Little Lost Angel (23 page)

In conclusion, the report indicated that while Laurie was deeply disturbed, she was not insane and was capable of standing trial.

It didn’t take Townsend long to realize that he had a strong case against both Melinda and Laurie. Steve Henry’s interviews with Melinda’s friends and the letters exchanged between Melinda and Amanda pointed strongly to Melinda’s motive of jealousy. And the interviews with Larry Leatherbury and Kary Pope gave every indication that Laurie had a capacity for violence.

Still, Townsend knew that a lot of things could go wrong at a trial.

“This was a case where there seemed to be every indication that Melinda and Laurie would be pointing fingers at each other. A jury has to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt. Whenever there is more than one defendant in a case
there’s always the possibility that one of them can persuade the jury that the other one did it. There’s always the possibility that one of them could walk. Melinda could bat her eyes at the male jurors for two weeks and convince one that she couldn’t possibly be responsible for this, and we’d end up with a hung jury or an acquittal.”

It was Townsend’s hope from the beginning to get a plea agreement and avoid a trial.

“The family would not have been subjected to eighteen months of this dragging out, this community would not have gotten eighteen months of bad publicity, and the county would have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Townsend said. “It was worth something to get it done.”

Townsend offered both girls a chance to plead guilty to one count of murder, the sentence for which ranges from thirty to sixty years in prison. But neither of the girls’ attorneys seemed eager to deal.

“They knew that my case hinged on the cooperation of either Toni Lawrence or Hope Rippey,” Townsend said. “At that point I had neither.”

The unwillingness of the two girls to talk to the police led Townsend to believe that they were more involved than Toni had claimed in her original statement.

“I made the same offer to Toni and Hope,” Townsend said. “I told them that if Toni’s story was true, if they didn’t actually participate in any way, then I would treat them as juveniles and not waive them into adult court.”

That was until Melinda’s attorney, Mike Walro, told Townsend that Melinda claimed it was Hope Rippey who had poured the gasoline on Shanda before she was set on fire.

“Thankfully, Hope didn’t accept my original offer,” Townsend said. “If we’d have agreed to charge her as a juvenile and then found out later that she had actually poured the gas, it would have been a gross miscarriage of justice. And it would have been my fault.”

After a month of getting nowhere with both Toni and Hope, Townsend decided to turn the screws. He would bring charges against both of them and slap them in jail. A little
time behind bars might persuade them to change their minds.

*  *  *

Neither Toni nor Hope had gone back to school after Shanda’s murder. They were afraid of harassment from the other students, and their parents feared that they might be bothered by the reporters who’d staked out the school to interview classmates.

Toni and Hope didn’t see each other at all during that month, although they did talk once on the phone. In hushed tones, Hope admitted to Toni that she had poured the gas the first time. The confession came as a shock to Toni. She’d been truthful to police when she said she’d not watched the first burning. She’d assumed that Melinda poured the gas both times. Hope swore Toni to secrecy, even though it would prove to be fruitless. Melinda had no loyalty to Hope and had already told her lawyers that Hope had poured the gas the first time.

Toni became more frightened with each passing day. She had always been scared of the Leatherburys, and she feared that they or some of Laurie’s other friends might seek revenge on her for talking to the police.

“Toni didn’t go anyplace” that whole month, her father said later. “She stayed right with her mother. Her mother had to go to the bathroom with her. Her mother had to go get her pajamas out of her room and bring them to her so she could change. She was that scared. She slept on the floor in our room. Sometimes when she woke up with a nightmare she’d get into bed with us. She’d lay in bed and kick and jerk for a long time and I’d reach over and shake her and she’d wake up screaming.”

Hope was also losing sleep, although her fears centered around her own guilt.

“She couldn’t get to sleep at night and Gloria would have to sleep with her,” Carl Rippey recalled. “Sometimes she’d wake up screaming, ‘Make it stop. Make it go away.’ She asked if she could be hypnotized or could take some kind of drug that would make the memories go away.”

*  *  *

Television crews and newspaper reporters swarmed around the Madison courthouse on the morning of March 15. Word had leaked that Toni and Hope were going to be charged in the murder and that additional charges were being brought against Melinda and Laurie.

A few weeks earlier, a Louisville television station had broadcast pictures of Toni and Hope taken from their yearbook, but other than that they had remained out of the public eye.

The attorneys for Hope and Toni had warned them that Townsend could charge them with murder and have them arrested, but when the word finally came both girls had trouble dealing with it. The last night that Hope and Toni spent at home was a traumatic one for both of them, with many tears shed by parents and daughters. The next morning the Rippeys and Lawrences took their daughters to the offices of their respective attorneys. Townsend had agreed to let each girl give herself up.

As police escorted them into court, Toni and Hope covered their faces with their arms, trying to shield themselves from the cameras. The initial hearings were closed to the media and the public because at that point Toni and Hope were still considered juveniles. But they wouldn’t be for long. Judge Ted Todd waived both into adult court, and that same day Toni and Hope were charged with murder, arson, battery with a deadly weapon, aggravated battery, criminal confinement, and intimidation. Both girls were in tears as they were escorted from the courthouse across the alley to the Jefferson County jail.

Later that afternoon, Melinda and Laurie were brought into Judge Todd’s court for separate hearings, in which they were charged with seven additional crimes, including child molesting and criminal deviate conduct.

The press had been hearing rumors that Shanda was sexually molested prior to her murder, but this was the first proof. The information filed with the child molestation charge indicated that Shanda had been sodomized by a metal object.

As he’d done with Laurie, who was in the Indiana
Women’s Prison in Indianapolis, and Melinda, who was in the Clark County jail, Judge Todd had ordered that Toni and Hope be kept in different jails so they wouldn’t be able to communicate. Hope stayed in Madison, while Toni was sent to the Scott County jail about thirty miles east of Madison.

Away from her family for the first time since the murder, Toni was an emotional wreck. She’d been placed in her own cell, a tiny room with no windows and only a small opening at the base of the cell door, where food could be shoved through. She’d lay for hours on the floor, watching the jailers’ footsteps through the door opening.

“When we’d visit her, she couldn’t stop crying,” Glenda Lawrence said. “She said they treated her awful up there. The jailers would say cruel things to her and she wasn’t allowed to mingle with the other prisoners.”

The harsh realities of her confinement and the serious charges against her weakened Toni’s resolve not to testify against the others. On April 22, five weeks after she’d been slapped in jail, Toni accepted the state’s offer of a plea agreement.

The attorneys for the other girls would later decry the plea agreement as the “deal of the century.” In exchange for Townsend dropping all other charges, Toni pleaded guilty to the charge of criminal confinement—for keeping Shanda captive against her will—and agreed to testify against the other girls.

In Indiana, the charge of criminal confinement carries a standard sentence of ten years in prison, but the judge is allowed to subtract up to four years for mitigating circumstances or add up to ten years for aggravating circumstances. So Toni now faced between six and twenty years in prison.

“We always thought that Toni would be the one to cave in,” Townsend said. “It was pretty much in the cards that she would talk. It was the only way she could salvage anything. Thank God we had her. Without an eyewitness we didn’t know who did what.”

14

T
oni the traitor. How dare she turn state’s evidence against Melinda, Laurie, and Hope.

Larry and Terry Leatherbury and Kary Pope were fuming. They’d teach that little weasel a lesson she’d never forget. They couldn’t get to Toni herself, however, because she was tucked away safely in the Scott County jail. But there were other ways to take revenge.

Hyped up and full of venom, Kary and the Leatherburys went to a discount store in Clarksville and armed themselves with long knives and hatchets. Then they left for Madison in search of Toni’s parents, Clifton and Glenda Lawrence, with menace on their minds.

But somewhere along the fifty-mile drive to Madison, Kary had second thoughts and convinced the brothers that they should turn back. And a short time after that, Kary called Detective Steve Henry and confessed it all.

“Kary was hysterical,” Henry said. “She told me what had happened. They were going to do some horrible things to Toni’s parents. Somewhere along the way they chickened out and the whole thing fell through. Kary told me she felt terrible about it.”

Kary was a walking contradiction. A tough guy one minute, a confused waif the next. The seventeen-year-old lesbian had an up-and-down relationship with her own family and was drawn to the solid, easygoing Henry. The detective provided an anchor for her during the months following Shanda’s murder. He had treated her with respect from the start, telling her that her sexual persuasion made no difference to him and that he needed her help to understand the dynamics of Melinda and Laurie’s friendship. She would call him often and he’d offer words of advice. He told her that if she hadn’t been on the outs with Laurie and Melinda at the time she might have been along the night of Shanda’s abduction.

“I told her that she had a second chance,” Henry said. “I told her she had the opportunity to learn from this and turn her life around and stop hanging with that crowd. I think she honestly tried at times, but then she’d do something stupid, like that stunt about hurting Toni’s mom and dad. She’d act tough for the others, but I think she was probably the most fragile of the lot.”

Kary had kept up a correspondence with both Melinda and Laurie after their arrest, writing letters and visiting them in jail. She told them she was lost without them and would be waiting for them when they got out—however many years that would be.

In July 1992, six months after Shanda’s murder, Melinda wrote Kary this letter:

Dear Kary (poopsie),

I received all your precious letters and I’ve got all these mixed up feelings about them. It’s like you sometimes take Amanda’s place. She hasn’t written me a letter since she’s been back from Florida [where she’d gone for a vacation] and it’s like she don’t care. I miss her so much but they say if you love something let it go and if it comes back then it was meant to be. So, that’s what I plan on doing. Kary, I will always be here for you and I’ll stay in touch. I promise that I’ll never leave you or forget about you. You are my best friend, sister, and could be more but we are both so fucked up and
insecure we can’t only have one partner. We have each other and always will and I’ll see to it. Do you understand what I’m saying, poopsie? We are one of a kind. We are so much alike that we don’t even realize it. Well, about that girl Angie. Drop her. You deserve the best like me. Kary, go on with your life and just date around and have fun. Well, I hope this letter finds you all right and remember we have a date when I get out!!! I love you.

All my love,
your doll,    
Mel            

P.S. You are so cute.

Kary and Laurie began writing to each other almost immediately after the latter’s arrest. A poem Laurie sent to Kary on January 21, 1992, just ten days after Shanda’s death, had obviously been inspired by the fiery scene on Lemon Road:

THE FOREST

The forest burns.

The children scream.

Shadows await, to take souls unseen.

Stones that mark death await for their calling.

Innocence allies with evil hence falling.

Their father stands watching, laughing in victory.

His servants surround him, struggling to be free,

From the chains that bound them to his ebony throne.

From the ground calleth voices,

Which once had been known,

They scuffle about until one breaks free