![]() In 1992, four teen girls tortured and killed 12-year-old Shanda Sharer. This week on ISGD Podcast, Stacey tells us about the horrific murder of Shanda Sharer, a 12 year old girl from Madison, Indiana who was tortured to death by. 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. Shanda Sharer was once a popular and bubbly Hazelwood Middle Schoolgirl. The Indiana teens picked up Shanda under the ruse Amanda was at an abandoned property near the Ohio River. After Loveless threatened Shanda with a knife, the foursome tied her up. Subsequently, the teens beat, strangled, and stabbed Shanda. 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. They forced her into the trunk of the car and moved her to another location. The foursome drove to where Sharer was spending the weekend with her father. The girls, minus Lawrence, then carried Shanda to a field and burned her alive. Prosecutors maintained the motive for the murder was jealousy - the same motive identified in the 2003 ‘ Miss Irresistible’ murders. In October of that year, the pair attended a school dance together. Sharer and Heavrin became fast friends and then romantic partners. Melinda Loveless, 17, was sentenced to 60 years in prison in 1992 for the murder of Shanda Renee Sharer, a 12-year-old girl who was tortured and burned to. Shanda Sharer met classmate Amanda Heavrin at Hazelwood in 1991, soon after moving to the area with her recently divorced mother from Kentucky. Jefferson County courts tried the four teens as adults. They accepted plea bargains to avoid the death penalty and pled guilty to counts of murder, arson, and criminal confinement. Loveless is eligible for release in 2019, after serving approximately 25 years of a 60-year sentence.Īlthough the courts considered the mitigating factors of the four teens’ backgrounds, the Indiana Supreme Court would not overturn Loveless and Tackett’s sentences during a 1994 appeal. Melinda Loveless, the 17-year-old ringleader of the girls who murdered Shanda, reportedly had a tumultuous upbringing. Loveless's father routinely raped her mother while she and her sisters listened, and he allegedly molested each of his daughters. Laurie Tackett was also 17 years old when she helped murder Shanda. Tackett grew up in a strict Pentecostal home. Child services had to intervene when Tackett’s mother strangled her for changing into jeans at school. Tackett was in and out of the hospital for committing self-harm on multiple occasions. ![]() She dropped out of high school and met Loveless in Louisville, KY. Tackett, Rippey, and Lawrence were childhood friends from Madison. The teens engaged in self-harm, drinking, and drug use. ![]()
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