Little Lost Angel (32 page)

“Was there a reason for not closing the trunk all the way?” Townsend asked.

For the first time Laurie seemed tentative. She closed her
eyes in deep concentration. Then she shook her head and said matter-of-factly, “I just did it. I just didn’t close it all the way.”

Johnson scribbled a note to himself as Laurie continued. If the trunk was still open and Shanda was conscious, why didn’t she escape? There was obviously something that Laurie didn’t want the court to know.

Laurie once again said she remembered little of the long drive she and Melinda made with Shanda in the trunk, never mentioning anything about either of the girls using the tire iron to hit Shanda. When she recounted the scene at the burn site, she admitted that Hope had poured the gas—contradicting an earlier statement she’d made in an attempt to protect Hope.

“Who set her on fire?” Townsend asked.

“I have no idea,” Laurie said anxiously. “I was bending over her. I was going to take the blanket away from her face because she was crying. She couldn’t say anything. She tried to say things but I couldn’t understand what she said. She was screaming, trying to say things. I don’t know what she was trying to say.” Laurie was talking rapidly now, and she needed no further prompting from Townsend. She was reliving the moment, and her words came out in quick, terse phrases. “While I was bent over her the fire went up in my face and singed my hair. Melinda was running and she told me and Hope to come on. We drove down the road awhile. Melinda told me to turn around. She wanted to make sure Shanda was completely on fire. We turned around and went back. She was burning but her legs weren’t on fire. Melinda got out of the car and poured the rest of the gas on her. She stood there awhile before she poured the gas, looking at her. After she poured the gas on her Melinda got back in the car and she was laughing. She said that Shanda’s tongue was going in and out of her mouth and she was laughing about it. She said things like ‘I’m glad Shanda’s gone. I’m glad she’s out of me and Amanda’s lives.’ She told us that if we stuck together everything would be okay. From there we went to McDonald’s.”

When Laurie abruptly stopped talking, the courtroom’s
attention shifted to the front row, where Steve Sharer was hunched forward, his elbows on his knees, his face covered in his hands. Jacque’s left arm was draped over her ex-husband’s back and her head was resting on his shoulder as she cried. Their spouses, Sharon and Doug, sat on either side, giving Steve and Jacque comforting hugs.

Laurie, cool and collected and ready to continue, seemed a bit disappointed when Townsend dismissed her.

*  *  *

The third day of the hearing began with Russ Johnson’s cross-examination of Laurie. Assuming an aggressive, contemptuous manner, Johnson accused Laurie of twisting the facts to harm Melinda, pointing out that she’d originally said that Melinda, not Hope, had first poured the gas. Although Laurie appeared cocky at first, Johnson caught her off balance by asking her how Shanda had gotten her anal injuries.

Laurie hesitated for a moment before finally answering: “I feel like she might have had sex with someone else before we picked her up.”

Johnson knew that Laurie was improvising now. He had her where he wanted her. He asked her about when she went outside her house to check on Shanda after she and the others heard Laurie’s dog barking. “You testified that you just put the trunk lid down far enough where it would stay down, not that it was locked or closed. Is that correct?”

“Yes.” Laurie was pensive, eying Johnson with suspicion.

“It never crossed your mind that if you left this trunk open this young lady could have gotten out and walked away?”

“She probably could have.”

“When you went outside she was conscious because she was screaming and banging. Is that right?”

“Yes.” Not understanding where Johnson was going with this, Laurie stuck firmly to her story.

“Was she still screaming after you put the blanket over her and left?”

“Yes.”

“Let me understand this,” Johnson said, playing as much
to the spectators as he was to Laurie. “This little girl was screaming and banging on the trunk, and you leave the trunk open and she just lies there screaming and banging.”

Laurie began to realize that she was cornered. She hesitated, then answered tentatively, “She probably didn’t know I left the trunk cracked open.”

“If someone’s banging on the lid of that trunk and it’s not shut, I assume that trunk’s going to fly open.” Johnson stepped closer to Laurie. “She wasn’t screaming when you left, was she?”

“Yes she was,” Laurie said defensively.

Johnson was looming over her now. “Your specific reason for going out to the automobile was to quiet Shanda Sharer, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And isn’t it a fact that you did quiet her by hitting her with a tire iron?”

Laurie seemed startled. “No,” she stated loudly.

“Didn’t you tell Crystal Wathen that when Shanda started screaming, you took a tire iron and hit her over the head?”

Laurie sneered back at the attorney. “No.” She was on edge, and Johnson could see it.

“Isn’t it a fact that you not only hit her with the tire iron but that you also molested her?”

“I didn’t hit her and I didn’t molest her.”

Johnson switched gears and began asking a series of questions about Laurie’s fascination with the occult.

“I was never a devil worshiper,” Laurie said defensively. “Never had sacrifices. I’m not into it anymore. I was never into it. I was just interested in it.”

“Do you believe in God?”

“Yes.”

“Then why did you tell Melinda that you didn’t believe in God, that you believed in black magic?”

“It was something I tried to portray myself as so people would leave me alone about my past religion.”

Johnson was not about to let Laurie off so easily. He pressed on, asking her why she’d shaved her head and why she so often dressed in black. He asked her about her
channeling episodes, in which spirits supposedly talked through her body.

“Channeling doesn’t work,” Laurie said. “It’s fake.”

“So were you faking it when this Deanna the Vampire would channel through your body and you would talk like a vampire?”

“I believed it at the time, but it doesn’t really exist. Deanna doesn’t exist. No one ever came into my body and talked through me.”

“Have you ever cut your wrist and drank your own blood?”

The crowd stirred and leaned forward, waiting for the answer. Laurie hesitated, then said, “No, I didn’t. I’ve never done that.”

“Kary Pope said you cut your wrist and drank your own blood at a party.”

Laurie shook her head. “No. A girlfriend drank my blood at a party.”

“Did you ever tell Kary Pope that you would kill her grandmother for her?”

“Jokingly, yes.”

“Isn’t it a fact that you told Mr. Leatherbury that one of your biggest fascinations was to know what it feels like to see someone burn?”

“The answer is no.”

Johnson walked closer to Laurie and said softly, “You know what it feels like now, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Laurie said meekly.

And with this bizarre portrayal of Laurie Tackett firmly in place, the court adjourned for the day.

*  *  *

During his long tenure as Kentucky’s chief medical examiner, Dr. George R. Nichols II had testified at countless murder trials. But never had he spent such a curious hour while waiting to take the witness stand. Seated in the law library that served as the witness lounge for Judge Todd’s court, the doctor found himself in the company of several teenagers also waiting to testify. The group included Larry Leatherbury and Kary Pope.

“They talked amongst themselves as if I wasn’t there,” Nichols would later tell a reporter. “The lone boy among them said he was concerned about his testimony. He hoped people wouldn’t think he was homosexual because he was really bisexual. One girl said she herself wouldn’t mind being sent to women’s prison because she could have all the pussy she could eat. It was the strangest conversation I have ever heard.”

It is not surprising that the teenagers paid Nichols no mind. A medium-sized man with unruly black hair and spectacles, Nichols was by appearance unimposing. But his unobtrusiveness vanished once he took the witness stand and began testifying about Shanda Sharer’s autopsy in his deep, authoritative voice.

“Would the smoke inhalation indicate that Shanda was alive when she was set on fire?” Townsend asked.

Nichols looked Townsend straight in the eyes. In a booming voice he said, “Absolutely.”

*  *  *

The courtroom buzzed with anticipation when Townsend announced Amanda Heavrin as his next witness.

A week before the hearing began, Jacque had reluctantly agreed to give an interview to the Louisville
Courier-Journal
. The newspaper had learned through sources about the letters exchanged between Shanda and Amanda and was ready to run a story that would have touched on their lesbian relationship. In hopes of putting the letters in their proper perspective, Jacque openly discussed all her efforts to get Shanda away from Amanda. When Amanda’s father, Jerry Heavrin, was contacted in order to give his daughter’s side of the story, he refused to be quoted. But he made it clear that he was furious with Jacque for pointing the finger at his daughter, saying that she had nothing to do with the murder.

Although Amanda was not named in the original newspaper account, her name had been revealed to the public on the first day of the sentencing hearing, and the spectators craned their necks to get a good look at the girl whom Melinda had killed for.

Amanda came to court in baggy black pants, a button
down purple shirt, and tennis shoes. With her flat chest and her brown hair cut short, she looked like a young boy. She gave a quick sideways glance at Melinda and slipped into the witness chair. Her left tennis shoe tapped up and down as she quietly and nervously answered questions about her relationship with Melinda, admitting in little more than a whisper that she and Melinda had been lesbian lovers. Townsend had mentioned Melinda’s sexual relationship with Amanda during his opening statement, so it came as no surprise to the packed courtroom. But the spectators strained to hear more.

Townsend repeatedly had to rephrase questions for Amanda because she was not able to understand what he meant when he used words such as “persist,” “subsequent,” and “discontent.” He would apologize for “talking like a lawyer” and simplify it for the none-too-bright youngster. Amanda squirmed in her chair and cried as she described the scene at Melinda’s house on the afternoon following Shanda’s murder. Once again she claimed that Laurie had bragged about killing Shanda.

It was obvious that Amanda was trying her best not to hurt Melinda, but Townsend pressed her by asking, “Did you ever hear Melinda say she wanted to kill Shanda?”

Amanda knew that police had Melinda’s letters, so she answered the best she could for her former lover: “I heard her say she wished she was dead, but I don’t think she meant it.”

Amanda’s appearance had been anticlimactic. The public had been anticipating some fashion of femme fatale, but what they saw was simply a bumbling, frightened little girl.

*  *  *

If Crystal Wathen was nervous she didn’t show it as she breezed into the courtroom, flashing a friendly smile at Melinda as she walked by the defense table. The pretty blonde wore jeans and a T-shirt that had a picture of dead rock idol Jim Morrison on the back. Playing with the ends of her long hair, she casually described the scene that took place in Laurie’s car the afternoon following the murder.

“Tell the judge what Laurie Tackett did with the tire tool,” Hammerle said.

“She was tapping it against the dash,” Crystal said. “She was feeling on it and she said she could remember what it felt like when she was hitting Shanda in her head. She said it was taking hunks out of her head. She stuck it in my face and told me to smell it.”

Hammerle waited a few seconds to let the grisly image sink in and then, raising his voice to make sure that everyone in the courtroom heard, he asked, “Isn’t it a fact that Laurie Tackett told you that she found a piece of Shanda’s head in the trunk and threw it out in the yard for the dog to eat?”

There were gasps in the courtroom as Crystal answered coolly, “Yes, she did.”

*  *  *

Kary Pope and a small entourage of her friends had spent the week camping out in the hallway outside the courtroom.

They seemed to take enjoyment out of raising the eyebrows of the conservative Madison residents who came to the courthouse to watch the hearing. Kary’s friends—all girls, except for the Leatherbury brothers, Larry and Terry—spent much of their time hanging on each other and exchanging kisses.

Larry Leatherbury in particular seemed to revel in his newfound notoriety as the friend of killers. He once spied a television crew stationed outside a courthouse exit, so he ran up to Kary and announced in an excited voice that he was going down the steps to be interviewed.

Kary was no less obtrusive. With her short-cut reddish-brown hair, her baggy jeans, and flannel shirt, she walked up and down the hallways slumping her shoulders back and forth with the cocky assurance of a streetwise rapper.

On Tuesday, the second day of the hearing, Kary hung around a water cooler by the back entrance of the courtroom, waiting for a chance to talk to Melinda. During a recess, while Melinda sat in a chair in a foyer near the water cooler, Kary persuaded a guard to let her have a moment with Melinda. Kary knelt at Melinda’s side and gave her friend a long hug. She whispered something in Melinda’s ear and Melinda laughed.

As this went on, Shanda’s mother, Jacque, stood at one end of the hallway and stared at Kary with disgust.

“I want you to know,” she told a reporter, “that none of these kids were friends of Shanda. She didn’t know any of them other than Melinda and Amanda. Those aren’t the type of kids she associated with. What I want to know is where are their parents. What kind of parents wouldn’t come to court with their children if their children had to testify at something like this?”