What about when MOM is the abuser?

I have started adding a look at various individual cases to the blog and they will all be in the category of Case Series. This is another of those cases and is truly an awful one. It shatters every myth that women can not be as cruel or sadistic as men:



On the morning of Saturday, January 11, 1992, Canaan, Ind., two men were out hunting and stumbled across a body. What they saw both shocked and appalled them.

Other than a pair of panties, the body was naked and burnt from the waist up. The legs of the victim were spread as if they had been posed, and the arms were stretched out with clenched fists. The victim looked like a young woman, but the chest had been burned so badly that it was difficult to tell. Even worse was the victim's face — the eyes were empty, without color; and the mouth was wide open, exposing teeth tightly clenched on the victim's tongue.

The victim was 12 year old Shanda Sharer.

The autopsy that was done showed that she had suffered multiple injuries. Ligature marks were found on her wrists, and she had several lacerations on her head, neck and legs. Her fingers were so badly crimped that they had to be cut off in order to take prints. Her jaw was also removed so that her dentist could make a positive identification. The upper part of her body was covered in extreme burns, and her tongue protruded through clenched teeth. Lacerations to the anus and rectum indicated a blunt object had been inserted at least three and a half inches. In addition, the extent of rectal bleeding showed that she had been alive at the time of the assault. Soot in the upper airway, showed that she had been alive when she was set on fire.

What was the reason behind someone doing this to a 12 year old girl? Jealousy.

Shanda had been seeing a girl at her school who already had a girlfriend. That girl was Melinda Loveless. She set about tormenting and threatening Shanda for months. Shanda continued to see the girl and eventually Loveless crossed the line into murder.

Loveless decided to do something about Shanda and when her friend Laurie Tackett came to her house things began to happen. Tackett was some friend. She had allegedly dabbled in the occult and claimed to have another personality that was a vampire; and had often talked about killing someone for the fun of it. They picked up two other girls on the way to Shanda's house, Hope Rippey and Toni Lawrence. They decided to go to Shanda's house and abduct her and take her somewhere and hurt her and that is exactly what they did.

Shanda was subjected to 10+ hours of torture by these 4 girls. The 2 main tormentors were Loveless and Tackett. Starting with Shanda getting into the car and Loveless holding a knife to her throat, calling her names, ignoring Shanda's cries to not hurt or kill her. At one point they stopped and tied Shanda's hands, lit a fire and Tackett told Shanda that was what she was going to look like before they were done with her. They stole her jewelry, tormented her more verbally and decided to go to another location that was more private. They stopped to get gas and one of the girls called a friend yet said nothing about what was going on.

They drove for about an hour before they reached their destination. They forced Shanda out of the car and made her strip off all her clothes despite the bitter January cold. Loveless claimed she wanted to keep the clothes as a souvenir. Then the abuse got worse.

Tackett grabbed Shanda's arms and held them behind her back so that Loveless could hit her. Loveless repeatedly hit Shanda and the braces in her mouth caused blood to flow from the numerous cuts they inflicted. Loveless also kicked and used her knee on Shanda's head. Throughout all this Shanda begged and pleaded with her tormentors. She promised to never see the girlfriend again. It was all in vain and only caused her to be tormented more.

At some point Shanda fell to the ground. Loveless tried to cut her throat with a knife but the knife was to dull. One of the girls in the car, Hope Ripey, jumped out and held Shanda down as Loveless tried using her foot to force the knife to cut her throat but it did not work. So Loveless and Tackett took turns stabbing Shanda in the chest with the knife repeatedly. The wounds were not deep enough to kill her instantly and Shanda was begging for her life still but Loveless reportedly laughed in her face when she did.

At that point Tackett ran back to the car to get some rope to strangle Shanda with because the knife wounds were not working. When Tackett returned with the rope, Loveless sat on Shanda's legs as Tackett straddled her chest. Tackett then wrapped the rope around Shanda's neck and pulled with all her might until Shanda's body went limp. They were not sure if she was dead yet or not so they tossed Shanda's into the trunk of the car and headed for Tacketts house.

When they got to Tackett's house the girls all went inside and began socializing. During this time they heard a noise and that noise turned out to be Shanda screaming inside the trunk of the car. Tackett grabbed a knife from her kitchen and went out to the car trunk and stabbed Shanda over and over in hopes of killing her finally. She then shut the trunk and went back inside were Tackett and Loveless decided to take Shanda somewhere else and the other two girls refused to go.

As they were driving they decided to check and see if Shanda was dead yet. So they pulled over and open up the trunk to find Shanda covered in blood. Shanda said one word, "mommy". At that point Tackett grabbed a tire iron and hit Shanda in the head with it, closed the trunk and they got back into the car and drove on.

Again as they were driving they heard noises coming from the trunk and again they pulled over. Tackett went back, opened the trunk and saw Shanda lying on her side still alive. Tackett again grabbed the tire iron and repeatedly hit Shanda in the head with it. This time she hit her so hard she broke a piece of Shanda's skull off. Tackett got back into the car put the tire iron under her nose and smelled it. She began laughing as she explained what had happened and waved the tire iron under Loveless' nose.

As they continued to drive they decided to burn Shanda. They stopped several more times and beat Shanda with the tire iron each time they stopped. They went back to Tacketts house where they told the two girls who had remained behind what they had planned and bragged about what they had done to Shanda.

At this point they opened the trunk and Ripey saw a bottle of glass cleaner next to Shanda. She picked it up and began to spray Shanda with it. Shanda sat up at that point, covered in blood and swaying back and forth. Tackett began talking to her and tormenting her but Shanda was unresponsive. At this point the evidence suggests the girls sodomized Shanda with the tire iron; but none of them has ever admitted any knowledge of it or responsibility for this act. Tackett's mother yelled for the girls and it spooked them so they closed the trunk on Shanda once again.

They drove Shanda to an old logging road and carried her out of the trunk and laid her on the ground where they threw gasoline on her and Tackett lit a match and threw it on Shanda. The girls hopped back into the car and started to drive away when Loveless told Tackett to turn around because she wanted to make sure the body was still burning. When they went back Loveless grabbed the bottle with the remaining gasoline and went over to Shanda. Loveless saw Shanda curled up into a fetal position and her tongue darted in and out of her mouth. She poured the remaining gasoline on Shanda's burnt body and went back to the car. Loveless thought Sharer's death throes were funny and described them to the others. On their way back home they stopped at McDonalds to get breakfast and they made jokes about how the cooked meat looked like Shanda.


Cases like this one show one thing. People are people. Anyone, regardless of gender, is capable of anything. I know of many girls that talk about the bullying that goes on in school by other girls and how awful it can become. This case shows it in the extreme.