Little Lost Angel (26 page)

Toni came out of her coma gradually. Weeks of therapy at LifeSpring Mental Health Services followed. On September 21 she was admitted to Larue Carter Memorial Hospital in Indianapolis for further therapy.

On the date of Toni’s discharge, October 8, therapist Esther Schubert wrote a report in which she made the following observations:

Toni’s parents admit that she is a strong-willed child who often got her way by pouting. They usually gave in; however, as she became older, they tended to treat her with grounding when she was disobedient. Nevertheless, there was a significant number of years early in her life when she ran the show and she continues to do that in her relationship with her parents. She appears to have grown up assuming she could also have whatever she wanted.

Toni has a long history of rebellion against her parents. Apparently as early as age ten or eleven she began to sneak out of the house at night and was involved in parties and apparently some drugs and alcohol. She had been smoking cigarettes since she was thirteen, and although her parents do not approve of this they have never had the courage to tell her not to smoke. She did not make good choices in friends. She seems to have some difficulties with her conscience development and her ability to make decisions. In many cases her tendency has been to decide whether to do something on the basis of whether she would be caught, rather than on the rightness or wrongness of the action.

Toni told her therapist that she’d taken the overdose because her parents were going out of town for a while and she was feeling abandoned.

“She states categorically that she did not mean to kill herself,” Schubert wrote in her report.

My impression is that Toni has learned over the years that there are no consequences to her behavior. She was unable to discuss the wrongful behavior in which she participated [Shanda’s death] and assumes that because she was not physically striking some of the blows
that she therefore was not responsible for anything that happened. She claims that she is not responsible because she was so afraid of these girls, but she had several opportunities before Shanda was killed to call home or leave or call someone for help. The family commented that Toni has vacillated since she has been in jail between feeling remorse that she is in this mess and feeling that she did nothing wrong. There does not seem to be a genuine concern or empathy for the child who was murdered.

The therapist characterized Toni as “a follower” whose intelligence appeared to be “low average.” She wrote that Toni considered herself ugly “and always has.”

Part of Toni’s therapy called for her to give written answers to various questions. To the question “What do you believe in?” Toni wrote: “The things I believe in are God; love at first sight; premarital sex; having babies out of wedlock; and peace.”

To the question “What would you change about yourself?” she wrote: “I’d like to change the way I judge and trust because I don’t take time to think and I make quick decisions and trust too easy. I’d also like to change my looks. I don’t like my glasses and I need a little more meat on my bones. I’d like to be prettier and a couple of inches taller. I’d like to have a healthy life because I don’t like being suicidal and depressed and sick all the time.”

Asked to say something about her feelings, Toni wrote:

I’m very confused, angry, sad and I feel suicidal. I’m confused because of all the shit that’s going on in my life. I’m angry because you’re making me do these stupid questions again. I’m sad because I want to go home and be with my family. And I’m suicidal because I think it’s the only way to get out of this mess completely. I’m worried because I’m afraid I’m going to succeed in killing myself one of these days and because my ninety-seven-year-old great-granny doesn’t know any of what’s going on in my life and I’m afraid she’ll have a heart attack when she finds out.

In another paper, Toni wrote what she hoped to be doing in ten years:

I want to have one kid and adopt two. I want to have a well-paying job and I want my husband to have a well-paying job. I want to live in a big house in the country with ten mustangs. I also want a vacation home in the Bahamas. I want to go to France for two years. I studied it [French] for two years. I hope to have gotten all of this mess behind me and be finished with it all. And I want to stay close to all my family.

In closing, Schubert wrote that the staff at Larue Carter “found Toni to be a morally salvageable adolescent provided she be placed in a program that includes education, psychotherapy, and plans for eventual re-entry into the home community after her legal obligations have been satisfied.”

With Toni’s recovery assured, Townsend put the pressure on the attorneys for Melinda and Laurie by setting a deadline for them to accept his final offer of a plea agreement. Townsend said he would not seek the death penalty and would drop all other charges against the girls if they would plead guilty to murder, arson, and criminal confinement. Townsend also offered to recommend that the sentences on those charges run concurrently, which meant that the sentences the girls received for each individual charge would all run at the same time; the alternative would have been for the sentences to run consecutively, or one after the other. Thus each girl would now be facing a sentence of between thirty and sixty years, which is the sentencing range for murder, the most serious charge. In exchange for the deal, both girls would have to agree to give statements and to testify against the others at their sentencing hearings.

On September 21, the day before the expiration of the deadline, Melinda and Laurie accepted the deal.

“We had to,” Russ Johnson said. “We knew we had problems if we went to trial. The extreme priority was to get the death penalty dismissed.”

Goering said, “Laurie was not eager to deal and her father
did not want her to deal, but after I got a look at the evidence it was the only way we could go.”

Not missing a chance to criticize Townsend, however, Goering continued: “We definitely got a better deal than we would have gotten from an experienced prosecutor, but the case was almost prosecutor proof. Steve Henry had done a thorough job. The evidence was there to convict. Even Townsend would have had a difficult time botching it.”

16

O
n the same day that Laurie Tackett accepted her plea agreement, she was steered into the jury room of the Jefferson County courthouse by Steve Henry and Sheriff Shipley. As part of her plea bargain, Laurie had agreed to tell her side of the story.

Henry had not talked to Laurie since the night of her arrest, and he was full of questions. The picture of Laurie painted by Kary Pope and Larry Leatherbury was almost too bizarre to believe. He wanted to get Laurie’s version of her occult practices, but first he had to deal with the matter at hand: What had been her role in Shanda’s murder?

With her attorney, Wil Goering, by her side, Laurie launched into the series of events that led to her first meeting with Melinda. As Laurie spoke of Melinda, Henry could detect the resentment in her voice. Whatever their relationship had been at the time of Shanda’s murder, Laurie made no secret of the fact that she now blamed Melinda for everything that had happened. It was Melinda’s fault, she believed, that she, Hope, and Toni were behind bars.

Laurie told Henry and Shipley that she, Hope, and Toni
had had no idea that Melinda planned to kill Shanda. She said they’d gone along with the ruse to lure Shanda out of the house thinking only that Melinda wanted to beat her up.

Laurie said that Melinda “just went off on” Shanda when they got her out of the car on the dirt road near her home. “Melinda kept beating her up and Shanda wasn’t trying to fight back,” she said.

Laurie said that after Melinda had beat Shanda senseless, all four girls put Shanda into the trunk, then drove to her house. Laurie claimed that she did Shanda no harm when she went outside alone to quiet her barking dog.

“I opened the trunk and looked in on her,” Laurie said. “I said, ‘Shanda,’ and she looked up at me and her eyes rolled back in her head. It just scared me to death. She was all bloody. There was blood everywhere. I grabbed the red blanket out of the backseat and put it over her because she was shivering.”

Laurie claimed it was Melinda who suggested they drive off with Shanda in the trunk and Melinda who thought up several schemes to finish Shanda off and dispose of her body.

“Do you know how Shanda sustained the injuries to her body?” Henry asked.

“No,” Laurie said. “But it was Melinda who brought up the idea to burn her. She said her friend Crystal Wathen said that if she was going to kill Shanda the best way to get rid of her body was to burn it. Melinda was the burner. We laid her on the ground. Melinda got the gas and poured it on Shanda.”

Henry looked at Shipley. They were both fairly certain by now that Hope had been the first to pour the gas. This is what Melinda had told her attorney, and Toni had confessed that Hope had admitted the same to her. But the lawmen said nothing and let Laurie continue.

“Shanda started crying,” Laurie said. “I was bending down over her. I was going to lift up the blanket. I guess I was going to try to talk to her again and then the fire went up in my face and it singed my bangs.”

Laurie said they got back in the car but hadn’t driven far when Melinda told them to turn around.

“Melinda said she needed to make sure she was on fire all the way,” Laurie said. “Melinda got out and poured the rest of the gas on her. Melinda kept saying, ‘I’m so happy she’s dead. I’m so happy she’s out of mine and Amanda’s life,’ and she was laughing and carrying on. Then we went back to Melinda’s house to go to sleep. But I couldn’t sleep because I just kept hearing Shanda screaming. Melinda told me to shut up and that’s the last thing we said to each other before we were arrested.”

Laurie sat back in her chair, assuming she was finished, but Henry and Shipley still had questions.

“You said that Melinda poured the gas but you never said who lit the fire,” Sheriff Shipley asked.

“I don’t know who lit it,” the girl insisted. “The fire just went up in my face all of a sudden. It wasn’t me. Hope and Melinda were standing around her and I personally feel that Melinda did it.”

“At any time during this did you try to get Melinda to stop?” asked Shipley.

“No,” Laurie said meekly. “I was scared.”

“Scared of who?”

“Nobody would understand unless they were in a situation like this,” Laurie explained. “It didn’t have to be us. It could have been the nicest people on the earth with one bad person. I went out under the impression that we were going to scare her and that Melinda was going to beat her up. After Shanda went unconscious and all the blood and everything, we were scared to take her anywhere. If I were to take her to a hospital what would they say to me? They’d ask how she got like this.”

“I’m sure they would have,” Shipley said sarcastically. “Do you know how Shanda sustained her anal injuries?”

Laurie put on her most sincere face. “I don’t know. I don’t remember that happening. I feel like she might have gotten them before all of this. I feel that she might have had sex with somebody else that did that. That’s the only thing I can think of that would have done that because we sure didn’t do anything. We didn’t molest her. We didn’t do anything to her in any way . . . like molested her or anything. I mean, it wasn’t like that.”

Henry took over the questioning and asked, “How did she get the injuries in the back of her head?”

“My lawyers have asked me the same question,” Laurie said matter-of-factly, as if she were commenting on some mundane detail. “I think she did a lot of banging around in the back of the trunk. She did a lot of banging around. It sounded like she was kicking the back of my car out. I kept wondering to myself how she had that much strength. She was kicking around a lot and there was a big old tire back there too I think. She could have hit her head on the trunk part. She could have done anything by kicking like that.”

Henry was tired of fooling around. “Once you left your house, did you at any time stop, open the trunk, and hit her with a tire tool or anything?” he asked bluntly.

“No.”

“Did anyone?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Laurie said. Then, realizing that this was another opportunity to shift the blame to Melinda, she continued: “Melinda went back to the trunk when I was sitting in the car. She stopped the car and went back to the trunk several times.”

Henry pressed Laurie for more details about the long drive with Shanda in the trunk.

“I can only remember parts of what was happening,” Laurie said coolly. “It’s totally blacked out from the time we were out on the country road to the time we got to my house.”

“It seems that there’s a lot of things you can’t remember,” said Henry, showing his frustration.

“Yeah,” Laurie said, becoming defensive. “That’s because we were out there a long time. It seemed like an eternity. It seemed like we were out there forever.”