Laurie Tackett

Case details

Mary Laurine “Laurie” Tackett was born in Madison, Indiana on October 5, 1974. Her mother was a fundamentalist Pentecostal Christian and her father was a factory worker with two felony convictions in the 1960s.

Tackett claimed that she was molested at least twice as a child at ages five and twelve.

Other details

Early life, mental health, and family background

In May 1989, Tackett’s mother discovered that Tackett was changing into jeans at school. After a confrontation that night, her mother attempted to strangle her.

Social workers became involved, and Tackett’s parents agreed to unannounced visits to ensure that child abuse was not occurring. Tackett and her mother came into periodic conflict. At one point, her mother went to Hope Rippey’s house after learning that Rippey’s father had purchased a Ouija board for the girls. She demanded that the board be burnt and that the Rippey house be exorcised.

Tackett became increasingly rebellious after her fifteenth birthday and became fascinated with the occult. She often attempted to impress her friends by pretending to be possessed by the spirit of “Deanna the Vampire”. She began to engage in self harm, especially after early 1991 when she began dating a girl involved in the practice.

Her parents discovered the self-mutilation and checked her into a hospital on March 19, 1991. She was prescribed an anti-depressant and released. Two days later, with her girlfriend and Toni Lawrence, she cut her wrists deeply and was returned to the hospital. After treatment of her wound, she was admitted to the hospital’s psychiatric ward. She was diagnosed with Borderline personality disorder and confessed that she had experienced hallucinations since she was a young child. She was discharged on April 12.

She dropped out of high school in September 1991. Tackett stayed in the Louisville area in October 1991 to live with various friends. She met Melinda Loveless but they did not become friends until late November.

In December, Tackett moved back to Madison on the promise that her father would buy her a car. She still spent most of her time in Louisville and New Albany, and by December most of it with Melinda Loveless.

People connected to the case

Hope Anna Rippey was born in Madison, Indiana in June 1976. Her father was an engineer at a power plant. Her parents divorced in February 1984, and she moved to Quincy, Michigan with her mother and siblings for three years. She claimed that living with her family in Michigan was somewhat turbulent. Her parents resumed their relationship in Madison in 1987.

Rippey was reunited with friends Laurie Tackett and Toni Lawrence whom she had known since childhood, although her parents saw Tackett as a bad influence. Rippey began to self harm at age fifteen.

Toni Lawrence was born in Madison, Indiana in February 1976. Her father was a boilermaker. Lawrence was close friends with Hope Rippey from childhood onward. She was abused by a relative at age nine and was raped by a teenage boy at age 14; the police were only able to issue an order to keep the boy away from Lawrence. She went into counseling after the incident but did not follow through. She became promiscuous, began to self harm, and attempted suicide in eighth grade.

Victim

The murder of Shanda Renee Sharer involved a 12-year-old girl who was tortured and burned to death in Madison, Indiana. Shanda Renee Sharer lived from June 6, 1979 to January 11, 1992.

Her birth was at Pineville Community Hospital in Pineville, Kentucky on June 6, 1979 to Steve Sharer and Jacqueline Vaught.

Shanda attended fifth and sixth grades in Louisville at St. Paul School, where she was on the cheerleading, volleyball, and softball teams. After her parents divorced, her mother remarried and the family moved to Louisville. When her mother divorced again, the family moved to New Albany, Indiana in June 1991, and Shanda enrolled at Hazelwood Middle School. Early in the school year, she transferred to Our Lady of Perpetual Help School, a Catholic school in New Albany, where she joined the school’s female basketball team.

Background

In 1990, Melinda Loveless met and began dating Amanda Heavrin. After Loveless’s father left and her mother remarried, Loveless was erratic, depressed, in counseling, and fighting at school.

In March 1991, Loveless came out of the closet to her mother; her mother was initially furious but eventually accepted it. In the fall of 1990, Loveless’s relationship with Heavrin deteriorated, and Loveless associated this deterioration with Shanda Sharer. Heavrin and Sharer met early in the school year when they got into a fight; however, they became friends while in detention for the altercation.

Loveless immediately became jealous of Heavrin and Sharer’s relationship. In early October, Sharer and Heavrin attended a school dance where Loveless found them and confronted them. Although Heavrin and Loveless never formally ended their involvement, Loveless began dating an older girl.

Loveless became increasingly jealous when Heavrin and Sharer went to a festival together in late October. She began to discuss killing Sharer and threatened Sharer in public. Concerned about their daughter’s relationship with Heavrin, Sharer’s parents arranged for her to transfer to a Catholic school in late November, and the girls started drifting apart in December.

Loveless and Heavrin never reformed their relationship.

The offence

Events of January 10–11, 1992

Pre-abduction

On January 10, Toni Lawrence, Hope Rippey, and Laurie Tackett drove in Tackett’s car from Madison, Indiana to Melinda Loveless’s house in New Albany.

Rippey and Lawrence, while friends of Tackett, had not yet met Loveless; upon arrival they borrowed some clothes from Loveless, and Loveless showed them a knife and told them she was going to scare Shanda Sharer with it.

None of the girls except Loveless had ever met Sharer, although Tackett already knew of the plan to intimidate the 12-year-old girl. Loveless explained to the two other girls that she disliked Sharer for being a copycat and for stealing her girlfriend.

Tackett let Rippey drive them to Sharer’s house in Jeffersonville, Indiana, stopping at a McDonald’s restaurant for directions. They arrived at Sharer’s house shortly before dark, and Loveless instructed Rippey and Lawrence to go to the door, introduce themselves as friends of Heavrin, and invite Sharer to come with them to see her girlfriend, who was waiting for them at a place called “The Witch’s Castle”.

Sharer said she could not go because her parents were awake, and told the girls to come back around midnight. Loveless was angry at first, but Rippey and Lawrence assured her that they could return for Sharer later.

The four girls crossed the river to Louisville and went to a punk rock concert at the Audubon Skate Park near Interstate 65. Lawrence and Rippey quickly lost interest in the music and went to the parking lot outside the skate park where they engaged in sexual activities with two boys in Tackett’s car. Eventually the girls left for Sharer’s house.

During the ride, Loveless said she could not wait to kill Sharer; Loveless also said she found Sharer attractive and would like to have sex with her and that she intended to use the knife to frighten her.

When they arrived at Sharer’s house at 12:30 a.m., Lawrence refused to retrieve Sharer, so Tackett and Rippey went. Loveless, who had previously harassed Sharer many times, hid under a blanket in the back seat of the car with a dull knife. She put the knife to Sharer’s throat as they got in the car and drove towards Utica, Indiana and the Witch’s Castle.

Abduction

The Witch’s Castle was a ruined stone house, also known as Mistletoe Falls, located on an isolated hill overlooking the Ohio River. It was an occasional hangout for local teenagers. Tackett told the girls that legend said the house was once owned by nine witches, and townspeople burned the house to get rid of the witches.

At the Witch’s Castle, they took Sharer in and bound her arms and legs with rope. Sharer started to cry. The girls were scared by the headlights of passing cars, so they left for a place near Tackett’s house, stopping for gas, then getting lost for a while before finally making their way to Madison, Indiana.

Torture

Tackett led them to a garbage dump off a logging road in a densely forested area. Lawrence and Rippey were frightened and stayed in the car as Loveless and Tackett made Sharer strip, then Loveless beat Sharer with her fists. Loveless repeatedly slammed Sharer’s face into her knee, cutting Sharer’s mouth on her own braces.

Loveless tried to slash Sharer’s throat but the knife was too dull. Rippey came out of the car to hold Sharer down. Loveless and Tackett took turns stabbing Sharer in the chest. They then strangled Sharer with a rope until she was unconscious, placed her in the trunk, and told the other two girls that Sharer was dead.

They went to Tackett’s nearby home and went inside to drink soda and clean themselves. They realized Sharer was screaming in the trunk, so Tackett went out with a paring knife and stabbed her several more times, coming in a few minutes later covered in blood.

After she washed, Tackett got her “runestones” and told the girls’ futures with them. Lawrence and Rippey stayed behind as Tackett and Loveless went “country cruising” at 2:30, driving to the nearby town of Canaan.

Sharer continued making crying and gurgling noises. Tackett stopped the car, and Sharer sat up, covered in blood, with her eyes rolled in the back of her head but unable to speak. Tackett then beat her with a tire iron until she was silent.

They returned to Tackett’s house just before daybreak to clean up again. Rippey asked about what had happened to Sharer, and Tackett laughingly told them about the torture.

The conversation woke up Tackett’s mother, who yelled at her daughter for being out so late and bringing home the girls, so Laurie agreed to take them home. She drove to the burn pile near Tackett’s house and showed the other girls Sharer. Lawrence refused to look, and Rippey sprayed Sharer with Windex and taunted, “You’re not looking so hot now, are you?”

Burned alive

The girls drove to a gas station near Madison Consolidated High School. They pumped some gas into the car and bought a two-liter bottle of Pepsi. Tackett emptied the bottle and refilled it with gasoline.

They drove north of Madison, past Jefferson Proving Ground to a place with which Rippey was familiar off US 421 on what was called Lemon Road. They placed Sharer, still alive, in a blanket and carried her into a field by the gravel country road.

Tackett made Rippey pour the gasoline on her, and then they set her on fire. Loveless was not convinced Sharer was dead, so they returned a few minutes later to pour the rest of the gasoline on her.

The girls went to a McDonald’s at 9:30 a.m. for breakfast. They laughed about Sharer looking like one of the sausages they were eating. Lawrence, horrified, called a friend and told her about the murder. Tackett then dropped Lawrence and Rippey off at their homes and returned home with Loveless. They cleaned out the car, using a hose to wash the trunk. They then drove to Loveless’s house around 3:00 p.m.

Loveless found out Heavrin was at River Falls Mall and had her paged, claiming an emergency, then told her that they had killed Sharer and arranged to pick Heavrin up later that day.

Loveless’s friend, Crystal Wathen, came over, and they told her about what had happened. Then the three girls drove to pick up Heavrin and bring her back to Loveless’s house, where they told Heavrin the story. While Heavrin did not believe it was true, she comforted the hysterical Loveless. Both Heavrin and Wathen were convinced when Tackett showed them the trunk with Sharer’s bloody handprints and socks still there.

Investigation

Later on the morning of January 11, two brothers from Canaan, Indiana were driving toward Jefferson Proving Ground to go hunting when they noticed something on the side of the road. They called the police at 10:55 a.m. and were asked to return to the corpse.

The Jefferson County Sheriff, Buck Shippley, and detectives arrived and began an investigation, taking forensic evidence at the scene. They initially suspected a drug deal gone wrong and could not believe the crime could be the work of locals.

Steve Sharer noticed his daughter missing early on January 11. After calling neighbors and friends all morning, he called his ex-wife, Shanda’s mother, at 1:45 p.m. and the two met and filed a missing person report with the sheriff.

At 8:20 p.m., an hysterical Toni Lawrence went to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s office with her parents. She gave a rambling statement, identifying the victim as “Shanda”, naming the three other girls involved as best she could, and describing the main events of the previous night.

Shippley contacted the Clark County sheriff and was finally able to match the victim to Shanda Sharer’s missing person report. Detective Howard Henry went to Sharer’s house and then obtained dental records that positively identified her as the victim.

Loveless and Tackett were arrested on January 12. The bulk of the evidence for the arrest warrant was Lawrence’s statement.

The prosecution immediately declared its intention to try both as adults. For several months, prosecutors and defense attorneys did not release information on the case, leaving the media only the statement by Lawrence, which was repeated in the arrest warrant and contained the general background of the crime.

Arrest

Trial

All four girls were tried as adults.

To avoid the death penalty, all four girls accepted plea bargains.

Sentencing

All four girls accepted plea bargains to avoid the death penalty.

Tackett was sentenced to sixty years in the Indiana Women’s Prison in Indianapolis. A formal plea hearing was scheduled for Oct. 6 and Tackett’s sentencing occurred on October 6, 1992. With maximum time reduced for good behavior, Tackett could be released in 2020. Her projected date of released was February 8, 2021.

Outcome

Tackett pleaded guilty and received a sixty-year prison sentence.

Aftermath

The crime was documented in two true crime books, Little Lost Angel by Michael Quinlan and Cruel Sacrifice by Aphrodite Jones. Jones’s book on the case became a New York Times Bestseller.

The story was turned into a play by Rob Urbinati called “Hazelwood Jr. High,” which starred Chloë Sevigny as Tackett. The play was published by Samuel French, Inc. in September 2009.

“Mean,” an episode from the fifth season of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit that aired on February 24, 2004, was based on the murder. Cold Case second season episode “The Sleepover” was also based on this case.

Sharer’s father died of cancer in 2005 at the age of 53. He was buried next to his daughter.

In an interview with Sharer’s mother Jacque Vaught on the TV series Deadly Women, Vaught stated that Sharer’s father was so destroyed by his daughter’s murder that he:

“...did everything he could to kill himself besides put a gun to his head,”
and that he: “...drank himself to death. The man definitely died from a broken heart.”

The Shanda Sharer Scholarship Fund was established in January 2009. It was written in the contract that the recipient would receive a plaque or document of some type that told Sharer’s story. The fund planned to provide scholarships to two students per year from Prosser School of Technology in New Albany: one scholarship would go to a student continuing their education, and the other scholarship would go to a student beginning their career and needing to buy tools and work equipment.

In 2011, the Dr. Phil show aired a 2-part series on the crime, featuring interviews with Sharer’s mother and sister, who also confronted Hope Rippey on the show.

In August 2011, Episode XI Studios interviewed and filmed both Melinda Loveless at the Indiana Women’s Prison and Jacque Vaught at her office for a documentary they were producing titled “Charlie’s Scars”. Both Loveless and Vaught were closely featured in the documentary, which was submitted to the Sundance Film Festival in September 2011 for the 2012 Festival.

Quotes (verbatim)

Tackett laughed and told the other girls about the torture.

Rippey taunted Sharer, “You’re not looking so hot now, are you?”

Jacque Vaught said on Deadly Women: and: