Melinda Loveless, the 16-year-old mastermind behind Shanda Sharer's murder, wanted to kill her because she thought Sharer had "stolen" her girlfriend.
Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions and/or images of violent, disturbing, or otherwise potentially distressing events.
Wikimedia CommonsShanda Sharer, the 12-year-old girl who was murdered by four teenagers because of a love triangle gone wrong.
In the fall of 1991, 12-year-old Shanda Sharer walked into her new school in New Albany, Indiana. She soon met a classmate named Amanda Heavrin, and they quickly became romantically involved. This innocent middle school relationship would ultimately end in Sharer’s murder.
Heavrin was also dating an older teen named Melinda Loveless. When Loveless found out about Sharer, she started sending the girl death threats — and in January 1992, she followed through on her chilling warnings.
Loveless enlisted three other teenage girls to help her abduct Sharer, torture her for eight hours, and then burn her alive. Afterward, they went out to breakfast and laughed about what they had done.
All four girls were ultimately arrested and imprisoned, but the disturbing case continues to haunt everyone who was involved, from Shanda Sharer’s loved ones to the police who investigated the murder. As one of the defense attorneys at Loveless’ trial put it: “Stephen King couldn’t come up with a plot like this.”
The Events Leading Up To Shanda Sharer’s Murder
In 1991, Shanda Sharer moved to New Albany, Indiana, after her mother and stepfather got divorced. She started seventh grade at Hazelwood Middle School, where she met Amanda Heavrin. The two girls started exchanging romantic notes, sparking the jealousy of Heavrin’s girlfriend, Melinda Loveless.
In retaliation, Loveless began dating someone else. But when Sharer and Heavrin went to a school dance together that October, Loveless showed up and confronted the girls, slapping Heavrin and threatening Sharer.
Family Photo/Find a GraveShanda Sharer shortly before her murder
Shortly after, according to the 1994 true crime book Cruel Sacrifice by Aphrodite Jones, Heavrin wrote Sharer a note that read: “I don’t think I would ever tell Melinda we are going out together. She would probably kill you.”
Shanda Sharer and Amanda Heavrin continued dating throughout the fall, and Melinda Loveless ramped up her threats. She once told Sharer, “If you even try to talk to Amanda again I’m going to f—ing kill you.”
The threats became so concerning that Sharer’s mother transferred her to a new school. Tragically, it wasn’t enough to save her.
Unthinkable Torture At The Hands Of Four Teenage Girls
On the evening of Jan. 10, 1992, 16-year-old Melinda Loveless invited her friend, 17-year-old Laurie Tackett, to her house in New Albany. Tackett lived in Madison, Indiana, about an hour away. She brought two other girls with her: Hope Rippey and Toni Lawrence, who were both 15.
Rippey and Lawrence had never met Loveless or Sharer, but when Loveless told them that she wanted to scare Sharer for being a “copycat” and “stealing” her girlfriend, they went along with the plan.
The four teenagers drove to Sharer’s father’s house, and Loveless sent Rippey and Lawrence to the door, telling them to introduce themselves as Amanda Heavrin’s friends. The girls told Sharer that they were going to meet up with Heavrin at the “Witch’s Castle,” an abandoned stone house not far from town.
Shanda Sharer’s killers, clockwise from the top left: Melinda Loveless, Laurie Tackett, Hope Rippey, and Toni Lawrence.
Sharer’s parents had banned her from seeing Heavrin, so she told the girls to come back later that night, after her father had gone to bed, so she could sneak out. Loveless, Tackett, Rippey, and Lawrence left and went to a concert before returning around 12:30 a.m.
Loveless hid under a blanket in the back seat while two other girls went to get Sharer. Once the car was moving, Loveless revealed herself and held a knife to Sharer’s throat as she interrogated her about her sexual relationship with Heavrin.
When they arrived at the Witch’s Castle, the four teens bound Sharer’s hands and feet with rope and threatened her. Then, they put her back in Tackett’s car and drove to a dense forest near Tackett’s house in Madison. Lawrence and Rippey stayed in the car while Loveless and Tackett took Shanda Sharer into the woods, stripped her down to her underwear, beat her, and tried to slit her throat.
When they realized that their knife was too dull, Rippey exited the car to hold Sharer down while Loveless and Tackett stabbed her in the chest and strangled her with a rope until she was unconscious.
The girls then threw Sharer into the trunk and went back to Tackett’s house. They were drinking soda inside when they heard Sharer screaming.
Tackett went back out and stabbed Sharer several more times. Then, Loveless joined her for a ride to the countryside. When the two teenagers stopped the car, they beat Sharer with a tire iron and then repeatedly sexually assaulted her with the weapon.
WLKY News Louisville/YouTubeMelinda Loveless in handcuffs after she masterminded the murder of Shanda Sharer.
They returned to Tackett’s house just before dawn and showed Lawrence and Rippey what they’d done. According to Cruel Sacrifice, Rippey sprayed Sharer with Windex and laughed, “You’re not looking so hot now, are you?”
Finally, all four girls went to a gas station, filled a two-liter Pepsi bottle with gasoline, drove to a rural area north of Madison, carried Tackett into a field, poured the fuel on her, and lit her on fire. Sharer was still alive and crying for her mother at the time.
Loveless, Tackett, Lawrence, and Rippey then went to McDonald’s for breakfast and joked that their sausage looked like Shanda Sharer’s charred corpse.
Later that morning, two brothers stumbled upon Sharer’s body and called the police. Around the same time, Sharer’s father reported her missing. But it wasn’t until Toni Lawrence and Hope Rippey turned up at the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office that night that investigators connected the two cases.
The Conviction Of Shanda Sharer’s Killers
Loveless, Tackett, Lawrence, and Rippey were all charged as adults for the murder of Shanda Sharer. Lawrence and Rippey — who were younger, less involved in the torture, and more forthcoming with authorities — received lighter sentences. Rippey spent 14 years behind bars, while Lawrence was imprisoned for just eight years.
Tackett was sentenced to 60 years in prison, but she was released in 2018 after 26 years. Loveless, the ringleader, also received a 60-year sentence but was released in 2019.
Everyone who heard about the case had one question: How did a simple dispute over a girlfriend end in torture and murder?
It was later revealed that all four teenagers had troubled pasts. Rippey’s parents had an on-and-off relationship, and she was known to engage in self-harm. Lawrence had been raped at age 14 and attempted suicide shortly after. And Tackett was molested as a child and spent time in a psychiatric hospital for her borderline personality disorder.
Chiliad22/Wikimedia CommonsA memorial to Shanda Sharer in the field where she died.
Loveless, meanwhile, was sexually abused by her own father. In a 1998 interview with WISH-TV, Loveless said, “It turns into anger if you keep that hurt and don’t let it go… That hurt can turn into anger and hate and make you do things that you would never really do.”
Laurie Tackett had different thoughts on the matter. In 2011, she released a statement from prison for an episode of Dr. Phil:
“Let’s say, for instance, I know a couple of people who kill simply for the fear that they see in their victim’s eyes, and for the sight of blood on their bodies… [M]y opinion is that they do it to feel superior, or high on the victim’s fear, and they’re thirsty for the spill of blood.”
Today, a small memorial to Shanda Sharer sits in the field where she was brutally murdered. It’s easy to miss, but it marks the spot of one of the most chilling crimes in the state’s history — one that was carried out by four young girls.
After reading about the murder of Shanda Sharer, go inside the stories of nine teenage serial killers. Then, learn about Alyssa Bustamante, the high schooler who murdered a nine year old.
