Little Lost Angel (27 page)

“Toni indicated in her statement that when you and Melinda came back from your drive that you both had blood on you.”

“I don’t remember that,” Laurie said.

Changing the subject, Henry asked Laurie about her fascination with witchcraft and about Larry Leatherbury’s statement that she wanted to watch somebody being burned alive.

Laurie denied ever saying that and claimed that her interest in the occult was minor, although she had tried to channel with spirits.

“Tell me about that,” Henry said.

“That was just something I did to make people like me,” Laurie said. “I just wanted to be liked by people.”

With the interview over, Henry and Shipley drove Laurie back to the Indiana State Women’s Prison in Indianapolis. During the drive, Henry asked Laurie about something that had been bothering him for some time. The stories he’d heard about Laurie’s battles with her mother over going to church had piqued his curiosity. A teenage girl who refused to identify herself had called him at the police station two or three years earlier. She’d asked if it was a form of child abuse for her parents to make her go to church when she didn’t want to go. She had told Henry that her parents strictly disciplined her when she refused to attend services. Henry had told her that her best bet was to call the welfare department in her county, and he hadn’t thought any more about it until now. Now he just had to know: Was Laurie the caller?

“Yes,” Laurie said. “It was me.”

“Well I’ll be doggone,” Henry said.

*  *  *

The following week, Henry and Shipley drove back to the women’s prison to interview Melinda Loveless, hoping they’d learn more from her than they had from Laurie.

“We felt that Laurie was lying about a lot of things,” Henry said later. “She seemed to have been living in a fantasy land.”

Melinda had been moved to the state prison the previous week, after an eventful incarceration in the Clark County jail. Melinda had created problems for her jailers from the start. She thought of herself as a celebrity and had tried to obtain special privileges. She’d written the head jailers dozens of requests, ranging from demands for more visitation time with her family and friends to a request that she be able to wear a more comfortable jail uniform. She got into several altercations with other female inmates over what
programs to watch on television and seemed to constantly be stirring up trouble with her haughty ways.

When some of the other inmates began teasing her about newspaper and television reports that Shanda had been killed out of jealousy over another girl, Melinda insisted that she was not a lesbian. She told them that it had been a matter of jealousy but that it was over a boy named Justin.

One of Melinda’s former cellmates, Arlinda Randle, said that Melinda took her celebrity status to extremes, once even giving out autographs.

Randle said that Melinda was always talking about how little time she would have to do for the murder. She felt as if she would be released in a couple of years. Randle said that Melinda had a copy of her Hazelwood yearbook, which she would show off to other prisoners. Over Shanda’s picture she’d written “So young. So pretty. Had to die early.” Melinda had also hung a picture of herself on the wall and inscribed on it “Most Wanted.”

Randle said that Melinda’s cruel sense of humor was also used against other inmates.

“One time a girl asked her for a cigarette,” Randle said. “While the girl wasn’t looking, Melinda stuck the cigarette up her nose and rolled it around and then gave it to her. And on another occasion another girl wanted a cigarette and Melinda stuck it up in her vagina and gave it to the girl afterward. She was always flirting with the guards. A couple of times she flashed them. Raised her skirt up. I told her not to do that. I told her that if she was my daughter that would upset me.”

On Sunday night, September 27, Melinda was caught having sex with a male jailer in a command-post room. When another jailer burst in on them, Melinda hiked up her pants and ran back to her cell. The next day Melinda bragged to the other inmates that she’d screwed a jailer that they all thought was cute. The jailer resigned the next day rather than face a dismissal hearing.

Melinda’s sexual exploits had already become an item of interest around the Jefferson County courthouse. When she came to court for one of her early hearings and was changing
her clothes, one of the jail matrons noticed that she had hickeys all over her body.

Henry would later learn that Melinda had quickly found a lesbian lover at the Indiana State Women’s Prison, but on the day he interviewed her she hadn’t yet settled into her new surroundings and was noticeably nervous.

With her attorney, Russ Johnson, by her side in the small interview room, Melinda gave a detailed account of her lesbian relationship with Amanda and how it had been wrecked by Shanda’s “interference.” She admitted that she despised Shanda for coming between her and Amanda, but she claimed that she’d never intended to kill the girl. Her only intention had been to beat her up and “teach her a lesson.”

Melinda’s version of events differed little from the statements given by Toni and Laurie up to the point where she and Laurie came out of the hardcore show and went to join Toni and Hope in the car. Melinda claimed that the two girls weren’t just talking to the two boys in the car.

“Hope and Toni were in there with a black guy and white guy and the windows were steamy,” Melinda said. “We beat on the car and finally they let us in. They had to pull up their pants. I guess they were having sex. They said they wanted to finish, so we shut the door and went to a phone booth. I had Tackett call Shanda to make sure she was home but the answering machine was on, so we went back to the car. This time Hope had the other guy. They had switched partners. Finally we got the guys out of the car and we went back to Shanda’s house.”

Melinda’s tale of the abduction and the trip to the Witches’ Castle was similar to the stories told by Toni and Laurie, and she admitted that she’d punched and kneed Shanda on the dirt road. From there on, however, her version of what happened was dramatically different from Laurie’s. Melinda claimed that she backed off from Shanda and told Laurie it was time to take her home. But Laurie wouldn’t listen.

“She just went off,” said Melinda, who referred, curiously, to Laurie by her last name throughout the interview. “I
walked over by the car and Tackett still had her. Shanda called for me to help her but I didn’t do nothing. Tackett had her on the ground and was choking her with a rope. She put it around Shanda’s neck and started strangling her. That’s when Shanda wasn’t moving. I guess she was unconscious because she stopped kicking. I thought she was dead.”

Her account of the fight was suddenly interrupted by tears. Russ Johnson handed her his handkerchief, and after a few minutes Melinda picked up where she’d left off.

“Tackett had the knife,” she said. “I hate talking about this, but she just started cutting her. She told me to come help her. She just kept saying, ‘We need to finish her, Melinda. It’s already too late.’ She kept saying, ‘I think she’s dead. Let’s just finish her. Help me.’ I said, ‘No.’ At that time she snatched my hand and put it on top of hers with the knife and just started stabbing. I pulled my hand away and went back to the car. I started crying and saying, ‘I don’t want nothing to do with this.’ I was like shocked. I’d never seen anything like that. I just freaked out. I couldn’t move. I just wanted to go help her or scream, but I couldn’t. I was actually like frozen. I don’t know how to explain it.”

Melinda’s recollection of her and Laurie’s drive through the country was much clearer than Laurie’s. Melinda claimed she never saw Laurie actually strike Shanda with the tire iron, but she heard it.

“I watched through the rear-view but I couldn’t see much,” Melinda said. “I heard something thump and there was like a weeping sound. I heard this hit like you would hear when someone hits you in your stomach.”

Melinda said that when Laurie returned to the car, she stuck the bloody tire iron under Melinda’s nose and told her to smell it. She also claimed that it was Laurie who came up with the plan to burn Shanda and that it was Hope who first poured the gasoline.

“Tackett was standing there with these matches,” Melinda said. “She tells Hope to pour the gasoline. At first Hope says ‘No’ and tries to hand the gas to Tackett, but Tackett says, ‘Just hurry up and throw it on her.’ So Hope puts some gasoline on her. Soaks her. Tackett lit the match
and
poof
, throws it on her. That was when everything just went up.”

Melinda was crying again now, but at Henry’s urging she continued her story.

“That’s when she tells me to get out of the car and to pour the rest of the gasoline on her. Tackett was saying, ‘This was your idea, Melinda. You wanted this. You need to finish her. It’s only right.’ I’m saying no but Hope reached over me, opened the door, and pushed me out. She handed me the bottle and she was crying and screaming at me. ‘Just do it. Just do as she says.’”

Melinda said she stepped out of the car with the half-full bottle of gasoline and walked over to Shanda’s smoking body.

“I looked at her and I threw the two-liter,” Melinda said with a choked voice. “It went beside her and it hit the ground. That’s when it started going again. I could see her face. She was burned to a crisp. You couldn’t recognize her. Her tongue was sticking out. I remember her feet were up in the air. They were straight up in the air. I could see her panties or a shirt. Something was still on her but it was burned. I mean she was totally crisp black. I ran back to the car. I was sick. . . . I’m sick.”

Melinda once again started crying. Whether or not they were genuine tears, Henry couldn’t tell. He gave her a moment to compose herself, then asked if she knew how Shanda had gotten her anal injuries.

“No,” Melinda said adamantly. “I wasn’t even aware that it happened until they told me about the molestation.”

“Did Laurie Tackett have the opportunity to inflict that injury?”

“Yeah,” Melinda said eagerly. “At two different times. She went back to the trunk when we stopped one time when we were driving around. It took a while and there was screaming on and off. It could have been there or it could have been when we were at her house and she said she was going out to take care of Shanda. She was there for a while.”

Still no proof of who sodomized Shanda. Henry switched
off the tape recorder. The interview was over. The next time he’d see Melinda Loveless would be in court.

*  *  *

Judge Todd had decided to hold Melinda’s sentencing hearing first because she was the catalyst in the crime. The question of her guilt was already settled. She had killed Shanda, and she admitted it. The facts of the case would be presented in much the same manner as a trial, only there would be no jury. Judge Todd would determine how many years she would serve. The sentencing range was between thirty and sixty years.

Melinda’s attorney, Russ Johnson, felt his client had a good chance for a sentence at the lower end of that spectrum. She had a good defense team. In addition to Johnson, there was Mike Walro, who was a former legal colleague of Judge Todd. Even though Walro didn’t expect any favors from Todd, it could only help to have someone in his corner who was familiar with the way the judge ran things. The third member of the team was Bob Hammerle, a top-notch Indianapolis criminal attorney with plenty of experience in murder cases.

The defense strategy would be twofold. First, they would try to shift as much of the blame as possible to Laurie Tackett. Second, they’d attempt to build sympathy for Melinda by bringing out the sordid details of her disturbing home life.

When Johnson first began work on the case he suspected that Melinda might have come from an abusive home. He’d done enough reading to know that the vast majority of teenage killers have past histories of childhood abuse. Even so, he was shocked when Melinda’s mother, Margie, and two older sisters, Michelle and Melissa, told him about their domestic life.

Margie, forty-six, looked as though she’d aged ten years since Melinda’s arrest. Her face was haggard, and she had deep circles under her eyes. Once an attractive woman, she now looked worn, beaten down by the shame Melinda had brought on the family.

Michelle and Melissa Loveless had the same long dark curly hair as their younger sister, but neither had Melinda’s
striking beauty. Melissa, twenty-two, still lived at home with her mother and her stepfather, Michael Donahue, whom Margie had married a year earlier.

Michelle, twenty-five, who had a bachelor’s degree in psychology and worked as an activity director at a home for the elderly, was out on her own now. She was the one who helped Johnson convince Margie that they would have to air all of the family’s deep secrets if Melinda was going to have a chance at a reduced sentence.

(The following information came from an interview with Johnson and from court testimony. The allegations against Larry Loveless have not been proved and Loveless has denied the charges.)

Over the course of several meetings with the Loveless women, Johnson was told that Melinda’s father, Larry Loveless, had ruled the home with perverse cruelty until he walked out on Margie and his three daughters two and a half years earlier. Larry was an alcoholic Vietnam veteran who’d wandered through a series of jobs—railroad worker, truck driver, postal carrier, small-town cop—but he was out of work as often as not. His short stint as a New Albany police officer ended in scandal in 1973, when he used his billy club to throttle a black man he thought was flirting with Margie. To avoid going to jail, Larry resigned from the police force.

Larry was not imposing physically. About five-foot-six and 150 pounds, he carried a potbelly and wore glasses. Nevertheless, he had delusions of grandeur and thought of himself as one tough hombre.

“My dad had a big fetish with guns,” Michelle Loveless said later. “He thought he was Clint Eastwood. He would put on a poncho and would tell us that he wanted to live back in the Old West so he could just walk down the street and blow somebody’s head off if they bothered him. My dad would hold a gun to my mom’s head and tell her that if she left him he would kill her and us three girls. One day he was showing me his gun and he pointed it at my head and shot, but it missed and hit the wall. I peed on myself.”