defense, he
Speaker 4: would see what was behind their mask and the vulnerability
Speaker 4: and sadness and just lack of ability.
Speaker 6: To cope with life.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that does.
Speaker 4: Not mean that you can go and take someone else's
Speaker 4: life and give you any excuses.
Speaker 2: No, absolutely not.
Speaker 6: There's no getting around that.
Speaker 4: What these girls did, and they all participated, and the
Speaker 4: way that Tony Lawrence, who eventually turned on the girls
Speaker 4: and was chief in getting these guilty. Please Tony Lawrence
Speaker 4: and Hope Rippy they went to her house right, yeah,
Speaker 4: and they were there for two three hours while Melinda
Speaker 4: and Laurie went country driving. So once they left the house,
Speaker 4: and here's Hope and Tony very safe, why are they
Speaker 4: not calling the police? I mean, I can understand you're
Speaker 4: scared because you're for your own life. Okay, but how
Speaker 4: about Shanda, how about what's going on right now? You
Speaker 4: don't tell your parents? Oh my god, this girl's are crazy.
Speaker 4: There's a girl in the trunk. You don't say anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you just.
Speaker 4: Sit there and read room stones and be in a magical,
Speaker 4: bizarre world.
Speaker 6: It's incomprehensible to me.
Speaker 2: Even Amanda, they had told her right to look in
Speaker 2: the trunk and she still didn't call the face.
Speaker 4: That's after the fact, Hope Rippy and Tony Lawrence had
Speaker 4: the ability to shave save Shanda's life. When Amanda was
Speaker 4: shown that trunk, it.
Speaker 2: Was all over all, was all done. Yes, that was.
Speaker 4: Later No no, no, Tony Lawrence and Hope Rippy and
Speaker 4: Tony got away with really murder in the sense that
Speaker 4: she only did ten years was out of twenty. They
Speaker 4: could have stopped this, and there were other opportunities. They
Speaker 4: had stopped at gas stations, they were at a punk
Speaker 4: rock thing in Louisville for a few hours waiting to
Speaker 4: go back to Retreat Shanada. There were numerous times that
Speaker 4: they got lost driving around where they had the opportunity
Speaker 4: to stop it or to get out of it.
Speaker 6: Even though they didn't live down there.
Speaker 4: I understand, you're not supposed to have driven to the
Speaker 4: three hours away. That you're sixteen and fifteen years old.
Speaker 4: You don't want to get in trouble with.
Speaker 6: Your parents and this and that. But once they.
Speaker 4: Got back to Madison, Indiana.
Speaker 6: They're safe and they're in Tony's house.
Speaker 4: So why would Tony Lawrence go along with knowing that
Speaker 4: Lauri and Melinda.
Speaker 6: Are going to kill her.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about their sentencing. Tell us how you felt
Speaker 2: about the sentencing that the girls got.
Speaker 4: I think that even the Hope Rippy went on for
Speaker 4: the ride and didn't know what she was getting into,
Speaker 4: Hope allowed this to happen. And when Hope participated with
Speaker 4: Laura Tackett taking that two liter bottle of soda, dumping
Speaker 4: it out on the ground of a gas station a
Speaker 4: circle k and filling that with gasoline, that's not Maybe
Speaker 4: I don't know, Maybe that's deliberate knowing you are going
Speaker 4: to kill someone. Now they may have thought she was
Speaker 4: already dead. Who knows.
Speaker 6: It doesn't matter.
Speaker 4: At what point does it become your fault. That's when
Speaker 4: it became help Rippy's fault, because not only does she
Speaker 4: fill that two lead her bottle with gasoline, but then
Speaker 4: she followed through when they got Shanda and put her
Speaker 4: in that field, pouring that gasoline all over the child
Speaker 4: and letting Laurie light the match. You know that Shanda
Speaker 4: died of spoken inhalation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because she fought like she fought. I mean, she
Speaker 2: fought she.
Speaker 4: Was alive when they wrapped her in a blanket and
Speaker 4: put her in that field. And then not only that, Melinda,
Speaker 4: who is absolutely a savage, she realized I don't think
Speaker 4: she's burned enough and had them turn back around and
Speaker 4: lighted again.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 4: And one of the things that happened to me when
Speaker 4: I was researching this book is, yeah, I spent a
Speaker 4: lot of time in courtrooms. I spent a lot of
Speaker 4: time in evidence rooms, et cetera. And a court clerk
Speaker 4: came to me and she said, Okay, you want to
Speaker 4: see this video, said jud She goes, you want me
Speaker 4: to sit with you while you watch it?
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 4: I said, no, that's okay, that's okay. It was the
Speaker 4: video of the hunters who found Shanda. And as I'm
Speaker 4: looking at this thing and realizing she did look like
Speaker 4: a mannequin that was burned, and the closer and they
Speaker 4: got I mean the pictures I show in the book
Speaker 4: are not anywhere near how horrific this image really was.
Speaker 4: I mean, her face was I don't know how to
Speaker 4: explain this in politically correct terms, but it was black
Speaker 4: as coal. It was like the color of my hair
Speaker 4: but all bubbled up and you know.
Speaker 6: Just horrifying.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately, I can never get that image out of my head.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can never unsee that.
Speaker 6: I don't even like to revisit this story, honestly.
Speaker 2: I can only imagine I can completely understand why, yeah.
Speaker 4: You know, And then I think about how Jackie got
Speaker 4: eventually forgave me Linda loveless. That is stunning to me.
Speaker 4: I presume Jackie did that for on Sanity long before
Speaker 4: Melinda was released, and Linda was only released in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 4: This forgiveness and helping Melinda by giving her a dog
Speaker 4: called Angels so she could train these dogs to help
Speaker 4: disabled people and children.
Speaker 6: That are methylishes.
Speaker 4: Whatever it was, I'm sorry, no.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, we talk about that, you know, a lot,
Speaker 2: in facing evil, and we always end, you know, with
Speaker 2: any mooa and Jackie is is anymua herself? Because like
Speaker 2: you just said, to be able to forgive someone who
Speaker 2: brutally tortured your daughter is I can't comprehend it, but
Speaker 2: we've seen it many times before, you know, with Judy Shepherd,
Speaker 2: who was Matthew Shepherd's mom. That you know, there's I
Speaker 2: guess I could never speak for them, but there has
Speaker 2: to be some type of closure for them.
Speaker 4: I have encouraged victims' mothers, okay, try to forgive so
Speaker 4: that they're not suffering, because the longer they suffer throughout
Speaker 4: the rest of their lives, the more this person who
Speaker 4: did this has hold over you.
Speaker 6: Right, So you're continually.
Speaker 4: Revictimized by what this person did, and it's just a
Speaker 4: record that's going in your head all the time.
Speaker 6: So I think what Jackie Bah did there.
Speaker 4: Because Melinda was using training dogs to help other people,
Speaker 4: this was the idea in her mind. She was able
Speaker 4: to finally go there. But you know, Steve Shearer, her
Speaker 4: father drank himself to death and died at fifty two
Speaker 4: years old. I mean, think about that, the guilt that
Speaker 4: this man felt for allowing his daughter to go to
Speaker 4: the front door, not once, but twice. But he knew
Speaker 4: those girls didn't know his daughter because they asked is Shandy?
Speaker 4: When Shanda opened the door and he heard, and he
Speaker 4: questioned her and he says, who are these people? He
Speaker 4: realizes they don't know his daughter. Now I have to believe,
Speaker 4: and I mean my heart breaks for Steve Sharer that
Speaker 4: he could never forgive himself for that.
Speaker 3: But at the end of the day, of course, yes,
Speaker 3: you know, we can all you know, look back and
Speaker 3: be like, you know, Steve should have done this, the
Speaker 3: four girls should have done this, I mean, all these things.
Speaker 3: But really, at the end of the day, sadly it
Speaker 3: was those four girls that ended Shanda's life, of course,
Speaker 3: But I think again, and we always, you know, we
Speaker 3: do this on facing evil, like we have to look
Speaker 3: for that light in the dark, right, like you said,
Speaker 3: like that stunning gem of a human that Jackie had
Speaker 3: to be to forgive Melinda, to forgive her ex Steve
Speaker 3: to move onward and upward, and that's what he moved me,
Speaker 3: to move onward and upward, like we have to who
Speaker 3: like and we always want to focus on the victim,
Speaker 3: but it's so hard.
Speaker 2: We didn't know much about Shanda.
Speaker 3: She was only twelve.
Speaker 7: Well, and that's you know, I mean, that's the other
Speaker 7: thing here too, is when you talk about facing evil,
Speaker 7: if you don't face it in a way that you
Speaker 7: can get past it.
Speaker 4: Then for example, Melinda was dealing with evil in her
Speaker 4: household all her life, right, yes, and the evil that
Speaker 4: transpired there she now projected onto someone else. So whether
Speaker 4: it eats your soul, whether it makes you become angry,
Speaker 4: and somebody who's going to lash out and do horrible
Speaker 4: things to other people because you've been.
Speaker 6: Abused, now you're going to abuse your kids or whatever.
Speaker 4: And that chain of violence and that chain of abuse
Speaker 4: that goes on, somebody's got to stop and say I
Speaker 4: can face this, I can get past this.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Just going back to Shanda's mom, right, Jackie, because
Speaker 2: you know, we're talking about her father, and we know
Speaker 2: that they were divorced, you know, and living in separate households.
Speaker 2: But the thing about Shanda's mom is she did everything right.
Speaker 4: Talking about a sacrificial lamb. I mean, Shanda had no
Speaker 4: idea what she was dabbling in there, right, no idea.
Speaker 4: And Amanda Heaven swears up and down that it was
Speaker 4: Shanda who went to her, that Shanda went after her,
Speaker 4: that Shanda had been dating boys, Shanda was sexually active.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying she certainly could have been sexually active
Speaker 4: at twelve years old. I don't know why she's going
Speaker 4: from boys to girls at twelve years old. I don't
Speaker 4: know that twelve year olds necessarily are sexually with it, right,
Speaker 4: you know, there's a whole other element of stuff.
Speaker 6: Here, like what is happening here?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: So much time, so much to unpack.
Speaker 3: Yeah, before we wrap things up, Aphrodity, I would love
Speaker 3: to ask you, just because of everything you've so brilliantly
Speaker 3: shared with us today, how do you decompress?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 3: How are you going to walk out of this interview
Speaker 3: after this and go on with your life with things?
Speaker 7: You know?
Speaker 3: You can't unsee certain things or think in your head.
Speaker 4: There are a couple of things I'm going to say
Speaker 4: about this. When I wrote this book, I was a drinker,
Speaker 4: and I did this book throughout the night, writing un
Speaker 4: till two or three o'clock in the morning. I wrote
Speaker 4: it very quickly and in a frenzy. After that, I
Speaker 4: had to give up drinking because I was drinking so
Speaker 4: much that this book had consumed me. And I don't drink.
Speaker 4: I haven't drank it thirty years.
Speaker 2: So, oh, congratulations, thanks.
Speaker 4: But talk about a mind vendor. You know, this story
Speaker 4: in particular, I didn't know how I was going to
Speaker 4: get past it, and even to write it, what I
Speaker 4: had to do to get through it. It was so
Speaker 4: so hard for me. But at the same time, I
Speaker 4: knew this story had to be told because we had
Speaker 4: to look at what's going on with teenagers, because it
Speaker 4: wasn't just for girls. And yes, they've done the most
Speaker 4: horrible thing of any teen I could think of, but
Speaker 4: all these other teenagers in the minefield were still out
Speaker 4: there and nobody was really paying attention to it. Back then,
Speaker 4: it was like, I don't know, everybody's good. We're all No,
Speaker 4: they weren't good. And I think the idea of parents
Speaker 4: paying more attention of parents and not trying to blame
Speaker 4: the parents, but just getting the lesson about this. And
Speaker 4: it wasn't just not just Shanda's parents, what about all
Speaker 4: the other parents. And I promised myself one thing that
Speaker 4: when I was not writing, and I would never write
Speaker 4: on a weekend again, which that book I wrote weren
Speaker 4: a new night weekends. I decided, I'm never writing past
Speaker 4: five o'clock at night anymore. Ever, I am never writing
Speaker 4: on a weekend, and I am going to shut myself off.
Speaker 6: I'm going to have two lives, two lives.
Speaker 4: In which I'm dealing with this horror and all the
Speaker 4: monsters I have dealt with since the killers that I'm
Speaker 4: on the phones with that I can't imagine writing a
Speaker 4: new book now. But when I finished the chapters, and
Speaker 4: when my day ends, I go often to Judge Judy Lands,
Speaker 4: I go off voting or whatever concert.
Speaker 6: I am not there anymore, you know, I can't be good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you after Deity.
Speaker 6: Guy, It's so nice to talk with you both.
Speaker 3: Today's message of hope and healing goes out to someone
Speaker 3: whose life was turned into a living nightmare in January
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety two, and that was Jackie Vaught, Shanda's mother.
Speaker 3: Shanda was, by all accounts, a well adjusted girl who
Speaker 3: just got involved with the wrong people. For many years,
Speaker 3: Jackie Vaught quite understandably didn't want anything.
Speaker 2: To do with her daughter's killers. Then in twenty twelve,
Speaker 2: she saw a videotape of Melinda loveless behind bars training
Speaker 2: service dogs, and she says she saw something new in
Speaker 2: her eyes, compassion. And then Jackie Vot did the unthinkable.
Speaker 3: She donated a puppy to the prison service animal training
Speaker 3: program in her deceased daughter's name, and she even let
Speaker 3: Melinda train her.
Speaker 2: The puppy's name was Angel, and she changed things for Melinda.
Speaker 2: Melinda had been on a path of growth for years
Speaker 2: and was remorseful now of her crime. Melinda said of Jackie,
Speaker 2: she helped me to heal and grow. She did a
Speaker 2: good thing and I couldn't think her enough. And I'm
Speaker 2: doing it for Shanda.
Speaker 3: Jackie Vaught still has no plans to meet her daughter's murderers,
Speaker 3: but this small act of reaching out was an unbelievable
Speaker 3: act of compassion, a bright spark in the dark.
Speaker 2: And so Jackie Vaught, today we honor you. Onward and
Speaker 2: upward e moua emua. Well, that is our show for today.
Speaker 2: We'd love to hear what you thought about today's discussion
Speaker 2: and if there is a case that you'd like.
Speaker 3: Us to cover, find us on social media at Facing
Speaker 3: Evil Pod or email us at Facingevil Pod.
Speaker 2: At tenderfoot dot tv.
Speaker 3: And one request, if you haven't already, please find us
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Speaker 3: is always cherished.
Speaker 2: Until next time, ah Loha.
Speaker 1: Facing Evil is a production of iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV.
Speaker 1: The show is hosted by Russia Pacuerero and Avet Gentile.
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick and Alex Williams our executive producers. On Behalf
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Speaker 1: albright In Payne Lindsay our executive producers on behalf of
Speaker 1: Tenderfoot TV, alongside producer Tracy Kaplan. Our researcher is Carolyn Talmadge.
Speaker 1: Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Find us on
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